Author Archives: Yves Smith
Negative Interest Rates – Are There Any Positives?
The more you look at negative interest rates, the harder it is to find anything to like.
Read more...“The Battle for VA Healthcare and Its Funding”
Despite its problems, the VA outperforms most of the US healthcare system on nearly every metric of quality.
Read more...The US is Beginning to Dominate Global Investment Banking: Implications for Europe
Europe’s banks are in retreat from playing a global investment banking role.
Read more...Oxfam Report on Rent Seeking Among the Top Wealthy Reinforces Neoliberal Shibboleths
A well-meaning effort to analyze rent-seeking goes off the rails.
Read more...Private Equity Kingpins Whine as Stock Market Values Languish
What word best describes how distasteful it is to see obscenely rich men complain that they aren’t as rich as they think they ought to be? The subhead on a new Financial Times story on private equity tell us: “PE believes investors do not grasp their long-term cash flow generation capabilities.” In other words, this […]
Read more...Links 3/27/16
Wolf Richter: World Trade Collapses in Dollars, Languishes in Volume
A rout in world trade that started in June 2014 shows no sign of getting better.
Read more...Millennials Like Socialism — Until They Get Jobs. Or Until a Pollster Tells Them That It Would Mean Tax Increases But Doesn’t Tell Them, for Example, That the Tax Increases Would Replace Healthcare Insurance Premiums and Out-Of-Pocket Medical Expenses. And Doesn’t Tell Them That “More Government Services” Means Something Other Than, Say, Trash Collection Twice a Week Instead of Once a Week.
A poll on attitudes toward socialism as a case study in biased research.
Read more...Links 3/26/16
The Global War on Drugs Has Unleashed an International Health Crisis, Says Top Health Panel
A study by Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and The Lancet has effectively pronounced the war on drugs to be a failure.
Read more...Bill Black: Democrats Need to Give Up Being Deficit Hawks Even When it Feels Good Politically
Why do Democrats act like Republican wannabes with deficit scaremongering? Let us count the reasons: Wall Street, Pete Peterson, hatred of the poor…
Read more...Don Quijones: Brexit Meltdown at the Bank of England
The current and former governors of the Bank of England are singing from very different hymnals on the subject of Brexit.
Read more...Links 3/25/16
How McKinsey Helped Turn Big Pharma into a Rent Extraction Business
How McKinsey contributed to the devolution of Big Pharma.
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