Category Archives: Economics

Marching Towards Another Depression

A fas­ci­nat­ing arti­cle at New Deal 2.0 details the steps we are tak­ing towards a likely sec­ond Great Depres­sion. At a time when economies are tee­ter­ing on the edge of recov­ery and a sec­ond reces­sion, gov­ern­ments are start­ing to make noises, par­tic­u­larly in Europe, about reduc­ing deficits as a model for respon­si­ble finan­cial health. Unfor­tu­nately, …

June 8, 2010 – 9:18 am | By Scotch Drinker | Posted in Economics | Tagged , , | Comments (0)

Can Civilization’s Birthplace Become Its Funeral Pyre?

Over­reach­ing head­lines aside, the Euro­zone is a bit of trou­ble. Greece has been bailed out in an attempt to avoid a sov­er­eign default. Those in the know think the Greeks are unlikely to be the last coun­try in the Euro­zone to require a bailout and the con­di­tions the IMF are expect­ing Greece to con­form with …

May 18, 2010 – 10:42 am | By Scotch Drinker | Posted in Economics | Tagged , , , | Comments (1)

Not Out Of The Woods

JP Mor­gan Chase reported today and it sure sounds like every­thing is com­ing up roses for the bank­ing behe­moth. Income is up 85% over last year at 74 cents a share com­pared to 40 cents a share a year pre­vi­ous. Rev­enue is up as well. Of course, as with most finan­cial report­ing these days, you …

April 14, 2010 – 7:58 am | By Scotch Drinker | Posted in Economics | Comments (0)

And The Rich Get Richer…

There is cur­rently a move­ment under­foot in Con­gress to rec­om­pense investors in the Bernard Mad­off and R. Allen Stand­ford Ponzi scheme deba­cles. It is couched in the terms of peo­ple hav­ing lost their life’s sav­ings being fairly rep­re­sented and treated but is actu­ally a dis­gust­ing reminder of how those in power con­trol much of our …

March 10, 2010 – 10:17 pm | By Scotch Drinker | Posted in Economics | Tagged , | Comments (0)

Fear The Boom And The Bust

When they start mak­ing rap songs about dead econ­o­mists, I think it’s prob­a­bly a sign of the apoc­a­lypse. Still, this one is excel­lent and instructive.

January 26, 2010 – 6:46 pm | By Scotch Drinker | Posted in Economics | Comments (1)

Baby Steps

This week, Pres­i­dent Obama pro­posed reg­u­la­tory changes that would limit big banks, implic­itly those that received the guar­an­tee of a gov­ern­ment back­stop dur­ing the crash last year, from invest­ing for prof­its using their own hedge-funds or pro­pri­etary trad­ing desks. This would be an excel­lent first step in rein­ing in the power that the JP Mor­gans …

January 23, 2010 – 5:56 am | By Scotch Drinker | Posted in Economics, Politics | Tagged , | Comments (4)

Why The Federal Reserve Is Immoral

Tim over at The Mess That Greenspan Made writes about why the Fed is immoral and I can hardly improve on it. You should read the whole thing. Once you’re done with that, read about why our cri­sis will deepen even fur­ther instead of get­ting bet­ter over at Cafe Amer­i­cain. I believed when I first …

August 12, 2009 – 9:19 pm | By Scotch Drinker | Posted in Economics | Comments (6)

Insider Trading Suit Against Mark Cuban Dismissed

A judge threw out the SEC’s case against Mark Cuban today related to his sale of stock in Mamma.com. I ini­tially wrote about it here point­ing out the pos­si­bil­ity that this case was polit­i­cal pay­back. You have to think it might have been since I’d imag­ine the SEC doesn’t nor­mally bring a case against some­one …

July 17, 2009 – 10:09 am | By Scotch Drinker | Posted in Economics | Comments (0)

What Do Spending Habits Tell Us About Being A Supreme Court Justice?

As most peo­ple know, Pres­i­dent Obama recently tapped Sonia Sotomayer to be the next Supreme Court Jus­tice. There’s been quite a bit of dis­cus­sion regard­ing her legal the­o­ries, recent com­ments on white men and Latina women and her over­all abil­ity to do the job. I per­son­ally doubt that she is ter­ri­bly dan­ger­ous even though she …

June 9, 2009 – 9:35 pm | By Scotch Drinker | Posted in Economics, Legal Affairs | Comments (0)

Green Shoots Are Sometimes Weeds

As any gar­dener will tell you, healthy lawns hardly ever have weeds in them. This is because when a lawn is healthy, it is lush and thick and weeds don’t have a chance to grow. Weeds only show up in a lawn when there is some­thing wrong with the under­ly­ing soil or lawn. If the …

May 21, 2009 – 8:54 am | By Scotch Drinker | Posted in Economics | Tagged | Comments (0)