Fri 2010-10-08 21:53 EDT

MERS 101

MERS - Mortgage Electronic Registration Inc. - holds approximately 60 million American mortgages and is a Delaware corporation whose sole shareholder is Mers Corp. MersCorp and its specified members have agreed to include the MERS corporate name on any mortgage that was executed in conjunction with any mortgage loan made by any member of MersCorp...Thus in place of the original lender being named as the mortgagee on the mortgage that is supposed to secure their loan, MERS is named as the ``nominee'' for the lender who actually loaned the money to the borrower. In other words MERS is really nothing more than a name that is used on the mortgage instrument in place of the actual lender. MERS' primary function, therefore, is to act as a document custodian. MERS was created solely to simplify the process of transferring mortgages by avoiding the need to re-record liens -- and pay county recorder filing fees -- each time a loan is assigned. Instead, servicer's record loans only once and MERS' electronic system monitors transfers and facilitates the trading of notes...MersCorp was created in the early 1990's by the former C.E.O.'s of Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, Indy Mac, Countrywide, Stewart Title Insurance and the American Land Title Association... MERS, as has clearly been proven in many civil cases, does not hold any promissory notes of any kind. A party must have possession of a promissory note in order to have standing to enforce and/or otherwise collect a debt that is owed to another party. Given this clear-cut legal definition, MERS does not have legal standing to enforce or collect on the over 60 million mortgages it controls and no member of MERS has any standing in an American civil court. MERS has been taken to civil courts across the country and charged with a lack of standing in reposession issues. When the mortgage debacle initially, and inevitably, began, MERS always routinely brought actions against defaulting mortgage holders purporting to represent the owners of the defaulted mortgages but once the courts discovered that MERS was only a front organization that did not hold any deed nor was aware of who or what agencies might hold a deed, they have routinely been denied in their attempts to force foreclosure. In the past, persons alleging they were officials of MERS in foreclosure motions, purported to be the holders of the mortgage, when, in fact, they not only were not the holder of the mortgage but, under a court order, could not produce the identity of the actual holder. These so-called MERS officers have usually been just employees of entities who are servicing the loan for the actual lender. MERS, it is now widely acknowledged by the courts, has no legal right to foreclose or otherwise collect debt which are evidenced by promissory notes held by someone else...

MERS 101.

Fri 2010-10-08 20:51 EDT

Top 20 Stocks With Huge Insider Selling - TheStreet

By Stockpickr Staff

You would think that after a huge stock market rally in September, corporate insiders would be optimistic and happy to hold on to their shares, expecting even more gains to come. Instead, corporate insiders are dumping stock in droves...The selling is so big that it equals $2,341 of insider selling for every dollar of buying...The total amount of insider buying for this reporting period was $177,064, vs. an unbelievable total selling of $414 million...

Huge Insider Selling; thestreet; Top 20 Stocks.

Minyanville Wed 2010-09-29 09:08 EDT

Excerpt From "Traders, Guns & Money" (Part 3)

Satyajit Das

Minyanville Professor Satyajit Das' book "Traders Guns & Money" is a wickedly comic exposé of the culture games and pure deceptions played out every day in trading rooms around the world. And played out with other people's money. Das is an international expert on financial derivatives and has more than 30 years of experience in the financial markets. Having worked on both the sell side and buy side for such banks as the Commonwealth Bank of Australia Citicorp Investment Bank Merrill Lynch and the TNT Group he now acts as a consultant advising banks and corporations and presenting

excerpts; gun; Minyanville; money; Part 3; Traders.

Sat 2010-09-25 11:02 EDT

Where is the World Economy Headed?

