By Douglas K. Smith, author of On Value and Values: Thinking Differently About We In An Age Of Me
Earlier this month, Matthew Yglesias of Slate tweeted “EXCLUSIVE: The activities of individual business executives have no relationship to the level of economy-wide employment.”
It’s hard to choose what is most ridiculous here…
Read more...Live stream, hat tip reader Deontos:
Read more...By Michael Hudson, a research professor of Economics at University of Missouri, Kansas City and a research associate at the Levy Economics Institute of Bard College
A shorter version of this article in German will run in the Frankfurter Algemeine Zeitung on January 28. 2012
The inherently symbiotic relationship between banks and governments recently has been reversed. In medieval times, wealthy bankers lent to kings and princes as their major customers. But now it is the banks that are needy, relying on governments for funding – capped by the post-2008 bailouts to save them from going bankrupt from their bad private-sector loans and gambles.
Yet the banks now browbeat governments – not by having ready cash but by threatening to go bust and drag the economy down with them if they are not given control of public tax policy, spending and planning. The process has gone furthest in the United States.
Read more...By Philip Pilkington, a journalist and writer living in Dublin, Ireland
The Financial Times recently ran a series on the future of capitalism. The FT is usually an excellent publication – but the series came up seriously lacking.
The lack arises because of the question posed.
Read more...One of my buddies who must go unnamed because he is involved in the Lehman bankruptcy told me many months ago that the unwinding was going to cost over $2 billion. A new story at Bloomberg suggests that his prediction is on track. The costs of various advisors to the Lehman estate in now in excess of $1.6 billion, and it ain’t over.
But perhaps more important, my mole, who has oodles of experience on big messy international bankruptcies, was incensed at the way various advisors, in particularly Alvarez & Marsal, which is running what is left of Lehman and is the major domo, and the lead law firm, Weil Gotschal, were feeding at the trough.
Read more...Real News Network highlighted a foreign broadcast on Spain’s “indignados,” and the way they have been providing advice to other anti-neoliberal movements around the world. I’m not sure it has gotten the attention it warrants, but the people that were involved in Occupy Wall Street early on conferred a good deal with seasoned protestors in Spain and Egypt.
Read more...It’s surprising and refreshing to see Bloomberg News, via an editorial, take on the way the economics profession has failed to clean up its act not simply in the wake of a massive intellectual failure but after the movie Inside Job highlighted some examples of corruption in the ranks of Famous Economists.
Read more...A revealing juxtaposition, and a belated MLK Day item:
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The intense debate precipitated by a post on this site, “How Ron Paul Challenges Liberals,” and follow up posts by Glenn Greenwald and here serve to prove their simple yet frequently misrepresented thesis: that Ron Paul’s anti-war, anti-Fed positions expose fault lines among those traveling under the “liberal” banner.
Anyone who read comments on NC prior to this debate would have noticed some sympathy for Paul, ranging from the more common “he’s batshit and I’d never vote for him, but his opposition to our Middle East adventurism and the lack of accountability at the Fed is refreshing” to some making a stronger case for him. That shouldn’t be surprising given the point often made here and in the few lonely “progressive” outposts on the blogosphere (“progressive” is in the process of being co-opted in the same way “liberal” has been): that the Democratic party has been so deeply penetrated by the neoliberal/Robert Rubin/Hamilton Project types that it isn’t that different from the right on economic issues.
It should not be controversial to point out that the Democratic party uses identity politics as a cover for its policy of selling out the middle class to banks and big corporate interests, just on a slower and stealthier basis than the right. And we’ve seen the identity card used in a remarkably dishonest manner in this Ron Paul contretemps.
Read more...By Matt Stoller, the former Senior Policy Advisor to Rep. Alan Grayson and a fellow at the Roosevelt Institute. You can reach him at stoller (at) gmail.com or follow him on Twitter at @matthewstoller.
A post I wrote two weeks ago, How Ron Paul Challenges Liberals, created something of a stir. It was the most commented article on Naked Capitalism, ever. And it kicked up a series of arguments among Democrats and civil libertarians. Glenn Greenwald, who has been talking about these problems in prominent forums, followed up with this remarkable post (and then this one), and has taken many insults as a result. This in and of itself is worth noting – the slurring of those who critique the structure of modern liberalism is an essential tool in the preservation of the status quo. I’m going to highlight a few of the reactions here without much of a rebuttal, because I think the reactions themselves illustrate the struggle that boxes in traditional partisan Democrats.
Read more...By Ian Fraser, a financial journalist who blogs at his web site and at qfinance. His Twitter is @ian_fraser.
I was surprised and disappointed when I opened my copy of The Economist on Friday morning.
The magazine is running a feebly-argued propaganda piece headlined “Save the City” as its cover story. The piece vaunts the “skills” that are to be found in the City of London and seeks to persuade us that having a powerful financial sector is critical to the future health of the UK economy and that the “Square Mile” must therefore be cherished and preserved at all costs. The cover image harps back to the Blitz, as if Hitler’s Lufwaffe is once again poised to carpet bomb a key part of our heritage.
Outside PR puff sheets like HBOS’s absurd “Deal Leaders” of 2005-08 and the Pravda-style advertorials inserted into newspapers and magazines to launder the images of evil dictatorships, I’ve rarely read such a farcical or misleading article.
Read more...Corey Robin teaches political science at Brooklyn College and the CUNY Graduate Center. His latest book, The Reactionary Mind, is available from Amazon.com.
Interview conducted by Philip Pilkington, a journalist and writer based in Dublin, Ireland.
PP: Okay, let’s move on. One of the chapters in the book deals with Ayn Rand. I’m going to quote from it directly as I don’t think there is a better way to sum it up.
“Saint Petersburg in revolt gave us Vladamir Nabokov, Isaiah Berlin, and Ayn Rand. The first was a novelist, the second philosopher. The third was neither but thought she was both.”
Read more...Corey Robin teaches political science at Brooklyn College and the CUNY Graduate Center. His latest book, The Reactionary Mind, is available from Amazon.com.
Interview conducted by Philip Pilkington, a journalist and writer based in Dublin, Ireland.
Philip Pilkington: The overarching thesis of your new book The Reactionary Mind is a provocative one. In it you contend that conservatism has always been a radical doctrine.
Read more...By Philip Pilkington, a journalist and writer living in Dublin, Ireland
Matt Stoller recently ran a thoughtful piece on this site about Ron Paul. Stoller’s thesis is that Ron Paul confronts Big Government liberals (my term, not Stoller’s) with the dark underbelly of their policy prescriptions. Stoller points out that Paul’s ideology touches at least three very sensitive areas for the modern liberal: their ties between Big War and government spending; their ties to the Federal system and its related monetary apparatus; and their ties to Big Finance.
To deal exhaustively with any of these complex topics is a daunting task and one which I will not pursue here. But Stoller dropped a name when he invoked the contradictions of liberalism; one well worth bringing up: Christopher Lasch.
Read more...Most people who have seen the work of Adam Curtis, say his BBC series The Century of the Self, or The Trap, or All Watched Over By Machines of Loving Grace, are struck by his ability to read how mass opinion has been shaped by media and the officialdom.
It would seem hard to convey much in the way of insight on the topic of Rupert Murdoch in a mere five minutes, yet Curtis pulls it off in this short film.
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