Picking Apart One of the Biggest Lies in American Politics: “Free Trade”
How the Founding Fathers and successful advancing economies steered clear of manufacturer-destroying “free trade”.
Read more...Author Archives: Yves Smith
German Wage Repression: Getting to the Roots of the Eurozone Crisis
How Germany’s wage repression, a war against its own workers, has been exported to the rest of the Eurozone.
Read more...As QE Wanes, Real Costs of “Employment” Subsidies Surface
As the QE prop is removed, it will become more difficult to ignore the fact that “employment” subsidies were often simply “employer” subsidies.
Read more...Links 8/21/15
“How Complex Systems Fail”
Complex systems are prone to catastrophic failure. Have we come to embrace policies and values that increase the odds of failure?
Read more...How Medical “Misbranding” Puts Patients at Risk
How the anodyne term “misbranding” covers conduct which can, and too often does, lead to higher patient death rates.
Read more...VICE News: “Why Pay Your Taxes?”
This Vice News segment makes the normally dry and daunting subject of taxes (really tax policy) accessible and entertaining. Plus it features Lee Sheppard.
Read more...Wolf Richter: It Starts – Broad Retaliation Against China in Currency War
Struggling economies that compete with China are going to protect their exports against Chinese encroachment via currency depreciation.
Read more...Links 8/20/15
FT Alphaville Credits Our Richard Smith for Busting GXG Markets, “European Scam-Central”
Richard Smith’s relentless gumshoe work has put a rancid fraud-enabler, GXG Global Exchange Group, out of business.
Read more...Greece’s Missing Drivers of Growth
This post mines an issue we’ve discussed repeatedly, that the heavy dose of “reforms” imposed on Greece succeeded in lowering wage costs without providing the expected boost in exports.
Read more...Low Oil Prices Could Break The “Fragile Five” Producing Nations
Five countries, and not necessarily the ones you’d expect, are particularly vulnerable to protracted low oil prices.
Read more...Louis Proyect: Once More on IT and a Return to the Drachma
Why selling magic sparkle ponies, in the form of presenting a conversion to the drachma as easy when it isn’t, makes for bad IT and even worse policy prescriptions.
Read more...Links 8/19/15
The ALEC Rankings: Does Smaller Government Mean Higher Growth?
Demonstrating why Menzie Chinn stated, “The ALEC economic outlook ranking is, in my assessment, a manifestation of faith based economics.”
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