Author Archives: David Dayen

About David Dayen

David is a contributing writer to Salon.com. He has been writing about politics since 2004. He spent three years writing for the FireDogLake News Desk; he’s also written for The New Republic, The American Prospect, The Guardian (UK), The Huffington Post, The Washington Monthly, Alternet, Democracy Journal and Pacific Standard, as well as multiple well-trafficked progressive blogs and websites. His has been a guest on MSNBC, CNN, Aljazeera, Russia Today, NPR, Pacifica Radio and Air America Radio. He has contributed to two anthology books, one about the Wisconsin labor uprising and another on the fight against the Stop Online Piracy Act in Congress. Prior to writing about politics he worked for two decades as a television producer and editor. You can follow him on Twitter at @ddayen.

Nomura Wins Sad-Sack Bank of the Week After Overpaying on Court Loss to FHFA, Having Bond Traders Indicted

So yesterday was a bad day if you were a Japanese bank with stubborn executives.

Wolf Richter: Corporate Revenue Recession Spreads past Dollar, Energy

Now that 495 of the S&P 500 companies have reported second quarter earnings, something has become abundantly clear: 2015 is going to be a nasty year for corporate revenues.

The End of the Deferred Prosecution Agreement?

From the Wall Street Journal comes news of an intriguing case that would give judges much more leeway in overruling a hapless Justice Department and their light-touch deals with corporations.

Links 9/8/15

Breaking the Greek Debt Impasse: A Solution for Greece

Greece needs debt restructuring. On this, a growing chorus of voices is agreed (Manasse 2015, Taylor 2015). Even the IMF (2015) now acknowledges that Greece’s debt is unsustainable. Restructuring is required, it now insists, for the workability of the third programme between the country and ‘the institutions’ that is currently being finalised.

Perry Mehrling: A Turbulent Exit, as the Fed Achieves “Lift-off”?

Turbulence if and when the Fed raises rates, and from an unexpected source.

Congressional Black Caucus Still Trying to Hurt Their Constituents By Killing the Labor Department Fiduciary Rule

Last year, the Huffington Post published the definitive take on the Congressional Black Caucus’ frequent sellouts to Wall Street, and how Maxine Waters has attempted to shut it down. Their public image as the conscience of the Congress belies a coziness with bank lobbyists and an open willingness to do their bidding. Ten CBC members […]

Links 9/3/15

Uber Strategy of “Monopolization Through Sidestepping Labor Law” May Be Coming to an End

A California judge is threatening Uber’s fiendish “Let’s arbitrage state and federal law and replace a monopoly with a different monopoly” plan:

Why Did Oil Prices Just Jump By 27 Percent in 3 Days?

Oil prices have posted their strongest rally in years, jumping an astounding 27 percent in the last three trading days of August.

While much of the recent price movement defies reason and is enormously magnified by speculative movements by traders to take and cover their bets on oil, still, there were a series of rumors, events, and fresh data that helped contribute to the spike.

Kaliningrad, Russia – The Dagger Points East and West

Listeners to US Government radio and readers of the London papers are being told that Kaliningrad is a Russian dagger pointed at the soft underbelly of the NATO alliance in central Europe. According to NATO sources, the dagger must be reversed so that it threatens the Kremlin instead.

Officials in the German Chancellery in Berlin and in the Polish government in Warsaw have begun asking their intelligence chiefs to prepare memoranda on how vulnerable the Russian outpost, formerly Königsberg in German East Prussia, is to a campaign of economic pressure and political subversion. Does this make Kaliningrad a potential flashpoint on the eastern war front, the next Crimea?

Links 9/1/2015

Proof of Ongoing Foreclosure Fraud and Mortgage Document Fabrication, in Five Emails

Five years ago this month, GMAC became the first mortgage servicer to announce that they would suspend foreclosure operations due to irregularities in their document preparation. Within a few weeks every major mortgage servicer in America followed suit. This is usually called the robo-signing scandal, but to be more precise we gave it the name foreclosure fraud. It ended with the five leading servicers, including GMAC, signing the $25 billion National Mortgage Settlement.

Except it didn’t end, and this past week I was handed inconvertible proof of that fact. The scenario is so fantastical that if I didn’t have a working knowledge of foreclosure fraud I wouldn’t have believed it. But it appears to be very real.

Why is China finding it hard to fight the markets?

China’s market drama started in June this year with the collapse of the Shanghai stock exchange, followed by frantic interventions by the Chinese authorities. As if the estimated $200 billion already spent on propping up stock prices were not enough, China found itself in another battle with the market, defending the RMB against depreciation pressures after the PBoC devalued the RMB by nearly 2% on August 11. The cost of the foreign exchange intervention to keep the RMB stable is estimated at $200 billion.

Ilargi: The Real Refugee Crisis Is In The Future

Perhaps Angela Merkel thought we didn’t yet know how full of it she is. Perhaps that’s why she said yesterday with regards to Europe’s refugee crisis that “Everything must move quickly,” only to call an EU meeting a full two weeks later. That announcement show one thing: Merkel doesn’t see this as a crisis. If she did, she would have called for such a meeting a long time ago, and not some point far into the future.