Mystery Economic Theater 2015

[kladner]

Just how corrupt is Washington?
It should be remembered that the "cash spigot" mentioned below is but a trickle compared to the billions to be made.

A decade in the making, the controversial Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) is reaching its climax and as Congress hotly debates the biggest trade deal in a generation, its backers have turned on the cash spigot in the hopes of getting it passed.


“We’re very much in the endgame,” US trade representative Michael Froman told reporters over the weekend at a meeting of the 21-member Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum on the resort island of Boracay. His comments came days after TPP passed another crucial vote in the Senate.

“It’s a rare thing for members of Congress to go against the money these days,” said Mansur Gidfar, spokesman for the anti-corruption group Represent.Us. “They know exactly which special interests they need to keep happy if they want to fund their reelection campaigns or secure a future job as a lobbyist.


“How can we expect politicians who routinely receive campaign money, lucrative job offers, and lavish gifts from special interests to make impartial decisions that directly affect those same special interests?” Gidfar said. “As long as this kind of transparently corrupt behavior remains legal, we won’t have a government that truly represents the people.”

[ewmayer]

More TPP: This NC piece highlights a crucial and under-reported geopolitical angle centered on control of the key shipping/naval chokepoint that is the straits of Malacca. That fits with the 'elephant in the bedroom' aspect of China not being part of the TPP alliance:

America's First Black President Throwing Slaves Under the Bus on TPP | naked capitalism

[ewmayer]

o The Federal Reserve Board Is Much More Likely to Take Your Job Than a Robot, so Naturally the Media Are Talking About Robots | Dean Baker, CEPR

Some good comments there - Among the non-MSM, econo-blogger Mish has been engaging in near nonstop robo-dream wankerage the past year or so, perhaps as a replacement for his previous techotopian blogging fetish, BitCoin. He blames Fed perma-EZ-munny policy (perhaps on-target) and 'unreasonable' demands by non-elite workers for a 'living minimum wage' (highly dubious) for the 'rise of the robots'. It is indisputable, however, that if the Fed gave a rat's patootie about the real 'main street' economy they would encourage the living wage movement, because recipients of those wage hikes would spend far more of same back into the real economy, whereas the elite looter class which is in fact the chief beneficiary of the Fed's actual policies spends most of it into the speculative-casino 'economy', that is into blowing unsustainable asset bubbles all over the place.

o Dick Fuld Continues to Exhibit Advanced Case of Wall Street CEO Derangement Syndrome | naked capitalism (Fuld is ex-CEO of the blown-up-during-GFC Lehman Brothers)

o The Economist Who Realized How Crazy We Are | Michael Hudson, writing for Bloomberg View

Richard Thaler ... has just published an odd and interesting professional memoir, "Misbehaving." It's odd because it's funnier and more personal than books by professors tend to be. It's interesting because it tells the story not just of Thaler's career but also of the field of behavioral economics -- the study of actual human beings rather than the rational optimizers of classical economic theory.
....
This willingness to allow oneself to be distracted from one's assigned task would later turn out to be a chief characteristic of behavioral economists, along with a bunch of other traits not normally found in economists, though often found in children: a sense of wonder, a tendency to ask embarrassing questions, and a mistrust of grown-ups' ideas about what's worth spending time thinking about and what is not. They're the sort of people whose day is made when they discover that health club members are most likely to hit the gym the day after they have received their monthly bill, or that race track gamblers are a lot more likely to bet on the longshot the last race of the day than the first.

[only_human]

How much you need to make per hour to afford a rental in the U.S.

[xilman]

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-33087604

Anyone prepared to bet that this will lead to anything?

Thought not

[R.D. Silverman]

Originally Posted by xilman

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-33087604

Anyone prepared to bet that this will lead to anything?

Thought not

I will lay long odds that it will not. Certainly not in the U.S.

[Fusion_power]

This is a refreshing view of bankers and justice. It might even meet Bob's approval. Note the 4 to 5 year sentences of the "Market Manipulators".

http://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/ne...-31292885.html

[ewmayer]

Originally Posted by xilman

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-33087604

Anyone prepared to bet that this will lead to anything?

Thought not

Like so many top "regulators" and government/big-Finance revolving-door-ers, Carney (IIRC) is a an ex-Goldmanite, thus made his bones at the epitome of the "culture of impunity". And as ever, talk is cheap.

[ewmayer]

Fascinating 'True Detective" story by expert NC fraud-ferreter-outer Richard Smith:

A Billion-Dollar Bank Fraud in Moldova, and 20,000 Opaque British Corporations | naked capitalism

There are only 90,000 active LPs and LLPs in the UK, all told. In other words: pick a currently active UK LP or LLP at random, and you have nearly a one-in-four chance of lighting on an entity perfectly configured for financial crime. If you narrow your choice to Scottish LPs alone, it’s much worse again: you have a better-than-even chance of hitting a dodgy one.

Here’s part of the explanation for that phenomenon.

UK Limited Liability Partnerships (LLPs)

In 2013, Richard Brooks and Andrew Bousfield, of the UK satirical & investigative weekly, Private Eye, broke the story of the large-scale abuse of British Limited Liability Partnerships (LLPs) for money laundering, in a special report entitled “Where there’s muck, there’s brass plates: How UK ghost companies made Britain the capital of global corporate crime”:

“Limited liability partnerships”… joined the lexicon of British corporate law only in 2000 as a result of heavy lobbying from Britain’s big accountancy partnerships, which wanted to limit their liability for carrying out dodgy audits without becoming limited companies and so incurring extra taxes. The new corporate vehicle allowed them to have it both ways by stipulating that an LLP would have limited liability but would not be a taxable entity itself…

The new hybrid had great appeal: not just to respectable accountants, but also to those who were up to no good.

The Hermitage fraud, in which $230Mn in tax receivables were pinched, in Russia, gets its obligatory mention. Sergei Magnitsky, working with Hermitage boss Bill Browder, who was investigating it, suddenly found himself accused of being the perpetrator. He was convicted, in a Russian court, and was later beaten to death, in a Russian prison.

LOL, "Hugh Janus Limited" and "York Hunt Limited" ... it would all be mostly amusing if these entities weren't engaged in such decidedly unfunny practices as robbing people of their livelihoods, impoverishing entire countries (e.g. Moldova bank fraud), laundering money for weapons and drugs cartels and quite literally getting innocent people killed. Thank you, UK financial "regulators".

[only_human]

Bees contribute more to British economy than Royal Family
"Bees contribute £651 million to the UK economy a year, £150 million more than the Royal Family brings in through tourism."

“We can’t just rely on our current starting line-up of pollinators. We need a large and diverse group of species on the substitutes’ bench, ready to join the game as soon as they are needed, if we are to ensure food production remains stable.”

No word of whether the royals have their own talent scouts or are even aware the a rivalry exists.

[Fusion_power]

As a beekeeper, I'm in favor of everyone knowing that 1/3 of the food we consume relies on bees. Do you like steak? Cattle are fed a lot of alfalfa which requires pollination to produce seed. It took a bee to make that steak! Yes, I know that corn is also a preferred feed for cattle and it is wind pollinated.

Grexit is back on the front burner. There comes a point where the most obvious solution to a problem is to apply the axe. Greece has financially abused and misused EU membership. IMO, it is about time they were kicked out on their ear. Will it be painful? Yep. Will the market twang like a bow fired without an arrow? Yep. Will we live over it? Yep.

http://www.bbc.com/news/business-33164924