Michael Hudson

...financial maneuvering and debt leverage play the role that military conquest did in times past. Its aim is still to control land, basic infrastructure and the economic surplus -- and also to gain control of national savings, commercial banking and central bank policy...Indebted ``host economies'' are in a similar position to that of defeated countries. Their economic surplus is transferred abroad financially, while locally, debtors lose sovereignty over their own financial, economic and tax policy. Public infrastructure is sold off to foreign buyers, on credit and therefore paying interest and fees that are expensed as tax-deductible and paid to foreigners. The Washington Consensus applauds this pro-rentier policy. Its neoliberal ideology holds that the most efficient path to wealth is to shift economic planning out of the hands of government into those of bankers and money managers in charge of privatizing and financializing the economy. Almost without anyone noticing, this view is replacing the classical law of nations based on the idea of sovereignty over debt and financial policy, tariff and tax policy...Bankers in the North look upon any economic surplus -- real estate rent, corporate cash flow or even the government's taxing power or ability to sell off public enterprises -- as a source of revenue to pay interest on debts...The original liberals -- from Adam Smith and the Physiocrats through John Stuart Mill and even Winston Churchill -- urged that the tax system be based on the economic rent of land so as to keep down the price of housing (and hence labor's cost of living). The Progressive Era followed this principle by aiming to keep natural monopolies such as transportation, communication and even banks (or at least, free credit creation) in the public domain. But the post-1980 world has encouraged private owners to buy them on credit and extract economic rent, thereby shifting the tax burden onto labor, industry and agriculture -- while concentrating wealth, first on credit and then via the enormous recent public bailouts of this failed financial debt pyramiding and deregulation...At issue is the concept of free markets. Are they to be free from monopoly and special privilege, or free for the occupying financial invaders and speculators?...

World Economy Headed.

naked capitalism Mon 2010-09-20 09:24 EDT

Theoclassical Law and Economics Makes the Law an Ass

William Black

...The Supreme Court's Citizens United decision allows businesses to make unlimited political contributions to judges and politicians. When judges are elected, the need for these contributions inherently turns judges into politicians. Sympathetic judges are corrupt businesses' most valuable allies. Corporations and their senior officials can commit civil or criminal wrongs with impunity if their case is assigned to a friendly judge...Yves noted that the Chamber of Commerce was leading the effort to elect CEO-friendly judges...The Chamber distributed a plan for a hostile takeover of university departments of economics and finance (and the courts and the media) proposed by Lewis Powell (the soon to be Supreme Court Justice). Extremely conservative ``law and economics'' proved to be central to this effort. The law and economics movement began as a non-ideological approach to explaining and aiding judicial decision-making. The scholars leading the movement had diverse views. The Olin Foundation transformed law and economics into an ultra ideological field dominated almost exclusively by passionate opponents of government ``interference'' in ``free enterprise.'' Olin specialized in creating well-funded positions in academia for scholars that had an ``Austrian'' approach to economics...Law and economics has, for over two decades, been dominated by theoclassical economic dogmas that have proved false...There are now tens of thousands of law and economics graduates that have taken a class in theoclassical law and economics. They were taught that theoclassical economic assertions (often falsified decades ago) were objective facts devoid of ideological content. They have been taught that economics has proven that regulation is unnecessary, hopeless, and harmful...

ass; economics make; Law; naked capitalism; Theoclassical Law.

Sat 2010-09-11 23:31 EDT

Excerpt From "Traders, Guns & Money" (Part 1)

Satyajit Das

Minyanville Professor Satyajit Das' "Traders, Guns & Money" is a wickedly comic exposé of the culture, games, and pure deceptions played out every day in trading rooms around the world. And played out with other people's money. Das is an international expert on financial derivatives and has more than 30 years of experience in the financial markets. Having worked on both the sell side and buy side for such banks as the Commonwealth Bank of Australia, Citicorp Investment Bank, Merrill Lynch, and the TNT Group, he now acts as a consultant advising banks and corporations and presenting seminars on derivatives throughout the world...

excerpts; gun; money; Part 1; Traders.

