We are glad to be rank well in a new finance blog tally (thanks to loyal NC readers!), even though this survey is tongue in cheek (it has a methodology which has some logic to it but simultaneously pokes fun at methodologies).
Read more...We are delighted to post the latest offering of Project S.H.A.M.E., a media transparency initiative led by Yasha Levine and Mark Ames, and now in partnership with NSFWCORP.
Read more...If the media was licensed, the New York Times story, “After Fiscal Cliff Deal, Tax Code May Be the Most Progressive Since 1979,” would be grounds for disbarment. I flagged the piece as a Big Lie in comments yesterday, and figured that since anyone who was either old enough to have been paying taxes in the 1980s or had minimal Google skills could ascertain its claims were nonsense, that it would be debunked elsewhere. Instead, it was apparently tweeted actively by soi-disant liberals on Saturday.
Read more...My, my, SEC head of enforcement Robert Khuzami has revealed himself to be both remarkably thin skinned and not very good at making a case for himself.
Read more...By Philip Pilkington, a writer and research assistant at Kingston University in London. You can follow him on Twitter @pilkingtonphil
Most pieces written and published on economic topics in our newspapers are morality tales rather than economic analysis. Economic analysis is boring and thus only a few people are going to read it. By contrast, morality tales pull at the heartstrings like a Hollywood script.
Read more...Matt Stoller is a fellow at the Roosevelt Institute. He can be reached at http://www.twitter.com/matthewstoller
Earlier this year, Obama Federal Communications Commission Chairman Julius Genachowski proposed relaxing media ownership rules to allow Rupert Murdoch to buy the Los Angeles Times and Chicago Tribune. It’s not something you’ll see discussed much, because Republicans like the fact that Murdoch is going to get more power, while Democrats don’t want to admit that Obama is helping the person framed as their arch-nemesis. This is part of a larger pattern – media consolidation is one of the many structural problems that Obama promised to deal with. And indeed, this is the real arena where the battle over free speech is being fought. Corporate control over our communications infrastructure is the free speech question of our time.
Read more...By Richard Alford, a former New York Fed economist. Since then, he has worked in the financial industry as a trading floor economist and strategist on both the sell side and the buy side.
The US mainstream media (MSM) found a lot to like when the FOMC announced that its current highly accommodative monetary policy stance will continue unless certain “threshold levels” for unemployment and inflation are reached. While the MSM was not uniform in its praise, it applauded what it saw as the increased transparency in the design and execution of monetary policy. In comparison, the response of the market and the foreign press was muted, and comments by financial and economic bloggers were mixed. Juxtaposing a Binyamin Appelbaum article in the New York Times (serving as a stand in for MSM), the transcript of the Bernanke press conference, and a working history of monetary policy, it is clear that the enthusiasm of many in the MSM for increased clarity is misplaced. This in turn has less than flattering implications for the MSM, the Fed and its communication strategy.
Read more...A default position among what passes for finance cognoscenti in the blogosphere is to argue that media stories pointing up bank improprieties are making a mountain out of a molehill. The form of the argument is usually, “If you only understood XYZ technical issue, this is not such a big deal.” Now that isn’t to say that position is wrong; we’ve more than occasionally made just that type of argument. But if you are going to go that route, it’s incumbent on you to take account of the relevant background; otherwise, whether you intend to or not, your argument can wind up being the equivalent of “Look, over there!”
We’ve seen this type of diversion-as-argumentation take place on the brewing Deutsche Bank scandal over losses that three separate whistleblowers allege that that bank hid from investors during the crisis. Matt Levine and Felix Salmon say, to use Levine’s turn of phrase, that all the German bank did was ignore the losses until they went away. That is a misrepresentation of what actually happened.
Read more...By Joao Peixe. Cross posted from OilPrice
The Koch brothers, Charles and David, are the billionaire owners of Koch Industries, and two of the most obstinate climate change deniers out there.
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...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 Abigail Field, a lawyer and writer. Cross posted from Reality Check
Showalter pushes the ‘it’s not the mod terms, it’s the bad borrower’ idea with far more than just a “Living Large” headline. He invents two couples, pitched as archetypes of good and evil, probably hoping to copy the policy-killing success of Harry and Louise. But this invocation of the irresponsible borrower myth is particularly egregious–both borrowers are trying to be responsible in the face of insolvency.
Read more...By Abigail Field, an attorney and writer. Cross posted from Reality Check
Friday HousingWire ran a six-and-a-half page big bank/mortgage servicer propaganda piece called “Living Large“, by Tom Showalter. The article, subtitled “A person’s lifestyle plays into whether they will pay their mortgage after a loan modification”, purports to explain why people default on loan modifications. Instead, it spins a bank-exonerating morality play not justified by the data supposedly being interpreted.
Read more...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...Basel III’s getting nowhere in the US.
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