And another view on the upcoming election deals we need to worry about in addition to party agendas and deals. Doubling down on upward distribution of wealth remains the name of this game…it is hard enough to debate real budget issues without this party going on: Deficit debate driven by the wealthy, by Michael Hiltzik, […]
Via Economist View comes James Kwak at Baseline Scenario on the early deal made on the the ‘fiscal cliff’: ‘The One-Sided Deficit Debate’ James Kwak is pessimistic about the deficit debate: What’s more, the “consensus” of the self-styled “centrists” is what now makes the Bush tax cuts of 2001 and 2003 seem positively reasonable. With […]
Barkley Rosser at Econospeak opines on: Bill Keller Joins The Cut Social Security Gang In today’s New York Times, former editor Bill Keller has an especially obnoxious column about baby boomer entitlement. I am not going to dispute at all his listing of various selfishnesses that we baby boomers have indulged in from Gordon Gekko type […]
JERUSALEM — Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney angered Palestinian leaders on Monday when he suggested here that the Israeli economy had outpaced the economy of the Palestinian territories in part because of advantages of “culture.” … Romney said he had studied a book called “The Wealth and Poverty of Nations,” searching for an answer about […]
Simon Johnson at Baseline Scenario points to basic fraud on the business practices for LIBOR: The behavior at Barclays has all the hallmarks of fraud, pure and simple – intentional deception for personal gain, causing significant damage to others. The Commodity Futures Trading Commission nailed the detailed mechanics of this deception in plain English in […]
Economist Mark Blyth talks on Europe and rescuing the banks… See 35 minutes in on context for LIBOR troubles. (70% of the special investment vehicles designed to pump and dump mortgages belong to European not American banks … Euro banks listed their periphery debt as Tier One Capital under Basel.)
by Linda Beale Tax evaders (and those who aide them), not regulatory complexities, cause tax evasion The July 24 New York Times Magazine carries an article by Adam D entitled My Big Fat Belizean, Singaporean Bank Account. The author shows how easy it was for him to establish a secret offshore bank account that would […]
I came up with this around ten years ago to put a point on the logical trap Social Security privatizers (often unwittingly) find themselves in. It goes like this: If Privatization is Necessary, it Won’t be Possible If Privatization is Possible, it Won’t be Necessary To understand the trap we need to do some parsing […]
The post-New Deal Republican party has delivered endless strings of deficits and debt. That is their historic legacy to America, the bare fact on the ground that unfortunately requires endless repetition to impart the reality, and counter the tea-party fantasy of fiscally irresponsible Democrats.Also required is a catchy moniker that encapsulates that reality: Red-Ink Republicans […]
Andrew Sullivan reviews the book Red Ink. Here are some shocking facts that I learned from “Red Ink: Inside the High-Stakes Politics of the Federal Budget. Where the Trillions Come From, Where They Go, and Why Inaction Imperils Our Future.” An amazing 64 percent of the 4.4 million employees on the federal payroll are either […]