Yearly Archives: 2012
Austerity Policy Destroying Greek Society
Although we’ve featured quite a few news reports on the impact of austerity in Greece, this report from Dimitri Lascaris, a lawyer with family in Greece, via Real News Network, gives a flavor of how conditions have deteriorated, even in small towns where social ties are presumably tighter than in Athens.
Read more...Philip Pilkington: The Delicate Balance of Terror –How Neoclassical Economics Deploys Psychotic Reasoning to Explain Human Behavior
By Philip Pilkington, a writer and journalist based in Dublin, Ireland
Read more...A concentration camp is the complete obliteration of privacy.
– Milan Kundera
Quelle Surprise! San Francisco Assessor Finds Pervasive Fraud in Foreclosure Exam (and Paul Jackson Defends His Meal Tickets Yet Again)
One of our big beefs about the pending mortgage settlement has been the failure of prosecutors and regulators to do anything remotely resembling serious investigations. You don’t settle on known, easy to prove abuses (particularly when you choose not to know their extent) and leave yourself with a grab bag of mainly more difficult to ferret out ones to consider going after later.
We’ve seen repeatedly that small scale investigations in the servicing and foreclosure arena have found widespread problems. So the latest report from San Francisco county should come as no surprise.
Read more...Chinese Credit Growth Slows Significantly
Yves here. This is a short post, but don’t underestimate the significance. The big picture is that Chinese government has been tightening credit to try to lower inflation, with some success, and various commentators have been calling a soft landing outcome. But residential real estate sales took a tumble in November, and electricity use fell in January (although that may be in part due to the Chinese New Year). This is another sign that just as American economists were unduly confident in their ability to fine tune the economy in the 1960s, so too may analysts be overly optimistic about the ability of Chinese leadership to control its economy.
Read more...Cathy O’Neil: How Big Pharma Cooks Data –The Case of Vioxx and Heart Disease
By Cathy O’Neil, a data scientist who lives in New York City and writes at mathbabe.org
Yesterday I caught a lecture at Columbia given by statistics professor David Madigan, who explained to us the story of Vioxx and Merck. It’s fascinating and I was lucky to get permission to retell it here.
Read more...Links 2/15/12
HUD’s Donovan Tells Remarkable Whoppers About Settlement to Mortgage Investors
If you are going to lie, it appears the Obama Administration believes there is nothing to be lost by telling a Big Lie.
Read more...New York Creates New Foreclosure Courts to Clear Backlog
Given the horrible history of special foreclosure courts in Florida, which as we recounted (see here and here for some past discussions) resulted in a bank-friendly travesty of justice, one has good reason to regard dedicated foreclosure courts with more than a modicum of concern.
The variant that is planned to be implemented in New York appears to be more fair-minded in intent than its Florida cousin. And while it appears unlikely to produce the sort of kangaroo court outcome that occurred there, it is not hard to see that this initiative is likely to fall well short of its objectives.
Read more...Philip Pilkington: Pension Provider to British Government – “QE Actually Does Kill Demand!”
By Philip Pilkington, a writer and journalist based in Dublin, Ireland
More pension funds are getting their act together and calling the British government on their dodgy pseudo-stimulative policies. The British pension provider Saga has released an excellent counterargument to the recent round of QE announced by Bank of England governor, Mervyn King (an argument that we have been pushing for some time).
Saga are seething and you would guess that pension recipients are no less enraged because the effects that QE is having on pension funds appears to be quite devastating.
Read more...Links 2/14/12
Occupy the SEC’s Comment Letter Objects to Excuses for Watering Down Volcker Rule (#OWS)
Yves here. No one should be surprised that Bloomberg is reporting today that Goldman is aggressively lobbying for a Volcker Rule waiver for its role as a sponsor of and investors in “credit funds.”
By George Bailey, who has worked in senior compliance roles at a Big Firm You’ve Heard Of and is also a member of Occupy the SEC
Today is “Volcker Day” and Paul Volcker was on a tear.
Read more...What to do About Apple and Fraud Friendly Manufacturing in China?
Former banking regulator and white color criminologist Bill Black gives an unvarnished view of the behavior of Apple and other technology companies in dealing with suppliers in China. He does not buy the idea that the US is powerless to do anything about work condition in China and provides some concrete suggestions.
Read more...Quelle Surprise! Administration and State Attorneys General Lied, Mortgage Settlement Release Described as “Broad”
North Carolina has posted an executive summary of the foreclosure settlement (hat tip Abigail Field), and it is a a troubling document. The first aspect is the very fact that an executive summary, rather than actual text of an agreement, is what is being released. And it’s not being released for the worst of reasons: the deal has not been finalized. We explained in an earlier post why this is completely outside the pale, and we’ll turn the mike over to Frederick Leatherman for a recap:
Read more...Bizarre Department of Justice Disclaimer for Mortgage Settlement Website
Dave Dayen pointed out how peculiar that the mortgage settlement propaganda website, www.nationalmortgagesettlement.com, is a .com and not a .gov. And it turns out the Department of Justice disavows its content (hat tip April Charney):
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