Yves here. A new ruling by the European Union Court of Justice is tantamount to shutting the gate door after the horses are in the next county. Nevertheless, it’s a striking if not well publicized indictment of US casualness about lobbing charges against countries on its enemies list.
Read more...We’re expecting to have some more thoughtful commentary in the next day or so from some close observers of the Scottish independence vote. On the surface, the results look more decisive than expected earlier. The margin of victory, at 55% against and 45% for, was wider than the forecast 54%/46% split. And the English press looks to be rubbing it in, with most UK media outlets showing celebratory images of the victors.
But keep a few things in mind….
Read more...Yves here. Bill Black shellacks a New York Times article that gives a big dose of unadulterated neoliberal propaganda supporting austerity. To give you a sense of the intellectual integrity of this piece, it including citing a Peterson Institute staffer without cluing readers in to the fact that the Institute has what is left of the middle class in its crosshairs.
Black stresses that one of the major lies behind the continuing for more, better hairshirts for long-suffereing Europeans is that the explosion in debt levels in Europe was the result of overly-generous social safety nets. In fact, as in the US, the tremendous rise in government debt levels was the direct result of the crisis. Tax revenues collapsed due to GDP whackage (and the costs continue as GDP is well below potential). And any economist worth their salt will also say that social safety nets ameliorated the severity of the damage, that those automatic stabilizers increased government spending when it was needed most, at the depth of the implosion, and prevented a spiral into a much deeper downturn.
Read more...No-one’s quite sure what Scotland is, nor what independence is, but they’re all for it anyway, or against it.
Read more...Yves here. As we’ve written, austerity in Europe and Chinese efforts to rein in construction-related lending have delivered enough of a hit to global growth so as to start denting oil prices, which were holding up in large measure due to tensions in the Middle East. This post suggests that more oil price weakness is in the offing. This is a big negative for the fracking boom, needless to say, and may give environmentalists more time to stymie further development.
Read more...Yves here. We are pleased to introduce Naked Capitalism readers to John Helmer, a Moscow-based analyst and journalist who, in the words of Mark Ames, “writes about the murky convoluted world of the extraction industry, its politics, and its oligarchs.” Given that the extraction industry is increasingly driving geopolitics, his beat overlaps with our “follow the big money” orientation. For instance, Helmer did original reporting on the IMF-Ukraine relationship which provided crucial to a recent Michael Hudson post on Ukraine that was first published at NC. Today he continues his look at how the US is funneling money into Ukraine, this time via a sus World Bank loan.
Read more...Yves here. While the impetus for Steve Keen’s post is the ECB’s latest pretense that it can and is doing something to combat deflation, he provides an excellent and short debunking of two widespread misconceptions about money and banking. The first myth is the money multiplier and the second is that reserves are the basis for bank lending.
Read more...Lambert here: Part I of this essay was also posted at Naked Capitalism. By Yanis Varoufakis, a professor of economics at the University of Athens. Cross posted from his blog This article is a sequel to an earlier piece entitled ‘Why is Europe not coming together in response to the Euro Crisis?’ and is best […]
Read more...Yves here. Mathew’s post describes the political and ideological dynamics that continue to drive failed austerity policies in Europe. But even more important, it also explains why Europe, and German leaders in particular, have fallen in line with the US and are escalating the conflict with Russia over Ukraine. As we’ve discussed, they’ve convinced themselves that Russia will suffer from the economic sanctions imposed by the US and EU before Russia can play its energy card. And some analysts further believe that Russia would not dare restrict gas supplies to Europe, that it cannot afford to lose the income.
Read more...Yves here. This post, while informative, omits a critical piece of the calculus made by the West (or at least the US, in pushing Europe to fall into line) in its escalation of the conflict in Ukraine.
Read more...The Organised Crime and Corruption Reporting Project recently (21st August) published one of their periodic investigations, concerning a rather large moneylaundering scheme: Call it the Laundromat. It’s a complex system for laundering more than $20 billion in Russian money stolen from the government by corrupt politicians or earned through organized crime activity. It was designed to not only […]
Read more...ECB President Mario Draghi is recognizing that the recovery in the Euro area remains uniformly weak.
Read more...I don’t know that I’d go so far to say it was Paul Krugman-induced, but the French government has been dissolved, primarily because two senior ministers dared speak the unspeakable and criticize Francois Hollande’s continued commitment to austerity, in the face of evidence of its failure.
Read more...It is with great pleasure that I received the news from Finland that my Global Minotaur: America, Europe and the Future of the World Economy has just been published in Finland by the good people of Vastapaino Publishers. (Click here for their site.)
My Preface to this Finnish edition follows:
Read more...With the ink still drying on Mexico’s historic energy reform, global oil and gas majors are salivating at the prospect of gaining access to one of the world’s largest and until recently most nationalized energy markets. One of those companies is the Spanish electricity giant Iberdrola, which expects to massively expand its operations in Mexico through increased investments of close to €1 billion.
Now, I know what you’re thinking: €1 billion is chicken feed in this age of inflated corporate balance sheets. Indeed, for some corporations such a sum is probably hardly worth getting out of bed for these days. However, in Mexico it can go a very long way, much further than it can in Europe or the US – especially when you have paid moles lobbying for your every interest at the highest level of government.
Read more...