The Bush tax cuts: a $2.74 trillion loss
The excellent David Cay Johnston asks: So How Did the Bush Tax Cuts Work Out for the Economy? Short answer: a nearly $3 trillion loss. And the GOP wants to extend them, and the Dems don’t want to go out of their way to stop them.
Citi update
Brad DeLong, um, comments on the 19-month-old Citigroup report on the Treasury’s bank policy that Citi demanded that WordPress and I take down: Citigroup’s View of the Obama Administration in February 2009… – Grasping Reality with Both Hands.
Fresh audio posted
Just posted to my radio archives (links there): September 16, 2010 Stephen Mihm, co-author of Crisis Economics, on The Crisis in historical perspective • Two segments on Cuba: Julia Sweig in an excerpt from a Council of Foreign Relations conference call (full audio here) about her conversation with Fidel, and consultant Kirby Jones on the Cuban economy and U.S. companies doing business there September 23, 2010 Eric Garris, founder of Antiwar.com, on the antiwar movement, the libertarian perspective on it, and the effort to unite opponents across the spectrum • Gary Shteyngart,… Read More
Citigroup feels violated
This morning, WordPress informed me that they’d received a “valid DMCA notice”—as in Digital Millennium Copyright Act—notice about a Citigroup research report I posted here in February 2009. Until the issue could be “resolved”—meaning I acknowledged this grave offense against intellectual property—I couldn’t post anything to this blog. Once I said “Yes, Sir,” my posting privileges were restored. The document was, of course, deleted. The report was an analysis of the Treasury’s proposed bank capital requirements in the run-up to the stress tests. Citi’s conclusion—and I think even the DMCA allows me… Read More
Interview
Me, interviewed by Allison Kilkenny of Citizen Radio: http://www.breakthruradio.com/index.php?show=11537
Why we loved the Zaps
This is terrific: We loved the Zapatistas, because they were brave enough to make history after the end of History. We loved the Zapatistas, because we were afraid of political power and political decisions. We loved the Zapatistas, because we thought we could do without a century and a half of baggage. But we could have done far more for the Zapatistas if we mounted a better challenge to the system that shackles us all—neoliberalism. I mean capitalism.
Radio commentary, September 15, 2010
[Been a while since I posted one of these. Too many things to do, too little time. Sorry. Much more, including graphs, in the forthcoming LBO.] Thursday morning brought the release of the Census Bureau’s annual income, poverty, and health insurance numbers. These are drawn from a special edition of the Bureau’s monthly Current Population Survey. The regular survey, which covers about 60,000 households, is what the monthly unemployment figures, among other things, are based on. This special survey, done every March, covers 100,000 households. This is a very large sample, though… Read More
New radio product
Just added to my radio archives (links to guest bios and articles are there): September 9, 2010 Liz McNichol of the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities on the fiscal crisis of the states • Yanis Varoufakis of the University of Athens fact-checks Michael Lewis’ Vanity Fair article on Greece September 4, 2010 (KPFA version) Jesse Eisinger talks about how banks flipped CDOs to each other, made billions, stuck us with the bill • Michael Yates talks about the miserable mood out there in the Real America
LBO News from Doug Henwood 
Posted on September 24, 2010 by Doug Henwood
Radio commentary, September 23, 2010
Summers • recession over! — except in housing and jobs • Zuckerberg & the charter scam Summers back to Harvard So Larry Summers is leaving as head of Obama’s National Economic Council. Everyone who talks about Summers assures us that he’s a very smart fellow, though he left Harvard, where he was president for five years, a financial wreck. (Background here, here, and here.) He’d advised the endowment to borrow heavily to speculate in derivatives that went sour, yielding billions in losses. But, as everyone will tell you, Larry is very smart. He did help… Read More