Tag Archives: crony capitalism

The New York Times Butchers the Story of How Treasury Got NPR to Censor My Criticism of It

Posted on May 31, 2013 by Devin Smith | 10 comments

We have further proof about how thin-skinned Treasury Secretary Geithner was, but we have it in the form of a weird May 29, 2013 story by Ben Protess in the New York Times. The story is in part about me, though it doesn’t mention me, because it is a story that notes that Treasury was able to convince NPR to remove from its December 13, 2013 broadcast a statement I made criticizing Geithner – an action that NPR took and noted, but without naming me as the source of the criticism. The weird part of the NYT story is that while it confirms the accuracy of the statement I made about Geithner it asserts that the statement by the unidentified “academic” criticizing Geithner was false. Continue reading →

10 Comments

Posted in William K. Black

Tagged crony capitalism, HSBC, Liberty Reserve, npr, nyt, Timothy Geithner, too big to prosecute

The Broader Costs of Lethal Lemons: “We Have so Many Ranas”

Posted on May 1, 2013 by Devin Smith | 3 comments

By William K. Black

This is the third article in a series on some of the additional lessons we should learn from the mass murder of Bangladeshi garment workers by anti-employee control frauds. I discuss new allegations about the senior executives involved in producing the terrible loss of life and maiming of so many workers because they are relevant to the broader harms that control fraud can cause that I discussed in the first and second articles in this series. Continue reading →

3 Comments

Posted in William K. Black

Tagged Bangladesh, Control Fraud, criminogenic environment, crony capitalism

Reinventing Government: the 1995 Speeches announcing the Road to Ruin

Posted on February 20, 2013 by Devin Smith | 12 comments

By William K. Black
(Cross posted at Benzinga.com)

Introduction to the “Reinventing Government” movement

Anyone who has worked for a large government or firm knows their tendency to be bureaucratic. Everyone has had the experience of dealing with bureaucratic mentalities, including the volunteer soccer referee who lets power go to his head and becomes an arrogant demigod. Everyone has had to deal with a public clerk or a private insurance company’s claim official who drives one nuts. Working for a federal agency meant that I often had to deal with a bureaucratic personality to get things done. That is why so many of us that have worked for a large government or firm are passionately anti-bureaucratic.

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12 Comments

Posted in William K. Black

Tagged 1995 speeches, clinton, crony capitalism, gore, reinventing government

Fantasy Football, Platinum Futures and the Future of Platinum

Posted on February 2, 2013 by Devin Smith | 29 comments

By Dale Pierce

For the present, all MMT policy advocacy is fantasy football. Everything we talk about is real, and everything we help to prove or explain or demonstrate or clarify is important – and will be much, much more important in the future. And, of course, there’s nothing wrong with fantasy football – it’s a useful exercise for learning about and interpreting the game. Similarly, the extension of theoretical MMT principles to practical problem-solving is a useful – even a vital – exercise. But nothing we advocate today is really going to happen today – at least not in America. I still keep hoping that some high-up political figure in Latin America, or Latvia, or maybe Iceland will come out with an up-front endorsement, along with an explicitly MMT-informed political platform. And I think that’s a worthwhile goal for us as well – provided that we understand just what it is that we are doing.

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29 Comments

Posted in Guest Blogger

Tagged crony capitalism, MMT, Modern Monetary Theory, platinum coin seigniorage

Goldman Sachs Proof that God hates its Customers

Posted on January 26, 2013 by Devin Smith | 9 comments

By William K. Black

The chief executive of Goldman Sachs, which has attracted widespread media attention over the size of its staff bonuses, says he believes banks serve a social purpose and are “doing God’s work.”

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9 Comments

Posted in William K. Black

Tagged accounting control fraud, banksters, crony capitalism, goldman sachs, serial abuses, vampire squid

Goldman Sachs: Doing “God’s Work” by inflicting the Wages of Sin Globally

Posted on January 26, 2013 by Devin Smith | 8 comments

By William K. Black

The central point that I want to stress as a white-collar criminologist and effective financial regulator is that Goldman Sachs is not a singular “rotten apple” in a healthy bushel of banks. Goldman Sachs is the norm for systemically dangerous institutions (SDIs) (the so-called “too big to fail” banks). Impunity from the laws, crony capitalism that degrades democracy, and massive national subsidies produce exceptionally criminogenic environments. Those environments are so perverse that they produce epidemics of “control fraud.” Control fraud occurs when the persons who control a seemingly legitimate entity use it as a “weapon” to defraud. In finance, accounting is the “weapon of choice.” It is important to remember, however, that other forms of control fraud maim and kill thousands.

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8 Comments

Posted in William K. Black

Tagged accounting control fraud, banskters, criminogenic environment, crony capitalism, goldman sachs

Why the World Economic Forum and Goldman Sachs are Capitalism’s Worst Enemies

Posted on January 26, 2013 by Devin Smith | 9 comments

By William K. Black

It is fitting that Goldman Sachs is the recipient of this year’s “Public Eye” designation, but it is even more fitting that it is being announced during the World Economic Forum (WEF) at Davos. Goldman Sachs exemplifies the travesty that WEF has created. It is not the worst of the worst. It is representative of the financial world of systemically dangerous institutions (SDIs) that are spreading crony capitalism through the West. The SDIs are the so-called “too big to fail (or prosecute)” banks.

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9 Comments

Posted in William K. Black

Tagged accounting control fraud, banksters, criminogenic environment, crony capitalism, Davos, goldman sachs, WEF, World Economic Forum

NEP’s William Black appears on Democracy Now

Posted on January 11, 2013 by Devin Smith | 2 comments

NEP’s William K. Black appeared along on Democracy Now. The appearance has been split into two parts and posted below.

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2 Comments

Posted in William K. Black

Tagged austerity, banksters, crony capitalism, Jack Lew

Jacob Lew: Another brick in the Wall Street on the Potomac

Posted on January 10, 2013 by Devin Smith | 2 comments

By William K. Black

The New York Times has just run two articles confirming that President Obama intends to appoint Jacob Lew as Treasury Secretary Geithner’s replacement. Most people assume that Geithner is a creature of Wall Street through direct employment, but Geithner never drew a paycheck directly from Wall Street. Geithner worked for a wholly-controlled subsidiary of Wall Street – the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. Lew is the real deal, another brick in Obama’s creation of Wall Street on the Potomac. While the first NYT article ignored Lew’s work on Wall Street, the second article simply tries to minimize it. Continue reading →

2 Comments

Posted in William K. Black

Tagged austerity, banksters, crony capitalism, Jacob Lew, MMT

Defeat Mitt Romney

Posted on November 4, 2012 by Dan Kervick | 26 comments

By Dan Kervick

New Economics Perspectives is an economics blog, not a political one. So in the past, while I have written freely about some political issues, I have avoided the partisan political wrangle. Continue reading →