Yearly Archives: 2012

Michael Hudson: A Planned Economy for the 1%

By Lambert Strether of Corrente.

In our everyday discourse, there are many narratives and tropes for elites, elite behavior, and changes in the nature of elites:

Edible forests

Yes, this is something completely different, but I wanted to get away, just for a little while, from “who loses and who wins, who’s in, who’s out”, and consider a subject that’s beautiful and long-lasting and useful and tasty; and something that’s maybe in the political economy of all our futures, if we’re lucky: Edible forests (also called food forests).

The Beacon Food Forest project will be breaking ground in Seattle this summer. Here’s one example of a food forest, maybe something like what they hope to achieve:

Links 2/26/12

Wolf Richter: Greece, “The Bottomless Barrel,” As Germans Say

In Greece, three-quarters of the independent doctors, lawyers, and engineers declare taxable income below the existential minimum. Tax fraud amounts to €20 billion per year (8.5% of GDP). And tax dodgers owe €63 billion in unpaid taxes (27% of GDP). The country is bankrupt and has been kept afloat by the Troika (EU, ECB, and IMF), of which Germany is by far the largest contributor. But there is a plan. And it’s not an endless bailout.

Have Labour Will Travel

By Sell on News of Macrobusiness, a macro equities analyst. Cross posted from MacroBusiness.

We cannot say we were not warned. Many commentators about globalisation said that it would create an imbalance between labour and capital, for the simple reason that capital is free to move wherever it wants, and labour, except at the very top end, is not. And so it is turning out, with the middle classes of much of the developed world under extreme pressure, and shrinking.

Links 2/25/12

Robert Shiller Has Arrow-Debreu Derangement Syndrome

I know it’s dangerous to judge an article by its synopsis, but Harvard Business Review articles, unlike their academic cousins, are designed to be easy-breezy, so there is much less risk in taking one of its previews at face value. Here is what the HBR says Yale economist Robert Shiller presents longer form in its January-February edition:

ECB President Draghi Declares War on Europe’s Social Safety Nets

I’m late to the remarkable interview given by ECB president Mario Draghi to the Wall Street Journal. I find the choice of venue curious, since the Financial Times has become the venue for top European politicians and technocrats to communicate with English speaking finance professionals.

But Draghi’s drunk-on-austerity-Kool-Aid message was a perfect fit for the Wall Street Journal.

Links 2/24/12

Fannie Putting More Dubious New Loans Back to BofA, So BofA Will Stick Them to Freddie Instead

Bloomberg has an article up “BofA Halts Routing New Mortgages to Fannie Mae,” doesn’t put the key issue, which is Bank of America’s continuing shoddy mortgage origination practices, in a sufficiently sharp spotlight.

The piece starts out in a direct-seeming manner:

Occupy the SEC Discusses Volcker Rule on RT

It’s always a pleasant surprise to see a TV program have a long form discussion on a fairly technical topic. Readers should enjoy the RT interview of Caitlin Kline and Alexis Goldstein of Occupy the SEC on its Volcker Rule comments. They discussed the major areas they were concerned with and some loopholes in the draft regulations.

Links 2/23/12

± I.M.F. ± from PlusqueMinusque on Vimeo.

Tom Deutsch of American Securitization Forum Finally Gets His Comeuppance: Pimco and Likely Other Investors Quit

Bloomberg reported a few weeks ago of a rift in the group that supposedly represents the mortgage securitization industry, the American Securitization Forum. We say “supposedly” because the interests of its two main types of members, the sell side, meaning the parties that put together deals, and the buy side, meaning investors, are now directly opposed.

That rift has now escalated to what looks like a fatal schism, as bond king Pimco has quit the ASF over the refusal of the ASF to send a letter voicing investors’ ~~objection to~~ concerns about the pending mortgage settlement. We are told by other investors that Pimco’s departure is likely to herald a wholesale exodus by investors who have long felt their views are not taken seriously by the ASF.

Philip Pilkington: Ireland – The Problem Isn’t Ignorance

By Philip Pilkington, a writer and journalist based in Dublin, Ireland

Speaking with a senior figure in Fianna Fail (the party that were kicked out of government last year by the Irish people) earlier this week something dawned on me for perhaps the first time. Namely, that the leaders in Ireland might know exactly what the issues and the problems are in Europe but they remain completely powerless to solve them.