Yearly Archives: 2014

NEP’s Randy Wray on Thom Hartmann’s Show

Posted on July 18, 2014 by | 3 comments

Randy will be on Thom Hartmann’s show July 18th, 2014 at 1:00 pm Eastern time. You can catch Randy and Thom live on radio stations coast to coast…live on XM/Sirius satellite radio…simulcast LIVE on Free Speech TV on Dish Network, Direct TV, Comcast Cable, RCN, Cox Cable, Time Warner, Verizon Fios and over 200 independent community cable providers nationwide including Manhattan Neighborhood Network.

The audio and video are streamed LIVE on Thom’s website. Free Speech TV also streams the program LIVE on their website.

The program is also streamed LIVE (audio and video) on The Thom Hartmann Program app available for iPhone and iPad (free of charge on iTunes)

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Krugman Now Disagrees with His Earlier Critique of MMT

Posted on July 17, 2014 by | 30 comments

By Scott Fullwiler

In a post yesterday, Paul Krugman notes the CBOs long-term projections for federal government deficits and the national debt now show a reduced projection of nominal interest rates:

This markdown has the effect of making the budget outlook — which was already a lot less dire than conventional wisdom has it — look even less dire.

After a bit of discussion of debt-interest rate dynamics—which I earlier discussed in detail here and in my series here (printable version here)—Krugman explains the importance of understanding currency issuers like the US versus currency users like the Eurozone nations for understanding these dynamics:

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AG Holder: “Thank you Fed and OCC”

Posted on July 17, 2014 by | 3 comments

By William K. Black

The second omission in Attorney General Eric Holder’s press conference about the settlement with Citi was “Thank you Fed and OCC.” The Federal Reserve (Fed) and the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) are Citi’s financial regulators. In my first installment in this series I explained Holder’s shameful failure at the press conference to thank Richard M. Bowen, III – the whistleblower who handed DOJ on a platinum platter what should have been its criminal case against a vast swath of Citi’s most senior leadership.

Holder’s Failure to Thank the Regulators

Holder also failed to thank the Fed and the OCC at the same press conference. He should have thanked them for their criminal referrals on Citi’s senior managers and their provision of irreplaceable expertise throughout the investigation. In particular, he should have praised examiners A, B & C, who the Fed and OCC detailed to the FBI so that they could serve as its in-house experts. By detailing examiners to work for the FBI they are able to receive “6 (e)” grand jury testimony and documents and explain their significance to the FBI and the prosecutors.

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AG Holder: “Thank you, Richard Bowen”

Posted on July 17, 2014 by | 19 comments

By William K. Black

Those should have been the first four words of Attorney General Eric Holder at the press conference announcing the settlement with Citicorp.

This article is the first in a series of pieces discussing the critical omissions in Holder’s statement at that press conference.  These omissions explain why elite banksters now routinely control our largest banks and use their power to become wealthy through leading fraud epidemics, with impunity from the law, that cause the our financial crises.

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EGREGIOUS FRAUDSTER: INTRODUCING BOB RUBIN’S CITICORP

Posted on July 16, 2014 by | 20 comments

By L. Randall Wray

By now you’ve heard that Citigroup admits—yet again—that it engaged in fraud. Heck, it was the business model under Bob Rubin. If you want to blame three individuals for the Global Financial Crisis, only Larry Summers and Alan Greenspan deserve more credit than Rubin.

Together they “softened-up” Congress so that it would free the Banksters, and then he ran Citi into the ground as he sucked gazillions of dollars of executive compensation out of the bank. Like all the CEOs of the biggest banks, he oversaw fraud on a scale never imagined—let alone seen—in the history of the globe.

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Two EU Finance Ministers Throw their Bosses and Nations Under the Bus

Posted on July 14, 2014 by | 1 comment

By William K. Black

The finance ministers of Italy and Serbia have just publicly thrown their heads of state and their nations under the bus.  In a testament to the crippling effect of the belief that “there is no alternative” (TINA) to austerity, these finance ministers have insisted on bleeding economies that are in desperate need of fiscal stimulus.  Their pursuit of economic malpractice is so determined that they eagerly sought out opportunities to embarrass the democratically elected head of state in Serbia when he dared to support competent economic policies.

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John Cochrane’s Witch Hunt for Witch Hunters

Posted on July 12, 2014 by | 7 comments

By William K. Black

John Cochrane is an economist at the University of Chicago.  The Wall Street Journal has just featured his op ed piece entitled “The Failure of Macroeconomics.”

I’ll focus on his foray into criminology as a component of economic growth. Cochrane’s column ignores the paramount role that the three epidemics of “accounting control fraud” played in hyper-inflating the bubble and causing the financial crisis – which cost over 10 million American jobs and a projected $21 trillion loss of production.  Instead, he claims that the economic recovery is weak because “Who wants to hire, lend or invest when the next stroke of the presidential pen or Justice Department witch hunt can undo all the hard work?”

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Survey of Bankers Unintentionally Documents their Depravity

Posted on July 11, 2014 by | 4 comments

By William K. Black

Makovsky is a PR group that specializes in representing banks.  Because of that dual specialization they should be the most skilled shills for fraudulent bankers that money can buy.  This fact makes their annual “reputation” survey delectable.  Each year, the survey unintentionally documents how depraved senior bankers are as a group.  They come to praise Caesar, but end up burying him in a garbage dump.

Here are key findings of their 2014 survey:

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National Retirement Infrastructure – Part 3

Posted on July 10, 2014 by | 3 comments

By J.D. Alt

1. Why we can afford it—2. Why we need it—3. How we can build it

3. How we can build it.

Cohousing, as briefly explained in Part 1, offers a uniquely supportive context for retired living. Cohousing communities consist of between 10 and 30 privately occupied and maintained dwelling units which share certain common facilities, amenities and, in some cases, social responsibilities and activities. It is this “commons” sharing that can potentially provide a retired person with benefits they otherwise could not afford to have, or have easily. For example, the shared facility might include an apartment for a live-in nurse-assistant/care giver who would provide assistance, in each of the private dwellings, as needed. Or, the “commons” might include a small exercise pool that individual retirees can utilize for a daily work-out. “Traditional” cohousing projects typically include a common cooking and dining facility where at least one meal a week is a shared community event—(individual dwellings have their own small kitchens as well.) In general, the goal is to create a comfortable balance between private autonomy and community activities.

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The Big Lie at the Core of Pete Peterson’s Attack on the Baby Boomers

Posted on July 10, 2014 by | 8 comments

By William K. Black

For the purposes of writing a column I ended up reading materials written by the financial industry PR specialist Makovsky and found this nugget. A Makovsky executive was interviewed about Millennials and he explained the finance industry’s perspective on that group.  Millennials have been leading victims of financial fraud and the resultant Great Recession so they have no love of financial firms:  “the four major banks in the U.S, were ranked in the 10 least loved brands among Millennials according to Viacom.”

The Millennials’ disdain for big finance is terrifying to finance for an excellent reason that Makovsky quantified.

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