Yearly Archives: 2013

Europe’s Good News, Bad News

Data out of Europe is showing relative improvement on several important fronts, but is this merely stabilization or “less bad” as opposed to finally turning a corner?

Manning Found Not Guilty of “Aiding the Enemy,” Guilty on 20 of 22 Espionage Counts

By lambert strether.

Readers, thoughts?

Link 7/30/13

Fiscal Crises: Coming To A City Near You?

The sad fact of the matter is that Detroit suffers today from international trade and international financial policies of the past two decades that many leading international economists embraced.

Memo to Eliot Spitzer: If Even Harvard’s Own Law Firm is More Loyal to Bain, How Can You Get Good Legal Advice?

The saga of Harvard Management Company’s relationship with its lead law firm, Ropes & Gray, is a cautionary tale for those who like to believe that private equity investors are doing a good job of taking care of their interests. Just follow the money.

James Galbraith on Social Breakdown and Financial Stress in Europe and Why the Word “Stimulus” Needs to be Banned

Yanis Varoufakis provided the English translation of a new interview with James Galbraith published in Suddeutsche Zeitung. Galbraith focuses on institutional arrangements, the need for restructuring and reform, and constraints on growth.

Links 7/29/13

Tom Engelhardt: Edward Snowden vs. Robert Seldon Lady Shows How Our One-Superpower World Works

Retired CIA agent Robert Seldon Lady, convicted in absentia in Italy for a rendition/kidnapping operation, is picked up in Panama on an Interpol warrant, hits the news for a day, and then is allowed to fly back to the U.S. where he disappears — and despite the Edward Snowden case, the Washington media doesn’t even blink.

Bad Derivatives Trades Added to Detroit’s Woes

Only now that the narrative around Detroit is pretty well established – city in long-term decline whose distress was intensified by a series of corrupt city governments, compounded by state governments that were opposed to Detroit’s interests – does an important additional factor come to light, that of derivatives losses.

Monday DataDive: June’s New and Existing Home Sales and Advance Report on Durable Goods

By rjs, a rural swamp denizen from Northeast Ohio, and a long-time commenter at Naked Capitalism. Originally published at MarketWatch 666.

This week we’ll look at sales of previously occupied homes, which unexpectedly slipped more than one percent in June… Some think it’s the effect of higher interest rates, but there’s not enough evidence in the data, which showed even higher prices, to pinpoint a cause.. Then we’ll look at the census report on sales of new homes, which some think were at a 5 year high, and explain that Census doesn’t even know if they rose or fell in June… Finally, we’ll look at new orders for durable goods, which appeared to be up more than expected in June, and find that once we strip out the orders for aircraft, new orders for other durable goods put up a goose-egg…

Fukushima Problems Escalating, Radioactive Water Going into Pacific

The Fukushima nuclear plant crisis continues unresolved in a bad way.

Links 7/28/13

Global Political Risk: China “Social Unrest” Numbers, the Chengguan and the Watermelon Seller, and the Economic Slowdown

By lambert strether of Corrente.

Here’s another in my series of quote dumps on protests by country; this time, I thought I’d focus exclusively on China. Much of this material comes from official media, and I’m not making any representations as to accuracy of the report; more sources, please! I tried to get some sense of the scale and variety of “social unrest” (ginormous, but then it would be), the role of the state, and the current seeming shift in the Party’s economic policy toward a slower growth rate, however motivated. China is (duh) just a huge topic, so your expertise in commments will be most welcome.