Author Archives: Yves Smith

Fierce Anti Bank Music Video by Animal Kingdom (NSFW)

Lambert and other readers old enough to remember the 1960s, when protest ballads of various sorts were an important part of both the civil rights movement and the opposition to the war in Vietnam, have wondered at the absence of anti-bank, anti-autocratic songs.

Below is one with a suitably pointed video taking aim squarely at predatory financiers.

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The Hissing Sound of Air Leaving the Economy

There’s a remarkable amount of optimism in the US financial media given the underlying health of the economy. Of course, the sort of short term investors that have come to dominate securities trading had been in a “risk on/risk off” pattern for a protracted period before commodities weakness and the remarkable run of the Nikkei has led to some renewed focus on relative values of various macro plays. But the markets are still dominated by an underlying faith in the willingness of central bankers to protect the backs of investors and limit any downside (while, ironically, many of these same investors howl about ZIRP and QE, which were clearly intended to goose the value of financial assets and real estate, with the hope that would lead to more consumer spending).

And why shouldn’t the professional investors (as opposed to widows and orphans who can no longer rely on low risk bond investments to produce adequate income) be pleased as punch?

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Philip Pilkington: Defrocking Reinhart and Rogoff – Controversy Ignores Fundamental Issues in the Use and Abuse of Statistical Studies

By Philip Pilkington, a writer and research assistant at Kingston University in London. You can follow him on Twitter @pilkingtonphil

Over the past week there has been some fuss over alleged inconsistencies found by the economists Herndon, Pollin and Ash in the famous 2010 Rogoff-Reinhart study on levels of government debt and its effects on growth. What is really interesting about the critique of Reinhart and Rogoff is that it raises the issue of just how contentious these studies are.

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The Elephants in the Room: Citizens United, Trade and Corporate Ownership of Our Natural Resources

Yves here. This is a short but useful reminder of how the failure to enforce anti-trust laws leads to oligopolies. MBAs are taught how to make markets inefficient to increase corporate profits, and one of the most lasting ways is to achieve a dominant position, ideally in a concentrated industry. “Roll ups” which is a consolidation play, is a favorite among private equity firms (but they often stumble in integrating the companies).

The author describes how dominant players preserve their profits through aggressive lobbying in the food space, and why that is particularly troubling.

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“Manufacturing Consent” 25 Years Later

If you haven’t read “Manufacturing Consent” by Noam Chomsky and Edward S. Herman, you really should. That book plus Walter Lippmann’s “Public Opinion” and Alex Carey’s “Taking the Risk Out of Democracy” are three essential reads on propaganda in the US.

This Edward Herman interview on the Real News Network gives a sense of the book’s thesis and impact.

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Boston Bombing Open Thread

I’m not sure what I can add to the extensive, and often confused, media coverage of the Boston bombing, the MIT police shooting and resulting manhunt, save to extend my condolences to the victims. As Marcy Wheeler pointed out, what differentiated these events from other outbreaks of violence was the intensity of the media coverage.

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Jeffrey Sachs Calls Out Wall Street Criminality and Pathological Greed

One of the things that Matt Stoller has stressed that the possibility of reform is remote until breaks within the elites take place.

Jeffrey Sachs, Columbia professor and director of the Earth Institute at Columbia, is a controversial figure for his neoliberal stance on macroeconomics and his role in promoting the use of “shock therapy” in emerging economies. But it is also important to recognize that criticism from a connected, respected insider has more significance than that of someone like Bill Black, who has made a career of taking on bank fraud but has never reached a top policy-making level.

This talk is blistering at several points.

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Yanis Varoufakis: Greek Banksters in Action – On the Latest Twist in the Story of Mafia-Style Terror Spreading Through the Greek Polity

Yves here. When high level bank and government dealings start resembling a John Grisham novel, it’s a sign that the rule of law is breaking down in a serious way. Given that the Troika’s plan for Greece is to break it on the rack, this sort of criminality isn’t a surprise. But the troubling bit is that if you reset this story in the US, I doubt anyone would find it implausible.

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