Author Archives: Yves Smith
JP Morgan, Not Satisfied with Profitable WaMu Acquisition, Sues FDIC to Extract More
If you are Jamie Dimon, a good deal is apparently never good enough.
Read more...Slate Tries Presenting Amazon’s Abusive Warehouse Jobs as Great Opportunities
A mere day after strikes at Amazon warehouses in Germany, which caught the attention of the media in the US, Slate ran as its lead piece in Moneybox an article that bears all the hallmarks of being a PR plant: Amazon Warehouses Are the New Factories.
I suspect the author, Emma Roller, wouldn’t recognize a factory if it fell on her.
Read more...We Are Seven Years Old
This is one of the few years when I’ve announced the blog’s birthday on a timely basis. I’m usually so distracted that I forget until after the fact. Many people have contributed to the success of the blog over the years. One of the things that helped early on was that people at higher traffic […]
Read more...Links 12/17/13
Bubble-logic and the Fed’s “To Taper or Not to Taper”
One of the amusing things right now is that there isn’t much debate in equity-land as to whether to be long or not.
Read more...Wolf Richter: Fear And Trembling In Muni Land
Municipal bond investors, a conservative bunch who want to avoid rollercoaster rides and cliffhangers, are getting frazzled. And they’re bailing out of muni bond funds at record rate, while they still can without losing their shirts.
Read more...Ragnarok – Iceland and the ‘Doom of the Gods’
Iceland is widely portrayed as a post-bubble success story, but the reality is more conplex.
Read more...Amazon Warehouse Workers Strike in Germany Over Pay, Sweatshop Conditions
Amazon is rapidly becoming the poster child for what is wrong with the so-called new economy.
Read more...Links 12/16/13
Market Participation, aka Shopping, as a Toll of Neoliberalism: Obamacare as Case Study
Why Obamacare illustrates a big hidden cost of neoliberalism: that you are required to shop, and shopping is work.
Read more...America’s Child Soldiers: JROTC and the Militarizing of America
Yves here. While itmay seem far afield of normal NC fare, I thought this post on the Junior Reserve Officers Training Corp was worth highlighting for several reasons. One is, as you’ll see, the way that the well-funded armed services are managing to suck funds out of already-struggling inner city school budgets. Second is that […]
Read more...Law And Disorder In Spain
As in so many Western countries these days, the social, political and economic landscapes in Spain are shifting at a startling rate. In the last two weeks alone the Rajoy government has announced one draft law and passed another that threaten to radically redraw the country’s system of law and order.
Read more...401(k) Plan Abuses Finally Coming to Light
I doubt that I’m unusual in being a finance type who has heard about 401 (k) abuses and bad practices for a very long time. So it’s gratifying to see the Financial Times that something is finally being done to try to curb this behavior. But that is hardly the full extent of what is rotten in retirement fund land.
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