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...By Marshall Auerback, a Senior Fellow at the Roosevelt Institute, and a market analyst and commentator. Crossposted from New Deal 2.0. It’s time to put the perps of this scandal in jail. Yves Smith, Bill Black, and Mike Konczal have already done yeoman’s work in seeking to explain the lender fraud scandal in the securitized […]
Read more...The specter of demonstrations in Europe are not only likely to become a regular news item, but other economies have high odds of similar social stresses, a UN agency forecasts. The International Labour Organisation has pushed back its estimate of when global employment will return to pre-crisis levels back to 2015. Given the widespread signs […]
Read more...By Marshall Auerback, a portfolio strategist .hedge fund manager, and Roosevelt Institute Senior Fellow My friend, Yves Smith, has posed the question as to why there is no political outlet for the anger on the left. In other words, where are today’s Huey Longs when you need them? It’s become patently obvious to anybody with […]
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...Some readers have wondered why this blog from time to time runs posts on the US health care system. Aside from the fact that it’s a major public policy problem in America, it is also a prime example of bad incentives, information asymmetry, and corporate predatory behavior. It thus makes for an important object lesson. […]
Read more...A question for readers: in many lines of commerce, large firms often enjoy significant cost and/or revenue advantages relative to smaller players. Over time, these industries tend to evolve to a format where many of the most successful enterprises are very large organizations. These firms typically wield considerable power relative to players smaller than they […]
Read more...Yves here. Doug Smith, the author of On Value and Values: Thinking Differently About We In An Age Of Me, raised some interesting questions about how the debate about recovery is being framed. The most common approach is to look it in terms of GDP, and look at various indicators to see is progress towards […]
Read more...It is truly astonishing to watch how determined the economics orthodoxy is to defend its inexcusable, economy-wrecking performance in the runup to the financial crisis. Most people who preside over disasters, say from a boating accident or the failure of a venture, spend considerable amounts of time in review of what happened and self-recrimination. Yet […]
Read more...By Marshall Auerback, a portfolio strategist and fund manager who writes at New Deal 2.0 Hint: it’s not Republicans. Social Security remains one of the greatest achievements of the Democratic Party since its creation 75 years ago. Although Republicans have historically fulminated against the program (Ronald Reagan once likened it as something akin to “socialism”), […]
Read more...Stress will bring out an organism’s or an organization’s defenses, and the beleagured Obama administration is looking mighty defensive these days. The great unwashed public isn’t buying its PR about its supposed accomplishments, such as the disgrace that it misbrands as financial reform (which 80% are skeptical will prevent a future crisis) and health care […]
Read more...The Wall Street Journal seems truly mystified that with headline unemployment at 9.5% and U6 at 16.5%, some employers are nevetheless having trouble filling jobs. But this shouldn’t seem all that strange when you consider that workers are not an undifferentiated mass, but have particular skills and experience, and live in particular places, and they […]
Read more...The press has been duly supportive of the successful effort by Bill Gates and Warren Buffet to get other mega-rich individuals to give away at least half their wealth to charity. But is this the unalloyed boon that it is presented as being? William Langley, in the Telegraph, points out that the new model of […]
Read more...Economists really do seem to struggle with history – and sometimes geography, too. Brad DeLong needs to remember that the Financial Times is published in London. As far as most combatants were concerned, the second world war broke out in September 1939. Niall Ferguson, FT, 20th July 2010. Goodish point. On the other hand, Ferguson […]
Read more...Update: “Silence implies consent, and the lack of a disclaimer indicates that there is some measure of positive approval of not just Mr. Goodwin’s right to his views, but of his views themselves.” (commenter barefoot bum) Consider that disclaimer added, then: Bob G. and I are well aware that we disagree strongly on a whole […]
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