Are the Davos Men Getting a Bit Nervous?
Normally I try not to pay much attention to Davos because it is meant to reinforce the idea that plutocracy is simply a manifestation of natural aristocracy.
Read more...Author Archives: Yves Smith
Congressmen Call for Hearings on Risks of Rental Securtizations
Private equity firms have been playing residential landlord for only a few years, but the impressive amount of capital they’ve deployed in this strategy means they’ve had significant impact in the markets they’ve targeted. Needless to say, that impact does not look to be very positive. A Congressman has called for hearings on rental securitizations out of concern that this structure could make this already not-too-good-looking situation much worse from the perspective of tenants and communities.
Read more...Global Dollar-Based Financial Fragility in the 2000s (Part I)
Yves here. It’s been frustrating to see orthodox economists continue to invoke the Bernanke “saving glut hypothesis” as a significant driver of the crisis. That view was rebutted in gory detail in a 2010 paper by Claudio Borio and Piti Disyatat of the BIS, “Global imbalances and the financial crisis: Link or no link?” (see Andrew Dittmer’s summary here). Not surprisingly, the orthodoxy has chosen to ignore this paper.
A new working paper by Junji Tokunaga and Gerald Epstein, “The Endogenous Finance of Global Dollar-Based Financial Fragility in the 2000s: A Minskian Approach,” builds on the perspective of the Borio/Disyatat paper. Readers should find this summary to be a straightforward, persuasive discussion of an important topic.
Read more...Gar Alperovitz on Mondragon and the Potential of Worker Owned Co-ops Economy
Gar Alperovitz, professor of economics at the University of Maryland, speaks on Real News Network about the potential and limits of worker cooperatives like Mondragon.
Read more...Links 1/25/14
Ann Pettifor on Combatting the Despotic Power of Finance
Economist Ann Pettifor discusses how economies around the world moved from using borrowing to support productive investments to fueling speculation and consumption, and how that led to the financial crisis. She also describes how the post-crisis response to the debt overhang isn’t merely ineffective but in fact counterproductive.
Read more...Another Obama Corporate Gimmie: Broadens Corporate R&D Tax Credits
Obama is looking more and more like an ideal Republican president with every passing day.
Read more...Michael Hudson: The Insider’s Economics Dictionary – N is for Neo-Serfdom, O for Offshore Banking
Yves here. We feature two new entries from Michael Hudson’s incisive and entertaining The Insiders Economic Dictionary.
Read more...Links 1/24/14
Why George Lucas, Eric Schmidt, (and yes, Steve Jobs) Should Go to Jail: Conspiring to Reduce Wages of 100,000 Tech Pros
One big difference between West Coast and East Coast oligarchs is that a lot fewer people lionize the Eastern ones. But a pending lawsuit may finally tarnish some Silicon Valley halos.
Read more...Bill Black: Dimon Does Davos, and His Board Gives Him a Raise
Yves here. It’s become tough work keeping up with the continuing large gap between Dimon hagiography in the media and his dubious accomplishments. So hat’s off to Bill Black for staying on this beat.
Read more...The Myth of Maximizing Shareholder Value
So many of the assertions made about “maximizing shareholder value” are false that they should be assumed to be a lie until proven otherwise.
Read more...Michael Hudson: The Insider’s Economics Dictionary – L is for Land, M is for Marginalism
Yves here. Two new entries in Michael Hudson’s answer to Ambrose Bierce’s The Devil’s Dictionary, his The Insiders Economic Dictionary.
Read more...Links 1/23/14
China Credit Worries Rise as Large Shadow Banking Default Looms
China faces the first big test of its shadow banking system, in the form of a pending default. How is it likely to fare?
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