Econintersect: Click Read more >> below graphic to see today’s list.
The top of today’s reading list is an article about the conflicts between unrestricted capital flows and economic benefit …….. and the last article discusses the possible manipulation of the ethanol credits market.
- More evidence: “Free trade” really means “free capital flow” — and causes constant bubbles (Gaius Publius, America Blog) Hat tip to Naked Capitalism. A liberal rant of considerable merit about the societal and economic damage resulting from unrestricted global capital flows. The general overall impression is that deregulation has loosed a capital “pump and dump” process on the world.
- The predictions through the years that turned out to be spectacularly wrong (Lucy Kinder, The Telegraph)
- Warnings of Market Crash Similar to ’87 Abound as Main Street Pain Worsens (Gil Weinreich, ThinkAdvisor)
- Supreme Court Is on the Path to Being a “Wholly Owned Subsidiary of Big Business” (Elizabeth Warren, AlterNet)
“The five conservative justices currently sitting on the Supreme Court are in the top ten most pro-corporate justices in a half century.”
- Get Ready for “Taper Lite”: 3 Signs the Labor Market Isn’t Picking Up (Russ Koesterich, Advisor Perspectives) Russ Koesterich has contributed to Global Economic Intersection.
- What caused the belly of the treasury curve to become more volatile? (Sober Look) It is the shorting of Treasuries to hedge long MBS positions.
- China Shadow Banking Returns as Growth Rebound Adds Risks (Hu Shen, Bloomberg News) New credit explodes raising questions of sustainability.
- America’s economic house is built on sand (Robin Harding, Financial Times) A very confused article which seems to support the idea that the government should be saving:
“In terms of financial balances, household and government savings needed to rise and corporate savings to fall.”
- Taxpayers Make U.S. Farmers Fat Cats With Insurance (Bloomberg News, via Financial Advisor)
A Depression-era program intended to save American farmers from ruin has grown into a 21st-century crutch enabling affluent growers and financial institutions to thrive at taxpayer expense.
Federal crop insurance encourages farmers to gamble on risky plantings in a program that has been marred by fraud and that illustrates why government spending is so difficult to control.
- Wall St. Exploits Ethanol Credits, and Prices Spike (Gretchen Morgenson and Robert Gebeloff, The New York Times) Did you miss this 19-bagger? Market manipuating TBTF banks didn’t miss it. In fact they may have created the conditions for the big run-up, cornered the market, if you will.