The problem of the big banks is becoming acute, as was made clear by Neil Barofsky in his excellent book Bailout: How Washington Abandoned Main Street While Rescuing Wall Street that I reviewed here. While having banks that are too big to jail makes a mockery of the legal system by inviting corruption, there is …
Category Archive: Economics
May 08 2013
What happened to Jeffrey Sachs?
Economist Jeffrey Sachs is professor of Health Policy and Management and Director of The Earth Institute at Columbia University. He used to be one of your standard establishment types. As recently as 2006, he wrote a book The End of Poverty: Economic Possibilities for Our Time that I read in which he promoted the neoliberal …
May 07 2013
How big banks fix benchmark rates
The rules against insider trading are meant to ensure that ‘the market’ is democratic and that everyone has access to the same information on which to base investment decisions, and to prevent individuals from taking advantage of knowledge that might give them more accurate knowledge of the true value of something than the public at …
May 02 2013
Book review: Bailout by Neil Barofsky
I recently read Bailout: How Washington Abandoned Main Street While Rescuing Wall Street by Neil Barofsky and it was a gripping read. His book is an insider’s account of how the financial crisis of 2008 was handled in Washington DC and it is not a pretty sight.
Apr 25 2013
Further revelations on the Reinhart-Rogoff fiasco
I wrote before about the faulty analysis by two Harvard economists Carmen Reinhart and Kenneth Rogoff that asserted that when the debt-to-GDP ratio reached a critical point of 90% in a country, the rate of economic growth took a nose-dive and went into negative territory. This analysis was used to spook policymakers, especially in the …
Apr 18 2013
The phony scare about the debt exposed
Debt cutting frenzy has been rampant across North America and Europe, with ‘everyone’ (i.e., politicians, elite media, and the oligarchs) arguing that if the deficits are not reduced by cutting spending on social services, countries risk ruin. This phony consensus has been driven by pseudo-grassroots campaigns like ‘Fix the Debt’ and the Simpson-Bowles ‘Catfood Commission’, …
Apr 01 2013
Senate votes unanimously against switching to chained CPI
In his search for a ‘grand bargain’ on the budget, president Obama has repeatedly signaled his willingness to cut earned benefits such as Social Security, a long-standing goal of the oligarchy. The way it is proposed is to replace the current Consumer Price Index or CPI, the current way of measuring the rate of inflation, …
Mar 27 2013
Percentages versus absolute numbers
I came across this article that said that rich people gave money to charities differently from the middle class and the poor. One difference was to whom they gave money. “The poor tend to give to religious organizations and social-service charities, while the wealthy prefer to support colleges and universities, arts organizations, and museums.”
Mar 25 2013
Cyprus update
As was to be expected, a deal has emerged over the weekend to deal with the demand by the European Central Bank that Cyprus needs to come up with 5.8 billion euros or risk going bankrupt.
Mar 21 2013
Why isn’t the minimum wage today $22?
I am sick of hearing people opposing a rise in the minimum wage because it would be an intolerable burden on business that would cause them to lay people off or prevent them hiring workers or that it would cause rampant inflation. Suring a hearing of the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions, …
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