Yearly Archives: 2012

The New Priesthood: An Interview with Yanis Varoufakis Part II

Yanis Varoufakis is a Greek economist who currently heads the Department of Economic Policy at the University of Athens. From 2004 to 2007 he served as an economic advisor to former Greek Prime Minister George Papandreou. Yanis writes a popular blog which can be found here. His treatise on economic theory ‘Modern Political Economics: Making Sense of the Post-2008 World’, co written with Nicholas Theocrakis and Joseph Haveli is available from Amazon.

Interview conducted by Philip Pilkington.

Philip Pilkington: In the book you talk about how humans are extremely hard to model – you go as far as to call them a ‘radical indeterminacy’. Now, some of this comes back to the classical theory of value that we already discussed. That theory of value seeks out the basis of value in the human capacity for labour – essentially putting humans out front and centre when modelling is undertaken. But the neoclassical theory of value – that is the marginal theory of value – also relies on humans to build models, in that it concentrates on their consumption preferences and derives so-called laws from these. Could you talk about this a little?

Robert Cowley, 2nd Baron Ardwhallan: an Unauthorized Web Biography (I)

By Richard Smith, proud scion of a 5,000-year-old line of soot-smeared metal bashers, (purportedly). An early version of this post was born prematurely, and then, since blogging is more forgiving than obstetrics, hurriedly stuffed back into the womb by the flustered midwife. This is the fully developed version.

Robert Cowley, aka Earl Cowley, aka 2nd Baron Ardwhallan, aka Sir Robert Cowley, aka the Right Honorable Robert Cowley, is a faker, fantasist, social climber, fraudster and con man from Australia.

I suppose I could stop there, but it wouldn’t be much of a biography, and Cowley has such a shadowy and fantastical pedigree that it would be a shame not to record some of it: the traces he leaves aren’t always durable, but they are always vivid while they last.

Ever Been to the Badlands?

By Ohio, originally posted at Corrente.

Lambert here. Yves had asked me to put up a quick post on yesterday’s Keystone XL truck stoppage in the Lakota Nation. But Ohio said everything a lot better than I could have. I’ll add some linky goodness at the end (including some Lakota contact info).

* * *

Not the Sissy Spacek movie.

They’re called that for a reason. Summer or winter, they’re a bad place to be. The climate is unpredictable and extreme, as in -40°F to 116°F, and you can look forward to the thunderstorms and blizzards.

Steep slopes, loose dry soil, slick clay, and deep sand. Lots of fossils, so people who hate the idea of evolution must also hate the place. The Lakota knew they were looking at fossils, that the area must have been underwater at some time and the petrified bones and turtle shells they found belonged to species that no longer existed.

I’ve been to the Badlands.

OCC Servicer Review Firm Also “Scrubs” Loan Files, Fabricates Documents

Reader Lisa N. pointed me to a troubling October 2010 press release by SolomonEdwardsGroup, a company that describes itself as a “national financial services consulting and staffing firm” about its remediation services for “significant loan documentation problems.” Alert readers will recognize that this is shortly after the robosiging scandal broke.

Here are the key parts of the press release:

SEG’s teams can also be rapidly deployed across the U.S., to help banks and servicers “scrub” files and determine which foreclosures may have been tainted by incorrect loan documentation and processing issues such as robo-signing….

Read more...

Links 3/6/12

Europe’s Recession Has Barely Begun

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.

The reserves from the ECB’s LTRO stage II operation are making their way back into the excess reserve facility at the ECB. The overnight holdings were at an all time record of €820.81bn. As I explained previously, this in itself isn’t a problem. In fact, unless the reserves are moving to some other non-commercial bank accounts at the ECB there is little other place they can go. However, what is the problem:

…is that the increasing use of the ECB’s marginal lending facility shows that not all of these parked reserves are actually “excess to market requirements”.

The statistics from last night show that for the last 3 days there is still €783 million being rolled over using the ECB’s margin lending facility. With €0.8trn technically available for interbank lending it is certainly a concern that there is at least one bank still having to lean on the ECB for overnight liquidity.

Guest Post: Attorney General Holder Says Murder Is Legal

Attorney General Says U.S. Can Murder Whoever it Wants

Wolf Richter: The Debacle of My Last Post

By Wolf Richter, San Francisco based executive, entrepreneur, start up specialist, and author, with extensive international work experience, who writes at Testosterone Pit.

As some readers have pointed out, there was a major problem in my last post, Deep Trouble at the Core of the Eurozone. I thank all commenters who criticized or defended my post, and I apologize for the errors it contained.

Links 3/5/12

Chris Cook: The Ghost of Enron Past Explains Oil Market Manipulation

By Chris Cook, former compliance and market supervision director of the International Petroleum Exchange

I outlined in my recent post my view that the oil market price has been inflated by passive investors whose attempts to ‘hedge inflation’ actually ended up causing it, and have allowed oil producers to manipulate and support the oil market price with fund money to the detriment of oil consumers.

But there has always been a missing link – precisely how has this manipulation been achieved?

Due Diligence Fail from BBC World Business

By Richard Smith, who is easily distracted.

I promised in my last meander, about international scammers and media screwups, that my next post was going to be set in Australia. But I found this little gem, while looking for something else, and so the exotic locations this time are Colombia and Vancouver (the big Canadian Vancouver, not the little Vancouver in Washington, US, which, as it happens, might also get a look-in in a future post in this rambling series).

But this one is still about scammers and media screwups, so we are still on track, sort of. Here’s BBC World Business giving Rahim Jivraj an opportunity to puff his pump-and-dump Colombian mining company, Mercer Gold.

Links 3/4/12

Animal Crackers

By lambert strether, who is an old-school blogger from Corrente.

So far, I’ve successfully avoided commenting on the primary campaigns of either legacy party; the spectacle seems much too far above my poor power to add or detract. But… Check out this video. When Santorum thinking when he told this story on himself? Watch it; it’s only 46 seconds long, though it seems longer:

(Transcript here.) Yes, unable to confess to dominating Pirates pitcher Kent Tekulve that he’d been pissed on by an old lady’s dog, Santorum tells Tekulve he pissed himself because he was so “excited” to see him. Isn’t this a perfect example of the authoritarian mindset? I mean, at least Santorum didn’t roll over to let Tekulve scratch his belly…