Blogroll Amnesty Day!
Today is the day when bloggers are asked to promote less-well-trafficked sites they like.
Read more...Category Archives: Politics
Tom Engelhardt: Ending the World the Human Way – Climate Change as the Anti-News
Here’s the scoop: When it comes to climate change, there is no “story,” not in the normal news sense anyway.
Read more...Nate Heckmann: Peter Schiff is Wrong About Everything
Yves here. I’m of two minds about featuring a post about Peter Schiff, since criticizing him treats him as being a more legitimate commentator than he is. But some targets ask so hard for a debunking that it’s hard to resist.
Read more...Bill Moyers and Michael Winship: Advice to Plutocrat Perkins – Shut Up!
Yves here. Billionaire Tom Perkins, who made the widely-pilloried claim that rich people like him were horribly victimized and on the verge of being slaughtered like Jews in World War II’s Germany, managed the impressive task of digging his hole even deeper in a follow up interview.
Bill Moyers, who among his many accomplishments was President Johnson’s press secretary, and his colleague Michael Winship put on their PR professional hat to describe where and how badly Perkins screwed up.
Read more...Republican State Lawmakers’ Refusal to Expand Medicaid Will Result in Thousands of Deaths
While this site has been critical of the (Un)Affordable Care Act as a further subsidy to an already bloated medical-industrial complex, we do need to give the devil his due. One of the sections of the law that appears to have been genuinely beneficial is Medicaid expansion. However, as most readers well know, the results are inequitable, with poor people in Republican states that refused to take up this provision being left out in the cold.
Read more...Ignacio Portes: How the Left Underestimates Chile’s Right-Wing Keynesians
Yves here. Please welcome Igancio Portes to NC. He’s a sophisticated young writer who has a sharp eye for power dynamics and is keenly interested in why the left (the genuine left as opposed to the fake version we have in the US) so often fails to achieve its intended results when it gets control of a government. He’ll be providing posts from time to time on Latin America, which is too often covered in a cursory and propagandized manner in the mainstream English language press.
Read more...Former IMF Chief Economist, Now India’s Central Bank Governor Rajan Takes Shot at Bernanke’s Destabilizing Policies
As Bernanke is about to take leave of office, attacks on his policies are becoming louder, thanks to financial markets turmoil resulting from the Bernanke/Geithner approach to the crisis: do whatever it takes to restore as much of status quo ante as possible. The problem, of course, is that status quo ante is what got us in this mess in the first place.
Read more...Mirabile Dictu! Reid Tells Off Obama on Fast Track, Killing Toxic Trade Deals for 2014
Obama made yet another pitch in State of the Union Address for his gimmies to multinationals known as the TransPacific Partnership and the TransAtlantic Trade and Investment Partnership. Today that idea went down in flames, at least as far as getting the deals done this year are concerned.
Read more...Mirabile Dictu! Post Office Bank Concept Gets Big Boost
Naked Capitalism readers have frequently called for the Post Office to offer basic banking services, as post offices long have in many countries, notably Japan. That idea has gotten an important official endorsement in the form of a detailed, extensively researched concept paper prepared by the Postal Service’s Inspector General.
Read more...The Empire’s New Asian Clothes – America’s Strategic Rebalance As Covert Retreat
Yves here. This article provide perspective on Obama’s unseemly anxiety to push through the toxic trade deal known as the TransPacific Partnership. the TPP is that it is a crucial part of Obama’s “pivot to Asia” strategy. One of its aims is to isolate China by creating a trade bloc that excludes the Middle Kingdom. The article below helps explain why non-military means of reinforcing US hegemony are particularly important now.
Read more...Congressmen Call for Hearings on Risks of Rental Securtizations
Private equity firms have been playing residential landlord for only a few years, but the impressive amount of capital they’ve deployed in this strategy means they’ve had significant impact in the markets they’ve targeted. Needless to say, that impact does not look to be very positive. A Congressman has called for hearings on rental securitizations out of concern that this structure could make this already not-too-good-looking situation much worse from the perspective of tenants and communities.
Read more...Another Obama Corporate Gimmie: Broadens Corporate R&D Tax Credits
Obama is looking more and more like an ideal Republican president with every passing day.
Read more...Bill Black: Dimon Does Davos, and His Board Gives Him a Raise
Yves here. It’s become tough work keeping up with the continuing large gap between Dimon hagiography in the media and his dubious accomplishments. So hat’s off to Bill Black for staying on this beat.
Read more...Michael Olenick: “Conversation with the Receptionists” – An Obamacare Skit
Patronage Plowing and Class Warfare
Yes sports fans, New York City’s new mayor, Bill de Blasio, is showing his true colors as a liberal by….pointedly not plowing the Upper East Side.
But is this really an effective gesture to stick it to the 1%, or even the top 5% in Manhattan (which is a lot higher income than the top 5% elsewhere)?
Read more...