Month: March 2016

She Said What?!?!?!?!

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I am beginning to think that Hillary Clinton has another bleeder in her brain:

Hillary Clinton on Monday defended the intervention in Libya that she championed as secretary of state, telling MSNBC’s Chris Matthews that the United States “didn’t lose a single person.“

Didn’t lose a single person?

Seriously?

She then followed up with, “Apart from that Mrs. Lincoln, how was the play?”

“Libya was a different kind of calculation. And we didn’t lose a single person. We didn’t have a problem in supporting our European and Arab allies in working with NATO,” the former secretary of state said during an MSNBC town hall on Monday night.

Clinton may have been referring strictly to the U.S.-backed overthrow of Libyan dictator Muammar Qaddafi in 2011, which indeed saw no loss of American lives and cost just around $1 billion. But her comments ignore the 2012 attacks at the U.S. mission and CIA outpost in Benghazi, which killed four people including U.S. Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens.

Ousting Qaddafi was worth it, Clinton said.

“Now, is Libya perfect? It isn’t. But did they have two elections that were free and fair where they voted for moderates. Yes, they did. So you know, changing from a dictator who has hollowed out your country to something resembling a functioning state and even hopefully more of a democratic one doesn’t happen overnight,” she said. “And we’ve got to continue to support the Libyan people, to give them a chance, because otherwise you see what has happened in Syria, with the consequences of millions of people flooding out of Syria, with more than 250,000 people killed, with terrorist groups like ISIS taking up almost — huge blocks of territory, as big as some of the states in that area.”

Isis is in Libya now.

It wasn’t before we destroyed the country.

They had a sophisticated irrigation system that allowed them to feed themselves.

We blew it up.

Free healthcare for everyone. Gone.

Free education. Gone

A right to decent shelter. Gone.

We also have a genocide of black Libyans in the north of the country.

We destroyed the country.

And we also helped Saudi Arabia and Turkey create the Syrian civil war under her watch.

And that coup that we fomented in the Ukraine? It’s going swimmingly.

Arguably, the most important issue for the President is war and peace, it is the one that they have the most control over, and as I’ve said before, Hillary is nearly as bellicose as Dick Cheney.

The Term for this is Unforced Political Error

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I understand that one needs to have a sense of decorum at a funeral.

It is not a place where one should prosecute political differences.

That being said, when you are in a primary contest, and among the complaints against you is that you are:

  • Mindlessly bellicose and willing to engage in regime change for its own sake.
  • A member of a corrupt and incompetent ruling elite.

This picture from Nancy Reagan’s funeral is a disaster, showing her palling around with Shrub, is a complete clusterf%$#, as the ensuing Twitter sh%$ storm shows:

This may be the best photo from Mrs. Reagan’s funeral. pic.twitter.com/kX1WZP9mwi

— David Chalian (@DavidChalian) March 14, 2016

The fail is strong in this one.

H/t naked capitalism.

Speaking of Unprosecuted Banksters

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It turns out that former Secretary of the Treasury, Robert Rubin, was referred to the Department of Justice for criminal investigation by the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission: (FCIC)

In late 2010, in the waning months of the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission, the panel responsible for determining who and what caused the financial meltdown that lead to the worst recession in decades voted to refer Robert Rubin to the Department of Justice for investigation. The panel stated it believed Rubin, a former U.S. Treasury Secretary who has held top roles at Goldman Sachs gs and later Citigroup c , “may have violated the laws of the United States in relation to the financial crisis.” Rubin, the commission alleged, along with some other members of Citi’s top management, may have been “culpable” for misleading Citi’s investors and the market by hiding the extent of the bank’s subprime exposure, stating at one point that it was 76% lower than what it actually was.

No government action was ever brought against Rubin. And there is no evidence that Department of Justice acted on the crisis commission’s recommendations. A source close to Rubin says the former Wall Street executive was never contacted by the Justice Department in relation to the commission’s allegations. Nonetheless, the fact that Rubin was among a relatively small group of top bankers who the crisis commission referred to the Justice Department for potential wrong-doing, and the fact that is appears nothing happened, sheds new light on the financial crisis, and the government’s effort to pursue those who may have broken the law.

