Category Archives: The destruction of the middle class

The Hissing Sound of Air Leaving the Economy

There’s a remarkable amount of optimism in the US financial media given the underlying health of the economy. Of course, the sort of short term investors that have come to dominate securities trading had been in a “risk on/risk off” pattern for a protracted period before commodities weakness and the remarkable run of the Nikkei has led to some renewed focus on relative values of various macro plays. But the markets are still dominated by an underlying faith in the willingness of central bankers to protect the backs of investors and limit any downside (while, ironically, many of these same investors howl about ZIRP and QE, which were clearly intended to goose the value of financial assets and real estate, with the hope that would lead to more consumer spending).

And why shouldn’t the professional investors (as opposed to widows and orphans who can no longer rely on low risk bond investments to produce adequate income) be pleased as punch?

Obama: The Buckraking Starts Here

It has become depressingly normal to hear of senior Administration officials going immediately for the golden ring when they leave public service. But for every Mary Shapiro joining Promontory and Lanny Breuer returning to Covington & Burling for $4 million a year, there are even more operatives at similar or lower levels who make a very juicy return on their association with Obama but don’t get the same level of attention in the mainstream media.

Norm Scheiber, in a must-read article in The New Republic, “Get Rich or Deny Trying:
How to make millions off Obama,” chronicles how this process works. It’s even uglier than you might imagine.

Joe Stiglitz Blasts Our Wealthy-Coddling Tax System for Increasing the Returns on Rent-Seeking

It’s a sign of how well relentless propagandizing works that Joe Stiglitz has to devote a lengthy op-ed in the New York Times to debunking the idea that our income tax system, whose salient characteristic is low tax burdens for the rich, is good for anyone other than the rich.

Troika Demands Another €6 Billion from Cyprus, Making “Rescue” Bigger Than GDP

Nothing like dramatic proof that austerity is a failure

Obama Moves Forward with Cutting Social Security and Medicare as We Lecture Europe Otherwise

It must be really hard to be an Obama defender these days, at least if you are not on a big corporate payroll.

BBC on Child Poverty in the US

One of the ongoing frustrations in being (of necessity) a heavy consumer of what passes for media in the US is how insistent and disconnected the official narrative is with conditions on the ground. This BBC documentary gives a much-needed counterpoint.

Has Walmart Been Engaging in Large Scale Accounting Fraud?

We’ve been poking at Walmart of late because the Bentonville giant appears to have feet of clay. It has been pursuing its relentless cost-cutting strategy to the point where it is damaging its franchise. Bloomberg (and later, the New York Times) described how the retailer had cut headcount to the point where it was having difficulty keeping shelves stocked and checkout lines to a tolerable length. Proving the validity of the Bloomberg account, over 1000 Walmart customers e-mailed the news service, describing their crummy experiences.

But Walmart may have started going off the rails even earlier than the counterproductive staffing cuts suggest.

Walmart Continues to Deny it Has a Staffing/Stocking Problem After E-mail Deluge to Bloomberg

After NC got its own mini comment deluge on our post yesterday about devolution and cost-cutting gone rabid leading to declines in service, with Walmart as the featured example, Bloomberg has a follow up story on customer complaints about Walmart stock levels.

Bill Greider on Why Paul Krugman Was So Wrong

A good piece in the Nation by Bill Greider, which focuses on Krugman’s long standing support of free trade, and how, contrary to his predictions, the results were not positive for ordinary American workers.