Why Timothy Geithner at Treasury?

| January 27, 2009

Timothy Geithner was confirmed as U.S. Treasury Secretary yesterday. The vote was 60-34 in the Senate. Some Senators expressed disapproval that Geithner failed to pay self-employment taxes for two years while working at the International Monetary Fund. See the story at boston.com, and read a few of the comments below the story. This is what […]

Cutting through the recovery rhetoric

| January 24, 2009

John Kemp at the Guardian asks whether the U.S. and UK can recover from increasing debt levels. Mish offers commentary on Kemp’s analysis. Despite the rhetoric you hear from politicians and pundits, the Fed policies and Treasury initiatives are not sufficient to cope with the massive debt load. For one thing, the debt is in […]

The damage around the world

| January 23, 2009

Let’s begin our tour with a nice, long statistical analysis of recent economic indicators by David Chapman at SafeHaven. Chapman notes the frequent occurrence of the word “Depression” in recent writing about the global economy. Chapman believes it is not a Global Depression but might become one. At the moment, whether the world enters a […]

How corporations dodge taxes

| January 23, 2009

Another reason to boycott large multinational corporations: the vast majority of them set up tax havens in foreign countries to avoid paying U.S. taxes. Carol Leonnig has the story at the Washington Post. Several of these firms have received TARP bailout funds. We are not going to get an honest functioning economy until we break […]

Keeping an eye on Robert Rubin

| January 22, 2009

Marygwen Dungan is on to Robert Rubin and summarizes the last month’s developments at SafeHaven. If Rubin’s story ever comes out, it will blow the whole lid off the criminal enterprise known as Wall Street and the government insiders who profited from Rubin’s schemes.

Fannie Mae and the housing crisis

| January 22, 2009

Chip Hanlon goes inside Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to explain how government-subsidized affordable housing caused the housing crisis at SafeHaven.

The ranks of the unemployed

| January 14, 2009

If you would like to keep up with the daily layoff announcements, check out Layoff Daily.