"I disagree with you, but I'm pretty sure you're not Hitler." – Jon Stewart
Posted in Blog Post on Feb 1st, 2010
My personal favorite Nobel Prize winning economist has a take on why Canada came out of the recent banking disaster relatively unscathed, while the US economy and financial institutions took a major beat down. It all comes back to the regulatory environment. The US decided, or rather the captains of industry in banking and a [...]
Posted in Blog Post on Jan 14th, 2010
Obama announces a “financial responsibility tax” to impact large financial firms that benefited from TARP*. This is to remain in place until all TARP money is re-paid and internal practices regarding risk taking and ridiculous compensation and bonuses are changed. That may strikes the right note of populist anger. I’m not sure that it will [...]
Posted in Blog Post on Jan 13th, 2010
This is galling. Getting your wealth from daddy: capitalist. Getting your Congressional seat from daddy: capitalist. Being a VP at Merrill Lynch and benefiting from billions in government bailout money: capitalist. Paying bloated bailouts because they did so well: capitalist. Suggesting that executive bonuses and pay be limited in companies that brought us to the [...]
Posted in Blog Post on Dec 4th, 2009
Mark Thoma passes along an article that points to a third way of dealing with stimulating the economy and doesn’t raise the deficit: As the latest job figures demonstrate, the economies of the United States, the euro area, Japan, and the United Kingdom are suffering from historically high rates of unemployment. In all four economies, [...]
Posted in Blog Post on Nov 3rd, 2009
Krugman is right more often than his colleagues in economics. There’s a reason he’s a Nobel prize winner in economics. The good news is that the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, a k a the Obama stimulus plan, is working just about the way textbook macroeconomics said it would. But that’s also the bad news [...]
Posted in Blog Post on Oct 29th, 2009
Sadly, for fat fools like Rush Limbaugh cheering for the President’s polices to fail, comes this bit of terrible news: GDP Expanded 3.5% in 3rd Quarter, WSJ: The economy expanded in the third quarter after shrinking for four consecutive quarters, likely marking an end to the worst recession since World War II. But the recovery [...]
Posted in Blog Post on Jul 17th, 2009
I’m not sure what the answer is, but what we’ve been doing doesn’t seem to work for anyone, except maybe Goldman Sachs. The sector officially labeled “securities, commodity contracts and investments” has grown especially fast, from only 0.3 percent of G.D.P. in the late 1970s to 1.7 percent of G.D.P. in 2007. Such growth would [...]
Posted in Blog Post on Jun 2nd, 2009
Florida ranks 48th in state GDP growth. In case anyone around here didn’t know, Florida has really been hard hit by the recession. Only Alaska and Delaware fared worse last year.
Posted in Blog Post on May 5th, 2009
via A View From Your Recession | The Daily Dish | By Andrew Sullivan. One of Sullivan’s readers captures the angst of many in the middle class: …We’ve also been helping out my wife’s parents quite a bit. Her father’s contracting work completely dried up a year ago and they are facing destitution having used [...]
Posted in Blog Post on May 4th, 2009
So they want to prevent companies and wealthy individuals from sheltering assets offshore? Let the GOP wailing begin! We are sure to see, any moment now, complaints that this is a tax increase. No kidding, huh? They’re not paying taxes on income now so if they do in the future, of course it will increase [...]
Posted in Blog Post on Apr 29th, 2009
Economist’s View: The Bad News Continues…. 6.1% contraction in Q1, wow that exceeds most of the expectations and not in a good way. Seems likw we’re going to drag along the bottom a while before things pick-up and employment improves.
Posted in Blog Post on Apr 28th, 2009
Why would anyone think these guys are worth a tenth of what they’re being paid? via How obscene Wall Street salaries are proof of market failure – How the World Works – Salon.com. Who didn’t feel their hackles rise at the mere sight of the headline in the Sunday New York Times business section, “After [...]
Posted in Blog Post on Apr 14th, 2009
I found these links via Digby: Eating our Seed Corn: How the Financial Industry Managed to Extract Equity from Just About Everybody | The Agonist. The #Money Thing | Stirling Newberry’s blog I found them both depressing. Not so much for me but for my 20 month old daughter. Stirling Newberry takes a larger cross-national [...]
Posted in Blog Post on Mar 30th, 2009
Obama Says No to More Auto Industry Bailout Money | Crooks and Liars. My favorite suburban guerilla captures my feelings of disgust at the way this has been handled. Screw working class people but dole out trillions, yes trillions, to greedy multi-millionares. After all they must be more deserving, they’re rich aren’t they?
Posted in Blog Post on Mar 24th, 2009
Stocks Surge On Bank Plan, Rise In Home Sales – NPR.org Stock markets took a big upward swing Monday on news of the Fed’s and the Treasury’s plans to encourage private investors to buy up to $2 trillion in real estate assets from banks. Also real estate showed improvement, according to the Washington Post, with [...]
Posted in Blog Post on Feb 12th, 2009
The press has simply been sppon fed the GOP narrative on the stimulus package. The Obama team needs to use this against the various GOP talking heads that appear on TV talking about how tax cuts are the best approach. Is Obama’s Tax Cut the Biggest in History? – Steven Waldman. The Democrats have been [...]
Posted in Blog Post on Feb 10th, 2009
Zero Hedge: How The World Almost Came To An End At 2PM On September 18. We were truly on the verge of complete financial/banking collapse. I wonder what would have risen from the ashes had the run on money markets continued. In watching the debate over the stimulus bill I can’t help but think that [...]
Posted in Blog Post on Feb 10th, 2009
Ignorance is bliss – Paul Krugman Blog – NYTimes.com. I’m with Krugman, this is vile. Drug and medical device makers want to remove $1.1 billion from the stimulus bill that would be spent to compare medical treatments. I would think that if they had nothing to fear from the public knowing which treatments were best [...]
Posted in Blog Post on Feb 2nd, 2009
Op-Ed Columnist – Herbert Hoover Lives – NYTimes.com. Frank Rich on the financial crisis, the stimulus bill and the “patriots” in the GOP: The crisis is at least as grave as the one that confronted us — and, for a time, united us — after 9/11. Which is why the antics among Republicans on Capitol [...]
Posted in Blog Post on Jan 31st, 2009
House Republicans “delighted” and “elated” and “celebrating” over their zero votes to save the economy. It’s about the economy stupid. The GOP has no interest in the good of the nation or the economy. They need to be punished for this at the ballot box (again). The only economists that agree that tax cuts are [...]
Date: 12/04/2005