Welcome to DU!
The truly grassroots left-of-center political community where regular people, not algorithms, drive the discussions and set the standards.
Join the community:
Create a free account
Support DU (and get rid of ads!):
Become a Star Member
Latest Breaking News
General Discussion
The DU Lounge
All Forums
Issue Forums
Culture Forums
Alliance Forums
Region Forums
Support Forums
Help & Search
66 replies
= new reply since forum marked as read
= new reply since forum marked as read
Economics convert. I am deeply interested in what plays out with Greece.
I have become a huge fan of this board over the years, and the posters, all of you bring so much...Demeter works tirelessly.
Believe me, I sing all of your praises to any and all. I have no doubt far more (at DU & beyond) appreciate all of you, perhaps far more than you are or may ever be aware of.
MattSh, I was blown away by your links. It's funny the things you learn along the way, some really do walk their talk. Your perspective means a lot, not only on this part of DU, but elsewhere, given your life experience. 
I find more and more that what brings me back to DU, is not what once did (two stolen elections), but the different and informative perspectives from others who are really here to do their part and inform. Seeing through the whitewash is far more important these days, as well as looking at global perspectives.
Kudos to all of you here, truly.
K & R for yet another great thread. 
http://www.alternet.org/news-amp-politics/millions-americans-are-embarrassingly-ill-informed-and-they-do-not-care-0?akid=12926.227380.K_TB7w&rd=1&src=newsletter1033774&t=19
Just how stupid are we? Pretty stupid, it would seem, when we come across headlines like this: "Homer Simpson, Yes -- 1st Amendment 'Doh,' Survey Finds" (Associated Press 3/1/06).
But what does it mean exactly to say that American voters are stupid? About this there is unfortunately no consensus. Like Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart, who confessed not knowing how to define pornography, we are apt simply to throw up our hands in frustration and say: We know it when we see it. But unless we attempt a definition of some sort, we risk incoherence, dooming our investigation of stupidity from the outset. Stupidity cannot mean, as Humpty Dumpty would have it, whatever we say it means.
Five defining characteristics of stupidity, it seems to me, are readily apparent.
First, is sheer ignorance: Ignorance of critical facts about important events in the news, and ignorance of how our government functions and who's in charge.
Second, is negligence: The disinclination to seek reliable sources of information about important news events.
Third, is wooden-headedness, as the historian Barbara Tuchman defined it: The inclination to believe what we want to believe regardless of the facts.
Fourth, is shortsightedness: The support of public policies that are mutually contradictory, or contrary to the country's long-term interests.
Fifth, and finally, is a broad category I call bone-headedness, for want of a better name: The susceptibility to meaningless phrases, stereotypes, irrational biases, and simplistic diagnoses and solutions that play on our hopes and fears.
SO, LIFE ON A CONDO BOARD...
... (The old joke is that "War is God's way of teaching Americans geography."
But it was never clear until the postwar period how ignorant Americans are. For it was only then that social scientists began measuring in a systematic manner what Americans actually know. The results were devastating. The most comprehensive surveys, the National Election Studies (NES), were carried out by the University of Michigan beginning in the late 1940s. What these studies showed was that Americans fall into three categories with regard to their political knowledge. A tiny percentage know a lot about politics, up to 50%-60% know enough to answer very simple questions, and the rest know next to nothing.
Contrary to expectations, by many measures the surveys showed the level of ignorance remaining constant over time. In the 1990s, political scientists Michael X. Delli Carpini and Scott Keeter concluded that there was statistically little difference between the knowledge of the parents of the Silent Generation of the 1950s, the parents of the Baby Boomers of the 1960s, and American parents today. (By some measures, Americans are dumber today than their parents of a generation ago.)
I'M BOOK-MARKING THAT ONE
QUERY: HOW DO YOU DEAL WITH THE IGNORANT OF EACH AND EVERY CATEGORY? A PERSON COULD GO MAD
Just how stupid are we? Pretty stupid, it would seem, when we come across headlines like this: "Homer Simpson, Yes -- 1st Amendment 'Doh,' Survey Finds" (Associated Press 3/1/06).