Seven years after the bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers, the fact that no major Wall Street figure was ever prosecuted for crimes related to the financial crisis remains an sticking point for many. It is regularly brought up by presidential candidate Senator Bernie Sanders. When the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission released its 662-page report nearly five years ago, members of the commission said they had formerly referred evidence of possible misconduct of a number of individuals to the Department of Justice. But it declined to say who. Brooksley Born, a member of the commission and a former regulator, said at the time, “Our mandate was to refer to the attorney general any individual that our investigation found may have violated US laws. We did make several such referrals, but we are not going to talk about any of those.”

………

In the run up to the financial crisis, Citigroup aggressively expanded into the mortgage market and subprime lending. Despite warnings that a bubble was forming in housing and that lending standards had gotten to loose, CEO Prince in mid-2007 famously told the Financial Times that as long as the music is still going he would keep dancing. Rubin at the time was the chairman of the executive committee of Citi’s board. Rubin reportedly blessed the increased risk taking at Citi in the mid-2000s.

By late summer 2007, Citi’s direct exposure to subprime bonds was $55 billion, according to the crisis commission. The staff notes of the commission say that “based on FCIC interviews and documents obtained during our investigation, it is clear that CEO Chuck Prince and Robert Rubin . . . knew this information.” It says the two top officials were made aware of the extent of Citi’s exposure “no later than September 9, 2007.”

Yet, according to the commission, on October 15, Citi executives told analysts on a call that the bank’s total exposure to subprime was just $13 billion, or 76% less than it actually was. Two weeks later as pressure began to build on Citi, and values in the mortgage market fell, Citi told the market that its actual subprime exposure was $55 billion, and that its losses from mortgage-related assets could already be as big as $11 billion. Prince also announced he was resigning.

The staff notes say that “the representations made in the October 15, 2007 analysts call appear to have violated SEC Rule 10b-5,” and that Prince and Rubin, along with “members of the board” may have been “culpable” for “failing to disclose” the bank’s true subprime exposure.

Rubin should have gone to jail, and he should have been banned from the finance industry for life.

Rubin isn’t alone in this.

This wasn’t just some sort of black swan.  It was aggressive, deliberate, and systemic fraud, but there were no prosecutions.

To mind, this comes down to crass tribalism, where the regulators, and prosecutors, were, or were managed by, people who went to the same schools, and started their careers at the same firms, and so there are no prosecutions.

It’s why we are seeing the rise of populism on the right and left right now.

The corrupt elites maintained their grip on power, and so we are likely to see another financial crack-up.

Hillary Clinton is Ditching Rahm Emanuel

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Not a surprise.

The mayor of Chicago is less popular than a case of the clap:

Bernie Sanders has tried to make the presidential primary vote in and around Chicago into a referendum on Mayor Rahm Emanuel, but Hillary Clinton won’t be giving him more ammunition when she visits the city on Monday.

 The Democratic presidential candidate and the former Clinton and Obama White House aide aren’t expected to see each other while she’s in town, Emanuel’s office said Sunday. Clinton often meets with, or is introduced by, mayors or other elected officials who have endorsed her as she campaigns across the country.

Adam Collins, a spokesman for Emanuel, said the mayor’s “focus remains on the job voters hired him to do last year, create opportunities for people across the city and tackle the challenges Chicago faces.” While Emanuel and Clinton won’t be meeting because “their respective schedules [won’t] make it possible,” Collins said, “the mayor’s support for President Clinton and Secretary Clinton is well known.”

………

Emanuel, who served as a senior adviser in Bill Clinton’s White House, has been under pressure as his police department faces a federal investigation into the alleged cover-up of a video of the shooting of 17-year-old Laquan McDonald. His approval rating was at a record low of 27 percent in a poll conducted for the Chicago Tribune in January, and four in 10 Chicagoans want Emanuel to resign. Half of the black and Latino voters surveyed said they want Emanuel to step down.

Aware of Emanuel’s vulnerabilities, Sanders has hammered the mayor in the run-up to Tuesday’s Illinois presidential primary, hoping to make him a Clinton liability.

“Hillary Clinton proudly lists Mayor Rahm Emanuel as one of her leading mayoral endorsers,” he said at a Saturday press conference. “Well, let me be as clear as I can be: based on his disastrous record as mayor of the city of Chicago, I do not want Mayor Emanuel’s endorsement if I win the Democratic nomination.”

It sucks to be Rahm right now.

Experience My Ass!

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One of the claims made by the Clinton campaign is that she has experience, and knows how to get things done.

I’m not quite sure how this makes sense.