Thu 2010-08-19 16:04 EDT

The AIG Bailout Scandal

William Greider

The government's $182 billion bailout of insurance giant AIG should be seen as the Rosetta Stone for understanding the financial crisis and its costly aftermath. The story of American International Group explains the larger catastrophe not because this was the biggest corporate bailout in history but because AIG's collapse and subsequent rescue involved nearly all the critical elements, including delusion and deception. These financial dealings are monstrously complicated, but this account focuses on something mere mortals can understand--moral confusion in high places, and the failure of governing institutions to fulfill their obligations to the public. Three governmental investigative bodies have now pored through the AIG wreckage and turned up disturbing facts--the House Committee on Oversight and Reform; the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission, which will make its report at year's end; and the Congressional Oversight Panel (COP), which issued its report on AIG in June. The five-member COP, chaired by Harvard professor Elizabeth Warren, has produced the most devastating and comprehensive account so far. Unanimously adopted by its bipartisan members, it provides alarming insights that should be fodder for the larger debate many citizens long to hear--why Washington rushed to forgive the very interests that produced this mess, while innocent others were made to suffer the consequences. The Congressional panel's critique helps explain why bankers and their Washington allies do not want Elizabeth Warren to chair the new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau...

AIG bailout scandal.

Phil's Favorites - By Ilene Thu 2010-08-19 15:58 EDT

Time for a New, New Deal?

Phil of Phil's Stock World

...The Big Lie being told by the right is that we can solve our problems by cutting spending and (ROFL) lowering taxes...Of course, let's keep in mind that the $1.5Tn the government spends directly employs 2.7M people and millions more indirectly so, for every person you cut, make sure you add back $20,000 a year for unemployment benefits and administration (or are we going to throw them all on the street?)...the real glove-across-your-face insult to your intelligence comes when they try to tell you that giving tax breaks to the rich and to corporations will help...US Corporations only paid a grand total of $138Bn in taxes in 2009 (6.5% of all taxes collected)...US Corporations have done nothing but outsource America's future for decades and it is time for the bottom 99% of the income earners (those earning less than $250,000 a year) to wake up and smell the class warfare that is being waged against them. How can we even begin to entertain the idea of cutting government and cutting government spending when the sum total contribution of Big Business America represents a rounding error in our national budget?...When private business fails to expand, when the budgets cannot be balanced because 25% of the population is unable to make income tax contributions due to loss of jobs and homes -- then a wise man knows when it is time to step in and let the Government fill the void. Not with more bailouts to the rich who, like Reagan's deficit ``are big enough to care for themselves'' but with bold programs that invest in the future of this country and utilize the skills and labor of this country and make America strong and independent...

Ilene; new; new deal; Phil's Favorites; Time.

Mon 2010-08-16 12:56 EDT

Help:How to research U.S. corporations - SourceWatch

This Guide, consisting of this main article and three more in-depth sub-articles, is designed to help researchers and activists gather essential information on any type of U.S.-based company, whether small or large, privately held or publicly traded. The resources listed here are all, in one way or another, part of the public record. The first part covers leading sources of basic information on companies of all kinds. The second part focuses on information sources relating to the key relationships every company must have in order to function. The final part shows you how to gather information about a company's "social responsibility" record. Together, these sections will help you find all the basic information needed to support efforts to get companies to do the right thing. Happy hunting!...

help; research U.S. corporations; SourceWatch.

Sat 2010-08-07 19:56 EDT

Why founding a three-person startup with zero revenue is better than working for Goldman Sachs. | AdGrok

I joined Goldman Sachs in 2005, after five flailing years in a physics Ph.D. program at Berkeley...I was a pricing quant on the Goldman Sachs corporate credit trading desk...Giving sophisticated models and fast computers to traders is like giving handguns and tequila to teenage boys. Only complete mayhem can result (and as we saw recently, complete mayhem did result)....The quants were there to make sure the guns were loaded, but also to make sure the traders didn't shoot themselves in the foot...

AdGrok; better; Found; Goldman Sachs; person startup; working; zero revenue.

