Alternative Visions – Are US Stock Markets About to Turn Down Again? – 03.30.18

Dr. Rasmus looks at the forces pumping up US stocks, especially Tech stocks and S&P500, and the emerging counter forces that may soon prevail to send US stock markets into another major correction. Forces driving the bubble are continuing record stock buybacks and dividend payouts, and now record levels of merger & acquisitions (up 67% in 2018 and $1.2 trillion) …

Black Agenda Radio – 12.04.17

Welcome to the radio magazine that brings you news, commentary and analysis from a Black Left perspective. I’m Glen Ford, along with my co-host Nellie Bailey. Coming up: Why are Americans obsessed with guns? Mumia Abu Jamal explores the genocidal roots of U.S. gun culture; and, a Black radical put one of its own in the mayors office in Jackson, …

Jackson Bliss – How the Internet changed the way we read

In the great epistemic galaxy of words, we have become both reading junkies and also professional text skimmers. Reading has become a clumsy science, which is why we keep fudging the lab results. But in diagnosing our own textual attention deficit disorder (ADD), who can blame us for skimming? We’re inundated by so much opinion posing as information, much of …

Wolf Richter – Obamacare? Wall Street Suddenly Scrambles to Buy Doctors, “Leverage” Their Patients

For PE firms, the fracking boom was nirvana. An eternal-growth industry. A big part of the money they poured into the scrappy oil & gas companies is now going up in smoke. Other industries are mired in a no-growth or shrinking environment. Chaos keeps breaking out in the international markets, most recently over Greece and China. So, healthcare, which accounts …

How Goldman Sachs Profited from the Greek Debt Crisis – ROBERT REICH

The Greek debt crisis offers another illustration of Wall Street’s powers of persuasion and predation, although the Street is missing from most accounts. The crisis was exacerbated years ago by a deal with Goldman Sachs, engineered by Goldman’s current CEO, Lloyd Blankfein. Blankfein and his Goldman team helped Greece hide the true extent of its debt, and in the process …

Thanks to Wall Street, America Has Growing Greek-Like Debt Bombs By Pam Martens and Russ Martens

From the $1.2 trillion instudent debt now on the backs of U.S. college students, a growing number of whom are turning to prostitution to keep up, to teetering Puerto Rico, the bankruptcy of Jefferson County, Alabama in 2011, Detroit’s bankruptcy in 2013, Wall Street was on hand to grease the skids or set the train wreck in motion.Greece has two things in …

Wall Street’s Fatal Flaw: Confusing “Disruptors” With “Corruptors” – Pam Martens

In the late 1990s, Salomon Smith Barney’s telecom analyst, Jack Grubman, was viewed by his powerful firm as a “disruptor.” He was throwing out the old rules on how a telecom analyst should interact with a company on which he was delivering research to the public and creating a new, innovative model. Instead of following the old rules and remaining …

Discredited Ideas: Free Market Theory is at Odds with Reality

Despite the practical failures of free-market economics, too many mainstream economists have continued to embrace simplistic ideas about how the economy works. Such ideas are often rooted more in ideology than in evidence. These beliefs and the policies that follow led directly to the 2008 financial crisis and the Great Recession. They also centrally contributed to the nation’s subpar performance …