She has no experience in an executive elected position, and Bernie Sanders was mayor of Burlington for 8 years.

She was in Congress for 8 years, Bernie for 25 years.

What’s more, all through his legislative career, he has managed to make significant legislative accomplishments despite his status as a party outsider:

As Democrats cobbled together a sweeping overhaul of the nation’s immigration law three years ago, Senator Chuck Schumer of New York was clear about one thing: His party could not suffer a single defection.

But one naysayer remained — Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont, who had opposed a similar effort in 2007 and once again did not like provisions in the new bill that he thought would displace American workers. And he had a price, a $1.5 billion youth jobs program.

Through wheeling and dealing, shaming and cajoling, Mr. Sanders, an independent who caucuses with Democrats, got his wish, and his favored provision was grafted incongruously onto a tough-minded Republican border security amendment and paid for by higher visa fees for some foreign travelers.

………

Yet in spite of persistent carping that Mr. Sanders is nothing but a quixotic crusader — during their first debate, Hillary Clinton cracked, “I’m a progressive, but I’m a progressive who likes to get things done” — he has often been an effective, albeit modest, legislator. He has enacted his agenda piece by piece, in politically digestible chunks with few sweeping legislative achievements in a quarter-century in Congress.

Over one 12-year stretch in the House, Mr. Sanders passed more amendments by roll call vote than any other member of Congress. In the Senate, he secured money for dairy farmers and community health centers, blocked banks from hiring foreign workers and reined in the Federal Reserve, all through measures attached to larger bills.

………

His congressional relationships with Democrats and Republicans have been largely legislative and not loving. A backscratcher he is not. Mr. Sanders is far more likely to be found alone in his apartment watching cable news than out for Chinese food with other members of Congress.

“He is not Ted Kennedy, who managed to have these personal relationships that come from the day in and day out working the halls,” said Representative Peter Welch, Democrat of Vermont, who replaced Mr. Sanders in the House. “The way he works is consistent with his temperament and his skills.”

Counter to his reputation as a far-left gadfly, Mr. Sanders has done much of his work with Republican partners, generally people with whom he has little, but sometimes just enough, in common.

And Hillary Clinton’s accomplishments?

Voting for the Iraq invasion, destroying Libya, installing a failed puppet regime in the Ukraine, and supporting every other ill conceived American imperial adventure over the past 15 years.

What experience is there to see?

Nepotism is not experience, see Bush, George Walker and Bush, Jeb.

More Clinton Speeches to Banksters

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Hillary Clinton’s paid speeches to Goldman Sachs Group have drawn criticism on the campaign trail, but they’re not the only talks she’s given to big banks.

Bank of America has also paid the Democratic presidential candidate and her husband more than $1 million combined to deliver talks to the Charlotte-based bank and its Merrill Lynch unit.

The Clintons collected the combined figure from Bank of America over four appearances from 2011 to 2014, according to financial disclosures posted by the nonpartisan Center for Responsive Politics. Former President Bill Clinton was the speaker on three of those occasions, once taking in $500,000 for a 2014 gathering in London.

The large fees raise concerns about potential conflicts of interest and are likely to remain a hot topic on the campaign trail, said Eric Heberlig, a political science professor at UNC Charlotte.

“Taking fees like this, particularly from banks that have been bailed out by the taxpayers, it’s certainly hard to argue to the public that you’re not acting in a self-serving way,” Heberlig said.

My point is not that Hillary Clinton is bought and paid for by the banks.

I do not think that she is.

Instead, I am suggesting that she, and Bill, are peas in a pod with the corrupt financial class (see Rubin, Robert), and the speaking fees are a reward for being a member of the tribe.

This is not someone who is going to go after Wall Street any harder than Barack Obama, and as mind boggling as it sounds, the George W. Bush administration prosecuted more financial criminals than Obama has.

Russia Begins Pullout, Declares Syrian Goals Achieved

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When was the last time that the US military declared a victory that actually involved removing troops from a theater>

I’m thinking that it was 1918, because, we are still in Germany, Japan, Korea, etc.

The only place where we’ve actually gotten all the way out in my lifetime is Southeast Asia, and that weren’t no victory.

The Russians had limited goals in Syrian, and the announcement of this move appears to be a part of achieving its goals, maintaining a stable ally in the region, and preventing the return of South Caucuses Jihadis to Russia:

President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia on Monday ordered the withdrawal of the “main part” of Russian forces in Syria, a surprise move that reflected what he called the Kremlin’s achievement of nearly all its objectives in the war-torn country.

