Archive for March, 2009
Successful bank rescue still far away (Martin Wolf)
Interesting piece by Martin Wolf of the Financial Times. By Martin Wolf | March 24 2009 19:24 I am becoming ever more worried. I never expected much from the Europeans or the Japanese. But I did expect the US, under a popular new president, to be more decisive than it has been. Instead, the Congress ...Read more.
Hey Paul Krugman (A Song, A Plea)
Catchy tune from YouTube. Hat-tip to Bryan S. [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XOYAuk809fY&hl=en&fs=1&rel=0]
Stiglitz On the Fiscal Crisis Of the State
From Common Dreams: Fiscal Plan Fails both Markets and Taxpayers by Joseph E. Stiglitz Let’s be clear: President Barack Obama inherited an economy in freefall and could not possibly have turned things around in the short time since his election. Unfortunately, what he is doing is not enough. The real failings in the Obama recovery ...Read more.
U.S. Seeks Expanded Power to Seize Firms
From the Washington Post. The plot thickens. Sure sounds to me like they’re thinking Geithner’s plan won’t work and they’ll have to nationalize after all. The “we’ve got to move quickly” line (2nd-to-last paragraph) is getting a little old. U.S. Seeks Expanded Power to Seize Firms Goal Is to Limit Risk to Broader Economy By ...Read more.
Down the dark path (Delasantellis on Geithner)
Hat-tip to Larry P. for this; he says “it’s by far the best thing I’ve read on this travesty.” I am in absolutely no possession of any historical evidence that 16th-century English jailers employed modern stand-up comedians to bring a bit of levity to their inheritantly bleak workspaces, but what if they had? What if, ...Read more.
The Economics of War
We get deluged with press releases, most of which we ignore (since the senders usually assume that we are a mainstream business or personal finance magazine). Recently we received some press releases from the site Antiwar.com, which humbly describes itself as “the oldest and most important antiwar Website.” (It turns out that there is also ...Read more.
The Wealth Gap Gets Wider
From Meizhu Lui, former executive director of United for a Fair Economy (our next-door neighbors and partners in various projects, including publishing The Wealth Inequality Reader), in Monday’s Washington Post: The chips are in. Every three years, the Federal Reserve, in its Survey of Consumer Finances, takes a look at how U.S. households are doing ...Read more.
Market Up Krugman Down
The Dow Jones Industrials soared nearly 500 points today (about 6%) on news of the Geithner plan to buy up toxic bank assets. The stocks of troubled banks did particularly well, Citibank up 17%, Bank of America 18%, JPMorgan Chase up 18%, and Wells Fargo up 17%. As usual, if Wall Street is happy about ...Read more.
Foreign Firms Want Piece of Stimulus Pie
With Congress doling out $787 billion in stimulus money, foreign firms figure that no one will mind if they get some of it. And they’ll probably only take 40% or so out of the country. All you need to win is a U.S. subsidiary, some well-placed lobbyists, and a dream. From the Washington Post: Spain’s ...Read more.
US Still #1 In Military Spending
According to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute as reported in the Economist, the U.S. spent more in 2007 on its military than the 14 largest countries combined. The U.S.’s $1.2 trillion in 2007 (hey, that could buy a bank bailout or two!) accounted for 45% of all global military spending. And this doesn’t even ...Read more.
