Andrew Bacevich: Save Us From Washington’s Visionaries, In (Modest) Praise of a Comforting Mediocrity
Seldom have well-credentialed and well-meaning people worked so hard to produce so little of substance.
Read more...Author Archives: Yves Smith
Who is Still Exposed to Greece?
Please read past the finger-wagging “private lenders are (barely) starting to come back to Greece, better not spook them” talk. This piece provides a useful overview of how the composition of lenders to Greece has changed over time. You can see how significant banks once were and how they were quiet deliberately displaced by various “official” creditors.
Read more...Mathew D. Rose: Hope for Greece, and Perhaps for Europe Too
Monday morning I encountered a word in a number of newspapers that I have not read regarding the European Union for years: Hope. The occasion was the election in Greece. I suddenly became aware of how long much of this continent has been living in what appears to be a never ending-crisis.
Read more...Links 1/29/15
Did New York Times’ Dealbook Throw a Source Under the Bus in TPG Suit Against Ex-Employee/Ex-White House Staffer?
If a lawsuit filed yesterday by TPG is to be taken at face value, the private equity kingpin has been the subject of a nasty extortion attempt by a vengeful now former employee, Adam Levine. Levine allegedly not only threatened to use his PR clout to bring down the firm, but purloined confidential materials from TPG’s systems and doctored at least one before sending it to a reporter at New York Times’ Dealbook. And TPG further claims it had good reason to be worried because Levine asserted that it was his grand jury testimony, shortly after he left the Bush White House as a member of its communications team, that brought down Scooter Libby.
But the real bombshell in the filing is the way that the New York Times’ Dealbook looks to have thrown Levine, an alleged source, under the bus.
Read more...The Sheldon Silver Medical Connection: None Dare Call It Health Care Corruption
Aside from the independent merit of this post, in calling out an aspect of the Sheldon Silver scandal that the media has sanctimoniously overlooked, I am also a big believer in encouraging the use of the word “corruption” when it fits, which is sadly all too often these days.
Read more...How More and More U.S. Corporate Profits Escape the Corporate Income Tax
Yves here. This post makes an important and simple point about one big source of the fall in the relative importance of corporate income as a source of Federal tax revenue that is often ignored in official discussions: the rise in the use of pass-through entities.
Read more...John Helmer: Russia’s and Greece’s Fraught New Friendship
Yves here. John Helmer points out that while Greece needs all the friends it can get right now, Russia has never been a great ally of Greece. Another big complicating factor is that Russia already has important commitments to Turkey. But the biggest complicating factor is that Greece’s links to Russia are through its oligarchs, which is precisely the class that Syriza has committed to crush. For instance, Yanis Varoufakis in a pre-election interviews put cracking down on oligarchs as a top priority. Similarly, as we noted, that commitment is one of the few reforms that Syriza has proposed that predisposes the Troika towards the new government.
Read more...Links 1/28/15
How Wall Street Killed Entrepreneurs
Since it conflicts with Americans’ widely-held image of self-reliance, the fact that new business creation has fallen to the point that even Hungary has a higher rate of starting new ventures than the US hasn’t gotten the attention it warrants in the mainstream media.
Unfortunately, many of the explanations for why that happened are more than a bit off.
Read more...Wolf Richter: Junk-Bond Bubble Implodes Beyond Energy, Deals Scuttled, Yields Soar, Suddenly “Insufficient Demand”
The year 2015 has just started, and already there have been two junk-bond casualties: the first on Thursday, and the second one yesterday. They weren’t energy companies. Energy companies don’t even try anymore.
Read more...Links 1/27/15
Tax Haven USA: The Vortex-Shaped Hole in Global Financial Transparency
Yves here. Nicholas Shaxson’s landmark book on tax havens, Treasure Island, described how the US was the biggest sponsor of what Shaxson called “offshore,” or tax havens and tax secrecy. He tells us how the US is working to keep it that way.
Read more...Snowstorm: New York Makes It Illegal to Be an Idiot
As often happens with snowstorms, the forecasters look to have gotten it a bit wrong, with supposedly epic snowfall of two feet plus for New York City now significantly downgraded by the Weather Channel, which has a bias to overpredict, to what looks like 12 to 14 inches total.
But even with the worst of the storm now hitting further north, were the extreme safety measures justified?
Read more...U.S. Shale Boom May Come To Abrupt End
U.S tight oil production from shale plays will fall more quickly than most assume.
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