Economy
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ZeroHedge | On a long enough timeline the survival rate for everyone drops to zero
Submitted by Tyler Durden on 03/22/2012 - 18:39 Auto Sales CDS China Consumer Sentiment Crude David Rosenberg Global Economy Housing Starts Iran Israel Merrill Michigan NAHB NFIB Payroll Data Personal Income recovery Rosenberg University Of Michigan Back in early 2011, even as the global economy was at best flatlining, the one goalseeked explanation to justify a levitating stock market (which was rising solely due to the short-term effect of transitory QE2 liquidity), was soaring corporate profitability (which only lasted as long as companies could trim some residual SG&A fat; they have now cut into the bone in terms of layoffs).
Republicans have morality upside down. Santorum, Gingrich, and even Romney are barnstorming across the land condemning gay marriage, abortion, out-of-wedlock births, access to contraception, and the wall separating church and state.
Robert Reich
Did You Hear the One About the Bankers? - NYTimes.com
It doesn’t get any more immoral than this. As the Securities and Exchange Commission civil complaint noted, in 2007, Citigroup exercised “significant influence” over choosing $500 million of the $1 billion worth of assets in the deal, and the global bank deliberately chose collateralized debt obligations, or C.D.O.’s, built from mortgage loans almost sure to fail. According to The Wall Street Journal, the S.E.C. complaint quoted one unnamed C.D.O. trader outside Citigroup as describing the portfolio as resembling something your dog leaves on your neighbor’s lawn. “The deal became largely worthless within months of its creation,” The Journal added.
When students take to the streets of Paris or London today, it is no longer to bring about a better world, but to defend what they can of the world their parents took for granted. - Dougald Hine, 'Remember the Future?', Dark Mountain II If someone has compiled an Occupy Wall Street reading list, investigative journalist Matt Taibbi's book Griftopia is surely on it. Taibbi argues:
A progressive dialogue: Occupy the future -- A new generation reaches for the emergency brake | rabble.ca
How the Rich Subverted the Legal System and Occupy Wall Street Swept the Land | The Nation
This article originally appeared at TomDispatch.com . To stay on top of important articles like these, sign up to receive the latest updates from TomDispatch.com . As intense protests spawned by Occupy Wall Street continue to grow, it is worth asking: Why now? The answer is not obvious.
Merge Left
Danilo Trisi and LaDonna Pavetti from the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities detail the failure of the 1996 welfare reform : Many policymakers continue to claim that the 1996 welfare reform law which created the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) program was a major success. They see the TANF program’s design and block grant structure as a model for the reform of other safety net programs. [1] TANF’s record over the last 15 years shows, however, that its role as a safety net has declined sharply over time. (See Figure 1). In 1996, for every 100 families with children living in poverty, TANF provided cash aid to 68 families.
As the buzz continues about who will be next at the helm of the World Bank, an outline for what should be done once the president’s tenure begins.
New Deal 2.0
What should liberal wonks make of the conservative movement’s abandonment of center-right policy innovations like the individual mandate and cap-and-trade once President Obama took them up? To answer this, it might be useful to look at revisions made to the 1892 edition of Herbert Spencer’s classic 19th century handbook of laissez-faire, Social Statics or The Conditions essential to Happiness specified, and the First of them Developed . That’s the book Oliver Wendell Holmes alluded to when dissenting in Lochner, famously saying, “The Fourteenth Amendment does not enact Mr. Herbert Spencer’s Social Statics.”
Rortybomb
What is it about being a great power that renders the imagining of its own demise so potent? Why, despite all the strictures about the prudent and rational use of force, are those powers so quick to resort to it? Perhaps it is because there is something deeply appealing about the idea of disaster, about manfully confronting and mastering catastrophe. For disaster and catastrophe can summon a nation, at least in theory, to plumb its deepest moral and political reserves, to have its mettle tested, on and off the battlefield. However much leaders and theorists may style themselves the cool adepts of realpolitik, war remains the great romance of the age, the proving ground of self and nation.
Corey Robin
In New York on Thursday, October 6th, CUNY, the Roosevelt Institute, and The Nation will present “What is Conservatism?,” a conversation between Professor Corey Robin and Christopher Hayes focused on Robin’s new book, The Reactionary Mind . Click here for more details on the event.
