Author Archives: Yves Smith
Gaius Publius: IPCC Accidentally Proves that “International Cooperation” on Climate Change is Dead
As you’ve been reading lately, there’s a new IPCC climate report out, the second of three. This report is from Working Group 2, responsible for studying “impacts, adaptation, and vulnerabilities.” In other words, what effect is climate change (“global warming”) having now, what impact will it have if we make certain choices, and where are we vulnerable?
Read more...Satyajit Das: The New Colonialism – Businesses Refuse Spend a Few Cents More Per Garment to End Labor Exploitation in Emerging Markets
Yves here. Das wrote this post to commemorate the anniversary of the collapse of Rana Plaza in Bangladesh, which killed over 1100 garment workers.
Read more...Philip Pilkington: Misdirection – Galbraith on Thomas Piketty’s New Book on Capital
Yves here. The best review so far on Thomas Piketty’s new book Capital in the Twentieth Century is by Jamie Galbraith, and we’ve featured it in Links. But the article itself is long and a bit wonky, so Pilkington’s recap is a useful distillation of Galbraith’s piece.
Read more...Yanis Varoufakis: Europe’s Latest Policy on Irish and Greek Banking losses – Two Swindles Too Similar for Comfort
The Irish and the Greeks are, in many ways, very different people. And yet, caught up in the Euro Crisis, their fortunes have become too close for comfort.
Read more...Michael Lewis’ Repeat Omission: No Crimes Were Committed
In Flash Boys, Michael Lewis has again launched a book that hews to his established formula: colorful outsiders take on a big bad entrenched establishment and win. Even though Lewis seems assured of having yet another best-seller, this book is getting more criticism than his works usually do. Put it this way: when commentators as diverse as Felix Salmon, Matt Levine, and Pam Martens feel compelled to object, it looks like Lewis has overfitted this tale to his blockbuster formula.
Read more...Links 4/2/14
CalPERS Tries Ineffective Mudslinging in Response to Our Ongoing Private Equity Investigation
Yesterday I learned that a press release that the California Public Employees’ Retirement Systems issued last Friday about our suit against the giant public pension fund. It’s quite a remarkable document, and not in a good way.
Read more...Wolf Richter: I Just Got PayPal’s New Absolutely-No-Privacy-Ever Policy
PayPal’s new “privacy” policies show how deeply the private surveillance apparatus digs into your life.
Read more...Bill Black: Deflation Dementia
Yves here. This piece by Bill Black not only does a great job of kneecapping some typically poor MSM reporting, but it’s also valuable as a high-level overview of the insanity of European economic policies.
Read more...Links 4/1/14
Slumlord Wannabe Blackstone Violates Local Housing Laws by Making Tenants Maintain Rentals
The yawning gap between private equity landlord sales talk and what they are delivering is finally being exposed.
Read more...Reuters Reports that CalPERS “Lawyered Up” in Response to Our Public Records Suit
Reuters is keeping tabs on some of the developments in our ongoing dispute with the nation’s largest public pension fund, CalPERS.
Read more...Understanding the Confidence Fairy
Why you should be skeptical when economists and policy-makers talk about the value of reducing uncertainty which is code for invoking the confidence fairy.
Read more...Was Marx Right?
We participated in a Room for Debate forum at the New York Times, on the topic of “Was Marx Right?” Readers are likely to say, “But of course!” Yet Marx had such a large opus and his forecasts were so bold that any fair reading has to come to more nuanced conclusion.
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