The news upended expectations in Western capitals and among ordinary Syrians, setting off fevered speculation about Russia’s intentions, much as Mr. Putin’s unexpected military plunge into the Syrian battlefield five months ago changed the course of the war.

Perhaps the most urgent questions were how the move would affect the war’s outcome and what it meant for President Bashar al-Assad of Syria, whose rule had been increasingly threatened by a string of military losses before Russian forces backed him up.

The Russian decision could signal a new confidence in Mr. Assad’s stability or an effort to pressure him to negotiate with his political adversaries — or both.

Mr. Putin has made his move at a particularly critical moment, as the upheaval in Syria enters its sixth year and a United Nations mediator in Geneva tries to revive peace talks to stop the war, which has displaced millions and created a humanitarian catastrophe.

A Russian military pullback will not leave Mr. Assad’s forces completely alone, because he also has support from Iran and from Hezbollah in Lebanon. And the Kremlin made clear it was keeping its new air base in the coastal Mediterranean province of Latakia, in addition to the naval refueling station it has kept nearby in Tartus since Soviet times.

And we are still hip deep in Iraq, and Afghanistan, and creating more terrorists around the world by our aggressive, and not particularly discriminant, drone war.

Another Reason to Like Bernie Sanders

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In an article outlining he rather fraught relationship between Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton, Politico drops this fascinating anecdote:

It’s an illustration of the extent to which the two political outsiders, once allies, have parted ways. Nader has known Sanders for decades and the Vermont socialist once referred to him as “a good friend” during a committee hearing, but he said Sanders hasn’t returned his phone calls for the past 15 years. During his time in Washington, as Sanders has fostered congenial relations with Clinton, said Nader, “He’s totally cut people like me out.”

Gee, what did Ralph Nader do about 15 years ago?

What has he never offered the most perfunctory expression of regret for?

It appears that Sanders hasn’t forgiven Ralph Nader for his exercise in narcissistic nihilism that was his 2000 campaign, which was calculated to provide maximize the benefit to George W. Bush, because, as Alfred Pennyworth says, “Some men just want to see the world burn.”

Good on Sanders for recognizing what Nader has become.

Why Trump Might Become President

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For all of his bombast, Thomas Franks notes that Donald Trump has a serious and real position on trade that is unique amongst his Republican compatriots, specifically he is the only one who talks against the current regime of free trade fetishism that is the Washington Consensus.

Over the past 50 years, there has been a trajectory towards greater trade liberalization, along with a massive expansion in property rights and rents.

Ordinary Americans note that this has made their lives, and the lives of their children, measurably worse.

The Very Serious People (VSPs) among our elites argue that in the long run we will benefit, but it’s been over 2 generations with poor results, and as John Maynard Keynes said, “In the long run, we are all dead.”

The VSPs maintain that it is all racism.  It’s something more significant than that:

………

Or so we’re told. Last week, I decided to watch several hours of Trump speeches for myself. I saw the man ramble and boast and threaten and even seem to gloat when protesters were ejected from the arenas in which he spoke. I was disgusted by these things, as I have been disgusted by Trump for 20 years. But I also noticed something surprising. In each of the speeches I watched, Trump spent a good part of his time talking about an entirely legitimate issue, one that could even be called leftwing.

Yes, Donald Trump talked about trade. In fact, to judge by how much time he spent talking about it, trade may be his single biggest concern – not white supremacy. Not even his plan to build a wall along the Mexican border, the issue that first won him political fame. He did it again during the debate on 3 March: asked about his political excommunication by Mitt Romney, he chose to pivot and talk about … trade.

It seems to obsess him: the destructive free-trade deals our leaders have made, the many companies that have moved their production facilities to other lands, the phone calls he will make to those companies’ CEOs in order to threaten them with steep tariffs unless they move back to the US.

Trump embellished this vision with another favorite leftwing idea: under his leadership, the government would “start competitive bidding in the drug industry”. (“We don’t competitively bid!” he marveled – another true fact, a legendary boondoggle brought to you by the George W Bush administration.) Trump extended the critique to the military-industrial complex, describing how the government is forced to buy lousy but expensive airplanes thanks to the power of industry lobbyists.

