Former Belgian Central Banker on Why the Money System is a Taboo Topic
Lively and provocative. Do yourself a favor and watch it. Hat tip Richard Smith via creditplumber.
Read more...Category Archives: Politics
Yanis Varoufakis: Why Europe Needs More Leaders Like Bruno Kreisky, Who Navigated 1970s Upheaval and Stagflation Well
Yanis Varoufakis asked: Why has European social democracy abandoned the legacy of leaders like Bruno Kreisky, falling in line with a toxic economics and politics that thinkers like Kreisky would have dismissed in their sleep as pathetic claptrap? Here he takes a step back to explain why he views Kreisky’s chancellorship in Austria in the 1970s as a success in social and economic terms.
Read more...Barbara Roper Weighs in on the SEC Vacancy
Matt Stoller is a fellow at the Roosevelt Institute. You can follow him at http://www.twitter.com/matthewstoller.
In the comments of my last post on the SEC nomination issue, director of investor protection for the Consumer Federation of America, Barbara Roper, laid out a rationale for different choices at the SEC. R
Read more...Fiscal Cliff Propaganda Watch: Business Owner Says the Fiscal Cliff Made Him Fire His Son
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...Matt Stoller: Why It’s Worth Fighting Over Who Runs the SEC
Matt Stoller is a fellow at the Roosevelt Institute. You can follow him at http://www.twitter.com/matthewstoller
I’ve been trying to figure out what is going on with the Securities and Exchange Commission for the past month or so, because it is the biggest weakness in our regulatory apparatus. In an interview with Neil Barofsky at Salon, he says that he would take the SEC job if offered. His plan for reform would involve rearranging enforcement priorities at the agency, and reexamine the policy whereby the SEC does not bring cases against corporations but settles without forcing an admission of guilt on particular facts.
This policy has turned the SEC into an agency that issues parking tickets.
Read more...Khuzami Deathwatch: SEC Ignores Tips About $12 Billion of Hidden Losses at Deutsche Bank
Two days ago, we said it was time to fire the SEC’s chief of enforcement Robert Khuzami, who has not provided the tough policing warranted by the biggest financial crisis in the agency’s history. We didn’t anticipate that the story of Khuzami’s negligence would blow so big so quickly. Today, the Financial Times reported that three separate whistleblowers charged that Deutsche Bank had mismarked up to $12 billion in exposures to make it look healthier in 2008 and 2009 than it was, yet the agency had not acted on these allegations. And had Deutsche carried its positions at the levels these former employees suggest was more accurate, Germany’s biggest bank may well have needed a bailout.
Read more...Econ4 Video on the Housing and Foreclosure Crisis (With Your Humble Blogger in a Supporting Role)
Econ4, which is a group of reform minded economists (that may sound like an oxymoron but it isn’t) is presenting a series of videos on major topics where it believes our policies are seriously out of whack. Their latest release is on housing and foreclosures. Your humble blogger is a participant.
Read more...Wonder Why States Are Broke? One Reason is Companies Play Them Off Against Each Other
Our states and localities are cannibalizing one another as they concoct targeted tax breaks which they use to lure corporations from their neighbors.
Read more...The Obscenely Rich Men Bent on Shredding the Safety Net
CEOs talk about shared sacrifice, but the only thing they want to share is your retirement money with their wealthy friends.
Read more...Time to Fire the SEC’s Khuzami: Fails to Act on Whistleblower Tips Under Dodd Frank Program
As we’ve detailed in numerous posts, the performance of SEC enforcement chief Robert Khuzami has been abysmal. It was bad enough that the SEC was weak before the crisis. But the fact that the agency hasn’t upped its game in the wake of the biggest financial markets debacle in history is a colossal fail. And as we’ve pointed out, there’s good reason Khuzami has engaged in (at best) entering into settlements with banks that judge Jed Rakoff described as mere “cost of doing business” level punishments. Any serious pursuit into the conduct at the heart of the crisis would have implicated him. He was General Counsel for the Americas for Deutsche Bank, and its senior trader Greg Lippmann was patient zero of toxic CDOs, so Khuzami was directly responsible for the failure to rein him in (specifically, note that Khuzami sued Goldman over one of 27 Abacus CDOs but did not sue Deutsche over a similar Deutsche Bank CDO program called Start).
The latest revelation makes it clear that the new head of the SEC needs to replace Khuzami.
Read more...Wolf Richter: New Rules For Life Insurers – “Future Generations Have To Deal With The Financial Carnage”
During the off-hours on Sunday, when few people were willing to ruin whatever remained of their weekend and when even astute observers weren’t supposed to pay attention, the National Association of Insurance Commissioners approved new rules that would allow life insurance companies to lower their reserves for future claims—at the worst possible time—having already forgotten all about the financial crisis.
Read more...Is There a Case for Optimism About the Eurozone?
I know, we don’t generally do optimism here at Naked Capitalism. And truth be told, I’m having trouble accepting the Financial Times’ John Dizard’s argument that things are going to get better in the Eurozone. Admittedly, John has a taste for investing on the wild side: he’s typically recommending exotic trades in his weekly column. But his argument isn’t based on catching a near-term trading bounce; it’s based on…..fundamentals.
Read more...Dan Kervick: Will We Be the Lamest Generation?
Yves here. Any post that starts out by making fun of Matt Yglesias already has something going for it. But one bit I quibble with. Kervick suggests that Social Security might be excluded from a Grand Bargain. Don’t get too optimistic.
Read more...Why the Fiscal Cliff is a Scam
This is a very good, high level interview of Jamie Galbraith by Paul Jay of Real News Network. It explains how the fiscal cliff scare was created and why Obama and the Republicans are united in fomenting a false sense of urgency. This is the sort of piece I’d suggest sharing with friends and relatives who’ve been unable to miss the news coverage and want to get up to speed.
Read more...Obama Signs Bill to Exempt US Airlines from EU Aviation Carbon Tax
I managed to avoid listening to pretty much all of Obama’s election victory speech but managed to click onto a news site that had a streaming video of it, and caught his tepid reference to climate change, a passing comment on “the destructive power of a warming planet.” This wasn’t a commitment of any kind; I took this as a sign simply that the president now feels he has to give global warming lip service.
This news story, of Obama undermining an EU carbon tax, is consistent with that theory.
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