By Edward Harrison of Credit Writedowns. A reader at Naked Capitalism asked us to respond to a recent article from the Christian Science Monitor asking Does US need a second stimulus to create jobs? Marshall Auerback has already done some heavy lifting – and taken all of the heat in the comments. He says emphatically […]
Read more...By Edward Harrison of Credit Writedowns The US Department of Agriculture highlights how the United States in the last decade, despite increased aggregate wealth, slid back significantly in terms of food insecurity as measure of poverty. With everyone now focused on the unemployment situation, it bears noting that even before the downturn in the economy […]
Read more...By George Washington of Washington’s Blog. Financial insider and commentator Yves Smith wrote an essay last week entitled “MSM Reporting as Propaganda” arguing that the government has been using propaganda to make people think that things are getting better, no one is angry, and – therefore – no one should get upset: The message, quite […]
Read more...By George Washington of Washington’s Blog. In 2000, America was described as the sole remaining superpower – or even the world’s “hyperpower”. Now we’re in real trouble (at the very least, you have to admit that we’re losing power and wealth in comparison with China). How did it happen so fast? As everyone knows, the […]
Read more...Ed Harrison has an excellent post over on his Credit Writedowns blog, following up and elaborating on his “Greed is Not Good” post here yesterday. To whet your appetite, here it the beginning of “More on greed, regulation, Lehman and the financial industry“: In one of my latest posts I said “greed is not good.” […]
Read more...By Marshall Auerback, an investment strategist who writes for the New Deal 2.0. A history of failed attempts to introduce universal health insurance has left us with a system in which the government pays directly or indirectly for more than half of the nation’s health care, but the actual delivery both of insurance and of […]
Read more...By George Washington of Washington’s Blog. Unemployment is disastrous on both the individual and societal level. Individuals who look for work but can’t find it are miserable. Indeed, most people who lose their job are unprepared for their circumstances.[1] On the national level, high unemployment is both cause and effect concerning other problems with the […]
Read more...Submitted by Edward Harrison of Credit Writedowns. I have had pretty much no computer access where I am so I apologize for not getting into the debate in the comments from my last post on healthcare. I wrote this article as an update to that post. The opinions here reflect only my view and have […]
Read more...Submitted by Edward Harrison of Credit Writedowns. Below is a post I recently wrote at Credit Writedowns. I hope you find this in line with Marshall Auerback’s recent post on the same issue. Here I am looking at things from a purely political standpoint – not necessarily a defense of one position or another on […]
Read more...As the economy limps along, with jobs still falling (despite keen efforts to call a turn, and with the figures a bit more dodgy if you look under the hood), more and more overindebted and underemployed citizens are out on the street. Reports of tent encampments or parking lots with cars that serve as shelter […]
Read more...Is the leopard changing its spots? First we have the Wall Street Journal, of all places, lambasting Goldman, while incredibly, the Washington Post springs to its defense. If that isn’t bizarre enough, today we have the Wall Street Journal, which along with just about every mainstream media outlet, likes to inveigh about coming Social Security […]
Read more...Nicholas Nassim Taleb and Mark Spitznagel have a provocative comment up at the Financial Time today, In some ways, it is isn’t surprising for those familiar with his work on risk and uncertainty. On the other hand, it is an eye opener to see what an internally consistent, reasonably comprehensive solution to our mess looks […]
Read more...A paradox arises to the extent that it is true that the market is dependent on normative underpinning (to provide the pre-contractural foundations such as trust, cooperation, and honesty) which all contractural relations require: The more people accept the neoclasical paradigm as a guide for their behavior, the more the ability to sustain a market […]
Read more...In America, the 1990 census showed a marked decrease in childbearing. 25% of the women between 30 and 34 were childless, while the comparable figure in 1976 was 16%. By 1985, the birthrate expected per average woman over her lifetime had fallen to 1.8, slightly below Europe’s level and below the “replacement rate”, the level […]
Read more...Steve Waldman offers a radical and unconventional cure to our financial mess. Stop lending. Waldman is deadly serious and thinks our attachment to lending is based on dangerously flawed premises: I am glad that the banks, for all the hundreds of billions of dollars we are giving them, are not lending. That is not because […]
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