By Nanea, a private equity insider, and Yves Smith
Private equity practitioners, including most famously Mitt Romney, often depict their sector as the epitome of private enterprise. These claims are false. Private equity firms not only depend directly and substantially on government support, they have also actively cultivated links to the state.
Read more...We are in the midst of a sea change in terms of the relationship of ordinary Americans to the housing market. Policymakers are not only in denial as to its magnitude, but are actively enabling courses of action that are likely to prove destructive.
Read more...Yves here. While Marcy starts with the most obvious misrepresentation in a New York Times hagiography of Michigan governor Rick Snyder, the most troubling parts come later in her post. She illustrates how the Times airbrushes out Synder’s anti-labor, anti-democracy stance.
By Marcy Wheeler. Cross posted from emptywheel
Granted, it pertains to my right-wing governor, so it’s personal.
Read more...Occupy Tampa is preparing for the Republican convention. As I understand it, they will be allowed to use the Voice of Freedom park and are hosting the Food Not Bombs World Gathering starting tomorrow. You can follow them on Twitter at fnbsouthflorida.
Read more...Paul Ryan has become a lightening rod for controversy, both for his aggressive plans to cut Medicare and Social Security and for questions surrounding suspicious-looking trades in financial stocks that were September 18, 2008, the same day Congressional leadership was briefed about the crisis by Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson.
The Real News Network interviewed Tom Ferguson to parse out history from hype on both issues.
Read more...By Bill Black, the author of The Best Way to Rob a Bank is to Own One and an associate professor of economics and law at the University of Missouri-Kansas City. Cross posted from New Economic Perspectives
We know that the supporters of austerity simultaneously urge us to reject “European socialism” while adopting the key European strategies that drove Europe into recession – twice. American conservatives assume that Europe must epitomize stringent financial regulation. The opposite is true. Europe adopted “light touch” financial regulation pursuant to neo-liberal economic theory. Its embrace of the three “de’s” – deregulation, desupervision, and de facto decriminalization was far more extreme than the United States. The City of London “won” the regulatory race to the bottom with the U.S. European’s adopted the full Basel II reduction in capital requirements without the minimum gearing ratio that the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) insisted upon. The FDIC prevailed over the intense, but fortunately unsuccessful opposition of the Federal Reserve economists who were the principal architects of Basel II’s disastrous reduction in capital requirements. The result was that European Union banks had roughly twice the leverage of U.S. banks and faced no meaningful regulatory restraints. The result was far larger real estate bubbles in several European nations (as a percentage of GDP) than in the U.S., multiple financial crises, and a Great Recession that reached depression levels in several nations.
Read more...By Bill Black, the author of The Best Way to Rob a Bank is to Own One and an associate professor of economics and law at the University of Missouri-Kansas City. Cross posted from New Economic Perspectives.
Eduardo Porter began by studying physics but decided not to complete his studies and pursue a career in that field in favor of becoming a journalist. He worked for the Wall Street Journal before joining the New York Times, where he writes a periodic column. His primary interest is now economics. I was intrigued by a recent column he did entitled “The Folly of Attacking Outsourcing.”
I reviewed a number of Porter’s NYT columns to get a feel for his views. Defending outsourcing and minimizing the criticisms of undocumented immigrants are his twin passions. He has written roughly a dozen columns on each of these topics. Porter’s starting point is neo-liberal economics. As I will show, he does so despite knowing that neo-liberal economics dogma has proven disastrously wrong.
Read more...An interview on Real News Network with James Henry of the Tax Justice Network covers his newly released report “The Price of Offshore Revisited” in which he estimates the size of the “offshore” market as somewhere between $21 and $32 trillion as of December 2010. Note that this total includes only financial assets, and thus omits real assets (real estate, gold, artwork, yachts) that are held via trusts or corporate entities in tax havens.
If you are in finance, the broad outlines of this story are familiar.
Read more...This section from Michal Kalecki’s 1943 Essay on Politics and Ideology is so clear and relevant that it needs to be read widely. Thanks to New Economic Perspectives for flagging it.
Read more...By Connor Kilpatrick, the managing editor of Jacobin magazine. Cross posted with The eXiled
Calling yourself a libertarian today is a lot like wearing a mullet back in the nineteen eighties. It sends a clear signal: business up front, party in the back.
Read more...A raise in the minimum wage is smart economics and beneficial to society. So what are we waiting for?
Read more...Romney may be determined to snatch defeat from the jaws of a possible victory. Business Insider reports that the newest addition to the list of possible VP candidates is…Florida’s Pam Bondi
Read more...By Matt Stoller, a political analyst on Brand X with Russell Brand, and a fellow at the Roosevelt Institute. You can follow him at http://www.twitter.com/matthewstoller
This is probably the least important Presidential election since the 1950s. As an experienced political hand told me, the two candidates are speaking not to the voters, but to the big money. They hold the same views, pursue the same policies, and are backed by similar interests. Mitt Romney implemented Obamacare in Massachusetts, or Obama implemented Romneycare nationally. Both are pro-choice or anti-choice as political needs change, both tend to be hawkish on foreign policy, both favor tax cuts for businesses, and both believe deeply in a corrupt technocratic establishment.
So while the election lumbers on like the death rattles of the wounded animal known American democracy, no one on either side is asking what the plan is for the next term.
Read more...By Bill Black, the author of The Best Way to Rob a Bank is to Own One and an associate professor of economics and law at the University of Missouri-Kansas City. Cross posted from New Economic Perspectives.
This column was prompted in part by reading RJ Eskow’s column, which alerted me to Anne Applebaum’s September 13, 2010 column celebrating Britain’s embrace of austerity and the Conservative Party.
I was already planning a piece responding to Applebaum’s Washington Post column about the consequences of European austerity published on July 25, 2012 (her birthday) and the contrast to a Wall Street Journal news story that same day announcing that austerity had, as we predicted, thrown Britain back into recession when I read Eskow’s column.
She reveals her real target – she wants to destroy the social programs that have improved the lives of the working class.
Read more...By Lynn Parramore, a contributing editor at Alternet. Cross posted from Alternet
So far, there’s not a whole lot known about James Eagan Holmes, the 24-year old whom police say fatally shot 12 people and injured dozens more in a suburban Denver movie theater during the premiere of the new Batman film “The Dark Knight Rises.” As the nation grieves for the families of the victims, questions about the alleged perpetrator are swirling.
What we do know paints a picture of a young man who might have reasonably harbored high expectations of a successful life.
Read more...