Fearless commentary on finance, economics, politics and power

Labour’s economists show their Third Way colors and advocate austerity-generating policy rules that might as well have been penned by former Treasury Secretary, later Citigroup vice chairman Bob Rubin.

Michael Hudson discusses his life as a young Communist intellectual, how he became interested in economics and finance, his life in academia, and his recent work on rentier capitalism and debt jubilees.

Attempts by the New York Times to blame humanity as a whole for climate change let the real culprits off the hook.

Today’s Water Cooler, including today’s primaries, the Koch brothers, liberalism and cruelty, job openings, shipping, Amazon, Tesla, Appalachia, brain twisters, Maine “Sea Goddess” dethroned.

Yes, the Democrat Party really is split.

Oxford professor Ludovic Phalippou gives a decisive debunking of the claim that private equity outperforms.

Yet another proof that the authorities were given evidence of widespread mortgage fraud before the crisis and chose to do nothing about it.

With its newest sanctions, the Administration ratchets up its “regime change in Iran” strategy. Not a good look.

By Lambert Strether of Corrente. I’m off to the optometrist’s this afternoon! –lambert Trade https://www.scmp.com/business/global-economy/article/2157320/factories-shift-out-china-avoid-trade-war-boosting-volume “China said it’s [hitting $60 billion worth of U.S. exports with new tariffs] ‘because the U.S. side has repeatedly escalated the situation despite the interest of both enterprises and consumers’ and it must ‘[a]defend the country’s dignity and the interests […]

The court ruled that the city’s ban on new fossil fuel terminals within its borders did not violate the Commerce Clause, which is the main argument the oil industry has used against bans like the ones in Portland, Oregon and other cities.

How hedge fund activists, who largely operate as a type of corporate raider, have subverted the notion of “shareholder democracy” and what can be done to rein them in.

The SEC succeeded in spinning the Wall Street Journal’s story on the large delays in paying out whistleblowers whose tips led to successful enforcement actions.