It seems the Federal Government has finally woken up and is making a show of being serious about one type of bank misbehavior, that of money laundering. The striking element about the agreementwith various Federal agencies and the Department of Justice is that nearly $1.3 billion of the $1.9 million fine comes in the form of a deferred prosecution agreement.
Read more...Paul Krugman is troubled by this chart from the Bureau of Labor Statistics and is looking for explanations.
Read more...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. Cross posted from New Economic Perspectives
The New York Times produces profiles of national leaders like Italy’s Mario Monti and Ecuador’s Rafael Correa. I invite readers to contrast the worshipful treatment accorded Monti with the Correa profile. The next time someone tells you the NYT is a “leftist” paper you can show them how far right it is on financial issues.
Read more...A new paper that analyzes the activities and effects of high frequency trading reaches some damning conclusions.
Read more...Lively and provocative. Do yourself a favor and watch it. Hat tip Richard Smith via creditplumber.
Read more...This site refrains from talking about individual stocks, since we don’t give investment advice. However, a potential sea-change is underway, as a large portion of the inventory of foreclosed homes is being converted to rentals. Private equity firms are pursuing this opportunity eagerly, as the combination of low financing costs and tight rental markets in the US means that, at least on paper, investor believe they can earn attractive income, with potential for appreciation, either by eventually selling the houses to individuals or by taking the company public.
Given all the excitement over this conversion (it was voted the best opportunity over the next 12 months at a real estate conference I attended in the fall), it was interesting to detect a fair bit in the way of reservations in an article in the New York Times on the first IPO in this space, Silver Lake.
Read more...Yanis Varoufakis asked: Why has European social democracy abandoned the legacy of leaders like Bruno Kreisky, falling in line with a toxic economics and politics that thinkers like Kreisky would have dismissed in their sleep as pathetic claptrap? Here he takes a step back to explain why he views Kreisky’s chancellorship in Austria in the 1970s as a success in social and economic terms.
Read more...By Dan Kervick, who does research in decision theory and analytic metaphysics. Cross posted from New Economic Perspectives
A common criticism of Modern Monetary Theory is that it is a naïve doctrine of free lunches.
But this criticism misses the mark. MMT does focus a good deal of attention on the monetary system and the banking system, and on the operational mechanisms of public and private finance. But the whole point of analyzing and clarifying the monetary system is to help people see through the glare of the economy’s glittering monetary surface to the social and economic fundamentals that operate below that surface.
Read more...Readers have enjoyed past productions by Versus. Here’s their latest holiday release:
Read more...The lies told to sell the chump public on the necessity of enduring cuts to the social safety net are already at a breathtaking level. Where would you like to begin? The idea that big reductions in spending (going over the edge of the world off the fiscal cliff would be horrific, while only somewhat big cuts would be salutary? That Social Security “reforms” are necessary to fix the budget? Even former budget chief Peter Orszag ‘fessed up that one was not true. Or the favorite refuge of the Republicans, that raising taxes on the wealthy will hurt job creation. Ahem, we’ve pushed the low taxes model further than any other advanced economy, and the result is crumbling infrastructure, an overpriced and mediocre health care system, and record corporate profits combined with extreme measures to pay less to workers and a lack of new investment (the corporate sector has been a net saver since the early 2000s).
The propagandizing nevertheless has gotten so shameless it appeared to be time to point out particularly egregious examples.
Read more...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. Cross posted from New Economic Perspectives
Austerity has driven unemployment among young Italian adults to over 35%. The result is that Italian university graduates are emigrating. This loss of Italy’s greatest source of future productivity gains is particularly crippling because Italy has far fewer university graduates than most developed nations.
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