Author Archives: Yves Smith

Wolf Richter: Big Reset Looms for Corporate Credit Market

Collateralized loan obligations and other risky corporate credit assets are trading at tight risk spreads despite stock market upheaval. What gives?

Links 2/14/18

Financial Markets Have Taken Over the Economy. To Prevent Another Crisis, They Must Be Brought to Heel.

A detailed and well-argued explanation of how the growth in the role of financial markets has become destructive.

Private Equity Firms Turn Up Noses at Trump’s Infrastructure Headfake

A perverse bit of good news: PE firms don’t like Trump’s infrastructure scheme.

Government Shutdown Once Again Shows the Lies Behind Deficit Hysteria

How the wealthy use deficit scaremongering to keep wages down and stave off calls for more investment and social spending.

Links 2/13/18

An Aetna “Fake Accounts” Level Scandal? Medical Director Admits He Never Reviewed Medical Records Before Denying Care

An Aetna medical director said he didn’t review any cases, a bombshell admission even for one doctor, and damning if a normal practice.

Cryptocurrencies Don’t Make Sense

How cryptocurrencies do a poor job of delivering on their supposed purposes.

Why CalPERS’ Private Equity Outsourcing Scheme Is Likely to Hurt Returns

Why CalPERS’ private equity outsourcing scheme is likely to leave the funds’ beneficiaries and California taxpayers worse off.

CalPERS Let New Fox in the Private Equity Henhouse: Silicon Valley Fixer Wilson Sonsini

Why Wilson Sonsini’s not-obvious role at CalPERS is another red flag for CalPERS’ private equity outsourcing scheme.

Gaius Publius: More on the Cape Town, South Africa, Water Crisis

Cape Town is becoming ground zero of water scarcity….a future that will arrive for many more in the coming decades.

Links 2/10/18

Wizards and Prophets Face Off to Save the Planet

How to feed 10 billion people? Wizards, as in technophiles, and prophets, conservationists, have very different answers.