My all time favorite TV series is "The Wire", which ran for 5 years on HBO. Throughout the series, the common thread was the affinity, by the police, the mayor, city politicians and even the drug lords, to "juke the stats". In other words, "tell them what they want to hear", and move on.

In this vein, I've been all over the econoblogosphere today and I'm surprised that this excellent article from Yves Smith hasn't gotten more attention.

Many of us here at EP, and elsewhere, have questioned the veracity of new data eminating from the Census Bureau, the BLS (a.k.a. Bureau of Lying Statistics) and other gov't agencies. In particular, any new reports pertaining to housing, unemployment levels and CPI must be taken with a heavy dose of skepticism.

It's been about 10 years since PBS first aired Ken Burns' wonderful documentary, "New York, A Documentary Film". In one of the middle episodes, the film focuses on the photojournalistic work of Jacob Riis, a Danish immigrant who investigated the realities of the tenements of the lower West Side. Riis first reported his work in a short magazine article in 1889. He then followed up with a book in 1890, "How The Other Half Lives". The book is replete with photographs and drawings chronicling the abject squalor of the tenements. Many later attributed the work of Jacob Riis as a source for the progressive movement in the early 20th Century, not only in New York City, but throughout the large cities of America.

You are probably familiar with the old fable about the scorpion and the frog. The one where the scorpion asks the frog for a ride across a river and the frog declines because it fears that the scorpion will kill it. Then the scorpion cons the frog by appealing to the logic that if it kills the frog, it would surely die too. Convinced, the frog agrees to help the scorpion but half way across the river, the scorpion stings the frog anyway. Paralyzed, in shock of disbelief, and just before sinking, the frog asks the scorpion "Why did you sting me"? The scorpion replies that it was just in its nature.

Petit Julien welcomes you back to the Populist Pub.  

Nearly 18 months into this recession, skepticism is growing about what "recovery" might look like. We hear talk of "green shoots" in an economy that is being remade into another bubble economy, this time based on "government finance". Is it really "stimulating" to the real economy to inject massive amounts of liquidity into the financial system? This unprecedented intervention includes Federal Reserve Credit, Treasury borrowings, agency debt, mortgage-backed securities issued by GSEs, as well as increased involvement of the FDIC. The latest estimates of the size of this bubble is around $14 Trillion which, amazingly, dwarfs the mortgage finance bubble it replaces. The question many analysts ask is whether the FED will be able to withdraw liquidity from the system in the proper amounts and at the right time in order to avert the inevitable inflation when it begins. Ironically, the FED will then find itself in the familiar position of being trapped by the risk of bursting another historic bubble!

Petit Julien welcomes you back to the Populist Pub.  

Earlier this week, we passed a milestone of sorts. The Obama administration marked its first 100 days in office. In 1933, FDR, facing a full blown depression, made numerous and transformative changes in his first 100 days. Since then, the accomplishments of the first 100 days of every new administration have been symbolically compared. That is, until this year.

On Thursday, Day #101 of the Obama administration, Steve Lendman, author, blogger, radio co-host and activist, who lives in Chicago, wrote an excellent article contrasting the first 100 days of FDR to BHO. This was effectively a follow up to a scathing article he wrote two weeks earlier. In that article, published on April 18th, Steve Lendman was highly critical of the Obama economic team especially. It was provocatively titled Barack Obama: Crime Boss.

Petit Julien welcomes you back to the Populist Pub.  

As a nation, we are groping for some sense of hope that we are emerging from the economic morass. The ranks of the unemployed continue to swell and millions of working Americans and retirees worry that the economic tsunami may engulf them next. The government has enacted a dizzying array of bailouts and assistance plans aimed at stabilizing the banking industry, thereby clearing a path to recovery in the real economy.

There is plenty of criticism for the government's actions to date, much of which is centered on understanding what brought on the crisis in the first place. Many critics attribute the 1999 repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act of 1933 and the 2000 enactment of the Commodities Futures Modernization Act as the impetus for the wreckless financial gambling of the last 8 years. For sure, this is not wrong and various measures of reform are now working their way through the Congressional process.

However, in an excellent article published in the April edition of Harper's Magazine, Thomas Geoghegan argues that we have not focused enough on the big deregulation that precedes all other deregulation. For him it was the day that America changed. His essay is titled: Infinite Debt; How Unlimited Interest Rates Destroyed The Economy.

Petit Julien welcomes you to the first gathering at the Populist Pub.   As an introduction, let me refer to this comment I made the other night. You can scroll up and down in that thread to get more context.

One of the things I like most about Naked Capitalism is the daily links that Yves provides. They are wide ranging, only sometimes graphical or analytical, but always apropros to the bigger picture.

So I was thinking if there is a way of doing something similar here at EP. Provide links to other reports, essays, analyses without paraphrasing and just invite general discussion or further original blog posts.

I am a baby boomer, a post WWII son of 2nd generation immigrant parents. I'm a bit older than Paul Krugman, but I grew up in exactly the same America he talks about in "Conscience of a Liberal".

Postwar America was, above all, a middle-class society. The great boom in wages that began with WWII had lifted tens of millions of Americans - my parents among them - from urban slums and rural poverty to a life of home ownership and unprecedented comfort. The rich, on the other hand, had lost ground. They were few in number and, relative to the prosperous middle, not all that rich. The poor were more numerous than the rich, but they were still a relatively small minority. As a result, there was a striking sense of commonality: Most people in America lived recognizably similar and remarkably decent material lives.