Austerity Kills: How the EuroCrisis is Being Used to Break the Social Contract
One aspect of the Eurocrisis that has not gotten the attention it deserves is the way it is destroying not just jobs, but the very underpinnings of society.
Read more...Category Archives: Social values
Amar Bhide: Dimon Should Lose His Job Over CIO Mess
Tufts professor Amar Bhide states in a Bloomberg interview that Dimon should have been ousted over the losses in JP Morgan’s Chief Investment Office.
Read more...Belated European Report and Elite Disconnect
While I’m a bit late in reporting on my trip to Europe (coastal Spain, Portugal, and France), I had thought not to say anything at all, given that I learned vastly less about the economic state of play than I expected. But that in and of itself is a data point of sorts.
Read more...Tom Ferguson: How Wall Street Hustles America’s Cities and States Out of Billions
Yves here. While the municipal swaps fiasco may seem like old news, this piece discusses a post-crisis type of swap which is even more appalling. The old scam was to talk local and state authorities who would have been far better served with old-fashioned fixed rate financing into doing floating rate financing and entering into a series of swaps to get a fixed rate deal, with a supposed improvement in funding costs. The problem is that many of those floating rate deals were auction rate securities, and when that market failed in early 2008, the borrowers were doubly hosed. The ARS went to penalty rates. In addition, payments on the swaps often kicked up shortly thereafter (due to the slow-motion failure of monoline guarantors, which was the hidden trigger behind both events. The downgrade of the monolines de facto downgraded the municipality, which led to increased payments on the swaps).
The latest scam is more appalling. Municipal authorities would borrow fixed rate, then enter into a variable rate swap on the side. Earth to base, no responsible manager wants uncertain funding costs on a long-term capital investment. This is tantamount to the owner of a candy store borrowing money at a fixed rate from his bank to finance an expansion of his business, then betting at the racetrack to try to lower his costs. Not surprisingly, many of these swaps have proven to be costly time bombs.
By Tom Ferguson, Professor of Political Science at the University of Massachusetts, Boston. Cross posted from Alternet
Many powerful interests have jumped at the opportunity to use the crisis to eviscerate what’s left of the welfare state.
Read more...Mop-Up Operations Resume As Voters Reject Public Pensions, Worker Rights, Liberalism
By Matt Stoller, a fellow at the Roosevelt Institute. You can follow him on Twitter at http://www.twitter.com/matthewstoller.
The big story on Tuesday was Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker’s win over unions and liberals, as voters ratified his attacks on public workers, the young, and women’s rights. But that vote was relatively close. Two other voter initiatives, in deep blue California, were not.
Read more...Steve Levitt: Like a True Chicago Boy, Likes People to Go to Jail so Markets Can Be Free
Yves here. Readers reacted positively to the inaugural report of the S.H.A.M.E Project on Malcolm Gladwell. S.H.A.M.E. , stands for “Shame the Hacks who Abuse Media Ethics.” Its approach is to provide information about the background and funding sources of well-recognized journalists and pundits so that the public will be in a better position to recognize bias and hidden agendas in their reporting and analysis.
This second report is on the widely-read economist Steve Levitt
Read more...Malcolm Gladwell Unmasked: A Look Into the Life & Work of America’s Most Successful Propagandist
Yves here. Yasha Levine and Mark Ames have launched the S.H.A.M.E. Project, which stands for “Shame the Hacks who Abuse Media Ethics.” Its approach is to provide information about the background and funding sources of well-recognized journalists and pundits so that the public will be in a better position to recognize bias and hidden agendas in their reporting and analysis. You can find a S.H.A.M.E dossier on Gladwell here.
By Yasha Levine, President of S.H.A.M.E., an investigative journalist and a founding editor of The eXiled. His work has been published by Wired, The Nation, Slate, The New York Observer and many others. He has made several guest appearances on MSNBC’s Dylan Ratigan Show.
“I’m necessarily parasitic in a way. I have done well as a parasite. But I’m still a parasite.”
– Malcolm Gladwell
Wisconsin Recap: Thanks to Obama, American Left Lies in Smoldering Wreckage
By Matt Stoller, a fellow at the Roosevelt Institute. You can follow him on Twitter at http://www.twitter.com/matthewstoller.
On Tuesday, Wisconsin Republican Governor Scott Walker humiliated his Democratic opponent, Tom Barrett, by easily turning back a popular recall attempt sponsored by unions and liberal activists. The numbers in the election, which were supposed to be close, were ugly, in favor of the Republican. But this wasn’t just any Republican, Scott Walker is THE Republican, the politician who made his governorship a referendum on a hard right agenda, in a blue state.
Read more...How the Media Covers for Corrupt Elites, Catholic Church Edition
By Matt Stoller, a fellow at the Roosevelt Institute. You can follow him on twitter at http://www.twitter.com/matthewstoller
Here’s CBS New York, back in February.
Read more...The Catholic Church is closely watching the attention Archbishop Timothy Dolan is receiving this week in Rome, praise and adulation one expert says is exactly what it needs right now….
Aeschylus’ Eumenides: The Furies on Justice
The Eumenides is the last surviving play in Aeschylus’ Orestia.
Read more...New Zealand, Fresh From Its Service to Mexican Drug Lords, Helps Out the Russian Mafia
It appears that New Zealand’s company incorporation regime has soiled itself, lavishly, again. This time, the Russian mafia appear to be involved.
Read more...Brett Scott: The Safe Deposit Box – Creating a Financial Wikileaks
By Brett Scott, who operates as a consultant bridging the gap between finance and those involved in socio-environmental justice and international development. He has also written for the Guardian, the Ecologist, New Internationalist and Open Democracy. Brett blogs at www.suitpossum.blogspot.com and tweets as @Suitpossum. He is a fellow of the WWF/ICAEW Finance Innovation Lab.
The greatest barriers to financial whistleblowing are social and economic, not legal.
Read more...Why is Paul Krugman Misrepresenting the Demise of a Wall Street Funded, Right Wing, Entitlement-Bashing Front Group?
Paul Krugman’s partisanship has become so shameless that we are giving him the inaugural Eric Schneiderman Decoy Award for his post “Things Fall Apart“. The Schneiderman Decoy Award goes for exceptional achievement in turning one’s good name over to particularly rancid Obama Administration initiatives.
Read more...Mark Ames: Failing Up With Citigroup’s Dick Parsons
Last month, shareholders finally rebelled against Citigroup, the worst of the Too Big To Fail bailout disasters, by filing a lawsuit against outgoing chairman Dick Parsons and handful of executives for stuffing their pockets while running the bank into the ground.
Anyone familiar with Dick Parsons’ past could have told you his term as Citigroup’s chairman would end like this: Shareholder lawsuits, executive pay scandals, and corporate failure on a colossal scale.
Read more...Barack Obama, the Great Deceiver
Barack Obama swept into office on a tide of giddy enthusiasm. His “Hope and Change” was a pledge to reverse Bush era policies, including socialism for the rich, adventurism in the Middle East, and attacks on civil liberties. He announced his intention to serve as a transformational leader, invoking Abraham Lincoln, FDR and Ronald Reagan as role models. Despite the frigid temperatures, people poured into Washington, DC to hear his inauguration speech, wanting to be part of a remarkable passage.
Those times of heady promise are now a cruel memory….
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