One thing to be said for the women now heading the Federal Reserve and the IMF: compared to some of their predecessors, they are refreshingly honest. Continue reading
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Category Archives: Economy
Did the other shoe just drop?
Black Rock and PIMCO sue banks for $250 billion
For years, homeowners have been battling Wall Street in an attempt to recover some portion of their massive losses from the housing Ponzi scheme. But progress has been slow, as they have been outgunned and out-spent by the banking titans. Continue reading
The deteriorating economic outlook
The third and final estimate (until the annual GDP revisions) of first quarter 2014 real GDP growth released June 25 by the US Bureau of Economic Analysis was a 2.9% contraction in GDP growth, a 5.5 percentage point difference from the January forecast of 2.6% growth. Apparently, the first quarter contraction was dismissed by those speculating in equities as weather related, as stock averages rose with the bad news. Continue reading
Asset price inflation and inequality
It is now common knowledge that the U.S. economy has, in recent years, been experiencing extremely uneven developments. While the financial sector has been enjoying enormously high rates of growth, the real sector is mired in stagnation or dismal growth rates. Accordingly, while the financial oligarchy is reaping the lion’s share of this fantastic growth of asset-price inflation, the overwhelming majority of citizens are suffering from the systematically declining standards of living. Continue reading
The looming foreclosure crisis: As the Fed runs out of bullets, local governments are stepping in
Former Assistant Treasury Secretary Paul Craig Roberts wrote last month that real US GDP growth for the first quarter of 2014 was a negative 2.9%, off by 5.5% from the positive 2.6% predicted by economists. If the second quarter also shows a decline, the US will officially be in recession. That means not only fiscal policy (government deficit spending) but monetary policy (unprecedented quantitative easing) will have failed. The Federal Reserve is out of bullets. Continue reading
Virtual economy’s phantom job gains are based on statistical fraud
And more fraud is in the works
Washington can’t stop lying. Don’t be convinced by last Thursday’s job report that it is your fault if you don’t have a job. Those 288,000 jobs and 6.1% unemployment rate are more fiction than reality. Continue reading
Affluence Economics: Low-inflation and “fool” employment
Numbers don’t lie, the saying goes, but the have-liars are doing their numbers on the gullible have-nots. And although mathematics is an exact science, it can be used as a practical tool by inexact social scientists working for those trying to influence people at the civic or individual level, call it politics or more accurately, persuasive deceit. Continue reading
How DC’s political intelligence biz made fat cats fatter
Looking over the last few weeks of news, if you would seek a single headline that sums up the Hulk-like grip in which corporate America holds the US Congress, this might be it: “Eric Cantor’s Loss a Blow to Wall Street.” Continue reading
Buying up the planet: Out-of-control central banks are on a corporate buying spree
When the US Federal Reserve bought an 80% stake in American International Group (AIG) in September 2008, the unprecedented $85 billion outlay was justified as necessary to bail out the world’s largest insurance company. Today, however, central banks are on a global corporate buying spree not to bail out bankrupt corporations but simply as an investment, to compensate for the loss of bond income due to record low interest rates. Indeed, central banks have become some of the world’s largest stock investors. Continue reading
More phantom jobs created—all in the wrong places
Education is not the answer
Last April, I saw a report that 83% of May’s college graduates did not have a job. I remarked that in my day most of us had 2 or 3 job or graduate school offers before we graduated. The latest payroll jobs report issued on June 6 proves that the April report was true. Continue reading
Interest rate puzzle
One of the biggest puzzles in the financial markets this year has been the considerable fall in interest rates, despite the Fed’s program of tapering or cutting back the Fed’s bond purchases known as Quantitative Easing. A year ago, when Fed Chairman Bernanke announced the possibility of tapering QE on May 22, 2013, the 10-year Treasury yield was 2.03%. The yield quickly moved up close to 3% after Bernanke’s taper comments, forcing the Fed to retract or “clarify” them. Since January 2014, however, when the Fed actually began tapering, the 10-year yield has steadily declined from over 3% to it’s current yield of just over 2.5%. Continue reading
Infrastructure sticker shock: Financing costs more than building it
Funding infrastructure through bonds doubles the price or worse. Costs can be cut in half by funding through the state’s own bank. Continue reading
Have you ever heard of the JOBS Act? Neither have many would-be entrepreneurs, especially women
The JOBS Act is a “game changer” that would allow “ordinary Americans . . . to go online and invest in entrepreneurs they believe in,” says President Obama. Continue reading
The wonders of the ‘free’ market
In 2010, Michelle Holmes and Wendy Chen, physicians and faculty members at Harvard Medical School, published an observational study in The Journal of Clinical Oncology that showed that women with breast cancer who took aspirin at least once every week were 50% less likely to die of breast cancer. Continue reading
More on Belgium’s purchases of Fed Treasuries
In response to our account of the mysterious large rise in Belgium’s Treasury purchases, The Fed is the great deceiver, it was suggested that the transaction would show up on the Fed’s balance sheet. However, the Fed is under no obligation to show the transaction. Continue reading
The Federal Reserve is the great deceiver
Is the Fed “tapering”? Did the Fed really cut its bond purchases during the three-month period November 2013 through January 2014? Apparently not if foreign holders of Treasuries are unloading them. Continue reading
Economic hate crime
