Paul Krugman: Rock Bottom Economics

The Inflation and Rising Interest Rates That Never Showed Up

Six years ago the Federal Reserve hit rock bottom. It had been cutting the federal funds rate, the interest rate it uses to steer the economy, more or less frantically in an unsuccessful attempt to get ahead of the recession and financial crisis. But it eventually reached the point where it could cut no more, because interest rates can’t go below zero. On Dec. 16, 2008, the Fed set its interest target between 0 and 0.25 percent, where it remains to this day.

The fact that we’ve spent six years at the so-called zero lower bound is amazing and depressing. What’s even more amazing and depressing, if you ask me, is how slow our economic discourse has been to catch up with the new reality. Everything changes when the economy is at rock bottom — or, to use the term of art, in a liquidity trap (don’t ask). But for the longest time, nobody with the power to shape policy would believe it.

Senate Report: Scale of Wall Street Holdings Are “Unprecedented in U.S. History”

By Pam Martens: November 25, 2014

Last Thursday, the U.S. Senate’s Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, chaired by Senator Carl Levin, released an alarming 396-page report that details how Wall Street’s too-big-to-fail banks have quietly, and often stealthily through shell companies, gained ownership of a stunning amount of the nation’s critical industrial commodities like oil, aluminum, copper, natural gas, and even uranium. The report said the scale of these bank holdings “appears to be unprecedented in U.S. history.”

Adding to the hubris of the situation, the Wall Street banks’ own regulator, the Federal Reserve, gave its blessing to this unprecedented and dangerous encroachment by banking interests into industrial commodity ownership and has effectively looked the other way as the banks moved into industrial commerce activities like owning pipelines and power plants.

Paul Krugman: Still Waiting for the Collapse

Sometimes the absurdity of what passes for economic wisdom surpasses even my highly adapted expectations.

I really, truly expected that even Wall Street would consider the recent hyperinflation-in-the-Hamptons rant from Paul Singer - the billionaire inflation truther who is sure that the books are cooked - embarrassing and pretend that it never happened. But no. Apparently Mr. Singer's letter to investors is being passed around eagerly by traders and big shots who think it's the greatest thing since sliced foie gras.

Filling the Blanks in Snowden’s ‘Citizenfour’

Exclusive: To grasp the full story of Citizenfour, the documentary on Edward Snowden’s decision to expose NSA spying, you must go back four decades to see how the reality slowly dawned on Americans that their privacy and freedoms were at risk, writes James DiEugenio.

By James DiEugenio

In 1974, at about the time President Richard Nixon was resigning due to the Watergate scandal, director Francis Coppola released his haunting, compelling film about electronic surveillance, The Conversation. Centered within the lives of surveillance technicians and the powerful corporate officers who employed them, Coppola depicted a nightmare world: one fraught with the invisible threat of electronic spying at almost any place, at any time – including in public parks and inside private hotel rooms.

The film had a remarkable double twist at the end. The protagonist, played by Gene Hackman, has found out that, unbeknownst to him, the people who hired him used his work to stage a killing. In turn, they find out about his dangerous knowledge. The long last scene depicts Hackman literally dismantling his apartment, trying to find the microphone his murderous employers have placed in his room.

Meet the Fortune 500 Companies Funding the Political Resegregation of America

—By Andy Kroll | Fri Nov. 21, 2014 6:00 AM EST

Over the past four to five years, the United States has been resegregated—politically. In states where registered Democrats outnumber Republicans and presidential races can be nail-biters, skillful Republican operatives have mounted racially-minded gerrymandering efforts—the redrawing of congressional and state legislative districts—that have led to congressional delegations stacked with GOP members and yielded Republican majorities in the state legislatures.

In North Carolina, Pennsylvania, and Ohio, to name just three, GOPers have recast state and congressional districts to consolidate black voters into what the political pros call "majority-minority districts" to diminish the influence of these voters. North Carolina is an especially glaring example: GOP-redistricting after the 2010 elections led to half the state's black population—1.1 million people—being corralled into one-fifth of the state legislative and congressional districts. "The districts here take us back to a day of segregation that most of us thought we'd moved away from," State Sen. Dan Blue Jr., who was previously North Carolina's first black House speaker, told the Nation in 2012.

