Category Archives: Social values

Mark Ames: Paul Ryan’s Guru Ayn Rand Worshipped a Serial Killer Who Kidnapped and Dismembered Little Girls

Yves here. There is one way that Mark Ames’ underlying post needs a smidge of updating. Sadly, the technocratic elites in Europe are now firmly trying to inflict bone-crushing austerity on ordinary workers, despite visible evidence of its failure (debt to GDP ratios keep rising as the economies contract) and widespread public opposition. There the rationale is a bizarre combination of “punish the borrowers” when countries like Ireland and Spain were held up as poster children of economic success until the bust, and a need to hide the fact that what looks like rescues of the PIIGS is in fact bailouts of French and German banks.

By Mark Ames, the author of Going Postal: Rage, Murder and Rebellion from Reagan’s Workplaces to Clinton’s Columbine. Cross posted from The eXiled

To celebrate today’s announcement that Ayn Rand fanboy Paul Ryan will in a few months’ time be a heartbeat from the presidency—and to honor this special moment, marking the final syphilitic pus-spasms of America’s decline and fall–we are reposting for your edification Mark Ames’ 2010 article about the man behind the Rand: Ayn Rand’s unrequited adoration of a notorious serial killer, William Edward Hickman.

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Bill Black: Krugman Now Sees the Perversity of Economics’ “Culture of Fraud”

Wow, is Black fast. I had just seen the Krugman post decrying how the three academic authors of Romney’s white paper on economics – Glenn Hubbard, Greg Mankiw, and John Taylor – repeatedly and aggressively misrepresented research they cited in support of their positions, and wanted to say something.

As much as it’s good to see Krugman call this sort of thing out, it nevertheless raises a basic question: where has he been?

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Bill Black: Eduardo Porter’s “Folly”—Why We Must End the “Race to the Bottom”

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 New Economic Perspectives.

Eduardo Porter began by studying physics but decided not to complete his studies and pursue a career in that field in favor of becoming a journalist. He worked for the Wall Street Journal before joining the New York Times, where he writes a periodic column. His primary interest is now economics. I was intrigued by a recent column he did entitled “The Folly of Attacking Outsourcing.”

I reviewed a number of Porter’s NYT columns to get a feel for his views. Defending outsourcing and minimizing the criticisms of undocumented immigrants are his twin passions. He has written roughly a dozen columns on each of these topics. Porter’s starting point is neo-liberal economics. As I will show, he does so despite knowing that neo-liberal economics dogma has proven disastrously wrong.

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Satyajit Das: Tilting at Windmills

By Satyajit Das, a former banker and author of Extreme Money and Traders Guns & Money

Richard Duncan (2012) The New Depression: The Breakdown of the Paper Money Economy; John Wiley, Singapore

Simon Lack (2012) The Hedge Fund Mirage: The Illusion of Big Money and Why It’s Too Good to be True; John Wiley & Sons, Inc, Hoboken NJ

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Are Handcuffs Needed for the Libor Scandal to Register With Bank Perps?

While many citizens favor criminal prosecutions of bankers (I recently had a BSchool classmate of Jamie Dimon ask me when he was going to jail), it’s been remarkable how little mention of it there has been in the mainstream media in connection with the Libor scandal (yes, sports fans, price fixing is criminal per the Sherman Anti-Trust Act). This interview of Dennis Kelleher and Felix Salmon by Eliot Spitzer provides a badly-needed counterpoint.

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Obama’s Second Term Agenda: Cutting Social Security, Medicare, and/or Medicaid

By Matt Stoller, a political analyst on Brand X with Russell Brand, and a fellow at the Roosevelt Institute. You can follow him at http://www.twitter.com/matthewstoller

This is probably the least important Presidential election since the 1950s. As an experienced political hand told me, the two candidates are speaking not to the voters, but to the big money. They hold the same views, pursue the same policies, and are backed by similar interests. Mitt Romney implemented Obamacare in Massachusetts, or Obama implemented Romneycare nationally. Both are pro-choice or anti-choice as political needs change, both tend to be hawkish on foreign policy, both favor tax cuts for businesses, and both believe deeply in a corrupt technocratic establishment.

So while the election lumbers on like the death rattles of the wounded animal known American democracy, no one on either side is asking what the plan is for the next term.

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Bill Black: The Right’s Schadenfreude as Their Austerity Policies Devastate Europe

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 New Economic Perspectives.

This column was prompted in part by reading RJ Eskow’s column, which alerted me to Anne Applebaum’s September 13, 2010 column celebrating Britain’s embrace of austerity and the Conservative Party.

I was already planning a piece responding to Applebaum’s Washington Post column about the consequences of European austerity published on July 25, 2012 (her birthday) and the contrast to a Wall Street Journal news story that same day announcing that austerity had, as we predicted, thrown Britain back into recession when I read Eskow’s column.

She reveals her real target – she wants to destroy the social programs that have improved the lives of the working class.

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Lynn Parramore: Did the Youth Unemployment Crisis Play a Role in the Colorado Shooting?

By Lynn Parramore, a contributing editor at Alternet. Cross posted from Alternet

So far, there’s not a whole lot known about James Eagan Holmes, the 24-year old whom police say fatally shot 12 people and injured dozens more in a suburban Denver movie theater during the premiere of the new Batman film “The Dark Knight Rises.” As the nation grieves for the families of the victims, questions about the alleged perpetrator are swirling.

What we do know paints a picture of a young man who might have reasonably harbored high expectations of a successful life.

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