Author Archives: Yves Smith

Michael Hudson: America’s Deceptive 2012 Fiscal Cliff, Part III– Why Today’s Fiscal Squeeze Imposes Needless Austerity

By Michael Hudson, a research professor of Economics at University of Missouri, Kansas City, and a research associate at the Levy Economics Institute of Bard College. His latest book is “The Bubble and Beyond.”

The financial sector promises that privatizing roads and ports, water and sewer systems, bus and railroad lines (on credit, of course) is more efficient and will lower the prices charged for their services. The reality is that the new buyers put up rent-extracting tollbooths on the infrastructure being sold. Their break-even costs include the high salaries and bonuses they pay themselves, as well as interest and dividends to their creditors and backers, spending on stock buy-backs and political lobbying.

Public borrowing creates a dependency that shifts economic planning to Wall Street and other financial centers. When voters resist, it is time to replace democracy with oligarchy.

Lynn Parramore: 6 Reasons Joseph Stiglitz and Other Top Economists Think Means-Testing Medicare & Social Security Is a Destructive Idea

By Lynn Parramore, a senior editor at Alternet. Cross posted from Alternet

In Washington-speak, “means-testing” is a scheme to deny or reduce Medicare and Social Security benefits for people who are “too wealthy” in the name of saving money. It’s a counterproductive, harmful idea, but one that well-intentioned liberals often get snookered into embracing.

Links New Year 2013

Links 12/30/12

Does Floating Hagel Balloon Show Obama’s Posture Towards Iran?

This Real News Network interview with Phyllis Bennis of the Institute for Policy Studies looks at the significance of the surfacing of Chuck Hagel as a candidate to run the Department of Defense. Hagel is an interesting choice because he believes in cutting defense spending and in communicating with all of our actual and designated bad guys, including Iran. The latter view has made him an official target of AIPAC.

Links 12/29/12

Deprogramming Progressives Indoctrinated into Supporting Austerity

By Bill Black, the author of The Best Way to Rob a Bank is to Own One and an associate professor of economics and law at the University of Missouri-Kansas City. Jointly posted with New Economic Perspectives

A little bit of economics can be a truly terrible thing, for the introductory classes in micro and macro-economics are the most dogmatic and myth-filled part of the neo-liberal curriculum. Dogmas that have been falsified for 75 years (such as austerity) are taught as revealed truth. The poor indoctrinated student is then launched into the world “knowing” that austerity is the answer and that mass unemployment and prolonged recessions are small prices to be paid (by others) to achieve the holy grail of a balanced budget. Students are taught that national budgets are really just like household budgets. These dogmas are not simply false, they are self-destructive and cruel. Neo-liberal economics is so bad and has gone downhill at such a rapid rate that it now worships the economic analog to bleeding patients – austerity – as a response to a Great Recession. Millions of people are indoctrinated annually into believing this long-falsified nonsense, and that includes people who consider themselves progressives.

Links 12/27/12

Links 12/26/12

Administration Planning to Use Fannie and Freddie to Provide More Stealth Stimulus

The Obama Administration is planning to launch yet another mortgage refi program, this one targeting subprime borrowers who are current on their loans but underwater, extending the government support of the mortgage market to yet another borrower group.

Links 12/25/12