Behind 700% Loans, Profits Flow Through Red Rock to Wall Street

By Zeke Faux - Nov 24, 2014

Joshua Wrenn needed money to make the January payment for his Jeep Cherokee.

The truck driver and aspiring country singer in Madison, North Carolina, got $800 within minutes from a website he found on his phone. When he called to check his balance a few weeks later, he was told he had electronically signed a contract to pay back $3,920 to a company owned by an American Indian tribe.

U.S. Senate Tries Public Shaming of New York Fed President Dudley

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: November 24, 2014

Last Friday, the Senate Subcommittee on Financial Institutions and Consumer Protection, chaired by Sherrod Brown, effectively put William Dudley, President of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, in stocks in the village square and engaged in a rather brilliant style of public shaming. With each well-formed question posed by the panel, Dudley’s jaded leadership of a hubristic regulator came into ever sharper focus.

There were a number of elephants in the room during the lengthy session that were only briefly touched upon but deserve greater scrutiny by the press. First, Congress knew that the New York Fed was a failed, crony regulator during the lead up to the financial collapse in 2008, but it granted it an even greater supervisory role under the Dodd-Frank financial reform legislation in 2010. This Congress has also failed to engage in public shaming of President Obama for brazenly ignoring the Dodd-Frank’s statutory mandate that calls for him to appoint, subject to Senate confirmation, a Vice Chairman for Supervision at the Federal Reserve Board of Governors, who could have shaped and monitored a more credible policing role for the New York Fed.

Zephyr Teachout Keeps Preaching 'We Can Actually Do Something' About Corruption

SUBHEADINGGOESHERE

Paul Blumenthal
Posted: 11/22/2014 7:30 am EST Updated: 11/22/2014 7:59 am EST

WASHINGTON -- Earlier this year, Fordham law professor Zephyr Teachout emerged as a political star among progressives when she challenged New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo in the Democratic primary and performed far better than expected. Teachout received 35 percent of the primary vote and won over 20 counties despite raising little money. She ran on a strongly populist platform that emphasized the anti-corruption and anti-monopoly principles she hopes to bring to the fore of American politics.

In that vein, Teachout also published a book this year titled Corruption in America: From Benjamin Franklin's Snuff Box to Citizens United, which traces the legal history of corruption. The book was intended, she said, to be a long letter to the Supreme Court's conservative majority showing how wrong they have been in major campaign finance cases.

Thomas Frank: Phony spin even Fox News won’t buy

For decades, the idiot pundit class has pushed Democrats to the right after every loss. It's not working this time

Thirty-four years ago, after a different disaster for Democrats, the pundit form known as the electoral postmortem reached an important milestone. It happened on the “MacNeil/Lehrer Report,” a then-influential PBS news program, on the day in 1980 following Jimmy Carter’s landslide defeat by Ronald Reagan. Morton Kondracke, on his way to becoming one of TV’s most respected bombastinators, was part of a panel sifting through the results. The traditional Democrat among the group was in despair; the Republican was jubilant. Then, like a ray of light through the darkness, came the words of the rising pundit princeling: “It seems to me,” Kondracke announced, “that what the Democratic Party has to do is adopt some sort of a — what might be called a neo-liberal ideology.”

The author from whom I derive this account of that shifting-of-the-tectonic-plates moment, Randall Rothenberg, proceeded to ennoble his description of the exchange with all the drama he could summon: He described Kondracke as a “youthful, guileless Midwesterner,” whose idea—“neoliberalism”—was so brash and shocking and just plumb outrageous that it actually startled the program’s host, Jim Lehrer (“What in the world is that, Mort?”). Indeed, the story of Kondracke’s TV pronouncement was supposed to be so momentous that it was the very first tale Rothenberg related in Chapter 1 of his 1984 salute to political pragmatism, “The Neoliberals.”

Malarkey on the Potomac

By Andrew J. Bacevich, TomDispatch

“Iraq no longer exists.” My young friend M, sipping a cappuccino, is deadly serious. We are sitting in a scruffy restaurant across the street from the Cathedral of St. John the Divine on Manhattan’s Upper West Side. It’s been years since we’ve last seen each another. It may be years before our paths cross again. As if to drive his point home, M repeats himself: “Iraq just doesn’t exist.”

