RollingStone.com: Matt Taibbi | Taibblog Thu 2010-09-23 09:37 EDT

Bob Rubin Cuddles

Matt Taibbi

...No man's behavior looks attractive when he's cheating on his wife, but this little tell-all by a woman who had a sort-of fling with former Goldman chief and Treasury Secretary Bob Rubin is more than unusually embarrassing...The most disgusting (and revealing) part of the story is, to me, this part of Iris Mack's narrative... A multi-multi-millionaire giving a homeless guy a dollar on the way to the Ritz...if that isn't the perfect metaphor for the modern ``Third Way'' Democratic Party, I don't know what is...Bob Rubin's main job at Citi was to hang around and be available for his political connections. His job, as I understand it, was a sort of permanent, ongoing bribe...

Bob Rubin cuddle; com; Matt Taibbi; rollingstone; Taibblog.

naked capitalism Fri 2010-09-17 18:52 EDT

Why Do We Keep Indulging the Fiction That Banks Are Private Enterprises?

... Big finance has an unlimited credit line with governments around the globe. ``Most subsidized industry in the world'' is inadequate to describe this relationship. Banks are now in the permanent role of looters, as described in the classic Akerlof/Romer paper. They run highly leveraged operations, extract compensation based on questionable accounting and officially-subsidized risk-taking, and dump their losses on the public at large...The usual narrative, ``privatized gains and socialized losses'' is insufficient to describe the dynamic at work. The banking industry falsely depicts markets, and by extension, its incumbents as a bastion of capitalism. The blatant manipulations of the equity markets shows that financial activity, which used to be recognized as valuable because it supported commercial activity, is whenever possible being subverted to industry rent-seeking. And worse, these activities are state supported...banks can no longer meaningfully be called private enterprises, yet no one in the media will challenge this fiction...

bank; fiction; Keep Indulging; naked capitalism; private enterprise.

The Full Feed from HuffingtonPost.com Sat 2010-05-22 21:19 EDT

Navigating the Jobs Crisis: Time for a New 'New Deal' Jobs Program

L. Randall Wray

We must use the principles of the New Deal, but create something both broader and permanent: a universal job guarantee available through the thick and thin of the business cycle...

com; full Feeds; HuffingtonPost; job crisis; job program; navigate; new; new deal; Time.

Unqualified Reservations Fri 2009-12-18 10:03 EST

Expiring liquidity facilities: bad plan, Stan

Mencius Moldbug

I predict: serious financial disturbances will occur on or before February 1, 2010. Or soon thereafter...I also have a serious - ie, verifiable - prediction. I predict that before the end of 2010, probably well before the end of 2010, possibly even before the beginning of 2010, the Fed will be forced to renew these facilities or others like them. In other words, I predict that its attempt to kick the liquidity junk will not succeed. In the end, I believe all these "temporary" facilities will become substantively permanent - just like the original LF, deposit insurance.

Bad plans; Expiring liquidity facilities; Stan; Unqualified Reservations.

naked capitalism Wed 2009-11-25 10:14 EST

Ivy Zelman: ``Home prices are going back down''

Edward Harrison of Credit Writedowns

This is a post I wrote overnight about rising delinquencies and shadow housing inventory. I am not convinced house prices in the U.S. are headed higher permanently...The Mortgage Bankers Association is reporting that nearly one in ten households with mortgages are at least one payment behind. That is a record, my friends...Look, the fake recovery is now in full swing. But I expect the recovery to hit a brick wall by 2011, if not earlier. While the proximate cause of my concern is the likelihood of increased taxes and/or reduced spending by the Obama Administration, it is jobs that concern me. See Calculated Risk's post showing the correlation between unemployment and mortgage delinquency and you see the connection. The fact is we have a record number of foreclosures and that is a direct result of rising unemployment. Unemployed people don't have any money, so they don't pay mortgages.

Go; home prices; Ivy Zelman; naked capitalism.

Jesse's Café Américain Fri 2009-11-20 08:01 EST

Krugman Declares "Mission Accomplished," Maginot Line Completed

Jesse

...the key to coming out of a crisis permanently is not how quickly and dramatically one inflates the money supply, or even how long one maintains it, and how many stimulus programs one can create, but rather how quickly and capably a country can reform, can change the underlying structures that caused the problem in the first place. Japan has been doing it slowly because of its embedded kereitsu structure and government bureaucracy supported by a de facto one party system under the LDP. In the 1930's the impetus for reform was overturned by a strict constructionist Supreme Court and an obstructionist Republican Congress. The story of our time might be the perils of regulatory and political capture.

Jesse's Café Américain; Krugman declared; Maginot Line Completed; mission accomplished.

Thu 2009-07-30 00:00 EDT

AlterNet: The Disease of Permanent War

-- by Chris Hedges; ``The embrace by any society of permanent war is a parasite that devours the heart and soul of a nation.''

AlterNet; disease; permanent war.

Tue 2009-06-16 00:00 EDT

Clusterfuck Nation by Jim Kunstler : Strange Days

``he global economy, which was supposed to be a permanent new add-on to the human condition, is sloughing away in big horrid gobs''

Clusterfuck Nation; Jim Kunstler; strange day.

The IRA Analyst Tue 2009-06-16 00:00 EDT

The Institutional Risk Analyst: Zombie Update; Pento on Bernanke's Permanently Expanded Balance Sheet

``This zombie dance party ain't over. No sir.'' Michael Pento: ``Bernanke will be hard-pressed to substantially raise rates to combat inflation once consumer and wholesale prices begin to significantly increase.''

Bernanke's Permanently Expanded Balance Sheet; Institutional Risk Analyst; IRA Analyst; Pento; Zombie Update.

Fri 2008-12-12 00:00 EST

Jesse's Café Américain: Money Supply, Paul Krugman, and the Great Depression

Jesse's Café Américain: Money Supply, Paul Krugman, and the Great Depression; ``Fed made a significant policy error in raising the discount rate in early 1931''; ``we can imagine an outcome in which misbegotten monetary policy results in an oligopoly of corporate interests and an economy that is permanently frozen in a series of de facto monopolies based on central planning, not all that dissimilar to the experience of the Soviet Union prior to its dissolution and some countries in which a hundred or so powerful families control the government and its economy in a state of permanent corruption and malaise.''

Great Depression; Jesse's Café Américain; money supply; Paul Krugman.

Sun 2008-11-23 00:00 EST

Joe Bageant: Sarah Palin is the Future of Conservatism

by Anonymous Political Consultant John Brown; ``In a system, which is entering a period of semi-permanent crisis, to plant oneself or one's party in its political center is to make yourself responsible for a political system which is forever failing, losing legitimacy and eventually its right to rule. In the long run, the future will belong to whichever political force flies the boldest flags, stands credibly far enough from those who will be held accountable for our troubles, and curses the loudest at the coming darkness.''

Conservatism; future; Joe Bageant; Sarah Palin.

Thu 2007-11-01 00:00 EDT

blackagendareport.com

- The Handwriting is On the Wall: It's a Clinton-Obama Ticket in 08, by Bruce Dixon; "For Democratic and Republican wings of America's permanent ruling party, the all-important selection which precedes the election isn't about poll numbers, votes or the citizens that cast them. It's about winning the favor of military contractors, the banking and financial sectors and Big Oil. It's about reassuring insurance and pharmaceutical companies, cozying up to agribusiness, the cable and telecom monopolies, allaying the fears of chambers of commerce, and wooing Hollywood."

blackagendareport; com.