Another example of the corruption of science: the press falls all over itself hyping Praluent, a new cholesterol-lowering drug with remarkably inconclusive clinical trial data behind it. As Roy Poses points out, “The clinical benefit of the drug was not evident in this trial.”
Read more...The first direct evidence of IMF hostility towards Russians as a matter of policy, including multiple violations of the IMF staff code, and an attempt by Lagarde herself and her spokesman Rice to cover up the misconduct of their IMF representative in Kiev.
Read more...Those who are looking only at Greece and the crazy behaviour of the European Union may well be looking in the wrong direction to identify the next big crisis as it comes.
Read more...Why having generic managers run health systems is a bad idea.
Read more...A decision by the New York State Department of Financial Services appears to be finally crimping the wings of this powerfully placed bank fixer. Promontory is being denied access to information that effectively locks it out of a large swathe of consulting work that is important to its business.
Read more...While it’s gratifying to see former UBS trader Tom Hayes go to jail for large-scale Libor bid rigging, his bosses had to have known what he was up to. So when will we see their indictments?
Read more...For every dollar these billionaires give, they take 44 from the rest of us.
Read more...As one tax expert put it, “Private equity is a tax gimmick with an acquisition attached.” We’re going to discuss a very big tax gimmick that virtually no private equity investors seem to be aware of. The failure of private equity general partners to publicize a tax scheme that on paper should benefit their limited […]
Read more...Let us not kid ourselves that the Democratic party is also for the most part out to gut financial regulation.
The only reason that there is more space between Congressional Republicans and Democrats than usual is the pro-business, pro-bank “blue dog” wing of the Democratic party has gotten deservedly slaughtered in the last two Congressional elections for selling out what used to be the American middle class. So the more progressive-minded survivors are a bigger faction on a relative basis than they once were.
This Real News Network interview with Bill Black covers both a critical slice of the history of financial regulations (or more accurately, its rollback) as well as some of the current dynamics.
Read more...As mass killings become more common in the US, law enforcement agents fixate on and unduly publicize cases with jihadist links. As this post describes, that serves as an excuse for even more intensive surveillance.
Yet as Mark Ames described in one of the first works on these rampages, in his book “Going Postal,” there were no obvious similarities among the perps. They weren’t all, or even often, isolated losers. They did not typically come from broken homes. They were generally of above average intelligence. Aside from being disproportionately male, the other common thread was that they had been bullied.
If Ames’ observations still hold true, the lack of distinctive demographic or behavioral predictors of those who go on rampages means that heightened surveillance is at best another form of security theater, and at worst an excuse for Stasi-like dossier-gethering.
Read more...Why you should look hard at the rationales and motives of ratings agencies like S&P in giving sovereign debt downgrades.
Read more...A detailed account of the long and tortured history of budget fakery in Greece and how it is has been aggressively defended by successive Greek governments. A tidbit from the post: one section is labeled “When revising wrong statistics is treason.”
Read more...How big corporate tax avoidance hurts local schools.
Read more...What explains the turmoil in Chinese stock markets, and what does it mean for the rest of the world?
Read more...Silly me! I thought that given that the Greek government had prostrated itself and had complied with the creditor demand to pass legislation double-plus quickly or else, that the worst of the hurdles to getting the third bailout passed had been surmounted.
I should know better than that.
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