Author Archives: Yves Smith
Mortgage Settlement Monitor “Progress” Report Gooses Numbers to Hide Lack of Real Relief to Homeowners
Today, the settlement monitor Joseph Smith released another PR piece, um, progress report.
Read more...Down to the Wire, Last Chance for 2012 Fundraiser!
We are two and a half hours away from the end of our fundraiser. In just the last two hours, we’ve gotten quite a few generous donations, as in several $200, $150, and $100 contributions,) as well as a lot of $10 and $25 donations. It’s particularly gratifying to get support from readers we know from comments as well as fellow writers/bloggers (for instance, Susie Madrak gave in the last two hours).
Read more...Homeless in New Jersey
Yves here. This article points out what others have noted: that Hurricane Sandy has given much more visibility to the dangers of climate change. It’s an environmental version of the old economists’ joke: A recession occurs when your neighbor loses his job. A depression takes place you lose your job. The media and policymakers in large measure live in a bubble centered on New York and Washington DC, and it has taken an event that hit their sheltered world hard to get them to wake up and take notice.
Read more...Countdown!
Only four hours remain in the Naked Capitalism fundraiser. Show your support of critical thinking, merciless evisceration of lame punditry, deep diving into turbid financial waters, and cute animal pictures.
Read more...Final Hours of Fundraiser, Closing in on Our Targets
The Naked Capitalism community has spoken loudly and clearly. You’ve said you want this site to be more effective and you’ve been willing to provide tangible backing for your desire to have us demystify finance, call out chicanery in high places, parse propaganda, and in our small way, help promote the creation of a more just society.
We’re close to both our donor and financial targets.
Read more...Curtailing Intellectual Monopoly: The Insanity of US Copyright Law
Yves here. While our focus is on finance and economics, rentier capitalism is on the march , seemingly across the entire economy. One of the troubling examples is the expansion of intellectual property rights. The idea that seeds could be patented would be dismissed as ridiculous 40 years ago; we now have Monsanto controlling critical parts of our food supply as a result of its successful IP strategy.
Rajiv Sethi gives an update on the copyright front, where the Republican Study Committee (the RSC) issued a policy document that found, mirabile dictu, that copyright law had become skewed toward protecting content owners/creators.
Read more...Wow! Met Our Fourth Goal, on to Our Fifth!
Thanks to your generous and speedy responses, we’ve met our first four targets: upgrading site support and hosting (which should lead to faster loading times and quicker resolution of reader problems), nice ex-post facto honoraria to our loyal guest bloggers, travel/conference expenses and coverage, and vacation and partial weekend coverage. Let me stress again that these are all things that your donations have and continue to make possible. And at 827 donors, we’re over 80% of the way to our goal of 1000 contributors for this fundraiser.
Our fifth goal is hiring an intern.
Read more...Links 11/18/12
Greenspan’s Switch to Debt Scaremongering
Stephanie Kelton provides two video clips to underscore the point that until quite recently, Greenspan made the point that MMT types do: that the US as a currency issuer, can always pay its debts.
Read more...Tell University of Western Sydney They are Dopes for Planning to Dump Steve Keen
The Australian press is giving raspberries to a plan by the University of Western Sydney to pretty much eliminate its economics department, which would result in Steve Keen and other instructors being fired. Keen is a well known and respected heterodox economist, so this move looks particularly misguided.
Read more...Occupy Wall Street’s Debt Jubilee: A Gimmick with Tax Risk
If you stand far enough away, the OWS Strike Debt debt cancellation initiative, called Rolling Jubilee, looks like a simple and clever way to beat banks at their own game. So it’s not surprising that it has attracted a roster of celebrity supporters. But like most things in finance, the devil lies in the details, and the Rolling Jubilee plan, on closer inspection, is wanting.
Read more...Cathy O’Neil: Support Naked Capitalism
By Cathy O’Neil, a data scientist and member of the Occupy Wall Street Alternative Banking Group who blogs at mathbabe
Being a quantitative, experiment-minded person, I’ve decided to go about helping Yves Smith raise funds for Naked Capitalism using the scientific approach.
Read more...Links 11/16/12
Harry Shearer: Naked Capitalism – A Beacon in the Fog of Disinformation
By Harry Shearer, satirist, author, filmmaker and host of Le Show
I don’t even remember now how I don’t even remember now how I first came upon Naked Capitalism. What I do know is that, in the welter of myth and theology that passes for the preponderance of public discussion of economic issues, this site has been a beacon of fact, empiricism and skeptical reporting.
Read more...