Or so we’re told. Last week, I decided to watch several hours of Trump speeches for myself. I saw the man ramble and boast and threaten and even seem to gloat when protesters were ejected from the arenas in which he spoke. I was disgusted by these things, as I have been disgusted by Trump for 20 years. But I also noticed something surprising. In each of the speeches I watched, Trump spent a good part of his time talking about an entirely legitimate issue, one that could even be called leftwing.

Yes, Donald Trump talked about trade. In fact, to judge by how much time he spent talking about it, trade may be his single biggest concern – not white supremacy. Not even his plan to build a wall along the Mexican border, the issue that first won him political fame. He did it again during the debate on 3 March: asked about his political excommunication by Mitt Romney, he chose to pivot and talk about … trade.

It seems to obsess him: the destructive free-trade deals our leaders have made, the many companies that have moved their production facilities to other lands, the phone calls he will make to those companies’ CEOs in order to threaten them with steep tariffs unless they move back to the US.

Trump embellished this vision with another favorite leftwing idea: under his leadership, the government would “start competitive bidding in the drug industry”. (“We don’t competitively bid!” he marveled – another true fact, a legendary boondoggle brought to you by the George W Bush administration.) Trump extended the critique to the military-industrial complex, describing how the government is forced to buy lousy but expensive airplanes thanks to the power of industry lobbyists.

The most frightening thing about Donald Trump is that he is the best Republican on the issues, not his demagoguery.

How Utterly Proper

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Ben Carson has endorsed Donald Trump for Presisent, and capped it off by suggesting that it’s all an act:

Ben Carson, the former pediatric neurosurgeon who dropped out of the Republican presidential race last week, endorsed Donald Trump on Friday, praising his “guts” and “energy.”

“There are two different Donald Trumps,” Carson said at the billionaire’s Mar-a-Lago resort in Palm Beach, Florida. “There’s the one you see on the stage and there’s the one who is very cerebral, sits there and considers things very carefully. You can have a very good conversation with him. That’s the Donald Trump that you’re going to start seeing more and more of.”

Trump agreed with that assessment.

“I probably do agree. There’s the public version … it seems to have worked over my lifetime,” he said. “I think it’s different than the personal one.”

Moments later, though, Trump seemed to reject that idea.

“I don’t think there are two Donald Trumps. I think there’s one Donald Trump,” he said.

This is aa whole world of mental dysfunction, as would be anticipated by putting Donald Trump and Ben Carson together.

The frightening thing is that one of them is the odds on favorite for the Republican nomination.

This Reads Like Something from Joseph Heller’s Most Famous Novel*

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It appears that whistleblower protection legislation cannot apply to the FBI because there would be too many whistleblowers:

The Department of Justice is undercutting Chuck Grassley’s efforts to provide FBI employees whistleblower protection. That became clear in an exchange (2:42) on Wednesday.

The exchange disclosed two objections DOJ has raised to Grassley’s FBI Whistleblower Protect Act. First, as Attorney General Loretta Lynch revealed, DOJ is worried that permitting FBI Agents to report crimes or waste through their chain of command would risk exposing intelligence programs.

What I would say is that as we work through this issue, please know that, again, any concerns that the Department raises are not out of a disagreement with the point of view of the protection of whistleblowers but again, just making sure that the FBI’s intelligence are also protected at the same time

I suspect (though am looking for guidance) that the problem may be that the bill permits whistleblowers to go to any member of Congress, rather than just ones on the Intelligence Committees. It’s also possible that DOJ worries whistleblowers will be able to go to someone senior to them, but not read into a given program.

Still, coming from an agency that doesn’t adequately report things like its National Security Letter usage to Congress, which has changed its reporting to the Intelligence Oversight Board so as to exempt more activities, and can’t even count its usage of other intelligence programs, it seems like a tremendous problem that DOJ doesn’t want FBI whistleblowers to have protection because it might expose what FBI is doing on intelligence.

That’s sort of the point!

Especially given Grassley’s other point: apparently, DOJ is opposed to the bill because it will elicit too many complaints.

One of the issues that your department has raised is that allowing FBI employees to report wrong-doing to their chain of command could lead to too many complaints. You know? What’s wrong with too many complaints? … Seems to me you’d invite every wrong doing to get reported to somebody so it could get corrected.


Apparently, DOJ knows there are so many problems FBI employees would like to complain about that things would grind to a halt if they were actually permitted to complain.

We cannot protect whistleblowers, because they might whistleblow.