Sat 2010-08-07 19:40 EDT

The biggest lie about U.S. companies

Brett Arends' ROI - MarketWatch

You may have heard recently that U.S. companies have emerged from the financial crisis in robust health, that they've paid down their debts, rebuilt their balance sheets and are sitting on growing piles of cash they are ready to invest in the economy...It's a crock...their debts have been rising, not falling. By some measures, they are now more leveraged than at any time since the Great Depression...gross domestic debts of nonfinancial corporations now amount to 50% of GDP. That's a postwar record...net leverage is nearly 50% of corporate net worth, a modern record...

biggest lie; U.S. companies.

PRAGMATIC CAPITALISM Thu 2010-08-05 19:52 EDT

REGARDING THOSE ``STRONG'' CORPORATE BALANCE SHEETS

TPC

Brett Arends had an excellent piece on MarketWatch yesterday regarding the true state of US corporations...the total debts of these companies has...skyrocketed...corporations are even worse off today (in terms of debt levels) than they were when the crisis began...It's not just the consumer and banking sectors that remain overly indebted and poorly positioned in the long-run. The period of de-leveraging (balance sheet recession) is likely far from over and the continuation of the private sector weakness likely to continue until the problem of debt is accepted and dealt with...Private sector demand for debt is likely to remain very tepid and this will exacerbate the risk of deflation and economic weakness.

corporate balance sheets; PRAGMATIC CAPITALISM; strong.

Credit Writedowns Fri 2010-07-30 15:30 EDT

Subversive Economists

The economic research staff at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York has been busy. Last week we wrote about the New York Fed's Staff Report No. 458 , which discussed the shadow banking system in the United States. Today we refer to two other new reports: Staff Report No. 457 , entitled ``Resolving Troubled Systemically Important Cross-Border Financial Institutions: Is a New Corporate Organizational Form Required?'', and Staff Report No. 463 , ``The Central-Bank Balance Sheet as an Instrument of Monetary Policy.'' After reviewing them, we are left to conclude that these three papers demonstrate that the research staff at the New York Fed is perhaps the most subversive group of working economists currently on the government payroll....The combination of these three papers seems to suggest that the Federal Reserve is conducting a serious re-evaluation of its traditional role in the new financial landscape. No. 458 acknowledges that the shadow banking system is huge, but largely beyond the regulatory reach--and backstopping help--of the Fed. No. 457 suggests that the complexity of a large, modern financial institution is not only a challenge for managers, but is also a challenge for regulators. It is a cri de coeur for simplicity. And No. 463 breaks new ground by explicitly including central bank balance sheet management as a part of the monetary policy model...

credit writedowns; Subversive Economists.

Wed 2010-07-21 11:01 EDT

AlterNet: Are Our Bosses Becoming Meaner?

Sam Pizzigati

...Sreedhari Desai, Arthur Brief, and Jennifer George...have been exploring the link between executive pay and ``meanness.''...they may have shifted executive pay scholarly research in a sobering new direction, with much less attention on ``performance'' and much more on raw naked power...``exaggerated power asymmetry'' can make people with power mean to people without. Contemporary corporate workplaces, the three researchers continue, regularly display this ``exaggerated power asymmetry.'' And that asymmetry, they argue, is intensifying as pay gaps between CEOs and their workers have widened...

AlterNet; Bosses Becoming Meaner.

