Obama Wins, the System is Broken
This interview with Rob Johnson of the the Roosevelt Institute, Marc Steiner of WEAA, and Lester Spence of We are Many gives a sobering view of election results.
Read more...Category Archives: Social policy
Bill Black: Wall Street Urges Obama to Commit the Great Betrayal
By Bill Black, the author of The Best Way to Rob a Bank is to Own One and an associate professor of economics and law at the University of Missouri-Kansas City. Cross posted from Benzaga
Wall Street’s leading “false flag” group, the Third Way, has responded to the warnings that Robert Kuttner, AFL-CIO President Trumka, and I have made that if President Obama is re-elected our immediate task will be to prevent the Great Betrayal – the adoption of self-destructive austerity programs and the opening wedge of the effort to unravel the safety net (including Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid).
Read more...Fed Budgetary Experts Demolish CBO Health Cost Model, the Linchpin of Budget Hysteria
A remarkably important and persuasive paper that calls into question the need for “reforming” Medicare has not gotten the attention it warrants. “An Examination of Health-Spending Growth In The United States: Past Trends And Future Prospects” (hat tip nathan) by Glenn Follette and Louise Sheiner looks at the model used by the Congressional Budgetary Office to estimate long term health care cost increases. Bear in mind that this model is THE driver of virtually all forecasts of future budget deficits.
This paper, although written in typically anodyne economese, is devastating in the range and nature of its criticisms.
Read more...Cathy O’Neil: Glen Hubbard, the Economic Whore
By Cathy O’Neil, a data scientist who lives in New York City and member of the Occupy Wall Street Alternative Banking Groups. Cross posted from mathbabe.org
As a loudmouthed data scientist/blogger/activist, I go on record regularly complaining about quants and data scientists who sacrifice their integrity to put out crappy or misleading or exploitative or destructive models because they want to make their bosses happy, or rake in big bonuses, or because they’re afraid to speak up and get fired, or because they don’t bother to think through the consequences of their actions.
But here’s the thing, I’m not sure what anyone can do about economists.
Read more...Desperate Effort by Tyler Cowen and Megan McArdle to Silence Discussion about Income Inequality
A tangible sign that the issue of income inequality is taking hold in the American psyche: Tyler Cowen has made a patently ridiculous effort to try to change the topic, and Megan McArdle is dutifully amplifying it.
Read more...Bill Black: The Great Betrayal – and the Cynicism of Calling it a Grand Bargain
By Bill Black, the author of The Best Way to Rob a Bank is to Own One and an associate professor of economics and law at the University of Missouri-Kansas City
Obama intends to begin to unravel the safety net (Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid) to convince the Republicans to enter into this Faustian bargain. Just as only a conservative Republican could visit “Red” China, only a Democrat can begin the destruction of the safety net. The difference, of course, is that normalizing relations with China was a good thing while unraveling the safety net is a terrible thing.
Read more...Some Hidden Casualties of Hurricane Sandy
It’s peculiar to have been in the midst of the superstorm and have suffered pretty much nada in the way of immediate effects.
Read more...Michael M. Thomas: Naked Capitalism – An Insider’s Guide
By Michael M. Thomas, who figured out Wall Street was not all it was cracked up to be before most of you were born
More than any other forum, Naked Capitalism consistently suggests and proposes new ways to bridge what I consider the abyss that will one day sink us all if Koch brothers-style politics and capitalism have their way: the chasm that lies between what we need to know and what we have been (and will be) allowed to know.
Read more...The Coming Drone Invasion
If you thought the US was a police state, you ain’t seen nuthin’ yet.
Read more...Launching the NC 2012 Fundraiser!
Last year, around this time, NC held its first fundraiser. You helped show that Naked Capitalism was a valuable place for honest discourse, a corner of the world where we could peer into the abyss, together. It worked. Your generosity helped us upgrade the site’s infrastructure, bring in a series of guest bloggers, and in a host of ways large and small, aid us in ruthlessly describing the destructive impact of growing power of elite finance in the US and abroad.
As we move toward the elections, I’m going to ask all of you to join me once again.
Read more...Elderly Americans Burdened by Student Debt Too
The Wall Street Journal has an important story on a phenomenon that’s likely to get more attention by virtue of growth: that of middle aged and elderly Americans saddled by significant amounts of student debt.
Read more...Rentier CEOs Advocate Austerity for America
Felix Salmon did an admirable takedown of a “CEOs [sic] Deficit Manifesto” in the Wall Street Journal. It’s yet another entry in the long-running, dishonest campaign funded by billionaire Pete Peterson to pretend that all right thinking people (and of course CEOs believe they have the right to think for everybody else) should be all in favor of trashing the middle class and the economy through misguided deficit cutting.
Read more...Propaganda on the Rise on the Health Care Policy Front
Reader Paul Tioxon sent the following sighting by e-mail.
Read more...Philip Pilkington: Why “Free Markets” Accommodate Speculation and Lead to Disequilibrium
Philip Pilkington is an Irish writer and journalist living in London. You can follow him on Twitter @pilkingtonphil
Perhaps the most effective myth that mainstream economists have propagated over the course of the last century is the idea that the majority of prices in an advanced capitalist economy are set by the interaction of supply and demand in a market for scarce resources. Perhaps the second most effective myth they have spread is that this interaction tends toward equilibrium and stability.
Read more...Bill Moyers: Plutocracy Rising
Bill Moyer’s latest show, with Matt Taibbi and and Chrystia Freeland, focuses on how the super rich have established a yawning chasm between themselves and ordinary Americans, both in financial and physical terms. One major focus is view the rich are where they are by virtue of their talents and efforts, not (say) by regulatory and tax arbitrage, and how they’ve convinced themselves and a large swathe of society of this myth.
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