LILA RAJIVA: The Mind-Body Politic

Roubini, Chanos Use Hollywood To White-Wash Hedge Funds

mb4 — Fri, 12 Mar 2010 17:05:20 +0000

Aha! Searching for more confirmation of my thesis that there’s an ongoing effort to white-wash the role played by hedge-funds/speculators in destabilizing the economy, I came across this intriguing passage at wiki, about the upcoming Oliver Stone movie, Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps, a reprise of his 1987 movie Wall Street: “The New York Times reported [...]

Equal People Are Not Free

mb4 — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 01:53:50 +0000

Larry Reed: “Equal people are not free, the second half of my first principle, really gets down to brass tacks. Show me a people anywhere on the planet who are indeed equal economically, and I’ll show you a very unfree people. Why? The only way in which you could have even the remotest chance [...]

Illegal Immigrant Workers

Lila — Wed, 10 Mar 2010 16:59:14 +0000

David Kramer, at Lew Rockwell blog: “You know what an “illegal” immigrant worker is, don’t you? It’s someone who voluntary decides to move from one piece of land on the planet Earth to another piece of piece of land on the planet Earth because he or she knows of a person at that second piece of [...]

Camus On God

Lila — Wed, 10 Mar 2010 16:54:49 +0000

Albert Camus: “I would rather live my life as if there is a God and die to find out there isn’t, than live my life as if there isn’t and die to find out there is.”

Portugal and Spain In Trouble Too…

Lila — Wed, 10 Mar 2010 16:06:52 +0000

Will Frankfurt (the European Central Bank) come to the rescue of Greece, or Spain, or Portugal? Maybe in the end, but not now, reports Ambrose Evans-Pritchard in The Telegraph: “Mr Callow of Barclays said EU leaders will come to the rescue in the end, but Germany has yet to blink in this game [...]

Europe Thumbs Its Nose At G-Sax, Banksters

Lila — Tue, 09 Mar 2010 23:12:33 +0000

The Guardian: “For the first time in five years, no big US investment bank appears among the top nine sovereign bond bookrunners in Europe, according to Dealogic data compiled for the Guardian. Only Morgan Stanley ranks at number 10. Goldman Sachs doesn’t make the table. Goldman made it to number five last year and in 2006, [...]

Harry Markopolos On The SEC

mb4 — Tue, 09 Mar 2010 18:08:32 +0000

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c Harry Markopolos www.thedailyshow.com Daily Show Full Episodes Political Humor Health Care Reform

Rogers Tells Greeks To Go Bust

Lila — Tue, 09 Mar 2010 15:17:18 +0000

Rogers gets it right, as usual. From the Wall Street Pit: “Commodities legend Jim Rogers talks in this Bloomberg interview about Greece’s fiscal problems which needless [...]

Climate Scientists: Academic Barrow Boys

Lila — Mon, 08 Mar 2010 00:01:04 +0000

Climate scientists are fighting back, reports The Washington Times. Paul R. Ehrlich, a Stanford University researcher says: “Most of our colleagues don’t seem to grasp that we’re not in a gentlepersons’ debate, we’re in a street fight against well-funded, merciless enemies who play by entirely different rules.” Of course, climate skeptics (or rather, critics of anthropogenic global warming, [...]

Kurt Tucholsky On Love Of Country

Lila — Sun, 07 Mar 2010 20:37:06 +0000

“We have just written “no” on 225 pages, “no” out of sympathy and “no” out of love, “no” out of hate and “no” out of passion - and now we would like to say “yes” for once. “Yes” - to the countryside and the country of Germany America. The country where we were born and [...]

Chinese Electronic Espionage Leads To UK Office of Cyber Security…

Lila — Sun, 07 Mar 2010 18:30:01 +0000

The Times Online reported in January that the UK’s MI5 was battling devious Chinese attempts to entrap UK businessmen, with electronic bugging devices….and sexual “honey traps”. (Not as imaginative as the CIA’s “acoustic kitty,“ but probably more effective): “A leaked MI5 document says that undercover intelligence officers from the People’s Liberation Army and the Ministry [...]

The Cat They Sent Out Into The Cold…

Lila — Sat, 06 Mar 2010 22:39:29 +0000

The more you dig into the history of the CIA’s covert programs, the more it resembles not so much a fast-paced who-dunnit as a low-rent why-ever-did-they-do-it. Only it wasn’t low rent. A hefty wad of tax-payer money subsidized such expensive follies as Project Acoustic Kitty, in which the agency’s whizzes tried to turn man’s [...]

Roderick Long On Confucian Libertarianism

Lila — Sat, 06 Mar 2010 21:40:56 +0000

Masterful libertarian scholar, Roderick Long, has a very long, fascinating paper, “Rituals of Freedom: Austro-Libertarian Themes In Early Confucianism,” at Mises.org. It traces libertarian ideas in Confucian thought, and makes a convincing argument that Confucianism is a better source of libertarian inspiration than the much more frequently cited Daoism. I’m republishing a post on Long’s paper [...]

Shocks And Doctrines: WSJ Uses Quake To Critique Klein

Lila — Fri, 05 Mar 2010 22:44:07 +0000

Bret Stephens in the Wall Street Journal adds some nuance to Naomi Klein’s black-and-white picture of Milton Friedman’s contributions to the Chilean economy, noting how prosperity and effective enforcement of building codes have protected Chilean victims of the recent earthquake from the devastation that Haiti suffered: “In left-wing mythology—notably Naomi Klein’s tedious 2007 screed “The Shock [...]

Marc Faber On The Economy On Financial Sense Newshour

Lila — Fri, 05 Mar 2010 16:21:34 +0000