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Archive for March, 2009

fingers crossed, salt over left shoulder…

This graph of the Consumer Price Index is from my post in December 2008 [a few good republicans?…]. The worry then was a "Deflationary Spiral" [which is a very bad thing]. It’s when prices free-fall as panicky sellers hope to grab a dying market by dropping prices and portends sure doom. Here’s the graph now […]

1980?…

The crash has laid bare many unpleasant truths about the United States. One of the most alarming, says a former chief economist of the International Monetary Fund, is that the finance industry has effectively captured our government—a state of affairs that more typically describes emerging markets, and is at the center of many emerging-market crises. […]

Joe Baca: When Was It Broken? By emptywheel Joe Baca [D-CA] asked Ben Bernanke a very simple question in today’s House Financial Services hearing on AIG: When was AIG broken? When did it get so screwed up that we would have to bail it out. Bernanke, however, didn’t give Baca a clear answer. He did […]

iran-contra reunion…

My tolerance for the wrangling in Washington about the Budget, the Stimulus, the Banks, and the RNC is limited, but I can always be aroused by news about Cheney’s secret government. emptywheel has been following Sy Hersh‘s revelations of Cheney’s Assassination Squadrons. So now it goes back to the Iran-Contra Affair and the Forty Year […]

the best predictor…

the best predictor of future behavior is past behavior… Liddy’s Lies to Congress: Meet AIG’s $6.4 Million Man By: emptywheel March 20, 2009 As I noted this morning, Doug Poling was the guy whom AIG decided last year should get a $6.4 million "retention" bonus for sticking around a year. [He has since turned down […]

tonga…

a patriot…

I’d never heard of Ann Wright before today. Back in 2003, we didn’t hear about such people. She served as a Colonel in the Army, then later as a Diplomat in Nicaragua, Grenada, Somalia, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, Sierra Leone, Micronesia, Afghanistan and Mongolia. She is the kind of American Patriot that has been missing for too […]

Bernie’s mess…

In one of the lectures I gave second year Medical students  about Obsessive Compulsive people, there was one part that always sparked a laugh of recognition: It’s a paradox. These hyper-organized stickers for perfection always have a ‘secret mess,’ highlighting the fact that they are always in conflict – about everything. If you’re not on […]

frozen in time…

When one gets older, one doesn’t forget the thoughts at the way-stations of life along the way. I remember the passion of the Civil Rights days, and some of the fear that things could never be right. And I remember that Nixon period when all of the social gains of the JFK/LBJ era were being […]

it takes a village…

An “Aggressive” Prosecution? Breaking Down Madoff Auditor Case WSJ Law Blog March 19, 2009 By Amir Efrati Now that we’ve all had a chance to reflect on the fraud charges brought Wednesday against Bernard Madoff’s outside auditor, David Friehling, let’s delve a little deeper. Friehling was accused of enabling Madoff’s fraud by conducting sham audits. […]