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...Category Archives: Social policy
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.
Read more...Walmart, the Most Powerful Company in the World, Admits that Protests and Strikes Lead to Wage Increases
Matt Stoller is a fellow at the Roosevelt Institute. You can follow him at http://www.twitter.com/matthewstoller
For the first time ever, a strike is taking place in America aimed at the most powerful company in the economy: Walmart.
The possible strike could be very significant, because the target of the strike is the most important driver of the race to the bottom economy
Read more...Charter Schools Fail the Math Test in Battleground Chicago
Last year, the New York Times’ Nicholas Kristof highlighted a fundamental inconsistency in the increasingly heated discussion about public education in America. In other walks of life, no one would challenge the notion that you get what you pay for. Kristof pointed out that it only made sense that if you wanted better educational outcomes in the US, you need to pay teachers more. But the public wants a pony: higher quality education while demonizing teachers and cutting their pay.
Read more...Michael Hoexter: Deficit Hawks (Obama, Romney, Bowles, Boehner) Plan to Shrink YOUR Economy – Part 2
Michael Hoexter is a policy analyst and marketing consultant on green issues, climate change, clean and renewable energy, and energy efficiency. Originally published at New Economic Perspectives.
Shrinking “Their” Economy Shrinks Yours
The word “economy” comes from the Greek “oikos” meaning “hearth” or “household”. Everybody has a household economy that looks slightly different from that of their neighbors. However, because of the nature of a monetary economy, household economies are linked quite tightly together and trends that effect one household start to have effects in other households soon or over the longer term. While within the same economy some households can prosper while others do not, generally there is a movement in tandem for some obvious reasons related to how society and the monetary system work.
Read more...The German Economy and the European Crisis
Even though most economic commentators focus on the deterioration of the periphery and are nervously taking note of how that is coming to impair the core countries, the strength of the German economy is nevertheless seldom questioned outside the Eurozone.
This Real News Network segment focuses on a generally-overlooked issue: wage suppression and the increasingly precarious conditions that German workers face, and how that plays into Eurozone politics.
Read more...The New Great Dictators Are Gaining Momentum In Europe
Yves here. The author may seem unduly concerned about political talk to tamp down the fires stoked by the tasteless “Innocence of Muslims” may be part of a more general crackdown on free speech in Europe, but remember in the US how reactions to 9/11 have greatly accelerated the creation of a surveillance state. I very much welcome European reader input.
By Jan Bennink, a Dutch advertising professional and a columnist for the leading newspaper De Volkskrant. He is @superjan on twitter. This column was first published in Dutch on Volkskrant Opiniel. Translated and first published in English by Wolf Richter at Testosterone Pit
As far as I can remember I’ve never been afraid of the government.
Read more...The Disheartening State of American Incomes
Doug Short at Global Economic Intersection has a must-read post that pulls together some Census Report data on US incomes since 1967 and draws some conclusions. He looks first at real, rather than nominal, incomes, and shows how income in the top 5% and top quintile have grown faster than for the rest of the population
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