This does seem to be rather Helleresque, doesn’t it?

*Catch-22

Gee, You Think?

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The director of the F-35 (aka the Joint Strike Fighter) program, General Christopher Bogden, has admitted that the “Jointness” part of the program was a mistake:

Perhaps the only thing U.S. military leaders know about their next fighter jet is this: they want the program to go better than the F-35’s did.

The sixth-generation fighter effort is still in its infancy; the aircraft it produces may not fly for decades. The Pentagon hasn’t even decided whether to build separate planes for the Navy and Air Force. But the services’ leaders are already cooperating to figure out how the futuristic fighter will fit into the battlefield of the future — and how they can avoid another tactical aircraft program that winds up so late, over budget, and short of its goals.

Ask the F-35 program’s current director for advice, and you’ll get this gentle warning: joint programs are hard.

“I’m not saying they’re bad. I’m not saying they’re good. I’m just saying they’re hard,” Air Force Lt. Gen. Christopher Bogdan said Thursday. “You ought to think really hard about what you really need out of the sixth-generation fighter and how much overlap is there between what the Navy and the Air Force really need.”

When the F-35 was conceived in the 1990s, the goal was to buy a common plane for the Air Force, Navy, Marine Corps, and even America’s allies. The Air Force version would fly from traditional runways, the Navy version would operate from aircraft carriers, and the Marine version would be built to take off from short runways and land vertically. The goal was to have all three have 70 percent of their parts in common, which was meant to save billions of dollars in development and logistics costs.

But engineering changes have produced three variants that have only 20 percent of their parts in common, Bogdan said at a conference sponsored by McAleese and Associates and Credit Suisse.

………

“We will have some different requirements for what we need based on the different things we are expected to provide for the joint force,” Lt. Gen. James “Mike” Holmes, Air Force deputy chief of staff for plans and requirements, told reporters last month. “We will use common technologies and maybe some common things, but at this point we think it will be a different enough mission that it won’t be the same airplane.”

The only joint US Navy/US Air Force fighter that ever achieved a modicum of defense was the F-4 Phantom, and that was developed exclusively for naval use.

Bogden also ignores the elephant in the room, which is that the jointness that most seriously compromised the program has been the jointness with the US Marine Corps.

The STOVL version has added about 2000 lbs to the weight of just the engine, led to poor rear visibility from the cockpit, made the wings smaller than they should have been for either the Air Force of Naval variants to save weight, and the volume occupied by the lift fan restricted the placement and the utility of the inner weapons bays.

This is not the only reason that the JSF is shaping up as a clusterf%$#, but it is a lot of the problem.

It Appears That There Never Was a Barter Society

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One of the historical tropes that we we are taught is that money developed after barter societies became unmanagable.

It turns out that there there is no evidence that suggests that a barter society ever existed:

In the beginning, there was barter. Then, and forever after, there was money

That’s the myth every student of economics learns, that money grows out of barter. The idea is that monetary exchange solves the problem of the double coincidence of wants—that a person who is interested in trading needs to find someone who wants what they have and has what they want. Money makes trade much easier, so the story goes, and thus becomes a remarkable example of both human ingenuity and economic progress. The fact is, as Ilana E. Strauss [ht: ja] explains, the story is false. Human beings did not invent money to solve the difficulties of barter exchange. Barter turns out to be a historical myth.

various anthropologists have pointed out that this barter economy has never been witnessed as researchers have traveled to undeveloped parts of the globe. “No example of a barter economy, pure and simple, has ever been described, let alone the emergence from it of money,” wrote the Cambridge anthropology professor Caroline Humphrey in a 1985 paper. “All available ethnography suggests that there never has been such a thing.”

 Humphrey isn’t alone. Other academics, including the French sociologist Marcel Mauss, and the Cambridge political economist Geoffrey Ingham have long espoused similar arguments.

 When barter has appeared, it wasn’t as part of a purely barter economy, and money didn’t emerge from it—rather, it emerged from money. After Rome fell, for instance, Europeans used barter as a substitute for the Roman currency people had gotten used to. “In most of the cases we know about, [barter] takes place between people who are familiar with the use of money, but for one reason or another, don’t have a lot of it around,” explains David Graeber, an anthropology professor at the London School of Economics.


