It's Halloween! As candy, costumes and parties parse the night, we have our own goblins, ghouls and ghosts haunting economic policy.
Our current trickster is Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson, with his keys to the treasury purse via the Congress approved bail out
The United Steelworkers President, Leo W. Gerard, spelled out in a letter how the US taxpayer is being robbed blind. He does not mince words. An excerpt:
The Chosen Ones. I flipped on the local news late last night and saw a local bank CEO announce they have received millions of money from the bail out even though they don't need it. Images and drawings trying to explain how giving taxpayer money to some of the most consumer unfriendly banks would help the taxpayer abounded from the infomercial newscast. Arrows and redirects flooded a white board where one could have written corporate public relations B.S. clip in it's place. Paulson is helping the worse bank in Oregon, notorious for old growth timber clear cutting. The CEO said he would probably use the money for acquisitions, consolidation.
Currency pegs are being tested to destruction on the fringes of Europe’s monetary union in a traumatic upheaval that recalls the collapse of the Exchange Rate Mechanism in 1992.
It's Friday Night! Party Time! Time to relax, put your feet up on the couch, lay back, and watch some detailed videos on economic policy!
This evening I cannot help but revisit the 1930's. A famous film from the Great Depression is Our Daily Bread. Labeled pinko and capitalist propaganda at the same time, the story depicts communal living during the depression era.
The above image is from the United States Treasury agreement (pdf) on how much it will pay the Bank of New York Mellon for running the auctions to buy up toxic assets as proposed in the bail out.
The House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform is holding multiple hearings on the financial crisis. Today's hearing, the 3rd of 5, was Credit Rating Agencies and the Financial Crisis.
Pat Choate's new book, Dangerous Business: The Risks of Globalization for America is a must read book on the realities of globalization, trade, the lobbyists surrounding D.C., corporatism and China's modern mercantilism. Choate not only describes some of the corruption, insanity and erosion of the United States through bad trade deals, elitism and globalization, he prescribes solutions.
In the below talk on his book, Choate details massive intellectual property theft, biased trade deal provisions, emerging markets, deficits with minute detail :
It's Friday Night! Party Time! Time to relax, put your feet up on the couch, lay back, and watch some detailed videos on economic policy!
Considering how Lehman Brothers just received subpoenas for criminal violations, I thought we might revisit Enron. Isn't it wonderful how we have scandal, hearings and a few get busted but most....simply move on to yet another bubble?
Many folks are asking what the hell is going on, how did we get here and who is responsible?
The Washington post has named names on what and who are responsible for this disaster.
The issue at hand was regulation of the derivatives market and Brooksley E. Born wanted to regulate it. This is 1998, the Clinton administration.
It seems Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan, Treasury Secretary Robert E. Rubin and Securities and Exchange Commission Chairman Arthur Levitt Jr. didn't want any regulation on the growing shadow banking system called derivatives.
It's Friday Night! Party Time! Time to relax, put your feet up on the couch, lay back, and watch some detailed videos on economic policy! 
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