No news. No news about labor, on Labor Day, when unem­ploy­ment is 9-plus per­cent and U-6 unemployment–which counts not only peo­ple with­out work seek­ing full-time employ­ment, but also those who’ve become dis­cour­aged and stopped look­ing as well as those work­ing part-time for eco­nomic reasons–is 16-plus per­cent. Lots of news about Sept. 11, 10 years later....
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At the start of this blog, I pre­dicted that the finan­cial crash would cause the gov­ern­ment to spend huge money bail­ing out the peo­ple who caused it, adding a great deal to the national debt and spark­ing a cri­sis of con­fi­dence in the country’s abil­ity to repay it, which would lead to a pol­icy...
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Steven David­off at the Times’s deal­book comes through with an obvi­ous, 20-years-late obser­va­tion that Wall Street firms’ “rep­u­ta­tions are dying” in the rub­ble of the bust and rev­e­la­tions of ram­pant, sys­tem­atic chicanery. For­tu­nately, we have Yves Smith to put this in a cor­rec­tive con­text. Far from “dying,” invest­ment banks’ rep­u­ta­tions died decades ago amid the...
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CEO Guilty in $3 Billion Fraud" width="80" />

A fed­eral jury on Tues­day found the flam­boy­ant founder and CEO of bank­rupt Florida mort­gage lender Tay­lor Bean and Whitaker guilty of fraud. Lee Farkas appears to be the first CEO con­victed of a crime in the five-year-old mort­gage cri­sis. He faces life in prison at his July sentencing. Farkas, a col­lege dropout, founded Tay­lor...
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As I write this, the count­down to gov­ern­ment shut­down pro­ceeds apace, with Repub­li­cans per­form­ing rhetor­i­cal dou­ble Luntzes to try to pin blame on Democ­rats. Amidst that pathetic kabuki we have what passes for “seri­ous­ness” in the bud­get pro­posal of one Paul Ryan, con­gress­man from Wis­con­sin and chair­man of the House Bud­get Committee. Ryan’s plan, cyn­i­cally...
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Many words have been writ­ten about the alleged fact that “nobody goes to jail”  for the giant theft per­pet­u­ated on us all. But one guy—Taylor Bean and Whitaker  founder Lee Farkas—is now on trial for fraud in Virginia. Accord­ing to tes­ti­mony from just one of the lender’s exec­u­tives who has already pleaded guilty (and–YES!–faces five...
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I keep doing the same basic post over and over, hop­ing some­thing will change. I know what that makes me, so this is one of the last posts I’m going to do in this blog (though you can still find me over here occa­sion­ally). It’s had a rea­son­ably good run, made its point. Time...
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The New York Times has a story Sat­ur­day about com­puter pro­grams that not only read, but ana­lyze mil­lions of doc­u­ments to deter­mine the rela­tion­ships between the folks men­tioned in them and even the writ­ers’ crim­i­nal intent. It’s not news that com­put­ers are reading—and act­ing on—written doc­u­ments. The Ass­hole Class is automat­ing its cash har­vest­ing oper­a­tions...
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The Wash­ing­ton Times reports that a man whose job is find­ing out­side threats to national secu­rity has located one—in the cur­rent near-depression. Kevin D. Free­man con­cluded in a 2009 report “obtained by the Wash­ing­ton Times” that such threats of eco­nomic sab­o­tage do, indeed, deserve more study: In an inter­view with The Times, Free­man said his report pro­vided...
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Come the rev­o­lu­tion, this guy will be lead­ing legions. Try to pic­ture that.
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Twenty years ago he was counted (incor­rectly, he main­tains) among the neolib­eral shock doc­trine folks. Now he’s a rav­ing lunatic (by Manhattan/Washington, D.C., stan­dards, anyway). Here’s Jef­frey Sachs talk­ing about Pres­i­dent Obama’s pro­posed fed­eral bud­get and the Repub­li­cans’ more anti­so­cial­ist response (pdf), basi­cally say­ing that they both cut too much while refus­ing to raise taxes....
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As an uncre­den­tialed observer of the pol­i­tics of macro­eco­nomic pol­icy, I have often won­dered just how trans­par­ently cheesy the sup­posed smart guys will get before some­one calls them on it. The answer came yes­ter­day as I looked at this (PDF) alleged research report launched by the U.S. Cham­ber of Com­merce on behalf of the...
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