 ………

 And there are many other examples in the historical and anthropological record of forms of exchange that precluded money—centralization and redistribution, gifts, potlatch, trade at the edges of and between non-monetary societies, and so on. But there was no original barter economy, which was then surpassed by the use of money.And there are many other examples in the historical and anthropological record of forms of exchange that precluded money—centralization and redistribution, gifts, potlatch, trade at the edges of and between non-monetary societies, and so on. But there was no original barter economy, which was then surpassed by the use of money.

 ………

Instead, what mainstream economics offers starting with Smith, and continues to offer studies today, is a story about the mythical—not real, historical—origins of capitalism.

It does put the entire academic endeavor of economics in a different light.

Nothing to See Here, Move Along

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Is anyone surprise that the guests on Chris Matthews’ show Hardball have given over 75 thousand dollars to his wife’s campaign?

It’s an interesting racket:

One day last June, MSNBC’s Chris Matthews opened his show with some news: His wife, Kathleen Matthews, a former local news anchor and Marriott hotel executive, had announced a run for Congress, seeking to replace Chris Van Hollen in Maryland’s 8th District. Matthews enthusiastically endorsed his wife’s candidacy, and vowed to “offer Kathleen whatever help I can.”

The longtime host of Hardball added: “As a journalist, I also know how important it is to respect certain boundaries on my support for her both in my public role and here on MSNBC. And while most of you know that our show doesn’t typically cover congressional races, I will continue to fully disclose my relationship with her as part of MSNBC’s commitment to being transparent and fair in our coverage.”

In the ensuing months, Kathleen’s name has rarely come up on Hardball. But many of the guests on the show have become generous donors to her campaign. And the transparency Matthews promised has not extended to mentioning that to his audience.

Using Federal Election Commission data and Hardball transcripts, The Intercept has identified 48 frequent guests of Matthews’s program who have made donations to the Kathleen Matthews for Congress campaign. These individuals, their spouses, or their political action committees donated $79,050 as of December 31, 2015 — about 5 percent of the $1.5 million Matthews had raised as of that time.

Some of the guests made the donations after they were on the show — in some cases, long after. But in at least 11 of these cases, the Hardball guests appeared on the program after Kathleen Matthews announced her candidacy, and without any disclosure of the donations. And in at least three of those cases, the donations came within days of the MSNBC appearance.

As Atrios would say, “Time for another blogger ethics panel.”

It’s Bank Failure Friday!!!

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We have the first commercial bank failure of the year:

  1. North Milwaukee State Bank, Milwaukee, WI

Full FDIC list

The failures of credit unions continue apace (actually from last week, sorry):

  1. Education Associations Federal Credit Union, Washington, DC

Here is the Full NCUA list.

No graph pr0n, it would be kind of silly with only one commercial bank failure.

Not clear why credit union failures are outpacing commercial bank failures.

She Said What?!?!?!?!

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In an interview with Andrea Mitchell Hillary Clinton praised Nancy Reagan’s “Low key activism” on HIV/AIDS.

While I fully understand the desire not to diss the Nancy on the day of her funeral, this bit of “Can’t we all just get along,” historical revisionism is completely repulsive:

In an interview conducted at Nancy Reagan’s funeral today, Hillary Clinton recounted a version of history that didn’t happen, lauding the former first lady’s “low key advocacy” for the cause of HIV/AIDS awareness. “Low key” is one way of putting it. In fact, the Reagan White House is infamous for its lengthy, deadly silence on the epidemic.

 Clinton’s remarks came after an extended explanation of Nancy Reagan’s efforts to expand stem cell research after her husband was diagnosed with Alzheimers. Then, in a bizarre turn, Clinton began talking about AIDS in the 1980s, a topic anyone looking to remain civil and complimentary would go far out of their way to avoid at the funeral of Nancy Reagan:

“It may be hard for your viewers to remember how difficult it was for people to talk about HIV/AIDS in the 1980s. And because of both President and Mrs. Reagan, in particular, Mrs. Reagan, we started national conversation when before no one would talk about it, no one wanted to do anything about it, and that too is something that really appreciated, with her very effective, low-key advocacy, but it penetrated the public conscience and people began to say ‘Hey, we have to do something about this too.’”

It’s almost tempting to interpret this as withering, devastating sarcasm—the Reagans “started a national conversation about AIDS” in the same sense that George W. Bush “started a national conversation” about Iraq.