"About 1 in 4 Americans can name more than one of the five freedoms guaranteed by the First Amendment (freedom of speech, religion, press, assembly and petition for redress of grievances.) But more than half of Americans can name at least two members of the fictional cartoon family, according to a survey.
"The study by the new McCormick Tribune Freedom Museum found that 22 percent of Americans could name all five Simpson family members, compared with just 1 in 1,000 people who could name all five First Amendment freedoms."
"The study by the new McCormick Tribune Freedom Museum found that 22 percent of Americans could name all five Simpson family members, compared with just 1 in 1,000 people who could name all five First Amendment freedoms."
But what does it mean exactly to say that American voters are stupid? About this there is unfortunately no consensus. Like Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart, who confessed not knowing how to define pornography, we are apt simply to throw up our hands in frustration and say: We know it when we see it. But unless we attempt a definition of some sort, we risk incoherence, dooming our investigation of stupidity from the outset. Stupidity cannot mean, as Humpty Dumpty would have it, whatever we say it means.
Five defining characteristics of stupidity, it seems to me, are readily apparent.
First, is sheer ignorance: Ignorance of critical facts about important events in the news, and ignorance of how our government functions and who's in charge.
Second, is negligence: The disinclination to seek reliable sources of information about important news events.
Third, is wooden-headedness, as the historian Barbara Tuchman defined it: The inclination to believe what we want to believe regardless of the facts.
Fourth, is shortsightedness: The support of public policies that are mutually contradictory, or contrary to the country's long-term interests.
Fifth, and finally, is a broad category I call bone-headedness, for want of a better name: The susceptibility to meaningless phrases, stereotypes, irrational biases, and simplistic diagnoses and solutions that play on our hopes and fears.
SO, LIFE ON A CONDO BOARD...
... (The old joke is that "War is God's way of teaching Americans geography."
But it was never clear until the postwar period how ignorant Americans are. For it was only then that social scientists began measuring in a systematic manner what Americans actually know. The results were devastating. The most comprehensive surveys, the National Election Studies (NES), were carried out by the University of Michigan beginning in the late 1940s. What these studies showed was that Americans fall into three categories with regard to their political knowledge. A tiny percentage know a lot about politics, up to 50%-60% know enough to answer very simple questions, and the rest know next to nothing.
Contrary to expectations, by many measures the surveys showed the level of ignorance remaining constant over time. In the 1990s, political scientists Michael X. Delli Carpini and Scott Keeter concluded that there was statistically little difference between the knowledge of the parents of the Silent Generation of the 1950s, the parents of the Baby Boomers of the 1960s, and American parents today. (By some measures, Americans are dumber today than their parents of a generation ago.)
I'M BOOK-MARKING THAT ONE
QUERY: HOW DO YOU DEAL WITH THE IGNORANT OF EACH AND EVERY CATEGORY? A PERSON COULD GO MAD
AND TURN-ABOUT IS FAIR PLAY!
http://qz.com/340434/its-cheaper-and-easier-to-rent-an-mba-than-to-hire-one/
The on-demand economy, where people work when they want and get paid by the task, has redefined the roles of taxi drivers and created new jobs such as professional grocery store shoppers who are paid by the hour to run other people’s errands. Less well known is how the 1099 economy (named for the US tax forms filed by independent contractors), is now bleeding into the upper echelon of the workforce: The nation’s top business school graduates.
For many of these people—unlike the “struggling workers” of Uber or the homeless house cleaners at Homejoy who critics say are getting a raw deal—the decision to leave big companies is more often than not, a choice. And their migration has big consequences for the future of employment.
HourlyNerd, a two-year-old startup that lets companies rent an MBA, is bankrolled by the likes of Mark Cuban and Greylock Partners, and this week it secured its third round of financing, bringing the total raised to $12.55 million. One of its newest funders: General Electric’s venture arm. Perhaps the most institutionally corporate of all global companies is now backing a network of 10,000 graduates from top-40 US business schools.
