PBS on Corporate Campaign Donations
As one reader noted, “Closest PBS has ever come to telling the truth about the system”. You can view the segment here. Enjoy!
Read more...Category Archives: Politics
Is the US Taking Too Much of the Brunt of the Crisis Aftermath?
Before readers throw brickbats at me, I’m just acting as the messenger for two articles, one by Harvard’s Kenneth Rogoff, the other by the Financial Times’ Martin Wolf. Each points out that the US is taking a proportionately bigger hit than other big economies post crisis, particularly in terms of unemployment. And this is actually […]
Read more...Konczal: Make Your Voice Heard with a Comments Submission for the Volcker Rule
By Mike Konczal, a Fellow at the Roosevelt Institute who writes at New Deal 2.0. You may not be a lobbyist, but you can still make a difference in FinReg. Just a reminder: this Friday, November 5th, 2010, is the last day to submit comments on the Volcker Rule. Here is the website for this, […]
Read more...On Voting as a Duty Versus Voting as a Right
As I’ve mentioned from time to time, I lived in Sydney for two years, from 2002 to 2004, long enough to get a decent sense of the culture. Australian policies are intriguing. They are either brilliant or stupid, there seems to be perilously little middle ground. For instance, they’ve done away with the penny, a […]
Read more...Auerback: On McArdle’s Fuzzy Deficit Accounting
By Marshall Auerback, a portfolio strategist and Roosevelt Institute fellow There are plenty of legitimate reasons to criticize Barack Obama’s dismal stewardship of the US economy, and God knows I’ve voiced quite a few of them, but it does not follow that every criticism made of his economic policies is therefore legitimate. There is quite […]
Read more...Grayson Calls For Big Banks to Hold Extra Capital Against Title Insurance Indemnifications
We’ve noted that title insurers have been refusing to eat the risk in foreclosure sales when they can’t verify the chain of title from local records. Of course, the idea that title insurance was ever really intended to be insurance in the first place is questionable: the title insurers only step up when they can […]
Read more...Germany Draws Line in the Sand on Eurozone Bailouts, Insists Bondholders Take Pain
The contradictions of the Eurobailout mechanism were bound to be resolved at some point, smoke and mirror and insufficient firepower relative to the magnitude of the problem will only take you so far. The eurozone rescue operation, although it looked like it was aimed at so called Club Med, aka PIGS sovereigns (Portugal, Ireland, Greece, […]
Read more...Tom Ferguson: Obama’s Economic Policies Failed
Tom Ferguson, who is refreshingly blunt, gives his dim view of the Obama Administration economic policies. But be warned, he doesn’t like the Republican proposals either. From the Real News Network: More at The Real News
Read more...Our New York Times Op-Ed: How the Banks Put the Economy Underwater
Several regular readers were kind enough to send congratulatory e-mails on our New York Times op-ed, which appears in the Sunday edition. I hope you enjoy it. The text follows: In Congressional hearings last week, Obama administration officials acknowledged that uncertainty over foreclosures could delay the recovery of the housing market. The implications for the […]
Read more...“Protest works. Just look at the proof”
It’s astonishing to see how Americans have been conditioned to think that political action and engagement is futile. I’m old enough to have witnessed the reverse, how activism in the 1960s produced significant advances in civil rights blacks and women, and eventually led the US to exit the Vietnam War. I’m reminded of this sense […]
Read more...Ohio Attorney General Guts Bank “Just Submit New Affidavits” Plan
We have pointed out several times that banks were being awfully optimistic in assuming that they could simply replace improper “robo signed” affidavits with ones that were done correctly. The submission of a phony affidavit is a fraud on the court. The lawyers involved are subject to sanctions and judges could reject the filing, forcing […]
Read more...China Drops Rare Earths Ban
Here’s the update, per the New York Times: The Chinese government on Thursday abruptly ended its unannounced export embargo on crucial rare earth minerals to the United States, Europe and Japan, four industry officials said. The embargo, which has raised trade tensions, ended as it had begun — with no official acknowledgment from Beijing, or […]
Read more...Eurozone Worries Rising?
There are more news sightings that point to heightened worry about Eurozone sovereign debt/bank woes. A spate from Bloomberg this AM. Normally, when I can come close to doing one-stop shopping on relevant topics on Bloomberg, it’s a sign of anxiety. The first is “EU Bows to German Call for Permanent Debt Mechanism.” This piece […]
Read more...Joe Costello: Democrats Are Running on Empty
By Joe Costello, communications director for Jerry Brown’s 1992 presidential campaign and was a senior adviser for Howard Dean’s effort in 2004 who writes at Archein and New Deal 2.0 Without meaningful reforms, our economy — and our politics — will continue to suffer. New York, New York big city of dreams And everything in […]
Read more...“How to Destroy a Bank”
Your humble blogger is quoted at some length in this Playboy article (yes, article, remember the classic male wink and nod about buying Playboy for its articles) along with Bill Black. This piece was heralded in the New York Times. An excerpt: On the night of March 10, 2010 an otherwise anonymous American financial writer […]
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