Author Archives: Yves Smith
Quelle Surprise! Having No Idea What Really Happened in Foreclosure Reviews, OCC Parrots “Independent” Consultant Howlers
I was prepared to give the benefit of the doubt to incoming Comptroller of the Currency Thomas Curry. But it’s really hard to do that now.
Read more...Jack Lew’s Grotesque Citi Employment Deal and the Institutionalization of Corruption
Corruption has now become so routine in Washington that improprieties far worse than Turbo Timmie’s implausible failure to pay taxes on income from his days working as a consultant to the World Bank barely evoke a yawn from the media. Apparently the fourth estate is either so bedazzled by star turns, like Michelle Obama presenting at the Oscars (!!!) or so cowed by the prospect of being cut off from information that it dutifully falls in line.
Read more...Richard Wolff Discusses the Failure of Capitalism with Bill Moyers
The fact of this talk is telling in and of itself: that a mainstream commentator would devote an entire segment to the idea that capitalism isn’t working. While that idea may seem obvious to many NC readers, it was supposed to remain relegated to the sphere of deviance (see Daniel Hallin’s spheres of discourse for more detail).
Read more...Big Bank Welfare Queens Unprofitable Without Government Subsidies, So Why Don’t We Regulate Them Like Utilities?
Quite a few readers excitedly sent a link to a Bloomberg editorial, “Why Should Taxpayers Give Big Banks $83 Billion a Year?” which summarizes a study by Kenichi Ueda of the International Monetary Fund and Beatrice Weder di Mauro of the University of Mainz that the editors used to extrapolate that the five biggest US banks are “barely profitable” if they weren’t able to borrow at artificially cheap rates thanks to the market perception that they are too big too fail.
The Bloomberg article, while analytically flawed, still winds up being too charitable.
Read more...Why Obama Refuses to Kill the Sequester
The game of chicken both the Republicans and Democrats are playing with the sequester and the budget/deficit talks is striking. One of the truly bizarre elements is that neither side is signaling the faintest interest in dealmaking of any kind. As I indicated the week before last, the lack of any sense of urgency was obvious: Congress had a holiday last week, and there were no real negotiations or even an exchange of proposals, virtually guaranteeing the sequester would take place as scheduled.
Read more...Marcy Wheeler: DOJ Used the Open Access Guerilla Manifesto to Do More than Justify Prosecution, They Justified a Search of Aaron Swartz’ Home
By Marcy Wheeler. Cross posted from emptywheel
Yesterday, the HuffPo caught up to reporting I did in January, reporting that DOJ used Aaron Swartz’ 2008 Guerilla Open Access Manifesto to justify their investigation of him. But there’s something the HuffPo is still missing.
Read more...Links 2/23/13
Not-So-Smart ALEC: The Right Wing vs. Renewable Energy
Yves here. This post is useful not simply for its discussion of the economics of green energy but also for showing how think tanks fabricate findings to support their political message.
Read more...The Coming World of Killer Mini Drones
If you think drones are bad enough, the military industrial complex is already working on the second generation.
Read more...Bradley Manning 1000 Days in Jail and More Government Crackdown on Transparency
This Real News Network video not only gives a disheartening recap on how various transparency freedom fighters are faring legally, but also provides a sense of how the security state is extending its reach.
Read more...Links 2/22/13
Slimin’ Jamie Dimon’s Scheming to Stick the FDIC with WaMu Losses
It’s really easy to have a fortress balance sheet if you can get other people to eat your losses
Read more...The Dog That Isn’t Barking: Why So Little Pundit Attention to the Caliber of Statistics?
Ah, the halcyon days of early 2007, when economics and finance bloggers would study the clouds on the horizon and debate what they foretold. Maybe I’m not hanging out in the right circles these days but now that financial markets seem to be completely in thrall to central bankers, there isn’t much point in doing fundamental analysis. As a result, from what I can tell, the level of bullshitting among market pundits has risen considerably.
Read more...Yanis Varoufakis: Europe Needs a Hegemonic Germany
By Yanis Varoufakis, professor of economics at the University of Athens. Cross posted from his blog
For six decades Germany was being pampered by a hegemonic America that oversaw the write-off of its wartime debts, the reversal of Allied designs to de-industrialise it and, above all else, the constant generation of the global demand which allowed German manufacturers to concentrate on efficiently producing quality, desirable wares.
Having taken all this for granted for too long, Germany’s elites are now finding it conceptually difficult to come to terms with the new ‘normal’.
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