Yearly Archives: 2012

By lambert strether

In a post earlier this year on the foreclosure crisis and In Re Jones (“‘Code is law.’ Literally,” 2012-04-10), besides taking a passing swipe at Larry Lessig, I suggested there are two possible ways to look the foreclosure crisis:

1. As a law enforcement problem, where banksters have committed illegal acts; 
2. and as a jurisprudence problem, where the oligarchs who own proprietary software systems have changed the nature of law itself: Code is law, not metaphorically, but literally. 

In the latter case, what we understood the law to have been, in Civics 101, is then rewritten or crippled to conform to the code. Statutes, rules, regulations become vestigial. Code is the driver. (I can’t think another word for this than “revolutionary.” … That’s a rather unpleasant notion.

Two events in the last week or so suggest that, indeed, reality may be behind door #2.

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

It’s going to be one of those high volume news weeks for Europe. Obviously the most watched event of the week will be the German constitutional court decision on the legality of the ESM but there is also some other notable events.

Mario Draghi’s ECB action plan of last week has opened a new political semester in Europe as the mantle has been passed back to the politicians to sort out exactly what the next steps are for Europe under the umbrella of “unlimited” conditional support. My sense is that this is the limit of Mr Draghi’s mandate, possibly over it, but he has kicked the burning can far enough back into the politician’s court that it cannot be claimed that he did not do enough.

By lambert strether

Here’s a TED talk by Robert Neuwirth on “The power of the informal economy.” Like most TED talks on political economy, the ideas are intriguing but, if true, are unlikely to impact any of the listeners in the audience. Nevertheless, clocking in at a little under thirteen minutes, it’s definitely worth a listen. As Neuwirth says (my transcription):

[NEUWIRTH]If [System D] were united in a single political system, one country, call it The United Street Sellers Republic, the USSR, or Bazarristan [laughter], it would be worth 10 trillion dollars every year, and that would make it it the second largest economy in the world after the United States.

By letsgetitdone (Joe Firestone, who is Managing Director and CEO of the Knowledge Management Consortium International (KMCI). Originally published at Corrente.

Just saw John Sununu, one of Republicans favorite Bushie junk yard attack dogs all up in arms about the debt subject to the limit (the so-called national debt) reaching $16 Trillion dollars, and going on to tell people that every man, woman, and child in the United States now owes $50,000 to pay that debt off. Now, I’m here to tell you that all that is bull sh*t.

By lambert strether

Last week in Quebec, they held a provincial election. Quebec Liberal Charest lost and claims to have left politics, and Parti Quebecois Pauline Marois won, and formed a minority government. But although the election may turn out to be important to the fortunes of the carré rouge movement, it’s not the subject of this post. Instead, I want to talk about the dry topic of voting systems. You see, in Canada, they use hand-marked paper ballots, hand counted in public. Among other things, that process means that we can actually be sure who won. And if the elections of 2000 and 2008 are any guide, and the race stays as close as the pollsters sat it is, we might, on Wednesday, November 7, not be sure who won.

By jimq, who operates the Burning Platform website. Originally published at Washington’s Blog.

Have you heard the news? Auto sales are booming. Total sales for the month of August were 1,285,202 vehicles, according to Autodata Corp, the highest monthly sales figure for any August since 2007, when 1.47 million autos were sold in the United States. Year to date auto sales have totaled 9.7 million and are on track to reach 14.5 million. Between 2006 and 2007, auto sales ranged between 16 million and 18 million. They crashed below 10 million in 2009. The Keynesians running our government have pulled out all the stops to restart this engine of consumer spending. First they wasted $3 billion of taxpayer funds on the Cash for Clunkers debacle. Almost 700,000 perfectly good cars were destroyed in order to keep union workers happy. This Keynesian brain fart distorted the used car market for two years, raising prices for cars needed by the working poor. After that miserable failure, they realized the true secret to selling vehicles is to give them away to anyone that can scratch an X on a loan document, with 0% interest for 60 months, financed by Federal government controlled banking interests. Add in some massive channel stuffing and presto!!! – You’ve got an auto sales boom.

By Hugh, who is a long-time commenter at Naked Capitalism. Originally published at Corrente (archives).

The big number is that unemployment dropped two-tenths of a percent from 8.3% to 8.1%. However, the illusory nature of this drop can be seen in the fact that the number of jobs increased only 96,000. Essentially, what happened is that the unemployment rate declined, not because people found jobs but because the BLS defined them out of the labor force. Both of these numbers are seasonally adjusted.

By Delusional Economics, who is determined to cleanse the daily flow of vested interests propaganda to produce a balanced counterpoint. Cross posted from MacroBusiness. The SMP is dead! Long live the SMP! OMT? Surely they could have just called it SMP2 What am I talking about? Overnight Mario Draghi announced the new emergency program designed to […]

The Democratic National Convention’s message was simple: “Give Me More Time”. Every great speech, or bad speech for that matter, had at its core the argument that George W. Bush wrecked the economy, and slowly but surely, Barack Obama is repairing it. You might not feel it, but as Democratic partisan Paul Krugman notes, “there’s […]

By Dan, who lives in northeast Ohio.
Read more at here.

Lambert here: The ongoing transformation of “the heartland” into a second world petro-state has generated an increasingly intense civic engagement, as people try to “work the system” to protect their health, their land, and their water from the fracking industry and its supply chain. Here’s how civic engagement looks from the ground.

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