Mon 2010-07-19 16:30 EDT

US gripped with offshore economy

Jobs are becoming scarcer and scarcer particularly in the United States. Is it cyclical or is it structural? Is it something that America has completely turned its back on in a way that could potentially be a factor for decades going forward? Max Keiser discusses this issue with Dr. Paul Craig Roberts...Keiser: Andy Grove, the co-founder of Intel has just written an opinion piece for Bloomberg that has totally vindicated your long held argument against outsourcing American jobs...What is left in the arsenal to fight for jobs? Roberts:Nothing, one of the reasons they like offshoring is to destroy the unions so that's one of the reasons free market economists and corporations are so keen on offshoring, it destroys the unions...the only jobs that have been created in the 21st century in America are domestic service jobs like waiters, bartenders, hospital orderlies, construction workers, real estate, they are continuing to lose manufacture jobs, and not creating jobs for scientists and engineers and this has now been going on for a decade...What the US is going through is a process of disdevelopment of becoming an undeveloped economy; it's the opposite of economic development going on in the US...

grip; Offshored Economy.

naked capitalism Fri 2010-07-16 16:15 EDT

What is Simon Johnson Smoking?

Simon Johnson...incorrectly celebrates a toothless provision in the Dodd-Frank bill as being tantamount to an anti-trust act for too big to fail banks...If we believed this bill was meaningful, action be taken against these banks immediately upon signing. Odds of that happening? Zero...The problem is it not merely the size of these firms, but the fact that they control infrastructure that is deemed critical to modern commerce. I'll get into specifics in short order, but in some cases the firm owns critical plumbing outright; in other cases, it is so tightly networked to other firms that mucking with it very much runs the risk of taking down the rest of the grid...Citi runs a big corporate cash management/reporting system called GTS...And no one is going to dare tamper with JP Morgan's clearing business...The problem is that it would take a radical restructuring of the very biggest banks, the critically placed dealer firms, and the most important payment and clearing operations to make a real dent in systemic risk. The officialdom the political lacked the will to do so at the peak of the crisis, and there is no basis for fantasizing that it will suddenly develop more nerve now.

naked capitalism; Simon Johnson Smoking.

Minyanville Fri 2010-07-16 14:43 EDT

Intel Shows the 'Financialization' of Corporate America

Peter Atwater

To quote the company's own earnings headline: "Intel Reports Best Quarter Ever."While not taking anything away from the company's ability to deliver I'd strongly encourage readers to look at Intel's (INTC) balance sheet. To these eyes it's filled with financial assets...few have paid attention to what I term the "financialization" of corporate balance sheets, in which productive manufacturing assets have been increasingly replaced by various financial instruments, derivatives, and goodwill...because so much of corporate balance-sheet space is now a function of credit and market risk, financialization has created much tighter correlations to financial institutions than many currently think...And with corporate balance sheets more and more laden with financial instruments, it isn't just going to be product innovation that drives what earnings are ahead for companies like Intel.

Corporate America; Financial; Intel shows; Minyanville.

billy blog Fri 2010-07-02 18:17 EDT

A total lack of leadership

Bill Mitchell

Another G20 talkfest has ended in Toronto and the final communique suggests that the IMF is now back in charge...The line now being pushed is, as always, structural reform of product and labour markets -- which you read as deregulation and erosion of worker entitlements...They buy, without question the notion that ``(s)ound fiscal finances are essential to sustain recovery, provide flexibility to respond to new shocks, ensure the capacity to meet the challenges of aging populations, and avoid leaving future generations with a legacy of deficits and debt.'' But what constitutes ``sound fiscal finances'' is not spelt out. It is all fudged around what the bond markets will tolerate. But what the bond traders think is a reasonable outcome for their narrow vested interests is unlikely to be remotely what is in the best interests of the overall populace...A sovereign government is never revenue constrained because it is the monopoly issuer of the currency and so the bond markets are really superfluous to its fiscal operations. What the bond markets think should never be considered. They are after all the recipients of corporate welfare on a large scale and should stand in line as the handouts are being considered. They are mendicants. It is far more important that government get people back into jobs as quickly as possible and when they have achieved high employment levels then they might want to conclude the fiscal position is ``sound''...The G20 statement is full of erroneous claims that budget surpluses ``boost national savings'' when in fact they reduce national saving by squeezing the spending (and income generating capacity) of the private sector -- unless there are very strong net export offsets...The on-going deflationary impact on demand that persistently high unemployment imposes is usually underestimated by the conservatives...

