Author Archives: Devin Smith

The Race to the Bottom Produces Regulators who are Invertebrates and Epidemics of Fraud

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

I examine how highly conservative newspapers are covering the interplay of widespread “control frauds” by the world’s most elite banks, the carefully structured de-evolution of financial regulators through descent from the subphylum Vertebrata into the phyla of the invertebrates, and the global failure to prosecute the elite frauds that drove the ongoing financial crisis.  The three factors are interrelated.  Vigilant financial regulators serving as the vital “regulatory cops on the beat” are essential to the successful prosecution of large numbers of elite financial frauds.  Continue reading

Wall Street’s War Against the Cities: Why Bondholders Can’t – and Shouldn’t – be Paid

By Michael Hudson

The Bubble and BeyondThe pace of Wall Street’s war against the 99% is quickening in preparation for the kill. Having demonized public employees for being scheduled to receive pensions on their lifetime employment service, bondholders are insisting on getting the money instead. It is the same austerity philosophy that has been forced on Greece and Spain – and the same that is prompting President Obama and Mitt Romney to urge scaling back Social Security and Medicare.

Continue reading

Why is Paul Ryan, an Irish Catholic, praising the dogmas that drove the Great Hunger?

By William K. Black
(Cross-posted from Benzinga.com )

At the invitation of the Steamboat Institute’s “Freedom Conference” I debated Dan Mitchell, an economist at Cato on Friday August 25, 2012.  Dan suggested me as his debate opponent, a role we have played several times in Europe.  Our primary topic was Paul Ryan’s budget policies.  In the course of our debate Dan stressed an August 24 column he wrote entitled “For Once, I Hope Paul Krugman is Right.”   Continue reading

A CONSERVATIVE DEFENSE OF A JOBS GUARANTEE PROGRAM

By John Henry

John Locke is the “father” of property rights theory, and continues to be referenced in defense of private property. In the second volume of his Two Treatises of Government, Locke specified the conditions that must be satisfied in order for property to be deemed legitimate. Initially, any property taken from “the commons” (public or collective property) had to be based on one’s labor that was expended to improve that property. (While Locke focused on landed property, his argument applies more generally.)

Continue reading

One Simple Measure That Would Save Social Security and More

By Joe Firestone
(Cross posted at Correntewire.com)

The Fiscal Times is a digital rag funded by Peter G. Peterson to propagandize the ideology of neoliberal austerity. Today, a Post by Josh Boak highlighted the proposal of “fixing” Social Security by lifting the cap Continue reading

Part 2 – Is an Anti-Austerity Alliance of Left Neo-classicals and Post-Keynesians Possible? Is it Desirable?

By Michael Hoexter

Points of Agreement and Division (con’t)

United as they are in their critique of neoclassical economics, it would be a mistake to portray post-Keynesians as united among themselves, a further complication for the emergence of any unified message from anti-austerity economists.  Continue reading

The Dangerous Myth that Financial Regulation is Unrelated to Financial Crime

By William K. Black
(Cross-posted from Benzinga.com)

The inspiration for this article was an op ed in the Wall Street Journal by Wendy Long, the Republican/Conservative Party of New York’s candidate for the U.S. Senate.  Long’s thesis is: Continue reading

Men on a Wall

By J.D. Alt

I recently saw a newspaper photo of ten or twelve men sitting on a crumbling stone wall beside a dirt road. It was somewhere in Africa, but the location doesn’t matter. What matters is that the men, as the caption made clear, were sitting on the wall because they had nothing else to do: they had no land to farm, there was no local job or employment available to them, they had no savings or credit with which to start some venture. Continue reading

Part 1 – Is an Anti-Austerity Alliance of Left Neo-classicals and Post-Keynesians Possible? Is it Desirable?

By Michael Hoexter

I drafted the “Mixed Economy Manifesto” as one attempt to create a common basis for anti-austerity economists and non-economists to argue against, in the clearest terms possible, the waves of government spending cutbacks that are advocated by misguided elites, by the right-wing and by right-leaning neoclassical economists.  Continue reading

Kudos for William Black’s Performance on CNBC

Columbia Journalism Review (CJR) has a post giving kudos to William Black for his performance on CNBC’s Closing Bell. The episode’s topic was whether or not Goldman Sachs should or could be prosecuted on fraud charges for their part in the financial crisis.