It’s a sign of the times that a reputable economist, Dean Baker, can use the word “corruption” in the headline of an article describing two major trade deals under negotiation and no one bats an eye.
Read more...By Lynn Parramore, a senior editor at Alternet. Cross posted from Alternet
We think we know what democracy is. But do we?
Read more...As is par for the course, the financial media is telling a story about a major US company from the perspective of the investing classes, rather than the broader public.
Read more...Yves here. We’re a little EU-centric tonight as a result of a wealth of particularly good material, which is often a sign that stresses are rising (there was tons of good material in the runup to the crisis as well).
By Jesús Fernández-Villaverde, Professor of Economics, University of Pennsylvania and Luis Garicano, Research Fellow with the Productivity and Innovation Programme, Centre for Economic Performance; Professor of Economics and Strategy, Departments of Management and of Economics. Cross posted from VoxEU
By the end of the 1990s, under the incentive of Eurozone entry, most peripheral European countries were busy undertaking structural reforms and putting their fiscal houses in order. This column argues that the arrival of the euro, and the subsequent interest-rate convergence, loosened a tide of cheap money that reversed the incentives for further reforms. As a result, by the end of the euro’s first decade, the institutions and governance in the Eurozone periphery were in worse shape than they were at the start of the decade.
Read more...By Delusional Economics, who is determined to cleanse the daily flow of vested interests propaganda to produce a balanced counterpoint. Cross posted from MacroBusiness.
Yesterday I noticed an interesting paragraph over at efxnews about France and its parallels with what many see in the market today:
Read more...It’s a big surprise for some that France is high on the crisis susceptibility index…
Joseph Baines’s new article, “Food Price Inflation as Redistribution: Towards a New Analysis of Corporate Power in the World Food System” is a must read if you care to understand how major corporations exercise hidden influence on our daily lives.
Read more...Imagine you’ve just landed a job with a big-time retailer. Your task is to load and unload boxes from trucks and containers. It’s back-breaking work. You toil 12 to 16 hours a day, often without a lunch break. Sweat drenches your clothes in the 90-degree heat, but you keep going: your kids need their dinner. One day, your supervisor tells you that instead of being paid an hourly wage, you will now get paid for the number of containers you load or unload. This will be great for you, your supervisor says: More money! But you open your next paycheck to find it shrunken to the point that you are no longer even making minimum wage. You complain to your supervisor, who promptly sends you home without pay for the day. If you pipe up again, you’ll be looking for another job.
Read more...This Real News Network interview with James Henry gives yet another vantage on our have versus have-not economy.
Read more...Your humble blogger was surprised when Obama nominated Mary Jo White to head the SEC, since her reputation as a tough prosecutor is at odds with Obama’s well established pattern of catering to banks (the fact that he gives them only 97% of what they want is nevertheless offensive enough to their tender sensibilities). I surmised that there had to be an angle here…
Read more...By Delusional Economics, who is determined to cleanse the daily flow of vested interests propaganda to produce a balanced counterpoint. Cross posted from http://www.macrobusiness.com.au/2013/02/europe-waits-for-italy/“>MacroBusiness.
Another chapter in the Italy political story comes to a close as a government is formed, for how long who knows, but a familiar figure appears to be playing puppet master…
Read more...It appears that the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency and the Fed dropped the ball yet again on vetting firms involved in the Orwellianly-named Independent Foreclosure Review (IFR) for conflicts of interest. Michael Olenick’s expose on Allonhill, one of the “independent consultants” hired by Wells Fargo, led to Allonhill’s role being curtailed considerably.
But there’s no way to curtail the role of Rust Consulting, a firm that has been central in the Independent Foreclosure Reviews virtually from their onset. And as we’ll see, Rust has ample conflicts of interest when it was engaged to handle mailings and outreach under the IFR, and is about to become even more conflicted.
Read more...By Yanis Varoufakis, Professor of Economics at the University of Athens. Cross posted from his blog
Any fair minded reading of the Bundesbank’s latest Constitutional Court deposition must lead to one of two conclusions: Either the Bundesbank has failed to recognise the existentialist threat to the Eurozone (that was placed in suspended animation during the past eight months or so), or the Bundesbank has intentionally opted for a strategy that will, sooner or later, see the disbanding of the current Eurozone. Loath to assume naiveté on the Bundesbank’s part, I opt for the latter. Here is why:
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