His is an opinion grounded in experience. As an enlisted soldier, he completed two Iraq tours, serving as a member of a rifle company, before and during the famous Petraeus “surge.” After separating from the Army, he went on to graduate school where he is now writing a dissertation on insurgencies. Choosing the American war in Iraq as one of his cases, M has returned there to continue his research. Indeed, he was heading back again that very evening. As a researcher, his perch provides him with an excellent vantage point for taking stock of the ongoing crisis, now that the Islamic State, or IS, has made it impossible for Americans to sustain the pretense that the Iraq War ever ended.

Despite Electoral Defeat, Rev. Barber Touts “Forward Together” Triumph

Isaiah J. Poole

Rev. William Barber II’s new book, “Forward Together: A Moral Message To The Nation,” traces the advance of the Moral Mondays movement in North Carolina, which rose up in response to the right-wing takeover of the North Carolina state government in 2012. But what it doesn’t include is what movement participants hoped would be an electoral triumph: the defeat of state House Speaker Thom Tillis, who pushed a series of hard-right initiatives though the legislature, in his race for the U.S. Senate.

That triumph didn’t happen. But Barber, in an interview weeks later, said the results would still add a positive chapter to the book.

The People’s Republic of Plymouth

The strange and persistent right-wing myth that Thanksgiving celebrates the pilgrims’ triumph over socialism.

By Joshua Keating

This Thursday, Americans will gather together for an evening of family, food, football, and arguing with the relatives about politics. And why shouldn’t that argument extend to the meaning of the holiday itself?

One could argue that the idea of celebrating a rare moment of friendship between America’s early European settlers and its native inhabitants is marred somewhat by the centuries of bloodshed that followed. Yes, Americans of a conservative bent might dismiss this as mere P.C. revisionism. But the right has its own version of Thanksgiving revisionist history—the idea that the holiday is a celebration of the pilgrims’ abandonment of socialism in favor of free enterprise.

The Secrets of the “Secret Science” BillE

What House Republicans really mean when they call for reform of the EPA.

By Boer Deng

Few Republicans have kind words for the Environmental Protection Agency. Many refer to it as a menacing, conspiratorial madhouse—rather than an agency that takes up 0.2 percent of the federal government’s budget to keep the air and water clean. Michele Bachmann once pledged to padlock its doors; John Boehner has called it “nuts”; and Mitch McConnell says getting “the EPA reined in” will be a top priority when he ascends to Senate majority leader come January.

Those who insist the EPA needs muzzling claim it is consistently “overreaching” and making laws at “unprecedented” rates. (The agency is “a regulatory firehose on U.S. business,” intoned the Wall Street Journal.) But such bellows are at odds with the reality. According to the Office of Management and Budget, from 2001 to 2011, EPA regulations accounted for annual benefits to the country worth between $141 billion and $691 billion, while incurring annual costs between $42.4 billion and $66.3 billion. As of 2010, fewer Clean Air Act rules had been proposed or issued under the Obama administration than during the same point in the presidencies of George W. Bush or Bill Clinton.

Sam Pizzigati: Uncle Sam Needs Some Better Nephews

Average Americans have a choice at tax time. They can pay their taxes or risk going to jail for tax evasion.

America’s corporate CEOs have a different set of tax-time choices. These CEOs can have the corporations they run pay Uncle Sam or they can have their corporations pay more to their CEOs.

Painful to read...Warning: disturbing images--Dictynna

Whitewashing Imperialism

by Emanuel Stoakes

When the media erases the crimes of US imperialism, they make future atrocities more likely.

In the final weeks of summer, a minor news item shed light on a corner of the recent past largely forgotten by those north of the Rio Grande. “Beatification of Oscar Romero ‘unblocked’ by Pope Francis” read the headline, referring to the martyred Salvadoran bishop whose path to sainthood had previously been obstructed by a Vatican wary of the late prelate’s political influence.

Romero, as the piece explains, was “one of the heroes of the liberation theology movement in Latin America”; his criticism of atrocities committed by the US-backed Salvadoran armed forces precipitated his assassination at mass in March 1980.

