This Blog Features Only The Very Best Economists That Money CAN'T Buy. These include Republicans as well as Democrats. Their common denominators are deep understanding of macro economics and intellectual honesty.

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Obama's "Cat Food" Social Security Reform

Michael Hudson: Obama's "bargain" on social security reform will push more retirees into poverty in exchange for a minor increase in high end income tax - a class that receives most revenue from capital gains - April 11, 13

Bio

Michael Hudson is a Distinguished Research Professor of Economics at the University of Missouri, Kansas City. His two newest books are “The Bubble and Beyond” and “Finance Capitalism and its Discontents,” available on Amazon.

Obama Sends Lew to Europe Preaching Growth While Practicing Austerity at Home,

Bill Black: Treasury Secretary Lew tells Europe to ease up on austerity while Obama makes major cuts at home - April 11, 13

Original Here

Bio

William K. Black, author of THE BEST WAY TO ROB A BANK IS TO OWN ONE, teaches economics and law at the University of Missouri Kansas City (UMKC). He was the Executive Director of the Institute for Fraud Prevention from 2005-2007. He has taught previously at the LBJ School of Public Affairs at the University of Texas at Austin and at Santa Clara University, where he was also the distinguished scholar in residence for insurance law and a visiting scholar at the Markkula Center for Applied Ethics. Black was litigation director of the Federal Home Loan Bank Board, deputy director of the FSLIC, SVP and general counsel of the Federal Home Loan Bank of San Francisco, and senior deputy chief counsel, Office of Thrift Supervision. He was deputy director of the National Commission on Financial Institution Reform, Recovery and Enforcement. Black developed the concept of "control fraud" frauds in which the CEO or head of state uses the entity as a "weapon." Control frauds cause greater financial losses than all other forms of property crime combined. He recently helped the World Bank develop anti-corruption initiatives and served as an expert for OFHEO in its enforcement action against Fannie Mae's former senior management.

If only every American could watch these interviews and understand what is said here, millions would take to the streets when Obama and the Congress get set pass the "Grand Bargain," which is truly the "Grand Betrayal" -- aka legislative theft of American's social safety net. Bill Black is one of the top economists in the country and also a white-colar criminologist who sent over a thousand savings-and-loan CEOs to jail in the early 1990's for kind of financial crimes now committed with impunity by today's "too-big-to-fail" banks, whose CEOs have been rewarded, rather than jailed for their mega-crimes, protected by the likes of Tim Geithner and Jack Lew. Matt Taibbi is an investigative reporter who has been exposing in Rolling Stone magazine the criminality of the big banks and the government that coddles them.

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FRIDAY, JANUARY 11, 2013                                                                               Original Here 

"Failure of Epic Proportions": Treasury Nominee Jack Lew’s Pro-Bank, Austerity, Deregulation Legacy



Former bank regulator William Black and Rolling Stone’s Matt Taibbi join us to dissect the career of Jack Lew, President Obama’s pick to replace Treasury Secretary Timothy Geither. Currently Obama’s chief of staff, Lew was an executive at Citigroup from 2006 to 2008 at the time of the financial crisis. He backed financial deregulation efforts while he headed the Office of Management and Budget under President Bill Clinton. During that time, Clinton enacted two key laws to deregulate Wall Street: the Financial Services Modernization Act of 1999 and the Commodity Futures Modernization Act of 2000. Black, a white-collar criminologist and former senior financial regulator, is the author of "The Best Way to Rob a Bank Is to Own One." A contributing editor for Rolling Stone magazine, Taibbi is the author of "Griftopia: A Story of Bankers, Politicians, and the Most Audacious Power Grab in American History." [Original includes rush transcript]


FRIDAY, JANUARY 11, 2013                                                                               Original Here 

Matt Taibbi & William Black on Bailout Secrets & How New Foreclosure Deal Spares Banks from Justice



Four years after the massive bailout that rescued Wall Street, we look at the state of the financial sector with Rolling Stone’s Matt Taibbi and former financial regulator William Black. In a new article for Rolling Stone, Taibbi argues the government did not just bail out Wall Street, but also lied on the financial sector’s behalf, calling unhealthy banks healthy and helping banks cover up how much aid they were getting. The government’s approach to the banks came under new scrutiny this week after it reached an $8.5 billion settlement for improprieties in the wrongful foreclosures on millions of American homeowners, including flawed paperwork, robo-signing and wrongly modified loans. The settlement will end an independent review of all foreclosures, meaning the banks could be avoiding billions of dollars in further penalties, in addition to criminal prosecution. [Original includes rush transcript]