Thursday, May 26, 2016

Free Trade in Rhetoric, Not in Practice

The gap between the posturing and practice of free trade.

Purdue Pharma’s OxyContin: Corporate Fraud With a Body Count

Yves here. Some of the facts in this article are stunning. For instance, more Americans die from opoid overdose than from car accidents. And this article gives only a partial tally of Purdue Pharma’s predatory conduct. The drugmaker targeted overly-busy, not very well trained general practitioners in communities which were likely to have high incidence […]

2:00PM Water Cooler 5/25/2016

Today’s Water Cooler: TTIP in Eastern Europe, Clinton email hairball, California, the press, services, housing, trade, sorcerers, AI, love

Americans Increasingly Angry With Corporate Desertions via Tax Inversions

Tax inversions damage the already low credibility of Corporate America.

Links 5/25/16

bakery cat links

Where Did the Bernie Sanders Movement Come From? The Internet.

How the digital divide explains where Sanders did well, and not as well.

Unsealed Documents Reveal Former White House Officials Violated Fannie/Freddie Conservatorship Rules, Apparently to Advance Bank-Enriching “Reforms”

The Administration has refused to turn over over 12,000 documents in a lawsuit against how the government operated Fannie and Freddie in their conservatorship. The major bone of contention is that Treasury stripped them of all profits, which damaged the remaining private shareholders. But the unsealing of a small batch of government records shows why […]

Reader Note on Strikes in France: “Pass the Popcorn”

Transportation unions and airport workers are joining strikes in France to protest new labor laws,….right before the Euro Cup and tourist season.

The Pentagon’s Budgetary War on Accountability

Why the Pentagon always has the money it needs, and a lot more too.

2:00PM Water Cooler 5/24/2016

Today’s Water Cooler: TTIP, delivering Sanders voters, Trump voters, housing, manufacturing, forced labor, French strikes, solar storms

Helicopter Money: The Illusion of a Free Lunch

Does helicopter money come with a hidden price tag?

Links 5/24/16

Beagles

SEC Official Defends Weak, Selective Enforcement When Agency Records Show Private Equity Firms Thumb Nose at Agency

Yesterday, we looked at a section of a Stanford Law School conference at the end of March. The panel on pre-IPO funding included the SEC/s head of enforcement, Andrew Ceresney. In the question and answer section, Ceresney and a member of the audience, Marc Fagel, the former regional director of the SEC’s San Francisco office, […]

Neoliberalism’s Press Gangs: How Markets Raise Costs

Neliberalim’s press gangs – forcing citizens to participate in capitalism when even it produces worse outcomes than public ownership would.

The 7 Biggest Myths and Lies About Social Security

An antidote to Peterson Foundation anti-Social Security Kool Aid.