Bernie Sanders gave a forceful, if sobering, assessment of the state of the economy from the perspective of working men and women, as well as retirees, and focused on the hypocrisy of corporations and the wealthy that poor-mouth as a way to extract even more subsidies and tax breaks.
Read more...Michael Hudson recaps the theory, or perhaps more accurately, political justifications for quantitative easing, as opposed to how it works in practice.
Read more...Yves here. Unlike many other comments on the state of Greece’s finances, this post takes a stab at Greece’s ongoing budget needs as well as its various debt due dates. Note that one uncertainty flagged here has been resolved in Greece’s favor. The Greek government will receive €550 million this month from the Hellenic Financial Stability Facility.
Read more...Two stories on Slashdot say a great deal about the reality of the labor market versus the official hype. It’s noteworthy that the comments, which are typically fractious at Slashdot, line up almost uniformly on the “employers are looking for insanely specific and often unrealistic experience.” And why might that be? In the case of tech in particular, to justify bringing in more H-1B visa candidates.
Read more...It’s one thing to suspect that evidence that fracking causes earthquakes is being suppressed. It’s quite another to be able to name the parties behind the cover up.
Read more...I am at a complete loss as to why the Federal Reserve might think that now is the moment to begin raising interest rates. I cannot see a scintilla of hard evidence in support, and potent evidence against.
Read more...The short answer is not that many, and not that much. But that was not entirely unexpected.
Read more...As Greece staggers under the weight of a depression exceeding that of the 1930s in the US, it appears difficult to see a way forward from what is becoming increasingly a Ponzi financed, extend and pretend, “bailout” scheme. In fact, there are much more creative and effective ways to solve some of the macrofinancial dilemmas that Greece is facing, and without Greece having to exit the euro. But these solutions challenge many existing economic paradigms, including the concept of “money” itself.
Read more...On the curious way a New York Times story on McDonald’s efforts at transformation said almost nothing about McDonald’s workers.
Read more...Andrew Bacevich excoriates policy intellectuals as a “blight on the republic”.
Read more...A proposed bill that focuses on currency manipulation could case problems for pending “trade” deals and could lead to protectionism.
Read more...Asking Naked Capitalism readers to support Yasha Levine’s Surveillance Valley project, an investigation of how the for-profit surveillance industry uses technology to monitor and control our lives.
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