Dean Baker | Seven Years After: Why This Recovery Is Still a Turkey

December will mark the seventh anniversary of the beginning of the recession brought on by the collapse of the housing bubble. Usually an economy would be fully recovered from the impact of a recession seven years after its onset. Unfortunately, this is not close to being the case now.

It would still take another 7-8 million jobs to bring the percentage of the population employed back to its pre-recession level. The 5.8 percent unemployment rate (compared to 4.5 percent before the recession) doesn't reflect the true weakness of the labor force since so many people have dropped out of the labor force. Furthermore, more than 7 million people are working part-time who would like full-time jobs. This is an increase of almost 3 million from the pre-recession level.

Jeb Bush’s Four Mysterious Companies Share The Same Address And Have Never Done Any Known Business

by Josh Israel
Posted on November 21, 2014 at 10:32 am

Jeb Bush and his capital investment company have set up several companies that, despite being registered to his office and being approved for “any and all lawful business,” have seemingly not yet done anything. A ThinkProgress review of corporate registration records with the Florida Department of State revealed several companies registered in Bush’s name but little additional information.

In addition to his lengthy and troubled history as a business consultant and corporate board member, in recent years former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush (R) has ventured into a new territory: capital investment. Since 2008, he and his partners have registered a lengthy array of secretive companies with the state of Florida.

41 men targeted but 1,147 people killed: US drone strikes – the facts on the ground

New analysis of data conducted by human rights group Reprieve shared with the Guardian, raises questions about accuracy of intelligence guiding ‘precise’ strikes

Spencer Ackerman in New York

The drones came for Ayman Zawahiri on 13 January 2006, hovering over a village in Pakistan called Damadola. Ten months later, they came again for the man who would become al-Qaida’s leader, this time in Bajaur.

Eight years later, Zawahiri is still alive. Seventy-six children and 29 adults, according to reports after the two strikes, are not.

10 Fun Facts About the Student Debt Crisis

By Kyle McCarthy

1. Bigger than Most Countries

Currently, more than 40 million Americans hold student debt. The population with student loans is actually greater than the entire population of Canada, Poland, North Korea, Australia and more than 200 other countries. It's also about four times greater than the population of Sweden.

2. Giant Corporations can File for Bankruptcy, but Bankruptcy is Not an Option for Student Borrowers

Let freedom ring! Earlier this month, Freedom Industries, the company responsible for a chemical leak which contaminated drinking water in West Virginia, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection. The company faces 25 lawsuits, but by filing for bankruptcy protection, Freedom Industries is able to halt most litigation.

Our Government Has Become a Clearing House for Big Money

By Bill Moyers and Michael Winship

November 21, 2014 | We’ve been watching Congress since the mid-term elections and reading Zephyr Teachout’s terrific history book, Corruption in America: From Benjamin Franklin’s Snuff Box to Citizens United [2]. That snuff box was a gift from King Louis XVI of France. His Majesty was a good friend of the American Revolution but when he gave Benjamin Franklin the gold box, featuring the monarch’s portrait surrounded with diamonds, some of our Founding Fathers objected. They worried that the gift would corrupt his judgment and unduly bias Franklin in France’s favor.

The framers debated the meaning of corruption at the Constitutional Convention in 1787, and Americans have been arguing about it ever since. Today, gifts to politicians that were once called graft or bribes are called contributions. The Supreme Court has granted corporations the rights our founders reserved for people, and told those corporations they can give just about anything they want to elect politicians favorable to their interests. Diamond and gold snuff boxes are as outmoded as the king’s powdered wig. Now we’re talking cash — millions upon millions of dollars. Quadrupled, quintupled and then some – and it’s not considered corruption.

Warren Torches GOP On Economy: We Tried It, It Was 'Nearly Catastrophic'

By Daniel Strauss
Published November 19, 2014, 3:42 PM EST

Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) went straight after Republicans, blasting the GOP on deregulation and trickle down economics during a Center for American Progress event on Wednesday.

"The Republicans have a pretty simple philosophy: they say if those at the top have more — more power for Wall Street players to do whatever they want and more money for tax cuts than somehow they can be counted on to build the economy for everyone else," Warren said. "Well, we tried it for 30 years and it didn’t work. In fact the consequences were nearly catastrophic."