Relevant and even prescient commentary on news, politics and the economy.

Why Does Hillary Clinton Think We Want Elizabeth Warren to Be Vulnerable?

Hillary Clinton says women are “held to a totally different standard” in politics — and that it’s been that way since she first ran for office. “You’re expected to be both strong and vulnerable at the same time,” Clinton said in BuzzFeed’s “Another Round” podcast that was published online Sunday. “That’s not easy to do.” The Democratic […]

Yves Smith has been all over the Standard Chartered story

Yves Smith has been all over the Standard Chartered story: Reuters Runs Interference for Elite Corruption, Scrubs Article That Shows How Banks Get Out of Jail Free – 08/09/2012 – Yves Smith Standard Chartered Makes Empty Threat to Sue New York Regulator Over Iran Money Laundering – 08/09/2012 – Yves Smith NYS Order on Standard […]

Tax evaders (and those who aide them), not regulatory complexities, cause tax evasion

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 […]

The Blog Post to End All Blog Posts: 1 of 2

On this Armistice Veteran’s Day, let’s try to do a counterfactual and Make Brad DeLong Happy.* Let’s assume that the Gramm-Leach-Bliley—commonly referred to, incorrectly, as “the repeal of Glass_Steagall”—is A Good Thing. Well, I won’t go that far. An Inevitable Thing. [Many sentences about Larry Summers omitted here.] After all, anyone who was paying attention […]

Guest post: Frequently Maligned Class Action Lawsuits Actually Deter Financial Wrongdoing

By Jeff McCord is a former US Senate staffer, Securities Investor Protection Corp (SIPC) executive and has been a free-lance journalist for Dow Jones publications. His academic background in economics includes post-graduate work at the London School of Economics and George Washington University. FREQUENTLY MALIGNED CLASS ACTION LAWSUITS ACTUALLY DETER FINANCIAL WRONGDOING, STUDY FINDS  Though […]

Obama and Regulatory Uncertainty

One of the current Republican talking point is that a major reason that firms are not hiring is regulatory uncertainty. Of course there is little or no evidence to support this argument and virtually every poll of business and especially small business shows that fear of regulation is a very minor factor in current business […]

Health Care Thoughts: Regulations Gone Wild

As Rusty presents his short ‘thoughts’ on the administrative end of the national healthcare reform process, I noticed some readers have taken the problems he notes as indicative that the whole process is flawed and destructive. I do believe that is a wrong tack to take and will not serve to learn more of what […]

Is the House Trying to Encourage Criminal Activity?

I left out of the last post why David Vitter (claims) he is blocking the two SEC nominees: Sen. David Vitter (R., La.) will block two nominees to the Securities and Exchange Commission until the agency announces whether victims of R. Allen Stanford’s alleged Ponzi scheme are owed compensation from the Securities Investor Protection Corp….“We’ve […]

Get the Lead Out II

There is an absolutely serious hypothesis that the sharp drop in violent crime in the USA since the early 1990s is due to the EPA and, in particular, to the shift from leaded to unleaded gasoline roughly two decades earlier. Kevin Drum notes that James Q. Wilson ascribes about half of the total decline to […]

ABA Tax Section Report on the Economic Substance Doctrine

by Linda Beale ABA Tax Section Report on the Economic Substance Doctrinecrossposted with Ataxingmatter The ABA Tax Section put together a large working group to write a report on the newly codified economic substance provision–Download ABA Economic Substance. Comments on Notice 2010-62. The working group was led by several people, including Michael Desmond, who just […]