Yearly Archives: 2012

New Study Finds “Severe Toxic Effects” of Pervasively Used Monsanto Herbicide Roundup and Roundup Ready GM Corn (Updated)

Although I generally refrain from posting on Big Ag and relegate the topic to Links, I have a special interest in Monsanto. Last year, I had wanted to devise a list or ranking of top predatory companies, but could not find a way to make the tally sufficiently objective to be as useful in calling them out as it ought to be. Nevertheless, no matter how many ways I looked at the issue, it was clear that any ranking would put Monsanto as number 1.

Mirabile Dictu! Bloomberg Finally Notices Deposit Flight, a Major Threat to the Eurozone

On the one hand, given that the Eurozone remains a major economic and financial flashpoint, it is good to see a major news service like Bloomberg provide a lengthy report on a continuing existential threat, that of deposit flight, or as we have described it, a slow motion bank run. But it’s a bit surprising it has taken them this long to take notice.

Another Bearish China Signal? Expats Starting to Decamp

Sober Look has an intriguing little post up on how expats are leaving China and why that is a bearish portent.

Links 9/19/12

Mirable Dictu! Has Someone Noticed the IRS isn’t Enforcing Tax Laws in the Mortgage-Industrial Complex?

Reader Deontos highlighted a post on Reuters by two Brooklyn Law School professors, Bradley Borden and David Reiss, on a subject near and dear to our hearts, the abject failure of the IRS to take interest in widespread, probably pervasive, violations of REMIC, the part of the Federal tax code that governs mortgage securitizations.

The reason this matters is that this situation belies on of the Administration’s pet claims, that its hands were tied as far as addressing the foreclosure mess was concerned because it had no leverage over servicers. As we’ll discuss, in fact the Administration has a nuclear weapon in its hands that it is simply refusing to use.

So How’s That QE3 Working?

Obviously, it’s a little early to reach a verdict on QE3, but market pundit love reading the tea leaves early and often, so we figured we’d join the fun and look at early reactions.

Ian Fraser: UK Bank Regulator, FSA, Protects Powerful Cronies and Undermines Proper Bank Reform

By Ian Fraser, a financial journalist who blogs at his web site and at qfinance. His Twitter is @ian_fraser.

The UK’s failed regulator, the Financial Services Authority, is up to its old tricks again. Last week, it sought to scapegoat just one of the 16 directors who drove the awesomely badly managed British bank Halifax Bank of Scotland into the ground. And all he received was a £500,000 fine and a lifetime ban from working in the financial sector.

Links 9/18/12

Michael Hudson on How Finance Capital Leads to Debt Servitude

This edited transcript is expanded from a live phone interview with Michael Hudson by Dimitris Yannopoulos for Athens News. It summarizes some of the major themes from Hudson’s new book, The Bubble and Beyond: Fictitious Capital, Debt Deflation and Global Crisis, which is available on Amazon.

Q: How has the financial system evolved into the form of economic servitude that you call “debt peonage” in your book, implying a negation of democracy as well as free-market capitalism as classically understood?

Yanis Varoufakis: The Game of the Two Marios

Yves here. Yanis called this post “Europe’s Modern Titanomachy: How Europe’s future is being shaped by large battles on seemingly small matters (Part C)” but that title obscures the point. His piece works though how the choices of ECB chief Mario Draghi and Italy’s prime minister Mario Monti interact with each other, and what that means for the future of the Eurozone: “Today’s Great Expectations (regarding the ECB’s intervention, banking union, Brussel’s federal moves etc.) are more likely to prive Dickensian than literal.”

Central Banks Versus the People

By Delusional Economics, who is determined to cleanse the daily flow of vested interests propaganda to produce a balanced counterpoint. Cross posted from MacroBusiness.

As you are surely aware by now, the US Federal Reserve has announced a new round of quantitative easing which like the ECB’s outright monetary transactions (OMT) is a new program of large scale asset purchases by a central bank. I thought I’d spend a bit of time today talking about these programs because once again I have noticed some large misconceptions in the media about what these operations are, and more importantly, what the likely outcome of them is.

Links 9/17/12

Is QE3 Yet Another Stealth Bank Bailout?

It’s difficult to puzzle out what Bernanke thinks he is accomplishing with QE3. The level of bond buying, as various commentators have pointed out, is much lower than in the earlier QE programs. And pulling out bigger guns in the past was not terribly productive. As we wrote in April 2011 in a post titled “Mirabile Dictu! Economists Agree All the Fed Has Done is Goose Financial Markets!“:

Eugene Linden: In a World of Underpriced Risk, What Could Possibly Go Wrong?

By Eugene Linden, a journalist and author of seven books who has written extensively about animal behavior, environmental issues, and markets

On a recent conference call, the strategist of a major international bank (it was an off-the-record call for clients only) laid out the bare bones of what he called the world’s “giant experiment” in debt and interest rates. Never before have so many countries maintained such low base rates for so long; never before in peacetime have so many countries had such huge deficits and debt burdens; never before in U.S. history had long term rates been so low; never before has the U.S. gone so many decades without deflation following inflation. Because we live in these unprecedented times, it’s easy to lose sight just our strange they are… and how dangerous.