for life and liberty

Serious Revolving Door Move (Hedge Fund Edition)

"Hedge fund billionaire Paul Tudor Jones has hired one of the International Monetary Fund’s most senior officials, reports FT. Lorenzo Giorgianni, the deputy head of the IMF’s policy department (!!), will join Jones’s Tudor Investment Corporation in October according to FT. This is serious stuff. IMF and World Bank people have access to all kinds of insider data about money flows and where money is placed. Just in casual conversations with IMF and World Bank people, I have learned all kinds of very valuable information. I know for example that Slovenia is most likely the next country to experience a financial crisis, because a senior guy at one of these organizations told me." Continue reading →

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Where Bank Regulators Go to Get Rich

"Mary Schapiro, the former chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission, must take us for fools. Four months after leaving the SEC, Schapiro is joining a firm stuffed to the gills with former government financial-services regulators peddling their knowledge of Washington’s regulatory thicket to the banks and financial-services companies they once oversaw. Promontory, founded in 2001 by Eugene Ludwig, a former comptroller of the currency, has become a sort of mini-version of Fannie Mae in its heyday. About 100 of the 400 Promontory employees are former Washington regulators." Continue reading →

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Koch Has No Power to Coerce Anybody; That’s Why He Needs Government

"So the actual pattern we see is the Koch brothers and their pet think tanks actively encouraging a near-totalitarian level of state intervention to suppress all the mechanisms of civil society — investigative journalism by a free and independent press, a vigorous system of civil liability, etc. — that would help keep business honest and hold it accountable. The corporate Pharisees of our day strain at a gnat using 'free market' rhetoric to attack welfare for the poor, but swallow a camel when it comes to welfare for corporations. They claim to favor 'economic freedom' and 'free trade,' while putting the entire world under the totalitarian lockdown of draconian 'intellectual property' law." Continue reading →

Continue ReadingKoch Has No Power to Coerce Anybody; That’s Why He Needs Government

The Selfishness of Virtue

"As life’s cruel realities slowly peeled the scales from my bleeding eyes, I began realizing that many such propaganda machines, despite their eternal claims of uplifting 'the people' in a noble fight against 'the elite,' were themselves the organs of a certain class of astronomically well-heeled elites. They didn’t represent all of the elite, mind you—only a weird segment that seemed to exist in a perpetual state of denial about their own elite status. My disappointment mutated into a lingering resentment as it became clear that such elites’ showboating 'populist' efforts never really seemed to help the poor and the working class." Continue reading →

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Capitalism: A Hate Story

"In Year 1 of Obama, two fat cats named Michael Moore and Harvey Weinstein released a movie. Their magnum opus was 'Capitalism: A Love Story'. The unsubtly sarcastic point after the colon was that capitalism was an unmitigated bag of evil. And to reaffirm the faith of capitalism-haters in the evils of capitalism, here was a movie put out by a bunch of corporations owned by millionaires. The traditional image of the anti-capitalist as a ragamuffin who dies of consumption in his garret has always been at odds with the real image of the anti-capitalist as a rich man or the son of a rich man. The man of the people is rather often stuck at the bottom of the top of the pole." Continue reading →

Continue ReadingCapitalism: A Hate Story

The Talented Mr. Lew

"Some guys have it, and some don’t. I’m referring to that special quality that makes powerful institutions want to throw fistfuls of dollars at them in senseless acts of high-priced beneficence. Jack Lew has it like nobody’s business. You might think the bespectacled treasury-secretary nominee is just another brainy budget wonk and miss the animal magnetism that makes his employers lose all sense of financial proportion around him, paying him astronomical sums, forgiving his loans, and granting him generous golden parachutes. Yes, Jack Lew is a rare talent — at the art of getting paid." Continue reading →

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Audacious Hack Exposes Bush Family Pix, E-Mail, Clinton Friendship

"The apparent hack of several e-mail accounts has exposed personal photos and sensitive correspondence from members of the Bush family. In a December 27 e-mail to his four siblings, Jeb Bush saluted his ailing father’s 'kindness and good nature' and pointed to 'how kind he was with President Clinton and he helped restore his sordid reputation. A very tough thing to do but with kindness, dad probably helped Bill Clinton than anything he himself has done.' In a December 26 e-mail to his siblings, George W. Bush's mention of 'bubba' is apparently a reference to Clinton, whom Bush has referred to as a 'brother' due to his close relationship with George H. W. Bush." Continue reading →

Continue ReadingAudacious Hack Exposes Bush Family Pix, E-Mail, Clinton Friendship

White House Considering Top Female Treasury Official for Federal Reserve Post

"The White House is considering nominating the top woman at the Treasury, Lael Brainard, for one of the vacant seats at the Federal Reserve, amid criticism over the role of women in the administration, people familiar with the matter said, WaPo is reporting. Note this would not likely be the Fed chair position. In addition to naming a new chair for the Fed, as WaPo reports, Obama must fill as many as four open seats on the central bank’s board. Is this a bone thrown to women because it is going to be Summers as Fed chair nominee and not Yellen?" Continue reading →

Continue ReadingWhite House Considering Top Female Treasury Official for Federal Reserve Post

The Best U.S. Metros for Recent College Grads Looking for Work

"Across the nation's 50 largest metro areas, there were 15.8 million jobs in these fast-growing, highly educated fields as of 2013. New York leads with more than 66,000 openings, roughly ten percent of the total. L.A. is second with 39,508. That makes sense: N.Y. and L.A. are America's two largest metros. Together, they in fact account for nearly 3 million of these positions, nearly one in five of these estimated fast-growing, highly-educated jobs across the nation. Once we look beyond these two largest metros, the pattern diverges a bit from the size of a metro's population. Greater Washington, D.C., has the third largest number of estimated openings, 39,259." Continue reading →

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Carlyle Group Covers All Bases With a Bet on a Kennedy

"Carlyle-founder David Rubinstein has the Bush angle covered. Not only did Rubenstein show up at the White House for a 60th wedding anniversary party for George H.W. and Barbara Bush, but he gave the toast! Hillary Clinton is set to be the featured attraction at Carlyle Group’s investor conference that starts today in Washington D.C. NyPo reports: '[Carlyle managing director] Oliver Sarkozy, the boyfriend of Mary-Kate Olsen and half- brother of former French president Nicolas Sarkozy, is getting in bed with another political dynasty. He is hosting a reception in support of Massachusetts congressman Joseph P. Kennedy on Oct. 7 in Manhattan.'" Continue reading →

Continue ReadingCarlyle Group Covers All Bases With a Bet on a Kennedy