Jellyfish cells ‘diagnose’ cancer BBC Japan dolphin hunt town meets with activists PhysOrg Opt Out of a Body Scan? Then Brace Yourself New York Times The Phantom Left Chris Hedges (hat tip reader Foppe) Modern art was CIA ‘weapon’ Independent (hat tip reader May S) Foreign Money, National Security, And The Midterm Elections Simon Johnson […]
Read more...As I’ve mentioned from time to time, I lived in Sydney for two years, from 2002 to 2004, long enough to get a decent sense of the culture. Australian policies are intriguing. They are either brilliant or stupid, there seems to be perilously little middle ground. For instance, they’ve done away with the penny, a […]
Read more...By Marshall Auerback, a portfolio strategist and Roosevelt Institute fellow There are plenty of legitimate reasons to criticize Barack Obama’s dismal stewardship of the US economy, and God knows I’ve voiced quite a few of them, but it does not follow that every criticism made of his economic policies is therefore legitimate. There is quite […]
Read more...→ Washington’s Blog Real testing is starting to be conducted on dispersant and oil in the Gulf, the results are not looking so good: U.S. Government press release says NOAA, FDA now testing for dispersant: Corexit ingredient DOSS found in 13 samples — Up to 500 ppm allowed in shrimp, crabs, oysters [“DOSS” stands for […]
Read more...We’ve noted that title insurers have been refusing to eat the risk in foreclosure sales when they can’t verify the chain of title from local records. Of course, the idea that title insurance was ever really intended to be insurance in the first place is questionable: the title insurers only step up when they can […]
Read more...ProPublica reports that the SEC has taken interest in Magnetar’s role in a JP Morgan underwritten CDO. We discussed Magntar at length in our book ECONNED, which broke that story six weeks before ProPublica launched its report, and remains the definitive account of how those transactions were structured. (Our continuing beef with the ProPublica account […]
Read more...An article in the Wall Street Journal about Bank of America’s says a great deal about the woes afflicting Bank of America, thanks to its enthusiastic embrace of Countrywide, both the biggest subprime lender and the biggest subprime servicer. The irony is that one of the reasons BofA coveted a criminal enterprise like Countrywide (they […]
Read more...Theodore C. Sorensen dies at 82; JFK’s close advisor and writer-in-residence Los Angeles Times (hat tip reader Ted K) UK to sell half of forests AlJazeera (hat tip reader May S) The Looming Rare Earths Train Wreck Real Clear Science. Um, I’m not sure any technology that depends on rare earths can correctly be called […]
Read more...The contradictions of the Eurobailout mechanism were bound to be resolved at some point, smoke and mirror and insufficient firepower relative to the magnitude of the problem will only take you so far. The eurozone rescue operation, although it looked like it was aimed at so called Club Med, aka PIGS sovereigns (Portugal, Ireland, Greece, […]
Read more...The Alice Through the Looking Glass practices, of at best adherence to the mere appearance of legality, increasingly appears to pervade the nether world where financial players go in search of money they think might be due to them. And the big problem is the word “might”. Banks proceed as if there right to collect […]
Read more...Tom Ferguson, who is refreshingly blunt, gives his dim view of the Obama Administration economic policies. But be warned, he doesn’t like the Republican proposals either. From the Real News Network: More at The Real News
Read more...→ Washington’s Blog As many writers have documented, the corporate media is usually pro-war. See this. And so Washington Post hack David Broder’s op-ed arguing that war with Iran will save America’s economy is not all that surprising. Of course, China and Russia might not sit idly by and let their ally, Iran, be attacked. […]
Read more...Europe targets wasteful gadgets BBC Can Google call elections? TechBlorge (hat tip reader David C) ‘The middle class has lost track of how poor this country is’ Tehelka Magazine (hat tip reader May S) Old Foes Square Off Over Issue of Puppies New York Times. I must confess my first cat came from a pet […]
Read more...Several regular readers were kind enough to send congratulatory e-mails on our New York Times op-ed, which appears in the Sunday edition. I hope you enjoy it. The text follows: In Congressional hearings last week, Obama administration officials acknowledged that uncertainty over foreclosures could delay the recovery of the housing market. The implications for the […]
Read more...It’s astonishing to see how Americans have been conditioned to think that political action and engagement is futile. I’m old enough to have witnessed the reverse, how activism in the 1960s produced significant advances in civil rights blacks and women, and eventually led the US to exit the Vietnam War. I’m reminded of this sense […]
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