Category Archives: Politics

John Helmer: IMF Loan to Ukraine Props Up Failing Banks, Enriches Oligarchs

One reason for our continued coverage of the IMF generosity to Ukraine isn’t simply to demonstrate how the institution is bending its rules to support US adventurism. It’s also to highlight the striking contrast with the treatment of Greece. While Greece has a class of oligarchs that specialize in tax-evasion, Ukraine is widely recognized as a spectacularly corrupt country, to the degree that it makes Greece look like a paragon of virtue.

Nomi Prins: The Volatility/Quantitative Easing Dance of Doom

The battle between the ‘haves’ and ‘have-nots’ of global financial policy is escalating to the point where the ‘haves’ might start to sweat – a tiny little. This phase of heightened volatility in the markets is a harbinger of the inevitable meltdown that will follow the grand plastering-over of a systemically fraudulent global financial system.

Major American Allies Ignore U.S. Pleas and Join China’s Development Bank

China’s development bank is a salvo at America’s dollar-driven financial hegemony. The US has good reason to worry about its apparent appeal.

John Helmer: IMF Makes Ukraine War-Fighting Loan, Allows US to Fund Military Operations Against Russia, May Repay Gazprom Bill

For the first time, an IMF loan is funding a country at war, and one that is an impossible basket case economically. It’s hard not to conclude that the IMF largesse served to solve the wee problem of getting Congress to approve funding for US adventurism in Ukraine.

Is Momentum Building in Japan Towards Signing the TransPacific Partnership?

US sources claim that Japan is finally warming to the TransPacific Partnership. True or not?

Yanis Varoufakis: Presenting an Agenda for Europe at Ambrosetti

If you followed Yanis Varoufakis before he became a household word (at least in Europe and in finance circles), you’ll recognize that he is making a layperson-friendly case for the Eurozone reforms that he, Stuart Holland, and Jamie Galbraith call A Modest Proposal. A new wrinkle is that he argues that the scarcity of bonds eligible for QE argues for one of its ideas, infrastructure spending funded by the EIB (those bonds would presumably be eligible for QE purchases).

Can One Union Save the Beleaguered U.S. Postal Service?

The attack on the U.S. Postal Service is based on ideology and punitive, misleading accounting. It’s not too late to save it.

Michael Hudson on the IMF’s Tender Ministrations in Ukraine and Greece

This RT interview with Michael Hudson focuses on the appalling state of the Ukraine economy and the role of the IMF, both in its policy-violating rescue package there and on a more general basis.

The Dispiriting and Corrupt State of Email Public Records, Plus a Good Suggestion That Will Never Be Adopted

Do any elected officials, of either party, treat all public records as public? Doubtful. Can anything be done?

The Fed Impedes GAO Audits by Destroying Source Documents

Robert Auerbach, an economist to the Committee on Banking and Financial Services during the Arthur Burns, Paul Volcker, and Alan Greenspan chairmanships at the Fed, as well as being a Fed economist and now a professor at the University of Texas (Austin) has a bombshell revelation in his recent book Deception and Abuse at the […]

Gaius Publius: Astroturf “Progressive” Support for the TPP – Meet “270 Solutions”

It’s become routine to expose some of the supposedly organic proposals that come out of the Tea Party as actually sponsored by the Koch Brothers and other big corporate interests. We didn’t want to leave Democrats out in the cold in the astroturfing game. Gaius Publius discusses one ecosystem: a consulting firm, “270 Strategies” and one of its phony creations, the Progressive Coalition for American Jobs.

Bernie Sanders Blasts “Robin Hood in Reverse” Subsidies to the Rich, Calls for Full Employment

Bernie Sanders gave a forceful, if sobering, assessment of the state of the economy from the perspective of working men and women, as well as retirees, and focused on the hypocrisy of corporations and the wealthy that poor-mouth as a way to extract even more subsidies and tax breaks.

Did Obamacare Coverage Expansion Help Young Adults?

The short answer is not that many, and not that much. But that was not entirely unexpected.

Rationalizing Lunacy: The Policy Intellectual as Servant of the State

Andrew Bacevich excoriates policy intellectuals as a “blight on the republic”.