Category Archives: Our phony middle class
Let Them Eat Credit
By most counts, the U.S. economy started growing in the middle of last year. For many Americans, though, it does not feel as if the Great Recession has ended—unemployment and underemployment are still alarmingly high, and job growth is weak. … Continue reading
Great-est Depression???
This forecaster is saying something that I thought was just common sense and I mentioned a year ago or more. That is to say, without a vibrant middle class to effect the necessary 70 % consumption that represented the bulk … Continue reading
Small business sidelined in slow recovery from recession
In every recession over the last three decades, it has been America’s small businesses — those Lilliputian companies with fewer than 100 employees — that stepped forward, began hiring and pulled the country out of the mire. Not this time. … Continue reading
How Carl Levin Got Goldman Sachs’s Goat
Interview by Paul Smalera, senior editorApril 30, 2010: 3:21 PM ET (Fortune) — At Tuesday’s epic Goldman Sachs hearing, Senator Carl Levin of Michigan led a public grilling of Wall Street not seen by a government panel since the Depression-investigating … Continue reading
Washington Possessed
My Nov. 10, 2008 column warned that big government was walking away as the knockout winner over the private sector in the financial crisis. But it’s going much further than I’d feared. The federal government has accelerated its takeover of … Continue reading
“Of Rats and Sinking Ships”
Larry Summers is reportedly leaving later this year, and Andrew Cockburn reports that Rahm Emanuel, Obama’s acutely verbal Chief of Staff is said to be looking for other employment, preferably a high paying job on Wall Street with little work … Continue reading
Howdy, Neighbor!
When asked what advice he would give to residents of Ashtabula County Ohio because of cutbacks in official law enforcement budgets, Judge Alfred Mackey said they should: “arm themselves. Be very careful, be vigilant, get in touch with your neighbors, … Continue reading
Greenspan helps create the problem and then explains it?
Washington’s Blog Greenspan’s big defense is that the financial crisis was caused by a “once-in-a-century” event. Forget about the fact that the “once-in-a-century event” couldn’t have happened if Greenspan’s Fed hadn’t: Turned its cheek and allowed massive fraud Acted as … Continue reading
Does It Make Sense to Resurrect the Glass-Steagall Act?
In the present system, the more unrestricted the banks are, the more money they can generate “out of thin air,” and the more damage they can inflict upon the wealth-generation process. FULL ARTICLE by Frank Shostak
Obama’s “Catholic Plan”
Catholic . . . or not – must see! If you are Catholic, watch it. If not, watch it anyway. I’m sending this video out quickly with the hopes that it will get as far as it can before it … Continue reading
What they knew and when they knew it
“I have to think this train is probably going to leave the station soon and we need to focus our efforts on explaining the story as best we can. There were too many people involved in the deals — too … Continue reading
Sic transit America?
Flagging: a US sailor stands on the flight deck of the aircraft carrier USS George Washington If a week is a long time in politics, a decade is starting to look like an age in geopolitics. Comparing the America that … Continue reading
Another Stimulus?
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 … Continue reading
The Apparatchiks
The Big Government Boss isn’t going away
“Hindsight is a wonderful thing,” said Timothy W. Long, the chief bank examiner for the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency. “At the height of the economic boom, to take an aggressive supervisory approach and tell people to stop … Continue reading
Public Trust has Economic Consequences
Public trust has economic consequences, by Howard Davies, Commentary, Project Syndicate: Public trust in financial institutions, and in the authorities that are supposed to regulate them, was an early casualty of the financial crisis. That is hardly surprising, as previously … Continue reading
A Short Question For Senior Officials Of The New York Fed
At the height of the financial panic last fall Goldman Sachs became a bank holding company, which enabled it to borrow directly from the Federal Reserve. It also became subject to supervision by the Federal Reserve Board (with the NY Fed on point) – … Continue reading
Goldman’s Pre-emptive Influence
An Inside Look at How Goldman Sachs Lobbies the Senate, by Matt Taibbi: …Later on this week I have a story coming out in Rolling Stone that looks at the history of the Bear Stearns and Lehman Brothers collapses. The … Continue reading
It’s Unemployment, Stupid!
Pittsburgh protesters demand G20 do more for jobs Forbes “We’re not going to accept a jobless recovery,” said Larry Adams, a postal worker who came from Jersey City, New Jersey, for the protest. …
Operation Rollback: Wal-Mart’s World of Business
The expansion of international “supply chains” from Asian factories to American consumers has certainly created global trade imbalances and international currency flows that are not necessarily sustainable over the long run. A readjustment of the world economy, not a slackening … Continue reading
Socialism in America
Socialism in America A great deal has been made in recent weeks about Ronald Reagan‘s critique of nationalized or socialized health care from 1961: We can go back a bit further, though, and take a look at an intriguing piece … Continue reading
Sic Transit Gloria America
As U.S. deficits increased, global investors edged away from the dollar into the German mark, the Japanese yen, the Swiss franc, the Euro, and more recently baskets of Asian currencies. Which brings us to today. Only goodwill (defined both as … Continue reading
Income inequality can rise and fall for all sorts of reasons
Income inequality can rise and fall for all sorts of reasons. Twenty-somethings just starting out and retired seventy-somethings both earn a lot less on average than peak-earning fifty-somethings. As the age profile of the population shifts, income inequality figures shift, … Continue reading
A CLOSER LOOK AT THOSE GREAT HOUSING FIGURES
Just yesterday, for instance, the Commerce Department reported that new-home sales grew at an annualized rate of 11 percent last month, which was much better than people were expecting. And if you look under the covers, the annualized rate actually … Continue reading
The Committee to Defraud the World
To say now that ‘No one knew’ or ‘I was mistaken’ or ‘I was just doing as I was told’ is another in a series of lies and deceptions that have supported one of the greatest frauds in the history … Continue reading →