Yearly Archives: 2012
Shale Gas Hype: Subprime 2.0?
If my RSS reader is any guide, most of the press about shale gas has focused on two issues. First, shale gas is in considerable supply, cheap to produce, and burns far cleaner than other fossil fuels. Second, shale gas does not look so hot environmentally, all in. Fracking can pollute ground water (and potable water is our most scarce resource) and releases enough methane to make shale gas as detrimental as coal. Still, it has been treated as the Great Hope for America’s energy woes, a way to turn the US into an exporter, and maybe it will cure cancer too.
Read more...Philip Pilkington: Democrats vs. Technocrats – Son of Neoliberal Economist who Manufactured Policies that Led to Argentina’s Default is the Source of Contrary Statistics on Inflation
By Philip Pilkington, a writer and journalist based in Dublin, Ireland. You can follow him on Twitter at @pilkingtonphil
We know accurately only when we know little, with knowledge doubt increases.
– Goethe
There is a great deal of truth contained in Goethe’s old refrain. The fewer facts we possess the more certainty we are likely to have. But as facts proliferate, so too does doubt.
Economic statistics are notorious in this regard…
Read more...Frontline Takes Issue With Our Critique of Its “Money, Power & Wall Street” Shows
I received this e-mail last week. I will issue my rebuttal Tuesday during the day. Check back in then!
Read more...Pollsters Say Hollande Has Won French Election
Now it gets interesting…we have a real rift in the EU, or at least the possibility of pushback against austerianism.
Read more...Links 5/6/12
Economists, Liquidity Mongers and the Banker Assault on Financial Reform
This has been a bad stretch for advocates of financial reform – and therefore for the economy as a whole. One after the other, new financial regulations contained in the Dodd-Frank law are being gutted or delayed by regulators and Congress, while the bankers – escorted by a phalanx of paid economists, lawyers and lobbyists – are squealing “wee, wee, wee” all the way home.
Read more...George Washington: Lack of Trust – Caused by Institutional Corruption – Is Killing the Economy
Fraud – Without Prosecution – Is Causing People to Lose Trust In All Institutions
Read more...Links 5/5/12
How did Quebec Students Mobilize Hundreds of Thousands for Strike?
It’s telling that the fact that hundreds of thousands of people in Quebec have been striking for over two months has gone virtually unreported in the US.
Read more...Lynn Parramore: Why the Rich Are Sending Pets on a Diamond-Studded Trip to the Afterlife
I live in Manhattan, where signs of the New Gilded Age scream from the windows of deluxe pet spas and boutiques hawking crystal-studded dog collars. The biggest emerging trend of all? That would be giving dead pets the star treatment.
Read more...Exclusive: How Obama’s Early Career Success Was Built on Fronting for Chicago Real Estate and Finance
Barack Obama remains an icon to many on what passes for the left in America despite incontrovertible evidence that he does not represent their interests. There are many contributing factors, including his considerable skills as a speaker and his programmatic effort to neuter liberal critics by getting their funding cut.
A central component of the seemingly impenetrable Obama mythology is his personal history: a black man, son of a broken home, who nevertheless got on the fast track to financial success by becoming editor of the Harvard Law Review, but turned instead to working with and later representing a particularly disadvantaged community, the South Side of Chicago.
Even so, this story does not quite add up.
Read more...Draghi Departs the Solar System
By Delusional Economics, who is horrified at the state of economic commentary in Australia and is determined to cleanse the daily flow of vested interests propaganda to produce a balanced counterpoint. Cross posted from MacroBusiness.
Last night the ECB met in Barcelona and once again held on rates. Mario Draghi opening statement is below. As I have spoken about many times previously I considers Mario Draghi’s statement about what is happening in Europe to be a view from some other planet.
Read more...Links 5/4/12
Yet Another Mortgage Settlement Gimmie: Conflicting Servicing Standards Play into Hands of Banks
It’s bad enough that the overhyped mortgage settlement was a big victory for the banks at the expense of homeowners and the rule of law. It let servicers out of considerable liability at very low real cost, and even that is offset by the transfer from pension funds and savers to the banks by letting them write down securitized first loans without wiping out bank owned second liens that sit behind them.
But we now learn there are other gimmies that appear to have resulted from negotiating incompetence.
Read more...