Author Archives: George Washington

The Arizona Republic reports: Sen. John McCain of Arizona … says he was misled by then-Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson and Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke. McCain said the pair assured him that the $700 billion Troubled Asset Relief Program would focus on what was seen as the cause of the financial crisis, the housing meltdown. […]

Preface: Please skip to the end of this essay (entitled “Why Should I Care?”) if you want to see why this issue is important to the economy, civil rights, and the political causes which are most important to you. Yves does not necessarily agree with this essay.   Indeed, she may dislike it so much that […]

A new Rasmussen poll finds: The founding document of the United States, the Declaration of Independence, states that governments derive “their just powers from the consent of the governed.” Today, however, just 21% of voters nationwide believe that the federal government enjoys the consent of the governed. *** Seventy-one percent (71%) of all voters now […]

Preface for Naked Capitalism readers: This is on-topic because torture is bad for the economy. As I have pointed out periodically since 2005: The War Crimes Act of 1996, a federal statute set forth at 18 U.S.C. § 2441, makes it a federal crime for any U.S. national, whether military or civilian, to violate the […]

BIS tried to warn us. Rosenberg gave us a head’s up. Ferguson and Faber sounded the alarm. Now SocGen’s Edwards and Grice are ringing the bell. A lot of heavy-hitters are saying that this is not just a problem in Iceland, Dubai or Greece, but the start of sovereign defaults in fiat economies world-wide. When […]

A reader asked whether the U.S. is still in an official state of emergency, and if so, what that means. The answer is yes, we are still in a state of emergency. Specifically: On September 11, 2001, the government declared a state of emergency. That declared state of emergency was formally put in writing on […]

While Eric Margolis’ entire comment in the Toronto Sun is a must-read, the following two quotes really hit the nail on the head: More empires have fallen because of reckless finances than invasion… If Obama really were serious about restoring America’s economic health, he would demand military spending be slashed, quickly end the Iraq and […]

Sure, American politicians have been bought and paid for by the Wall Street giants. See this, this and this. And everyone knows that the White House and Congress – while talking about cracking down on Wall Street with strict regulation – have actually watered down some of the most important protections that were in place. […]

Reuters notes: U.S. securities regulators originally treated the New York Federal Reserve’s bid to keep secret many of the details of the American International Group bailout like a request to protect matters of national security, according to emails obtained by Reuters. The national security claim may seem outlandish, but it is nothing new. As Business […]

People have asked whether moving your money from your giant bank to a small community bank or credit union will have any real affect on the too big to fails, given that most of their profits come from speculative investments instead of normal banking deposits. According to the Nation, the answer is yes: The cynics […]

Preface: As always, my views do not necessarily reflect those of the owner of this site, Yves Smith. As everyone knows, the economy cannot permanently recover and truly stabilize until the giant banks are broken up. The top independent experts agree that the “too big to fails” are a drain on the economy and put […]

Joseph Stiglitz says that Wall Street is hyping up the economy to sell more stock. Has it worked? Well, the stock market certainly has rocketed up from its March lows. But many investors are still avoiding equities. As Vincent Deluard – a strategist for TrimTabs Investment Research (25% of the top 50 hedge funds in […]

As I pointed out in May 2008: The U.S. has imprisoned 2,500 children since 9/11 as “enemy combatants”, in violation of the Geneva Convention against classifying children as POWs … Pulitzer-prize winning reporter Seymour Hersh says that the U.S. Government has videotapes of boys being raped at Abu Ghraib prison (and see this; see also […]

Everyone knows that the too big to fails and their dishonest and footsy-playing regulators and politicians are largely responsible for trashing the economy. But the military-industrial complex shares much of the blame. Nobel prize winning economist Joseph Stiglitz says that the Iraq war will cost $3-5 trillion dollars. Sure, experts say that the Iraq war […]

Preface: This is admittedly somewhat peripheral to economics and business.  However, terrorist attacks cost many billions of dollars in damage, and could severely depress consumer sentiment and “animal spirits”.   And, as I have previously written, unnecessary wars hurt the economy.  See this and this. American civilian and military leaders have been creating new terrorists through […]