“Any government with both the power and the will to remedy the major defects of the capitalist system would have the power and the will to abolish it altogether.” Continue reading
The fracking prostitutes of American colleges
Part 3 of 3 parts
Among the mission statements of the University of North Dakota Department of Geology and Geological Engineering is that it “strives to develop in its engineering graduates keen insight and abilities to design an environmentally sound and sustainable future for humanity.” Continue reading
Robbing Main Street to prop up Wall Street
Why Jerry Brown’s rainy day fund is a bad idea
There is no need to sequester funds urgently needed by Main Street to pay for Wall Street’s malfeasance. Californians can have their cake and eat it too—with a state-owned bank. Continue reading
The fracking prostitutes of American colleges
Part 2 of a 3-part series
Two of the reasons Pennsylvania has no severance tax and one of the lowest taxes upon shale gas drilling are because of an overtly corporate-friendly legislature and a research report from Penn State, a private state-related university that receives about $300 million a year in public funds. Continue reading
US economy is a house of cards
The US economy is a house of cards. Every aspect of it is fraudulent, and the illusion of recovery is created with fraudulent statistics. Continue reading
So much for economic fairness and progress
Here is a well reasoned and said article, “The Doctrine of Fairness: It is Time,” and my reaction: One can build the case the Great Depression of the 1930s proved unfettered capitalism does not work for long under normal conditions. Continue reading
The fracking prostitutes of American colleges
Part 1 of a 3-part series
Lackawanna College, a two-year college in Scranton, Pa., has become a prostitute. Continue reading
Wall Street greed: Not too big for a California jury
Sixteen of the world’s largest banks have been caught colluding to rig global interest rates. Why are we doing business with a corrupt global banking cartel? Continue reading
Israel bonds are a high risk investment
Inappropriate for US states and municipalities
One might argue against the sale of Development Corporation for Israel bonds, aka Israel bonds, to government entities in the USA because the proceeds fund Israeli violations of international law, particularly the colonization of the West Bank, and other activities which violate internationally accepted norms, to include maintaining Gaza as a vast open air prison. But although these policies are likely to have a negative impact on Israel’s credit rating in the future, it is the characteristics of the bonds themselves, chiefly their illiquidity, which should put them off limits for states and municipalities in the first place. Treasurers and pension fund managers who buy these toxic, illiquid obligations are putting taxpayers and retirees at risk. Continue reading
The global banking game is rigged and the FDIC is suing
Taxpayers are paying billions of dollars for a swindle pulled off by the world’s biggest banks, using a form of derivative called interest-rate swaps; and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation has now joined a chorus of litigants suing over it. Continue reading
Another fraudulent jobs report
The March payroll jobs report released April 4 claims 192,000 new private sector jobs. Continue reading
The Federal Reserve has no integrity
As we documented in previous articles, the gold price is driven down in the paper futures market by naked short selling by the Fed’s dependent bullion banks. Some people have a hard time accepting this fact even though it is known that the big banks have manipulated the LIBOR (London Interbank Overnight Rate—London’s equivalent of the Fed Funds rate) interest rate and the twice-daily London gold price fix. Continue reading
Banking union time bomb: Eurocrats authorize bailouts and bail-ins
On March 20, 2014, European Union officials reached an historic agreement to create a single agency to handle failing banks. Media attention has focused on the agreement involving the single resolution mechanism (SRM), a uniform system for closing failed banks. But the real story for taxpayers and depositors is the heightened threat to their pocketbooks of a deal that now authorizes both bailouts and “bail-ins”—the confiscation of depositor funds. The deal involves multiple concessions to different countries and may be illegal under the rules of the EU Parliament; but it is being rushed through to lock taxpayer and depositor liability into place before the dire state of Eurozone banks is exposed. Continue reading
Warren’s post office proposal: Palast aims at the wrong target
Investigative reporter Greg Palast is usually pretty good at peering behind the rhetoric and seeing what is really going on. But in tearing into Senator Elizabeth Warren’s support of postal financial services, he has done a serious disservice to the underdogs—both the underbanked and the US Postal Service itself. Continue reading
The stone that brings down Goliath?
Richmond, Calif., and eminent domain
In a nearly $13 billion settlement with the US Justice Department in November 2013, JPMorgan Chase admitted that it, along with every other large US bank, had engaged in mortgage fraud as a routine business practice, sowing the seeds of the mortgage meltdown. JPMorgan and other megabanks have now been caught in over a dozen major frauds, including LIBOR-rigging and bid-rigging; yet no prominent banker has gone to jail. Meanwhile, nearly a quarter of all mortgages nationally remain underwater (meaning the balance owed exceeds the current value of the home), sapping homeowners’ budgets, the housing market and the economy. Since the banks, the courts and the federal government have failed to give adequate relief to homeowners, some cities are taking matters into their own hands. Continue reading
A new recession and a new world devoid of Washington’s arrogance?
Posted on June 27, 2014 by Paul Craig Roberts
A final number for real US GDP growth in the first quarter of 2014 was released Wednesday. The number is not the 2.6% growth rate predicted by the know-nothing economists in January of this year. The number is a decline in GDP of -2.9 percent. Continue reading →