Fed Employee attempts to regulate  Goldman Sachs and is fired after she refuses to back down on her recommendations. She secretly tapes meetings with management and Goldman. Her career ruined; Goldman Sachs conducts business as usual. Courtesy This American Life.

Hubbard's behaviour falls into the realm of evaluation for  positive economics not normative economics. He and others like him should be disavowed en masse for their lack of professional integrity and the call is not  even close. And we need to get to a point in society where we stop giving people  a pass for unethical behaviour just because it is legal. We are seriously undermining the case for democracy when we allow elites to fix the rules and  dance around their edges.

For the record - I have only voted against the conservative party once in my eighteen years of voting eligibility. But everything conservatism stood for when I was young - pro family pro small business- is being undermined by current catering to oligarchy elites by the right. 

Yet another in a long list of financial disasters in an improperly regulated global financial market. Same as it ever was.

Bank of England and Geithner (then chair of the NY Fed) knew about the LIBOR rigging as early as 2008. They allowed the rigging to continue for at least another year. Geithner said so in his own emails.

The Economist has hit the trifecta of stupid on its last three covers. I am starting to wonder if their writers are some Ayn Randish - Stepford Wives type clones. At very least the magazine seems to be turning into a corporate whore.

Think I am exaggerating?
Their cover for their print edition, May 12-18th, shows a picture of Achilles voting with the caption Europe's Achille's heel.

"If a majority of Greeks again vote to reject the spending cuts and reforms that go with their country’s bail-out, then euro-zone governments—in particular,  Germany’s—will face a drastic choice. Mrs Merkel will either accommodate Greece and swallow the moral hazard of rewarding defiance or, more likely, stand firm and cut the Greeks adrift."

The problem is not democracy or that European voters are rejecting austerity. At some point if you are going to anally rape me I am going to figure it out and resist. I may be asleep when the rape starts, but given your actions, unless you club me unconscious, I am going to wake up. The problem is that the austerity adjustment mechanisms will require sustained high
unemployment and will destroy the wealth of the middle class.

To quote Pettis on Spanish adjustment:
 
How  will we deal with the rising debt burden?  Typically we do so by confiscating  the wealth of small and medium enterprises or by confiscating the savings of the middle classes, and usually we do both. 

I am pretty sure that the middle class taxpayer in the European  periphery knows who's benefit the austerity measures are for - Germany's. 

With respect to their latest cover on China. How strong is China’s economy?

"Until recently most economists believed that China was heavily dependent on exports. But it has carried on growing even as its current-account surplus has  shrunk, and trade has subtracted from growth, not added to it. The country is undoubtedly investment-dependent, but its biggest problem is malinvestment not overinvestment. Most people believe that its past malinvestment will impede  future growth. This special report has raised doubts about that. Clearly China  would be better off had it not wasted so much capital. But if the capital stock  is not as good as it should be, that gives the country all the more room for  improvement.

Wrong on sooo many levels. Yeah, when you "invest" in millions of units of housing that are empty then this is both a misallocation of capital and an overinvestment of capital. You have lit money on fire. This money is gone forever. Also, "The Economist" provides no hope or insight as to why a flawed investment process (driven by corrupt SOEs) will do better the next time around.

Here is Jim Chanos on China's debt

Then their cover showing public companies as an endangered species. Woolly mammoths with brands like Facebook going over a cliff.

 They begin the article:
"The number of public companies has fallen dramatically over the past decade—by  38% in America since 1997 and 48% in Britain. The number of initial public offerings (IPOs) in America has declined from an average of 311 a year in
1980-2000 to 99 a year in 2001-11. Small companies, those with annual sales of less than $50m before their IPOs—have been hardest hit. In 1980-2000 an average  of 165 small companies undertook IPOs in America each year. In 2001-09 that
number fell to 30. Facebook will probably give the IPO market a temporary boost—several other companies are queuing up to follow its lead—but they will do  little to offset the long-term decline."

So they pick, as the reference point, the 20 years of one of the  biggest bull markets in history (that contains the dot com bubble) and compare it with a bear market that contains the popping of the dot com bubble, the fraud scandals like Enron, and the Great Recession. Wow, are you intellectually dishonest.

They end the article with a free market bromide:
"Public companies built the railroads of the 19th century. They filled the world  with cars and televisions and computers. They brought transparency to business life and opportunities to small investors. Because public companies sell shares to the unsophisticated, policymakers are right to regulate them more tightly than other forms of corporate organisation. But not so tightly that entrepreneurs start to dread the prospect of a public listing. The public company has long been the locomotive of capitalism. Governments should not derail it."

With the way the Facebook IPO was handled does “The Economist” still think the problem with IPO’s is too much regulation?

I am sorry,  but this magazine is turning into FOX News.