Fresh audio product

Just added to my radio archive (click on date for link): March 3, 2022 Anatol Lieven on Russia’s invasion of Ukraine • Alyssa Giachino and Derek Seidman, among the authors of this report, on private equity and fossil fuels

Fresh audio product

Just added to my radio archive (click on date for link): March 11, 2021 Brianna Rennix on the condition of migrants at the US–Mexico border • Gianpaolo Biocchi on creating a social housing authority in the US (paper here, NYT article here)

Bain actually loves Dems

All good Democrats are busily hating on Bain Capital right now. What they’re forgetting is how many Bain-affiliated political contributions have gone to Democrats. Plug the words “Bain Capital” into an OpenSecrets.org search and you learn that while Bain people have lovingly contributed to their former CEO’s presidential campaign, almost 3/4 of their contributions to other candidates, 72% to be precise, have gone to Democrats. That’s a higher percentage to Dems than the AFL-CIO! And among the top recipients are Dem headliners like Al Franken, Claire McCaskill, John Kerry, Mark Udall, Nancy Pelosi, and Sherrod… Read More

Leveraged speculators will save us!

And not just any band of leveraged speculators: handpicked members of the private equity elite operating with cheap government credit, and insured against losses! Others have criticized the Geithner bank rescue plan’s economic aspects in detail; no need to repeat all that here. I’ll just say that it strikes me as a very bad idea to set the thing up so that the government takes the lion’s share of any losses and the private investors, the lion’s share of any gains (if any). And it strikes me as fantastic that the dominant… Read More