Billy Blog; leadership; total lack.

Sat 2010-05-22 19:56 EDT

36,000 firms at high risk of collapse: Dun & Bradstreet - Business news, business advice and information for Australian SMEs | SmartCompany

James Thomson

Credit agency Dun & Bradstreet has delivered a blunt warning to SMEs about the patchy state of the economic recovery, warning it downgraded the risk profiles of a staggering 80,000 firms during the March quarter -- a greater number of firms than were downgraded during the first quarter of 2009. D&B now has 36,000 firms rated as being at "high risk" failure over the next 12 months, with the majority of those being smaller and young firms (less than four years of operation). D&B's director of corporate affairs Damian Karmelich, says the spike in risk downgrades is particularly worrying when compared to last year, when the economy was performing much worse...

000 firms; 36; Australian SMEs; Bradstreet; business advice; Business news; Collapse; dun; high-risk; inform; SmartCompany.

The Wall Street Examiner Sun 2010-05-09 10:02 EDT

The Minsky Cruise (part 3, Business)

...While non-financial domestic corporate profits have shrunk from a Korean War inspired 11% of GDP to average around 5% of GDP since 1970, the financial sector's profits have been growing...The love affair with finance and disdain for what, during the tech boom, we called the "bricks and mortar" industry- and admittedly a failure, by some in those industries, to accept the transition to maturity- has inspired, for want of a better word, envy in the non-financial sector. While financial sector stocks seem to levitate on their own, non-financial sector stocks, if intent can be inferred from behavior, are believed to require a boost. I suspect the use of options as payment has something to do with this as well...Additionally, the non-financial sector, since the mid-80s has- a true sign of envy- opted to copy finance, by breaking into that field. GE Capital and GMAC Financial are two prominent examples...To paraphrase Nixon, "we're all Ponzis, now."

business; Minsky Cruise; Part 3; Wall Street Examiner.

Jesse's Café Américain Sun 2010-05-09 08:30 EDT

Guest Post: The Perils of Credit Money Systems Managed by Private Corporations

Jesse

...The paper system being founded on public confidence and having of itself no intrinsic value, is liable to great and sudden fluctuations, thereby rendering property insecure and the wages of labor unsteady and uncertain.The corporations which create the paper money cannot be relied upon to keep the circulating medium uniform in amount. In times of prosperity, when confidence is high, they are tempted by the prospect of gain or by the influence of those who hope to profit by it to extend their issues of paper beyond the bounds of discretion and the reasonable demands of business. And when these issues have been pushed on from day to day until the public confidence is at length shaken, then a reaction takes place, and they immediately withdraw the credits they have given; suddenly curtail their issues; and produce an unexpected and ruinous contraction of the circulating medium which is felt by the whole community. The banks, by this means, save themselves, and the mischievous consequences of their imprudence or cupidity are visited upon the public. Nor does the evil stop here. These ebbs and flows in the currency and these indiscreet extensions of credit naturally engender a spirit of speculation injurious to the habits and character of the people...Recent events have proved that the paper money system of this country may be used as an engine to undermine your free institutions; and that those who desire to engross all power in the hands of the few and to govern by corruption or force are aware of its power and prepared to employ it... Andrew Jackson, Farewell Address, March 4, 1837

Credit Money Systems Managed; Guest Post; Jesse's Café Américain; peril; private corporations.

Jesse's Café Américain Wed 2010-05-05 16:22 EDT

Market Manipulation, Systemic Risk and Fraud, Pure and Simple, And It Continues Today

Jesse

This article by the Financial Times should remove any doubt in anyone's mind that Goldman Sachs was willfully selling fraudulent financial instruments. It appears that they were working in conjunction with Ratings Agencies, Mortgage Origination Firms, and Hedge Funds to cheat investors...Tom Montag, then a senior Goldman executive and now head of corporate and investment banking at Bank of America, was quoted as describing the deal in an e-mail as follows: ``Boy that timeberwof (sic) was one shi**y (sic) deal,'' according to the Senate subcommittee...Within five months of issuance, Timberwolf lost 80 per cent of its value...

continued; fraud; Jesse's Café Américain; Market Manipulation; Pure; simple; systemic risk.

