From Naked Capitalism: Why Does No One Speak of America’s Oligarchs? One of the striking elements of the demonization of Cyprus was how it was depicted as a willing tool of Russian money launderers and oligarchs. Never mind the fact, as we pointed out, that Cyprus is not a tax haven but a low-tax jurisdiction, […]

Josh Marshall has a post entitled “Just Crazy”.  As usual I agree with some of what Marshall writes.  In this case, I think the post is just crazy.  In it he quotes “TPM reader AN” with approval who wrote (among other things) …is there significant and recent precedent of an Administration refusing to enforce a duly […]

By Jeff McCord ANTHONY LEWIS, ADULTERATED MILK AND A TAINTED ECONOMYMarch 28, 2013 In the early days of his brilliant career as legal journalist and commentator, Anthony Lewis, who passed at age 85 on March 25, referred to a vision of the Supreme Court that served as his touchstone: “[W]hen the channels of opinion and […]

Via Daily Kos Bruce Webb writes: When the Ryan Roadmap to Prosperity/2013 Republican House Budget was released some otherwise sharp observers like Ezra Klein claimed it just gave Social Security a pass: Here is Paul Ryan’s path to a balanced budget in three sentences: He cuts deep into spending on health care for the poor […]

Travis Waldron at Think Progress pointed out this excellent article by David Cay Johnston. It dovetails well with my last post, which showed the fall of individual real wages and their failure to regain their peak fully 40 years after it was reached. Johnston writes: Incomes and tax revenues have grown from 2009 to 2011 […]

Students of Windsor and Hollingsworth have always recognized a basic tension between the theories of gay-rights advocates in the cases.  The challenge to DOMA is undergirded by a sense that marriage is a matter for state rather than federal regulation.  The challenge to Proposition 8 is a direct challenge to just such a decision by […]

Final update: #scotus 80% likely to strike down #doma. J Kennedy suggests it violates states’ rights; 4 other Justices see as gay rights. –Tom Goldstein of SCOTUSblog, on Twitter And: “The question is whether or not the federal government under a federalism system has the authority to regulate marriage,” Justice Kennedy said during oral arguments. […]

Imagine that all bank deposits — the dollars in your checking account — were 100% backed, one-for-one, by your bank’s reserve holdings at the Fed (the modern, fiat-money-world equivalent of gold reserves). Runs on bank deposits would be impossible, because the outfit that issues reserves and currency can’t run out of reserves and currency — […]

Yes, that’s right. Scalia said Citizens United was wrongly decided. He said it yesterday, at the argument on the constitutionality of California’s Prop. 8.  He also said that the right to bear arms doesn’t, after all, preclude the federal government and the states from enacting gun-ownership restrictions as they wish, so the recent Court opinions […]

The New York Times points us to a possible first in the state government bond market. My initial reaction was to wonder about flood insurance risk assessment by state, and wether our conversation might go beyond FEMA into more real areas of risk assessment. Mostly we seem to spend our time not avoiding risk but […]