Who Will Pay for Nuclear Power Plant Cleanup?
Yves here. Holy moley, the cost estimates focus the mind!
Read more...Author Archives: Yves Smith
Marcy Wheeler: What a Targeted Killing in the US Would Look Like
By Marcy Wheeler. Cross posted from emptywheel
On October 28, 2009, the FBI set out to arrest a man they claimed, in the complaint justifying the arrest, was “a highly placed leader of a … radical fundamentalist Sunni group [the primary purpose of which] is to establish a separate, sovereign Islamic state.” The leader of the group “calls his followers to an offensive jihad.” The complaint states the group trained in the use of firearms and martial arts and explains that “Abdullah is advocating and encouraging his followers to commit violent acts against the United States.”
The arrest was staged at a warehouse controlled by the FBI, outfitted with 5 closed circuit video cameras that gave the FBI full visibility into anyone entering and leaving the warehouse, as well as pallets loaded with sandbags to provide cover. Altogether 66 FBI Agents participated in the arrest, with 29 Agents, including a K-9 team and snipers, inside the warehouse itself, along with helicopter cover, another K-9 team, and a control room nearby….
Read more...Links 2/19/13
Dave Dayen: Yes, Katrina, Wall Street Won Again, and Progressives Need to Face Up to That
By David Dayen, a lapsed blogger, now a freelance writer based in Los Angeles, CA. Follow him on Twitter @ddayen
Greetings, NC readers! Yves has been nice enough to open up her Internet home to me, and I intend to grab the opportunity from time to time. This offer turned fortuitous after I wrote a little piece from Salon on the “anniversary” of the securitization fraud task force, announced at last year’s State of the Union address. Well, Katrina vanden Heuvel, editor and publisher of The Nation, got very upset at my characterization of the task force
Read more...Quelle Surprise! The Administration Wants You to Believe it is Serious About Prosecuting Banks
There are times I feel sorry for the business reporters at the New York Times.
Read more...Via Government’s Fiscal Policy and Regulatory Oversight, Ethical Values Shape Monetary Value
By Michael Hoexter, a policy analyst and marketing consultant on green issues, climate change, clean and renewable energy, and energy efficiency. Cross posted from New Economic Perspectives
There is no unified theory in our popular understanding of value: there are the market values of goods and then there are our “values” which we consider to be some of the most personal and even sacred aspects of ourselves. In practice, these beliefs and ideology are filtered through a process by which powerful and wealthy interest groups influence and shape the behavior of lawmakers.
Read more...Barry Ritholtz Declares War on Trolls
I’ve oft cited Barry Ritholtz’s comments policy as web standard, and sometimes have to remind readers that I’m more lenient in my comments policy than a lot of other blogs. Barry’s post, Why I Am Considering Getting Rid of Comments . . , might give you some insight into what Lambert and I are up against. Key extracts:
Read more...Links 2/18/13
Disposable Workers: Why Throwaway Employees are Bad Policy
The media increasingly appears to define the state of the economy based on corporate bottom lines and the experience of the upper echelon, reflected in the way it glosses over the anxiety and distress outside the top 1% of the population.
Read more...China Decides that South China Sea Oil is a National Asset
By John Daly, a non-resident scholar at the Central Asia-Caucasus Institute at Johns Hopkins University’s Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies and chief analyst at OilPrice. Cross posted from OilPrice
While the Western press is fixated on both recent North Korean nuclear tests and Beijing’s recent skirmishes with Japan over the Senkaku (“Diaoyu” in Chinese) islands, other maritime issues have developed further south, where China is involved in sovereignty disputes over the Spratly islands’ 750 islands, islets, atolls, cays and outcroppings with the Philippines, Taiwan, Vietnam, Malaysia and Brunei.
Read more...Blinder Leading the Blind
By Dan Kervick, who does research in decision theory and analytic metaphysics. Cross posted from New Economic Perspectives
The establishment’s debt and deficit hawks have taken flight once again, this time to launch a counterassault against Paul Krugman’s sensible and increasingly successful campaign to get people to stop clutching their pearls over the federal budget situation, and to focus attention on more pressing matters of high unemployment and economic stagnation. Joe Scarborough, Ezra Klein and the Washington Post editorial board are among those springing into action on behalf of deficit worry, and against the dangerous movement of calmness and sobriety breaking out all over. One thing that becomes more apparent as this debate unfolds is that the budget warriors frequently confuse broader public policy challenges that happen to have a budgetary component with narrower problems related to size of the budget deficit itself.
Read more...Michael M. Thomas’ Solution to the Crisis
Now, if only anyone had listened….
By Michael M. Thomas, who figured out Wall Street was not all it was cracked up to be before most of you were born. Originally published at his Midas Watch column at the New York Observer, March 10, 2009
Read more...Links 2/17/13
Love as a Consumer Good
It’s probably a bit late to be addressing this topic, but the use of romance and sexual insecurity as a hook for selling goods and services is so pervasive that it’s societal Muzak. Well, worse than Muzak, because it’s not hard to tune Muzak out, but the touting of romance keys into deep-seated emotional and physical needs, making it more challenging to ignore this type of hucksterism.
Read more...Israel’s Prisoner X Scandal: Israeli/Australian Held, Impossibly Commits Suicide, Story Under Gag Order for Two+ Years
Wow, this is ugly, and these two videos help explain why.
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