Category Archives: The destruction of the middle class

Student Debt is Crushing the Economic Future of the Young

If a bad job market wasn’t damaging enough, the cost of paying off student loans does much more harm to the long-term prospects of young people than is commonly realized.

Ilargi: Sometimes Humor Is The Best Way To Tell A Tragic Story

Yves here. This article is a portrait of official denial, which is then dutifully taken up and amplified by the media (well, not universally, but widely, as Ilargi’s post also demonstrates). It corroborates one of my pet theories: that we are at the end of an economic paradigm. The powers that be lack the will and imagination to do anything other than patch it up and put it back into operation. That simply assures more frequent breakdowns until the system is beyond repair.

Your Humble Blogger Discusses the Pending Trade Deals and JP Morgan on Le Show!

I really enjoy speaking with Harry Shearer, both for his engaging manner and his thorough preparation. I also hope you’ll see fit to circulate this interview, since the more attention we can bring to this plan to legalize corporate pillage, the better.

The Global Corporatocracy is Almost Fully Operational

Yves here. I hope you don’t mind additional coverage of the pending trade pacts, this from a European perspective. This is bar none the single most important geopolitical initiative underway, yet it’s getting virtually no media play. While this discussion overlaps with our chat on Bill Moyers, many of you have friends, family members, and colleagues who don’t have time to watch a video but would read an article. Please use whatever route you think will work best with the people you know to get the word out.

Greed, Revolution, and Governance

I’m generally very taken with Ian Welsh’s work, particularly two recent posts, A New Ideology and How to Create a Viable Ideology. He then continued with 44 Explicit Points on Creating a Better World. And I hate to say it, but the last piece was no where near as well thought out as the preceding pieces. What troubled me about his latest piece was its combination of confidence (as opposed to modesty and soliciting reactions and input) in combination with it having internal contractions and a lack of precision of language. But perhaps the biggest shortcoming was trying to finesse the question of governance.

Ken Rogoff Loses It, Calls Criticism of Errors in Debt Paper a “Witch Hunt”

Ken Rogoff has just shown how out of touch he is with reality and basic standards of professional accountability, as demonstrated in an interview published in the Frankfuerter Allgemeine, which is best thought of as a center-right New York Times. He’s come as close as Serious People do to foaming at the mouth, accusing those who criticized the discovery of errors in a widely cited austerity-supporting paper he wrote with Carmen Reinhart as being on a “witch hunt” and engaging in an “orchestrated attack…as in the 1950s under McCarthy.”

Us Versus Them

By Gerald Minack, a former global equity strategist for Morgan Stanley. Cross posted from MacroBusiness

Rising political polarisation in the US has gone hand-in-hand with rising income inequality, falling top-end tax rates, lower taxes on business, rising leverage and higher asset prices. These trends may be coincidental, but they seem to reinforce each other.