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Category Archives: Economics

Pity the corporate media

Monday, May 25, 2009

The New York Times drips sympathy for Freemantle Media Enterprises, the company that owns the rights to “Britain’s Got Talent”, the show on which Susan Boyle appeared. Seems that Freemantle has been unable to leverage Ms. Boyle into a windfall profit: The case reflects the inability of big media companies to maximize profit from supersize […]

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California Nightmare

Friday, May 22, 2009

California is on the verge of bankruptcy, but Washington is in no hurry to help: California needs to solve its financial crisis by itself and should not expect an emergency bailout from the White House, an array of Obama administration officials said Thursday, making clear they had no appetite to step in and provide financial […]

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Credit card scam

Tuesday, May 19, 2009

This morning’s Times has an article about the anticipated response of the credit card companies to the bill that was recently passed reining in their more egregious practices. Among other things, the industry would have us believe that the folks who pay off their cards every month are somehow cheating: “There will be one-size-fits-all pricing, […]

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Recommended reading

Monday, May 18, 2009

On several occasions I have posted pieces by my old friend, Bob Roth. Bob’s pieces are usually longer and more thought out than my stuff. I flatter myself that the reason for that is the fact that Bob is retired, and has more time on his hands. We are all entitled to a little bit […]

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This should not be an option

Sunday, April 12, 2009

According to the Times the big banks are suffering from a brain drain as the best and the brightest, their work done at the failed banks, go on to other things: Top bankers have been leaving Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, Citigroup and others in rising numbers to join banks that do not face tighter regulation, […]

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The sancity of contracts, revisited

Saturday, April 11, 2009

Remember how we were told that AIG just had to pay those bonuses, because contracts are sacred? Some of us had some questions, since union contracts didn’t seem to be so sacred, but then, these days, we are all supposed to join in the general disdain for unions. Why are those people always demanding pay […]

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Unintended consequences

Friday, April 3, 2009

Chris Hayes of the Nation, who many of us know from his frequent appearances on Countdown, has uncovered a truly marvelous example of corporate perversion of the tax laws: Thanks to an obscure tax provision, the United States government stands to pay out as much as $8 billion this year to the ten largest paper […]

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Courtney does good, Himes not so much

Friday, April 3, 2009

You would think that Congress would be wary of sanctioning more bonuses at bailed out institutions, particularly at AIG, but of course you’d only be partly right. Congress is more than happy to help those bankers, so long as it can do so in a way that, at least at the moment, is totally opaque […]

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Larry Summers’ past at Harvard

Wednesday, April 1, 2009

It’s been only about 70 days, but already Bush is beginning to seem like a bad memory. Obama has been a breath of fresh air in many ways, but there’s some notable exceptions, made all the more depressing for the very reason that they are so few. The most notable exception is the quality of […]

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There but for the grassroots..

Monday, March 30, 2009

This blog started year ago partly in reaction to George Bush’s attempt to “privatize” (read “destroy”) Social Security after he received a mandate to do so by never mentioning the subject during his 2004 campaign. Luckily, that didn’t work out so well, at least for George, and Social Security escaped his tender ministrations. There were […]

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