Wolf Richter: Government By Eurocrats – The Olive-Oil Dispenser Debacle
Yves here. This post illustrates a chief reason why regulation has become a bad word.
Read more...Author Archives: Yves Smith
Links 5/23/13
Chile’s Recent Lead Negotiator on Trans-Pacific Partnership Warns It Could Be a “Threat to Our Countries”
An important article in the Latin American press peculiarly has not gotten the attention it deserves. Or perhaps not so peculiarly, given the Obama administration’s intention to keep the Trans-Pacific Partnership negotiations as far out of the public eye as possible.
Read more...Is Jamie Dimon Really Out of the Woods With Shareholder Thumbs Down on Splitting CEO/Chairman Roles? (Updated)
There’s a surprising degree of blogosphere acceptance of JP Morgan’s messaging on the shareholder vote today regarding whether to split the CEO and Chairman roles, that this result was a vote of confidence in his prowess as CEO. Huh?
Read more...Richard Alford: The Problem of Central Banks With Multiple Goals and Few Tools
By Richard Alford, a former New York Fed economist. Since then, he has worked in the financial industry as a trading floor economist and strategist on both the sell side and the buy side.
Current monetary policymakers (largely economists) have designed and employed macroeconomic models and a policy framework that allow only one goal for central banks: price stability. They did not solve the problem of how to allocate scare resources (in this case limited policy tools) in pursuit of competing ends, e.g., stable prices, full employment, sustainable growth, financial stability, external balance.
Read more...Links 5/15/13
Are Germans Poorer than Other Europeans?
Yves here There’s been a great deal of consternation over a report that found that the median Spanish and Italian households are more than three times as wealthy as the median German household. This report says that these differences aren’t what they seem to be.
Read more...Catholic Church Voicing Opposition to Eurozone Austerity
It’s been slow in coming, but religious leaders are starting to speak out against the mechanisms and high social cost of austerity.
Read more...Josh Rosner on How Dodd Frank Institutionalizes Too Big to Fail
Josh Rosner of Graham Fisher testifies before a subcommittee of the House Financial Services committee today on why Dodd Frank has not ended too big to fail, but also has managed to entrench the megafirms’ advantaged position.
Read more...Attacking Iran’s Nuclear Sites Would be Sheer Madness
By Claude Salhani, journalist, author and political analyst based in Beirut, specializing in the Middle East, politicized Islam and terrorism. He is also the former editor of the Middle East Times and. C the former International Editor with United Press International and also ran UPI’s Terrorism & Security Desks. Cross posted from OilPrice
A timely article by Wade Stone for Global Research examines what would happen to the oil producing nations of the Gulf in the event that Israel would target Iran’s nuclear reactors and facilities; the reply and the scenario given is nothing short of a nightmare.
Read more...Private Equity Residential Landlords Rushing to Cash Out via IPOs
We’ve been skeptical of the private equity land rush to snap up single family homes for rentals. They’ve been a big enough force in the housing market nationwide to lead some commentators to question how solid the housing “recovery” is. Yet the combination of rising enthusiasm for housing and a richly-valued stock market is leading a raft of PE firms to ready IPOs as a way to take profits and establish valuations for their profit participations.
Read more...Russia’s Plan For The BRICS To Dismantle The Dollar System
The status of the US dollar as the world reserve currency gives the US tremendous advantages. Among them: it allows the Fed to export inflation, while the Federal Government can run a huge deficit with impunity. But now an angry Russia has had enough!
Read more...Links 5/13/13
Philip Pilkington: The Ideology to End Ideologies – A Response to Corey Robin on Nietzsche, Hayek, Mises, and Marginalism
By Philip Pilkington, a writer and research assistant at Kingston University in London. You can follow him on Twitter @pilkingtonphil
The political philosopher Corey Robin recently published an interesting essay on what he thinks to be the connection between the late German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche and the economic theory of marginalism which Robin associates with the Austrian school (but which, of course, is also a mainstay of mainstream neoclassical economics). As much as I admire his work, his latest piece is grossly misguided and reflective of the fact that, when it comes to theoretical economics, academic critics on the left simply do not know their enemy at all.
Read more...Coming Corporate Control of Medicine Will Throw Patients Under the Bus
In the US, business freedom means the God-given right to exploit the vulnerability of the public. The example slouching into view is more corporate control over the practice of medicine. And based on the previews, it will make the horrors falsely attributed to socialized medicine look pale.
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