Author Archives: George Washington

→ Washington’s Blog I have repeatedly documented the detrimental impacts of dispersants on humans, wildlife and seafood safety. See this, this, this, this, this, this and this. As I noted in September, scientists from Oregon State University found elevated levels of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) in the Gulf, and blamed dispersants. Now, the website of […]

→ Washington’s Blog It is now common knowledge that there is a potential domino effect of European sovereign debt contagion in roughly the following order: Greece → Ireland → Portugal → Spain → Italy → UK While some people have been writing about this for well over a year, many others have joined the party […]

→ Washington’s Blog The Fed says that unemployment will remain high for years. Some Republican congressmen are trying to take away the goal of ensuring full employment from the Fed. See this and this. Conservatives argue that the relationship between inflation and unemployment – as represented in the Phillips Curve – is false, and therefore […]

→ Washington’s Blog Ben Bernanke has said that the Fed is trying to promote inflation, increase lending, reduce unemployment, and stimulate the economy. However, the Fed has arguably – to some extent – been working against all of these goals. For example, as I reported in March, the Fed has been paying the big banks […]

→ Washington’s Blog LSU professor and oil spill expert Ed Overton has been all over the news saying that fears of the BP oil spill were overblown. But as Raw Story reports, Overton has been a lead NOAA consultant for decades, and a fellow LSU professor calls him a “shill”: Overton’s prominent position as the […]

→ Washington’s Blog Even Alan Greenspan is confirming what William Black, James Galbraith, Joseph Stiglitz, George Akerlof and many other economists and financial experts have been saying for a long time: the economy cannot recover if fraud is not prosecuted and if the big banks know that government will bail them out every time they […]

→ Washington’s Blog As economists such as William Black and James Galbraith have repeatedly said, we cannot solve the economic crisis unless we throw the criminals who committed fraud in jail. And Nobel prize winning economist George Akerlof has demonstrated that failure to punish white collar criminals – and instead bailing them out- creates incentives […]

→ Washington’s Blog Real testing is starting to be conducted on dispersant and oil in the Gulf, the results are not looking so good: U.S. Government press release says NOAA, FDA now testing for dispersant: Corexit ingredient DOSS found in 13 samples — Up to 500 ppm allowed in shrimp, crabs, oysters [“DOSS” stands for […]

→ Washington’s Blog As many writers have documented, the corporate media is usually pro-war. See this. And so Washington Post hack David Broder’s op-ed arguing that war with Iran will save America’s economy is not all that surprising. Of course, China and Russia might not sit idly by and let their ally, Iran, be attacked. […]

→ Washington’s Blog There is a flood of information coming out on the Gulf oil spill. Why? The reappearance of huge plumes of oil is making it hard to pretend that it has all gone away. Here’s a roundup of some of the Gulf oil headlines from just the last 4 days: More Independent Scientists […]

→ Washington’s Blog I’ve repeatedly documented that mortgages were pledged multiple times to different buyers. See this, this and this. In response, some people (including one of the country’s top bankruptcy lawyers) have told me they don’t buy it. Specifically, they ask such questions as: With a mortgage sold to two different entities, wouldn’t the […]

→ Washington’s Blog The corporate media has almost entirely stopped covering the Gulf oil spill. Many have tried to say that the effects of the spill are not nearly as bad as feared, and that everything is pretty much cleaned up and back to normal. But today, it is widely being reported that there are […]

→ Washington’s Blog The Fourteenth Banker writes today: In the stock market, program trading dominates volume. I heard recently that 70% of trade positions are held for an average of 11 seconds. He’s correct. As the New York Times dealbook noted in May: These are short-term bets. Very short. The founder of Tradebot, in Kansas […]

→ Washington’s Blog Oil Spill Commission co-chair Bob Graham slammed the administration’s handling of the Gulf oil disaster, including its low-ball estimates of the size of the spill ( which was some 60 times too low): It’s a little bit like Custer underestimating the number of Indians on the other side of the hill and […]

→ Washington’s Blog I previously pointed out: Some experts have also said that the use of Corexit has prolonged by decades the presence of toxic crude oil, because the dispersant sinks the oil beneath the ocean surface, where it cannot be quickly broken down by sun, waves and microbes. And the head of Lawrence Berkeley […]