Author Archives: Yves Smith

Bill Black: Obama’s Vain Search for a TPP “Legacy”

Yves here. This post confirms what readers know all to well, that Obama will use every opportunity to sell out the middle class to corporate interests.

One thing to bear in mind is that opposition to the Trans-Pacific Partnership, and its ugly sister, the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership, do not split on simply party lines. This fall, when Obama was unable to get enough votes to get “fast track” approval, which the Executive Branch uses to force an up-down vote on a final trade deal, denying Congress the opportunity to influence its contents, whip counts showed that nearly 40 Republicans in the House were prepared to join Democrats in opposing it. How the numbers would break now is an open question, but that means it is worth your time and effort to call your Congressman and let them know you are firmly opposed to these toxic trade deals.

Links 1/9/15

Michael Klare: How Big Oil Is Responding to the Anti-Carbon Movement

Yves here. It should be no surprise that Big Oil is not about to go down without a big fight. And they continue to copy from the playbook used by Big Tobacco. Behind the scenes, they go to great lengths to trying to undermine the already strong and ever-increasing evidence of the connection between greenhouse gas emissions and climate change, including openly offering bribes to scientists to attack the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change reports. In addition, frontally, they try to present their products and their social role as positive.

The CBO’s Bad Math: Putting $7 Trillion of Notional Value of Derivatives in Taxpayer-Backstopped Depositaries Will Cost Zero

So why did Elizabeth Warren lose her battle last month to stop banks from continuing to park $7 trillion notional value of risky derivatives like the credit defaults swaps in taxpayer-backstopped depositaries?

One of the less well-recognized reasons is that the CBO’s dubious analysis said it would not cost taxpayers a dime.

Links 1/8/15

How the Republican Campaign to Gut Dodd Frank is a Huge Gimmie to Banks and Private Equity Funds

The Republicans have been quick and shameless in using their control of both houses to try to crank up the financial services pork machine into overtime operation. The Democrats at least try to meter out their give-aways over time.

Their plan, as outlined in an important post by Simon Johnson, is to take apart Dodd Frank by dismantling key parts of it under the rubric of “clarifications” or “improvements” and to focus on technical issues that they believe to be over the general public’s head and therefore unlikely to attract interest, much the less ire. However, as Elizabeth Warren demonstrated in the fight last month over the so-called swaps pushout rule, it is possible to reduce many of these issues to their essential element, which is that Wall Street is getting yet another subsidy or back-door bailout.

Today’s example is HR 37, with the Orwellian label “Promoting Job Creation and Reducing Small Business Burdens Act”.

Fed Holds Fire on Disinflation Threat

Yves here. This post will not doubt give readers some grist to chew on in the ongoing debate as to whether the Fed is a very very clever bank stooge or not all that smart (and therefore a bumbling bank stooge, by virtue of cognitive capture). This discussion of the Fed’s blindness on disinflation, when commodities prices have fallen, oil is continuing its downward slide, and Europe has tipped into deflation, strongly suggests that the Fed is so desperately in need of believing in its own virtue that it will ignore any contrary evidence. That refusal to look at reality and to learn, particularly after how the central bank’s past ideologically-driven policies helped drive the global economy into the ditch, is a form of stupidity that seems to be drummed into orthodox economists.

Why Grexit Would Not Help Greece

Yves here. While readers may take issue with an economist who comes originally from the Troika, I’ve seen other credible analyses come to similar conclusions: that the structure of the Greek economy and its output mix means that it would not benefit anywhere near as much as one would expect from a large fall in […]

Links 1/7/15

Welcome to the Hunger Games, Brought to You by Mainstream Economics

As a virulent strain of austerity capitalism takes over Europe, leaving shattered lives in its shadow, researchers Servaas Storm and C.W.M. Naastepad, Senior Lecturers in Economics at Delft University of Technology in The Netherlands, consider how things got so bad, what role economists and misguided policy-makers have played, and which models and ideas are needed to change course. In the following interview, they discuss how most are getting the story about Europe wrong. They explain how their research shows that when countries try to compete with each other by lowering wages and slashing the social safety net, the costs are high both economically and socially, and why co-operative and regulated capitalism is a far better path.

Despite Current Glut, Oil Producers Continue Game of Chicken

When the world gives you too much oil, drill for more.