Category Archives: Politics

Paul Mason of BBC on How Austerity is Reducing Greece to Developing Country Status

The BBC’s Paul Mason, fresh back from Greece, gives a report on Democracy Now of how living conditions have deteriorated as a result of the imposition of austerity measures. One of the stunners, mentioned in Atlantic Wire (hat tip Lambert), is that not only will some Greeks have to work without pay, some will have to pay for their jobs (yes, that is not a typo). The euphemism is a “negative salary.”

Mason also discusses how this program is radicalizing the public. Communists, Trotskyists and other extreme-left groups are polling at 43%. That’s a strikingly high number. This plus the level of dissent on the street suggests Greece is on its way out of the eurozone. But will the technocrats prevail? As Michael Hudson has stressed here and in other commentary, the banks are succeeding in stripping Greece of assets, an operation that used to be possible only via military force.

From Democracy Now (hat tip Philip Pilkington):

John O’Brien: Mortgage Settlement Fails to Address Banking Criminal Enterprise

Yves here. The release by San Francisco county assessor-recorder Phil Ting of a study of document irregularities in foreclosures has put a spotlight on the failure of Federal banking regulators and state officials to do anything beyond cursory examinations of servicers’ bad practices. If a country official with limited resources can show that there are widespread abuses, what is the excuse of state and Federal officials for their failure to understand the depth and severity of these problems?

As Dave Dayen has pointed out, it was two county registers of deeds, Jeff Thigpen in Guiford County, North Carolina, and John O’Brien of South Essex County, Massachusettes, who were the first to look at their own records to see how extensive the frauds were. O’Brien has called his office a “crime scene” and refused to register any more fraudulent deeds. He also performed a study of his own, and the results were released in June 2011. As Dayen reported, the study found widespread failures and apparent fraud, just like the later San Francisco exam:

Politico: Schneiderman Caved to Administration Pressure on Mortgage Settlement, Did Not Get Tighter Release for Abandoning Opposition

While this blog has repeatedly pointed out that Tom Miller, the Iowa attorney general and leader of attorneys general in the settlement negotiations, is not the most credible source, the flip side is that the description of the release in the Administration’s own ~~propaganda~~ website strongly suggests that the release of bank liability is broad, rather than narrow, as deal cheerleaders claimed.

If you take this section of an article at Politico, “HUD boss jumps into mortgage melee,” (hat tip reader Deontos) at face value, you can only draw damning conclusions about New York attorney general Eric Schneiderman’s role:

Will Expiration of Tax Break Render Much of Mortgage Settlement Moot?

Even though the mortgage settlement deal was without a doubt massively lawyered from the bank end, and should have received similar levels of scrutiny from the Federal and state officials, a major fly in the ointment may have been overlooked. The tax rule allowing a reduction in mortgage debt not to be counted as income expires at the end of this year. As the Seattle Times explains (hat tip Lisa Epstein):

Philip Pilkington: The Liquidity Trap and All That…

By Philip Pilkington, a writer and journalist based in Dublin, Ireland

Recently the mainstream press have done some rather interesting coverage of Modern Monetary Theory (MMT).

Neil Barofsky on Taxpayer Subsidies to the Mortgage Settlement

Neil Barofsky, former Special Inspector General of the TARP, weighs in on the mortgage settlement at Bloomberg. One intriguing little aspect of this deal is the degree to which the Administration, particularly HUD, is frustrated that its PR efforts are landing with a thud. I’ve been told of HUD efforts to push back against my post, “The Top Twelve Reasons Why You Should Hate the Mortgage Settlement,” as well as an important article by Shahien Nasiripour at the Financial Times on how the administration’s mortgage modification program HAMP would wind up providing taxpayer subsidies to the settlement.

The Bloomberg reporter Erik Schatzker mentions how HUD has disputed the Financial Times reporting and Barofsky explains why the FT got it right.

Satyajit Das: It’s All Greek to Me!

Yves here. In case you managed to miss it, there is supposedly an agreement for Greece to get €130 billion. But then we learn that Greece will still need more dough if it meets its target of reducing government debt to GDP to 120% by 2020 (and why is debt to GDP of 120% seen as sustainable then when it is not seen as sustainable now? And leaked documents further note that Greece might not meet its targets (duh!) and its debt to GDP could instead by 160% of GDP, which would require bailouts of nearly twice the amount now contemplated. And “discussions” are continuing in Brussels into the early morning, which says this deal is about as done as the US mortgage settlement.

