The spin-meisters continue to package things that ought to incite outrage in anodyne wrappers in the hope no one will look inside. “The new normal” and “structural unemployment” join the universe inhabited by such gems as “extraordinary rendition” and “pre-emptive strike”. “New normal” is particularly insidious, since it implies that we must accept current conditions, […]
Read more...Today, quite a few commentators fell in with the take of the writeup by Real Time Economics on a speech by Paul Volcker given a conference on macroprudential regulation hosted by the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago. Its lead-in: Former Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volcker scrapped a prepared speech he had planned to deliver at […]
Read more...Tom Adams and I saw an advance screening of the Charles Ferguson film Inside Job, a documentary on the financial crisis, due for theatrical release in New York on October 8. Given how well each of us knows the subject matter, we’re not easily swayed, but I can speak for both of us in giving […]
Read more...On the one hand, a lot of tea leaf watchers had expected Larry Summers to leave the Administration economic team for some time. Summers clearly wanted a bigger job, and the only jobs big enough to satisfy his rather large ego were Fed chairman (the one he really wanted) or Treasury chief. When it was […]
Read more...Michael Hirsh, until very recently of Newsweek, now at the National Journal, is doing a star turn in connection with his new book, Capital Offense: How Washington’s Wise Men Turned America’s Future Over to Wall Street I must confess I blurbed his book (I find it a bit weird that I am now considered a […]
Read more...Keiser is admittedly hyperbolic, but his colorful style has been effective in calling attention to some of the bad practices of financial institutions. This taping was on the day when I seemed to be the Typhoid Mary of studio operations. The audio kept failing (although the folks in NYC told me that happened often with […]
Read more...Representative Alan Grayson of Florida has asked the Florida Supreme Court to halt all foreclosures in the state in light of an investigation by its attorney general into allegations of pervasive foreclosure fraud by so-called “foreclosure mills”. Text below: September 20, 2010 Chief Justice Charles T. Canady Florida Supreme Court 500 South Duval Street Tallahassee, […]
Read more...By Mike Konczal, a Roosevelt Institute fellow who posts at New Deal 2.0 Arjun Jayadev and I have another working paper out of Roosevelt Institute, this time focusing on the labor market in the current recession. The paper is: The Stagnating Labor Market (pdf). I hope you check it out; I’m going to talk about […]
Read more...The birth of modern propaganda took place in World War I, where an extraordinarily well orchestrated campaign turned America from pacifist to ferociously anti-German in a mere eighteen months. When after the war, the public learned that its beliefs had been turned without their realizing it, some of the key actors. such as Eddie Bernays […]
Read more...While this is a tad wide of our usual focus, the outcome of the November midterms has the potential to have significant economic implications. I ran into an old colleague, an investor and sufficiently serious Republican donor to have gotten invited to both Bush inaugurations. Surprisingly, he was not keen at all about the prospect […]
Read more...It is increasingly evident that the appointment of Elizabeth Warren to act as special advisor to the President and Treasury for the newly-established Consumer Financial Protection Agency has everything to do with Obama trying to shore up his questionable credentials as a reformer and perilous little with helping ordinary citizens. So the only question that […]
Read more...A New York Times report tonight sheds some light on the debate on whether ending tax cuts for the top 2%, which is how Obama proposes to deal with the pending expiration of Bush tax cuts, will, as low tax stalwarts contend, hurt small businesses. Although my sample is anecdotal, it strongly says not, and […]
Read more...The London sponsored bike hire scheme provides an ongoing media opportunity for one of the UK’s less well liked banks. Not everyone thinks the PR should go unchallenged. Shot in Smithfield yesterday, hat tip Richard Smith:
Read more...I received this query from someone we will call AK via e-mail: Was wondering if you might be help with a mental exercise I’ve been toying with the last few weeks pertaining to the roll of timeframe of consequences, and whether we will be hit with a shock or slow-burn when gravity finally kicks in. […]
Read more...Let’s see….early in the days of this Administration, Treasury Secretary Geithner said some pretty critical things about China. The Chinese threw a big temper tantrum and Geithner backed down. He had tended to try to play down tensions with China over its mercantilist policies (the most important being pegging its currency at an artificially low […]
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