Thursday, May 3, 2012

Les Leopold: How Wall Street Drives Up Gas Prices



By Les Leopold, the author of The Looting of America: How Wall Street’s Game of Fantasy Finance destroyed our Jobs, Pensions and Prosperity, and What We Can Do About It. Cross posted from Alternet

Gasoline prices have been falling in recent weeks, but they’re still close to their five-year high after climbing steeply for three years. For every penny increase at the pump, $1.4 billion per year leaves our collective pockets, creating a drag on the sluggish “recovery.” Where does it go and what caused the price explosion at the pump?


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George Washington: Our Country Is Being Fracked by the Merger of Government and Big Business



One of the best definitions of fascism – the one used by Mussolini himself – is the “merger of state and corporate power“. We’re pretty much there …


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David Graeber: New Police Strategy in New York – Sexual Assault Against Peaceful Protestors



By David Graeber, a Reader in Social Anthropology at Goldsmiths, University of London, and an author and activist currently based in New York

A few weeks ago I was with a few companions from Occupy Wall Street in Union Square when an old friend — I’ll call her Eileen — passed through, her hand in a cast.

“What happened to you?” I asked.


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Links 5/3/12




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Adam Davidson Parrots Disinformation as He Extols Rule by the Top 0.1%



Adam Davidson is moving up in the world. He has gone from fellating the 1% to the top 0.1%.


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Philip Pilkington: Inflation-Targeting Experiment May Start in Japan… But at What Cost?



By Philip Pilkington, a writer and journalist based in Dublin, Ireland. You can follow him on Twitter at @pilkingtonphil

Rumors abound that a deal is fomenting in Japan that might lead to the inflation targeting proposal that so many progressives champion on their blogs being put in place.


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New York Times Yet Again Demonstrates Its Fealty to the 1%



I got a message from a regular reader:


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Links 5/2/12




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Is Wells Fargo a Lehman in the Making?



Banking maven Chris Whalen has a must-read piece on the reckless real estate risk taking underway at Wells Fargo, the sanctimonious #4 bank.


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Philip Pilkington: Bankers Shoot Selves in Foot – “Reduce Our Profits by Cutting Deficits, Please!”



By Philip Pilkington, a writer and journalist based in Dublin, Ireland. You can follow him on Twitter at @pilkingtonphil

Are governments really engaging in ‘financial repression’?


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The Renegade Economist Speaks with Ann Pettifor



This is the sort of talk that makes Americans jealous of the British. Heterodox economist Ann Pettifor predicted a global debt deflation in 2003 (!) and critiques conventional thinking in the economics discipline. She also has a wonderfully theatrical manner of speaking.


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Dan Kervick: The Astonishing Case of the Impenetrable Zero Bound



Yves here. I rather like the storytelling format of this post.

By Dan Kervick, who does research in decision theory and analytic metaphysics. Cross posted from New Economic Perspectives

In a small, peaceful town there once lived three people: Abbie, Baker and Carlie.


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Links May Day 2012




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Mirabile Dictu! The SEC is Getting Disgusted With Lawyers Pulling the Same Tricks in SEC Investigations that They Pull in Foreclosure Land Every Day



The Wall Street Journal has an entertaining account, if your taste runs to black humor, of how legal chicanery has reached such high levels that the SEC is toying with the idea of going after it directly.


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Charlotte to Suspend Constitutional Free Speech and Assembly Protections to Help Bank of America, Duke Shareholder Meetings



It has become pretty routine for local police to engage in thuggery and run roughshod over Constitutional protections in the name of maintaining order, which increasingly means not annoying big companies.


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