By Satyajit Das, derivatives expert and the author of Extreme Money: The Masters of the Universe and the Cult of Risk Traders, Guns & Money: Knowns and Unknowns in the Dazzling World of Derivatives – Revised Edition (2006 and 2010)

The Greek Prime Minister spoke of a choice between “austerity” and “disorder”. He got both, as the Greek Parliament based the European Union (“EU”) agreed to severe budget cuts and outside rioters protested the plan.

“Crooks on the Loose? Did Felons Get a Free Pass in the Financial Crisis? “

I have to confess I have yet to do more than sample this video, but I intend to watch it in full as soon as I have a breather. This is a video of a panel discussion at NYU Law School earlier this month at which former prosecutors Neil Barofsky and Eliot Spitzer took on party-line-defending Lanny Breuer of the Department of Justice, and to a lesser degree, Mary Jo White, former US attorney who now works on the defense side. Various reports on the discussion indicate that sparks flew at several junctures, so I am confident the NC audience will find it engaging as well as informative.

Michael Olenick: Shocking Economic Insight – Mass Foreclosures Will Drive Down Home Prices

By Michael Olenick, creator of FindtheFraud, a crowd sourced foreclosure document review system (still in alpha). You can follow him on Twitter at @michael_olenick or read his blog, Seeing Through Data

“A lie told often enough becomes the truth.”
— Vladimir Lenin, adopted and reused by Joseph Goebbels

Every doctor knows the fastest way to stabilize a patient is to kill them, because there is nothing more stable than death. While that solution may be fast and inexpensive it’s also sub-optimal. Yet pundits repeatedly posit the fastest way to end the housing crisis is through mass foreclosures. In a strict sense they’re right, that will achieve stability, though so will other policies calibrated to cause less micro and macroeconomic damage .. and a lot less human suffering.

Navigating Global Prosperity: An Interview with Paul Davidson

Paul Davidson is America’s foremost post-Keynesian economist. Davidson is currently the Holly Professor of Excellence, Emeritus at the University of Tennessee in Knoxville. In 1978 Davidson and Sydney Weintraub founded the Journal for Post-Keynesian Economics. Davidson is the author of numerous books, the most recent of which is an introduction to a post-Keynesian perspective on the recent crisis entitled ‘The Keynes Solution: The Path to Global Prosperity’.

Interview conducted by Philip Pilkington

Philip Pilkington: Keynes famously claimed that the ideas of economists are extremely powerful and have huge influence on the way policymakers think. What struck me about your book The Keynes Solution was how well you related Keynes’ theoretical ideas to the problems the world is currently facing – and the proposed solutions. Before we talk in any detail about these ideas let me ask you this: to what extent do you think that Keynes was right about the ideas of economists?

San Francisco Foreclosure Audit Elicits Predictable Responses from Securitization Mess Deniers

Given the existence of a large and still for the most part very well remunerated mortgage industrial complex, it is not surprising that a investigation done by a mere county that found errors in virtually all the loans in a small sample of foreclosures created a hue and cry.

While state attorney general Kamala Harris remarked that, “The allegations are deeply troubling and, sadly, no surprise to homeowners and law enforcement officials in California,” and Nancy Pelosi wrote to ask Eric Holder to take a look, the securitization problem deniers went to assault mode.

Congress Pushes Iran Regime Change Over Diplomacy

This is a sobering interview on Real News Network with Lawrence Wilkerson, who was Colin Powell’s chief of staff, on how Congress and Obama are painting themselves in a corner over Iran.

Can Rep. Bachus and His Money-Crazed Congressional Colleagues Be Stopped from Insider Trading?

By Lynn Parramore. Cross posted from Alternet.

Back in the Gilded Age, venality was the rule in Congress. Bribes were as common as tobacco pipes. Lawmakers fattened their bank accounts through insider deals, with the needs of ordinary people an afterthought. Nelson Aldrich, a powerful Republican who served in the Senate from 1881 to 1911, was that corrupt era’s political poster boy, serving on the Finance Committee and using his position to invest in railroads, sugar, rubber and banking deals that made him rich.

Sound familiar? It should. We’re well on our way to repeating that money-crazed chapter in American history as a growing list of legislators use their office to play the game, “Who Wants to Be a Multi-millionaire?”