Yves Smith at Naked Capitalism has a topic we should be keeping an eye on over time, as does CR. Bloomberg now suing in court under the Freedom of Information Act for aggregate information concerning types of collateral being used for collateral with the $1.5 trillion authorized by Congress. The books from Treasury are being […]

I assume everyone heard about Starbucks offering a free cup of what they call coffee to anyone who went in on Tuesday and said they voted. Via a young woman who would probably prefer I not name her, a store in NYC went one better. (And the offers were non-rival.)

While there was a lot of blather about “values voters” swinging the 2004 Presidential election to the man who had none, the real story has always been that the HENRYs went for W’s policies. That changed in 2008: Guess who won Joe the Plumber’s vote…real people who make about $42,000 a year, the median income […]

The employment report confirms other evidence that the economy is accelerating to the downside. In comparison to other recession this looks like a very typical recessions. But to see how sever it is we will have to wait to see how long it last. Hours worked are weakening even more than earlier in the year. […]

By Spencer. Yesterday Movie Guy cited some data that supposedly disproved my claim that the belt from West Virginia across the southern border of Tennessee to Arkansas was a poverty belt. I think this chart of income by county strongly shows my analysis was correct even though there are some very poor counties that were […]

by cactus When Bush Went Wrong – A Warning to Obama, And to the Rest of Us Just about everyone except the fighting (now) 20% regard GW as a failure. Hopefully, the next President won’t be a failure. Things are definitely going in the right direction – compared to eight years ago, real economic growth […]

APA Membership Rejects Torture The American Psychological Association membership recently overrode their leadership (the Council of Representatives) via member vote. After significant grassroots organization by several psychologist organizations, the APA was forced to send out a ballot asking members whether APA members should be allowed to work in settings where detainees were held in inhumane […]

Robert Waldmann Matthew Yglesias is very smart, but he is not omniscient. In particular he doesn’t remember things that happened before he was born and it appears that he has fallen for some Republican propaganda. He writes In the late 1970s, it just so happened to be the case that the structure of Great Society […]

Robert Waldmann notes that some have argued that Credit Default Swap demonization is silly because they are in zero net supply so they can’t bring down the financial system (no names or links I will be rude below). This argument is crazy. If half the financial firms end up bankrupt and the other half make […]