WSJ Bemoans Rise in Rationality, Um, Decline in Entrepreneurial Risk-Taking
It’s hard to know where to begin with a story up at the Wall Street Journal, Risk-Averse Culture Infects U.S. Workers, Entrepreneurs.
Read more...Category Archives: Politics
Lynn Parramore: Guess What? Fewer Americans Call Themselves Economic Conservatives
New Gallup polls shows that economic conservatism is down, social liberalism is up.
Read more...Wolf Richter: Lobbying And GMO Giant Monsanto Buckles In Europe
The “March Against Monsanto” in 52 countries, an unapproved strain of its genetically modified wheat growing profusely in Oregon, cancelled wheat export orders…. A rough week for Monsanto. Now it threw in the towel in Europe where its deep pockets and mastery of lobbying had failed: “It’s counterproductive to fight against windmills,” it explained.
Read more...More Market State In Action: Consumers Treated Differently Under the Law Than Businesses
You thought corporate personhood was a bad thing? Think twice. You should be so lucky as to be a corporate person. They don’t just get treated like you and me, they are increasingly being treated better than you and me.
Read more...OCC Probe of JP Morgan Debt Collection Abuses Will Show if Agency Can Be Reformed
As readers probably know all too well, the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency has long been the most cronyistic of all bank regulators. So the default assumption when it cranks up an investigation is to assume that it’s just a window-dressing exercise or worse, a stealth bailout of some sort.
Yet the Washington Post tells us that the OCC is widening an investigation into debt collection, where alleged robosigner JP Morgan is the sinner-in-chief. What gives?
Read more...Barbara Parramore Speaks About Her Arrest in “Moral Monday Protests” Against Republican Railroading of Extreme Right-Wing Agenda in North Carolina
Yves here. NC intern Jessica Ferrer interviewed 80 year old Barbara Parramore, who was one of 57 arrested in North Carolina on May 20 as part of what has become weekly protests at the state General Assembly called “Moral Mondays”.
Read more...Gaius Publius: They Don’t Hate Us for Our Freedom, They Hate Us for Our Bombs
Yves here. This post makes a critical point that is deliberately obscured in domestic war mongering discussions of Middle East policy: that invaders and occupiers are never welcomed with open arms (despite Iraq War fantasies to the contrary) and hostility and efforts to make it costly for us to stay should hardly be surprising.
More on the Trumped-Up Charges Against Cyprus
As readers may recall, the Eurozone decided to make an example of Cyprus by using it to set the precedent of raiding deposits to fund a bailout (query: is a self-bailout even properly called a bailout?). But the moralists said Cyprus had it coming, since it was a seedy tax haven. A recently released official report summary supports those charges. Or did it?
Read more...Don Quijones: The Financial Takeover Of “Our” Newspapers
“In a newspaper like El País it is no longer possible to criticize the main Spanish banks. And you have to be very careful when talking about the Government, in case it gets angry: its benevolence is needed in order to avoid bankruptcy.”
The above words are from Enríc González, one of Spain’s most respected journalists. With more and more media groups struggling to make ends meet in this new age of Internet journalism and plummeting advertising revenues, one can’t help but wonder just how many other newspapers will soon fall into the clutches of the big banks and corporations.
Read more...IMF Rethinks Sovereign Defaults, Again
By Delusional Economics, who is determined to cleanse the daily flow of vested interests propaganda to produce a balanced counterpoint. Cross posted from MacroBusiness
Read more...Your Humble Blogger Speaks on the Melissa Harris-Perry Show About Apple’s Senate Hearing, Corporate Tax Avoidance
We appeared on the Melissa Harris-Perry show on Saturday to participate in a discussion of the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations hearing on Apple’s astonishingly low tax payments.
Read more...Parsing Obama’s Speech on Drones, the War on Terror, and Guantanamo
I particularly liked this Real News Network segment, in which Paul Jay and Michael Rattner, the President Emeritus of the Center for Constitutional Rights who brought the first case opposing detentions at Guantanamo Bay, went through Obama’s speech late last week on drone policy and Gitmo, focusing on key statements and teasing out what they really meant.
Read more...Gretchen Morgenson on Bill Moyers: Why Too Big to Fail Still Lives
This Bill Moyers segment gives a welcome view of Gretchen Morgenson recapping the sorry state of the “too big to fail” problem.
Read more...Chile’s Recent Lead Negotiator on Trans-Pacific Partnership Warns It Could Be a “Threat to Our Countries”
An important article in the Latin American press peculiarly has not gotten the attention it deserves. Or perhaps not so peculiarly, given the Obama administration’s intention to keep the Trans-Pacific Partnership negotiations as far out of the public eye as possible.
Read more...David Dayen: FSOC Annual Report Shows Continued Interest in Austerity Bargain Over Reducing Financial System
With Jack Lew now installed at Treasury, I decided to take a look at the annual report of the Financial Stability Oversight Council (FSOC), the Dodd-Frank creation that’s supposed to monitor systemic risk. We already know the leanings of the not-so-new regime at Treasury: they think Dodd-Frank worked to secure a more stable financial system, an opinion reiterated Tuesday at a Senate Banking Committee hearing.
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