 In reality, the Reagans were infamously, disastrously silent on AIDS—as President, Ronald Reagan spoke more about UFOs than HIV, and didn’t even say the word in a public address until 1987, by which point it had killed tens of thousands of Americans. The virus was quite literally a joke inside the Reagan White House. Whatever “advocacy” of Nancy’s Clinton is dreaming up here must’ve been low-key to the point of non-existence—just last year it was reported that she ignored her Hollywood friend Rock Hudson’s pleas for help as he himself died from AIDS. It’s hard for one ugly episode to stand out among so many ugly aspects of the Reagan administration, but Nancy and Ronald’s deliberate silence on one of the defining public health crises of the era is surely near the top of any list. What Clinton is saying isn’t just untrue, but erases the deadly legacy of the Reagan era.

The most charitable way to describe the Reagan administration’s behavior on the AIDS crisis is as an atrocity.

Once this blew up, Clinton walked it back, but this comment is indefensible:

Hillary Clinton’s statement on her comments about the Reagans’ record on HIV and AIDS: pic.twitter.com/RtIs0zpJfk

— Hillary Clinton (@HillaryClinton) March 11, 2016

I can’t figure out whether this is a moment of mind-boggling stupidity, or if she was trying to pander to the right in the hope of picking up a few votes.

In either case, particularly when juxtaposed with her late to the game support of gay marriage, this is a major f%$# up.

For anyone interested in LGBT issues who is still on the fence, this is a push to Bernie Sanders.

A Lesson That We Should Learn from Russia

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They know how to properly hate on mercenaries:

On Jan. 28, the Duma began discussing the possibility of legalizing private military companies in Russia. The law, which counts influential vice prime minister Dmitry Rogozin as a supporter, has one major goal — to ensure that Iraqi oil fields where Russian firms Rosneft and Gazprom operate no longer come under the protection of British or American security companies.

Back in April 2012, Russian president Vladimir Putin pointed out the need for Russia to pass contractor-friendly legislation. Putin praised private military companies as “instruments to further national interests without the direct involvement of the government.”

The center-left A Just Russia Party proposed a draft of the PMC bill in November 2014, but the Duma defense committee rejected it. Members of parliament returned with a revised text in December 2014, which the committee again turned down, deeming it “inarticulate,” “useless” and “irrelevant.” The FSB security agency and the Ministry of Defense both voiced concern of one day seeing “tens of thousands of uncontrollable Rambos turning their weapons against the government.”

It seemed Russian authorities had not forgotten the chaotic 1990s, a time when countless unpaid military officers sold their services to the highest bidder.

For some reason, the US government, and our poodles in London, continue to be all in on employing mercenaries, even though the corrosive effects of their activities both on our military and on the countries where they operate.

Didn’t Expect This to Appear in Fortune Magazine

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This essay eviscerates the claims by the finance industry that it needs to cheat its customers to function:

There’s a horrendous lie being told by the brokerage industry and its army of lobbying groups. It goes something like this:

“Middle-class Americans are not worth serving if we can’t charge them egregious fees and sell them products that they do not need.”

They’re not using that exact language, but this is precisely what they’re saying. This message disgusts me personally and I’m in a unique position to comment on it professionally. As I documented in my book Backstage Wall Street, the business model of selling investment products to investors is hopelessly rife with conflicts.

………

In other industries, higher-priced products are typically superior in both quality and efficacy—think luxury watches and cars, or the difference between a roadside motel and the Ritz-Carlton. With financial services products, however, it works in exactly the opposite way. Virtually every single piece of academic research ever produced on the topic says that the less you pay for an investment product, and the simpler it is, the better off you’ll be over the long-term. 

Wall Street knows this for a fact. It’s undeniable that high fees and excessive trading costs damage the long-term potential of a retirement account and work against investors. Unfortunately, the brokerage business is predicated on selling the higher cost solutions because that’s where the profit margins are. The incentives paid by fund companies to brokerage firm sales forces across the country are a cancer that must be rooted out. This built-in conflict between advisor and client is partially responsible for the nation’s looming retirement crisis. It also plays a role in the finance industry’s almost universally negative perception among Americans.

………

The logic here is astounding. The argument is literally that some people need to be taken advantage of in order for them to be worthwhile clients. I believe Ryan is on the wrong side of this issue and on the wrong side of history. But more than that, his argument—that somehow conflicted advice is better than none at all—is wrong for at least two reasons.

It’s a righteous rant.  I suggest that you read the rest.