Corporate Welfare Queens – Shocking “Development Program” Failure Rate in North Carolina
Funny how there’s little hue and cry when corporate subsidies like development programs wind up throwing taxpayer money away.
Read more...Author Archives: Yves Smith
What’s Wrong with David Leonhardt’s NYT Piece on Inequality?
Beware of analyses that tell you that inequality is not rising.
Read more...Two New Papers Say Big Finance Sectors Hurt Growth and Innovation
In a bit of synchronicity, two new papers confirm the long-held suspicion that Wall Street is sucking the life out of Main Street.
Read more...Links 2/19/15
Obama Administration Throws Greece Under the Bus; ECB Leak Recommends Capital Controls; Greece Weighing Capitulation (Updated: Germany Rejects Greek Proposal)
Things are not going well for Greece. It appears Syriza has largely capitulated to the demands of the Troika.
Read more...Wolf Richter: The Chilling Thing Devon Energy Just Said About the US Oil Glut
Devon Energy shows how companies are pumping even more oil with fewer rigs and lower investment, perpetuating the oil oversupply.
Read more...Greek Government Faces Cash Crunch Next Week
Greece is facing a cash shortfall even sooner than expected.
Read more...ECB Could Pressure Greece by Refusing to Increase ELA (Update: Small Increase Approved)
The ECB seems to be keeping Greece on a short leash by approving only a small increase in the ELA.
Read more...Mathew D. Rose: Greece – It’s a Revolution, Stupid!
As Greece’s struggles to secure relief from impossible-to-pay-debt that served to prop up otherwise insolvent French and German banks, and to be permitted to implement measures to reduce distress and restore growth, more and more observers are recognizing that this is really a struggle over democratic self-control versus rule by an unaccountable technocracy with inflexible rules, using finance as their enforcement weapon. This speech in the European Parliament today by UKIP leader Neil Farage echoes some of the themes of Mathew Rose’s post. Rose also explains how the many Germans justify the counterproductive destruction of a society that they have turned into a vassal state.
Read more...Links 2/18/15
Where are the “Progressive” Democrats on Loretta Lynch’s HSBC Money Laundering Wrist Slap?
Some Republican Senators are having a field day, and rightly so, over the fact that Obama’s attorney general nominee, Loretta Lynch, looks to have allowed bank giant HSBC, and more important, its executives and officers, off vastly too easy in a massive money-laundering and tax evasion scheme. And where are the inquisitive Democratic senators to be found?
Read more...The “Vultures” are Still Circling Argentina
Argentina’s infamous “vulture funds”, as the holdout creditors represented by Paul Singer’s NML Capital are affectionately known, are back at their usual antics of trying to claw back from the Argentine government what they (and the US court system) see as rightfully theirs.
Read more...TransPacific Partnership: Fast Track to Financial Instability
In his State of the Union speech, President Obama said he would submit a bill to Congress that would grant him the fast track authority to finalize the TransPacific Partnership (TPP)—a trade pact with Pacific Rim countries such as Japan, Malaysia, Peru, and Chile. While free trade has brought benefits in the past, tariffs in the world economy are at an all time low and new deals like the TPP offer few new gains in terms of growth and jobs for the American people. And the TPP in particular comes at unacceptably high cost.
Read more...Tom Engelhardt: In Whose America? Machine Guns, MRAPs, Surveillance, Drones, Permanent War, and a Permanent Election Campaign
The occasion for such reflections: machine guns in my hometown. To be specific, several weeks ago, New York Police Commissioner William J. Bratton announced the formation of a new 350-officer Special Response Group (SRG). Keep in mind that New York City already has a police force of more than 34,000 — bigger, that is, than the active militaries of Austria, Bulgaria, Chad, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Kenya, Laos, Switzerland, or Zimbabwe — as well as its own “navy,” including six submersible drones. Just another drop in an ocean of blue, the SRG will nonetheless be a squad for our times, trained in what Bratton referred to as “advanced disorder control and counterterror.” It will also, he announced, be equipped with “extra heavy protective gear, with the long rifles and machine guns — unfortunately sometimes necessary in these instances.” And here’s where he created a little controversy in my hometown. The squad would, Bratton added, be “designed for dealing with events like our recent protests or incidents like Mumbai or what just happened in Paris.”
Read more...Negotiation Breakdown Exposes Widening Rift Between Germany and Greece
The negotiations between Greece and the Eurogroup are on a worse trajectory than conventional wisdom would have you believe.
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