Sat 2010-04-24 08:59 EDT

Rent-A-Front: New Group Wages Stealth Battle Against Wall Street Reform | TPMMuckraker

TPM Media

...every indication is that Stop Too Big To Fail is an astroturf operation funded by corporate interests to give the appearance of grassroots opposition to reform..."These guys made the KGB look like amateurs, and I used to work in Russia quite a lot," says Simon Johnson, a former chief economist at the IMF, now at MIT, who is a prominent advocate of breaking up the big banks...the group pays lip service to the idea of breaking up the big banks while at the same time adopting "bailout fund" rhetoric used by Republicans, all the while devoting its resources to trying to kill financial reform altogether...Stop Too Big To Fail co-founder Bob Johnson...is president of Consumers for Competitive Choice (C4CC), which runs Stop Too Big To Fail...Before C4CC was Consumers for Competitive Choice it was Consumers for Cable Choice. That group was funded by big telecoms like Verizon and fought to deregulate the cable industry...the man who reached out to economist Simon Johnson about joining the Stop Too Big To Fail call was Oliver Wolf, a director with the DCI Group. DCI is the Washington public affairs firm that specializes in astroturf efforts and has worked for everyone from the Burmese junta to the tobacco industry.

front; New Group Wages Stealth Battle; renting; TPMmuckraker; Wall Street reforms.

naked capitalism Wed 2010-04-07 19:38 EDT

Have Bloggers ``Won''? And Is That a Bad Thing?

...[MSM difficulties] Richard Kline: ...Most of the MSM is owned by large corporations which abhor any serious questioning of the status quo. Most of the MSM decided a generation ago to pitch their product at the soft middle of the demographic curve; that's `dumb down' to those ow you who need a scorecard. Most of the MSM went to recent journalism school and bought into the idea of false `balancing' which has castrated their editorial opinion in favor of whoever is driving debate by telling the latest Big Lie. Then there is the problem of self-interested 'sources,' hardly new, and manageable when journalists were allowed to have an opinion themselves, but deleterious when they are supposed to be `neutral,' i.e. readily maniplulatible. Then there is the issue that too many journalists have decided to become propagandists for the status quo of the moment, making their reportage the worst kind of bandwagon swillage. Then too, MSM has responded, or rather _not_ responded to the emergence of new kinds of media spreading current information reportage: just when the MSM needs established `quality brand' to fall back on they find that they gutted the brand to fellate large shareholders and the interests of the same.

bad things; bloggers; naked capitalism; won.

Fri 2010-04-02 10:36 EDT

Archein: Krugman as Failure

...I'd like to direct you to a scathing, sniveling little review, Krugman wrote fifteen years ago on Bill Greider's most excellent "One World Ready or Not". Greider's book documents the ravaging of the American middle-class caused by the processes of corporate globalization. Krugman counters with a ludicrous little tale about hot dogs, and then proceeds to defend it pushing all the pop-economic theory of the day, by so doing, an economist was bestowed with money and pats on the head from the mega-corporate boardrooms, you know, like the money Paul was paid working for Enron. According to the Nobel Laureate, replacing good paying steel jobs with McDonald's jobs was just great. Now today, fifteen years later, Mr. Krugman's contradicting what he's been saying his entire career, while Greider, no back page of the NYT for him, was right along...Mr. Krugman represents the most serious problem this republic currently faces, power has lost all accountability. From the top of government, to media, to finance, to our large corporations, we've seen spectacular failure, and no one held accountable. It's a lot bigger problem than the fact Paul Krugman is really a very silly man.

Archein; failure; Krugman.