krebscycle

  • Adam Smith was not as stupid as modern neoclassicals: interest rates

    Here is Adam Smith explaining why interest rates should be limited by law – to prevent the proliferation of junk bonds and the whole private equity model. The legal rate, it is to be observed, though it ought to be somewhat above, ought not to be much above the lowest…

  • The three-fold path of the anti-Obama left

    To see just how weird the intersection of racism and economics can be in modern America, one need go no further than Yves Smith’s influential “Naked Capitalism” blog and an article with the title: Exclusive: How Obama’s Early Career Success Was Built on Fronting for Chicago Real Estate and Finance…

  • Justice Harlan rebukes Scalia and Kennedy

    When this court had before it the question of the constitutionality of a statute of Kansas making it a criminal offense for a contractor for public work to permit or require his employees to perform labor upon such work in excess of eight hours each day, it was contended that…

  • Justice Holmes rebukes Scalia

    This case is decided upon an economic theory which a large part of the country does not entertain. If it were a question whether I agreed with that theory, I should desire to study it further and long before making up my mind. But I do not conceive that to…

  • States Rights

    Theodore Parker on the Fugitive Slave Act: Yes, we are the vassals of Virginia. She reaches her arm over the graves of our mothers, and kidnaps men in the city of the Puritans; over the graves of Samuel Adams aNd John Hancock. [Cries of’Shame!’]’ Shame!’ so I say; but who…

  • Confederate economics

    Protecting slavery and prohibiting government assistance for economic development – that’s most of what the Slave states changed when they seceded and came up with a modified “Confederate” constitution based on the actual US constitution.The leaders of the Confederacy wanted a nation composed of  slaves, poor white people to be…

  • Dividend Recap

    “Dividend recap” is a great finance term that more people should know. It is a type of transaction that is common in the private equity world, the world of  Mitt Romney’s Bain Capital. Basically the idea is that you take control of a company and then make the company borrow…

  • Smearing Trayvon Martin versus 9th grade journalism

    Rene Stutzman of the Orlando Sentinal published a terrible, deceptive, and propagandistic article on Trayvon Martin’s killing. The first paragraph, the lede as we learned to call it in 9th grade, is frankly despicable. Here’s what she wrote: With a single punch, Trayvon Martin decked the Neighborhood Watch volunteer who…

  • Manufacturing, economics, and democracy

    (From 2012 when Tesla and Facebook were far less pernicious and when Obama made things look more hopeful) President Obama wants the government to do more to help rebuild America’s manufacturing. Many economists have responded to his initiative by giving their opinion on the question of “Should the government intervene…

  • Christina Romer and manufacturing

    In the his state of the union speech, President Obama stressed the importance of rebuilding a manufacturing economy. This idea is not popular among “liberal” economists. During the worst of the panic in 2009, Robert Reich  piped up attack the auto rescue  because we should all work in the service…