Yanis Varoufakis: The Emerald Isle Remains in Chains
A conversation with Phil Pilkington on Europe’s disgraceful triumphalism regarding Ireland’s ‘exit’ from its ‘bailout’
Read more...Author Archives: Yves Smith
Bob Goodwin: What Can Be Done About the Software Engineering Crisis?
Inside the software engineering field there are several huge paradigms with cult-like followers that continue to evolve in parallel with each other. Each seeks to master the process of developing software, as words like agile have been promoted in the English language from an adjective to a value system. But are any of these approaches adequate?
Read more...The Skunk Party Manifesto
The best political system that money can buy is doing a great job for its customers and a lousy job for the rest of us.
Read more...Bob Goodwin: Software Engineering in Crisis – Healthcare.gov is Just the Dead Canary
It has been a good generation to be involved with software. The scarcity of the skillset combined with the demand for the output have generated outsized incomes, while the work has been consistently rewarding. Our quirky group of builders has had an outsized influence on our industries, not to mention our culture and ideals. But that influence is looking less benign as the rigid procedures of computing are changing commercial relationships and the application of the law.
Read more...Ilargi: QE, The People And The Damage Done
A report issued by McKinsey Global Institute last week on the real world impact of QE warrants more scrutiny than it has gotten so far.
Read more...Links 11/20/12
Wolf Richter: Use Bitcoin As A Currency, Get Wiped Out (The Government Likes It That Way)
Four years after its creation, folks are still arguing over what bitcoin is: “investment opportunity of the millennium,” “part of a societal revolution,” a security, a currency, a casino token? Whatever. But US regulators now have strategy of killing it as a currency
Read more...Jackie Calmes’ “Dirty Secret” About the Opponents of Austerity is That They are Correct
When we pull away the camouflage that New York Times reporter Calmes deploys to obscure matters, the “dirty secret” that emerges is that key members of both parties realize that the purported “Grand Bargain” actually represents a self-destructive Grand Betrayal that should be opposed.
Read more...Michael Olenick: Obamacare Pits the 50% Against the 49%
Buried on CNN’s website is a story about an early Obamacare success…
Read more...Links 11/19/13
Another Lurking Obamacare Problem: Balance Billing
One of the proofs that Obamacare is really about helping insurers and Big Pharma rather than ordinary Americans is its failure to do much about the seamy practice known as balance billing.
Read more...Managing Bureaucrats
Yves here. I have to confess that the big reason I’m partial to this article is it is consistent with my experience. Metricization of business, and worse, employee performance, has become a fetish.
Read more...Welfare Queen Walmart Has Thanksgiving Food Drive for its Own Needy Employees
Prima facie evidence of the need to boycott Walmart (as if more were necessary)
Read more...Greenwald, Rosen, Scahill and the Price of One’s Journalistic Soul
Yves here. I’m pretty sure I’m not alone in hoping for the best from the new journalistic venture funded by eBay billionaire Pierre Omidyar that Glenn Greenwald and Laura Poitras, among others, have joined with much fanfare. But the fact that one wishes them well should not blind observers to the possible large flies in the ointment.
Read more...What Nobody Seems to Understand About Bitcoin
This has been around a couple of weeks, but I managed to miss it, and I suspect many NC reader might have as well. Plus we can always more levity. God knows we need it.
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