In this interminable post-crisis reality we are living, one thing has become crystal clear: regardless of the crime, senior bankers never do the time — at least not in most Western countries. One country that tried to buck this trend was Spain.
Read more...We’ll be on a lighter posting schedule starting this evening…
Read more...Fortune favors the prepared mind. –Louis Pasteur
By Lambert Strether of Corrente
I was going to take some pictures at a Winter Solstice bonfire last night and post them here — because there is a finance angle, I promise — but the organizers cancelled it because of the ice storm. So, herewith a picture of an alternative source of light and heat: My wood stove:
Read more...By Dan Fejes, who lives in northeast Ohio. Cross posted from Pruning Shears
Here is an interesting thing about the new health care law: News stories on it sometimes conflate flaws in the existing system with those in the new one. Many complaints about Obamacare are actually complaints about America’s health care system.
The administration bears some blame for that; the White House has done some conflating of its own. Most famously, the president assured us we would be able to keep our plans. That was never a promise he was in a position to keep. The new program still goes through the private insurance market, which means they decide what customers are restricted to.
Read more...By Lambert Strether of Corrente
And we go to Happyville, instead of to Pain City. –Thomas Pynchon, Gravity’s Rainbow
In a six-part series on “ObamaCare’s relentless creation of second-class citizens,” I showed how people seeking health care through ObamaCare’s exchanges get randomly varying access to care because of age, geography (state and county), income, employment status, banking status, internet access, existing insurance status, language, demographics, and by CMS marketing category (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, and 6. In addition, people “on the bubble” for income eligibility are incentivized to corrupt the system by gaming it.)
Read more...Lambert here: This should be fun!
By Vincent Huang*, a graduate student in the Economics Department at UMKC. Originally published at New Economic Perspectives.
The discrepancy between the orthodox (primarily neoclassical) and the heterodox (Post Keynesian, Chartalism, MMT, etc.) schools of thought rests fundamentally in their different perception in the way the capitalist economy functions. Such discrepancy can be described in the contrast between C – M – C’ and M – C – M’.
Read more...The Fed’s announcing the taper was supposed to be an earth-shaking event. But that actually sorta happened last summer when Bernanke first used the “t” word and interest and mortgage rates made an impressive upward march in a short period of time.
From my considerable remove, what was noteworthy about the Fed’s announcement yesterday is how terrified it seems to be of creating an upset.
Read more...Reader dSquib flagged a “bizarre” article by Mike Konczal in the New Republic titled, “Corporatism” is the Latest Hysterical Right-Wing Accusation: The secret history of a smear.” dSquib seemed quite perplexed that anyone would deem calling Obama a corporatist, which as we’ll demonstrate is patently true, a smear.
Read more...In my view the real purpose of the Volcker Rule is to prevent another Citigroup bailout and therefore the measure of its effectiveness is whether the rule would accomplish this.
Read more...A look at some predictions for Europe in 2014.
Read more...The uninsured, which along with those with existing conditions, would seem to be the clearest beneficiaries of Obamacare, and were thus assumed by many to favor it. But a new poll shows that on the whole far more distrustful that the Administration likely expected.
Read more...
