Lifted from comments by reader Juan comes this article from the Finacial Times: Subprime securities – still being downgraded Some two weeks ago Moody’s announced it was downgrading 28 tranches of various bonds (as well as upgrading two tranches, and confirming others) in an action that covered roughly $1.2bn worth of mortgage-backed securities (MBS). … […]
Congress is in recess, actual recess with no pro forma sessions. Barack Obama can recess appoint people. Tomorrow Ed DeMarco could cease to be acting director of the FHFA (Federal Housing Finance Agency). I think that Obama should, indeed must, recess appoint Mel Watt to be FHFA director. As acting director DeMarco has blocked all […]
Via Mark Thoma Economist’s View comes this note on credit rating company incentives: While the US Department of Justice did not give any statistical evidence in its deposition, our new research (Efing and Hau 2013) suggests that rating favors were indeed systematic and pervasive in the industry. In a sample of more than 6,500 structured […]
Political Calculations gives us this chart of median new home prices versus median incomes over the last 46 years. The rising tip at the upper right (!) is May 2013. What do you think: sustainable? Here’s the zoomed-in version of recent years, from inside the red dashes: As they say, …new homes are, virtually by definition, at the […]
by Linda Beale Redistribution and public production of public goods–not “let the markets handle it” In recent posts, the Importance of Distribution and Markets, Minimum Wages, and the Sins of Friedmania, I have noted the centrality to sustainable democratic institutions of corraling the market so that the power and wealth of the elite few does […]
by Linda Beale UK Territories to sign OECD Tax Info-Sharing Agreement, Reveal Beneficial Owners The UK’s David Cameron announced that Britain’s 10 crown dependencies and overseas territories–Cayman Islands, Bermuda, Jersey, Gilbraltar, Anguilla, Turks and Caicos Islands, Guernsey, Isle of Man, and the British Virgin Islands–would sign on to the OECD’s multilateral convention on Mutual Administrative […]
by Linda beale Market Power, Minimum Wages, and the Sins of Friedmania Two items caught my attention in today’s (June 22) newspapers and they represent diametrically opposed positions on what matters in society. One, by Paul Krugman, deals with the problems of monopoly rents–especially in industries in which there is very little production in this […]
For me, Profits Without Production equates to Profits sans Direct Labor Input. In most manufacture in the US today, Direct Labor Input is an extremely small ~10% of the Cost of Manufacturing which will vary up and down dependent upon the industry. (For the accountants and the purists, this does not include customary or legislative […]
by Linda Beale The importance of redistribution I have dedicated ataxingmatter to a concept I call “democratic egalitarianism”–the idea that individuals flourish best in a free society that allows them to choose democratically the rules that govern their lives, with the understanding that the institutions must be sustainable and must allow all individuals to flourish, […]
by Linda Beale The Tax Code Ain’t Nearly So Big as Often Claimed I can’t resist pointing readers to tax professor Jim Maule’s excellent post chastising everybody–from those obviously slanted propaganda-tank tax gurus Chris Edwards (you all know him as the purported tax expert from the right-wing pseudo-libertarian Cato Institute, whose other associate, Dan Mitchell, […]