The rise of these “nerds,” who don’t commute to an office but earn $100 to $150 an hour from companies such as Microsoft and American Apparel, tells an important story about where the labor market and the economy are headed. For one, companies can now bypass costs associated with hiring full-time employees or paying the overhead of big consulting firms, says John Shegerian, president of the recycling giant Electronic Recyclers, which used HourlyNerd to find a Harvard MBA to write a business plan for a new project...As NYU Stern professor Arun Sundararajan tells Quartz, “being employed full-time by one company may soon be the exception rather than the rule.”
“You get access to really smart people without having to make an annual commitment and pay benefits,” Shegerian tells Quartz. “We’re in a flex society, and entrepreneurs need that flexibility to right-size a business as it grows and contracts."
NOT THAT SMART, IMO
LORD, WHAT FOOLS THESE MORTALS BE!--PUCK
Posted on March 17, 2014
http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2014/03/neo-liberalism-expressed-simple-rules.html
Neoliberalism (a.k.a. The Washington Consensus) is the dominant ideology of the political class in Washington D.C., shared by both legacy parties. In fact, it’s not clear there is another ideology, which is why we get seemingly weird policymaking processes like RomneyCare morphing into ObamaCare, even as proponents of each version of the same plan hate each other, “narcissism of small differences”-style. Of course, in neo-liberalism’s house are many mansions, many factions, and many funding sources, so it’s natural, or not, that an immense quantity of obfuscation and expert opinion has accumulated over time, making fine distinctions between various shades of neo-liberalism. In this brief post, I hope to clear the ground by proposing two simple rules to which neo-liberalism can be reduced. They are:
#1 Because markets.
#2 Go die!
Of course, these rules can’t be applied, willy-nilly, inartfully, in just any context:
Rule #1 — and here we owe an immense debt of gratitude to the work of Outis Philalithopoulos on academic choice theory — doesn’t apply to (let’s label it)
Context #1: The world of the neo-liberal practitioners themselves the academic guilds, media outlets{1}, and think tanks to which they adhere, Flexian style, are distinctly not market-driven; just look at Thomas Friedman.
It follows that Rule #2 does not apply to neo-liberal practitioners either, because of their social position just described in Context #1: “wingnut welfare” and its equivalent in the “progressive” nomenklatura; they will have — to strike a blow at random — corporate health insurance.
In addition, we have Context #2: The world of the 0.01%. Neither Rule #1 nor Rule #2 rule applies to them, because no rules do.{2} These asymmetries will become more interesting shortly.
So (reviewing), to Rule #1: “Because markets” uses that stupid “because” meme:
http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2013/11/english-has-a-new-preposition-because-internet/281601/
Let’s start with the dull stuff, because pragmatism. … Linguists are calling the “prepositional-because.” Or the “because-noun.” {For example:} "But Iowa still wants to sell eggs to California, because money." It’s a usage, in other words, that is exceptionally bloggy and aggressively casual and implicitly ironic. And also highly adaptable. … it also conveys a certain universality. When I say, for example, “The talks broke down because politics,” I’m not just describing a circumstance. I’m also describing a category. I’m making grand and yet ironized claims, announcing a situation and commenting on that situation at the same time. I’m offering an explanation and rolling my eyes—and I’m able to do it with one little word. Because variety. Because Internet. Because language.
Let’s start with the dull stuff, because pragmatism. … Linguists are calling the “prepositional-because.” Or the “because-noun.” {For example:} "But Iowa still wants to sell eggs to California, because money." It’s a usage, in other words, that is exceptionally bloggy and aggressively casual and implicitly ironic. And also highly adaptable. … it also conveys a certain universality. When I say, for example, “The talks broke down because politics,” I’m not just describing a circumstance. I’m also describing a category. I’m making grand and yet ironized claims, announcing a situation and commenting on that situation at the same time. I’m offering an explanation and rolling my eyes—and I’m able to do it with one little word. Because variety. Because Internet. Because language.
Because neo-liberalism. Because I like the idea, a lot, of catching the Mount Pelerin Society, Pinochet, Diane Rehm, the Friedmans, Joe Biden, Rush Limbaugh, and the people who drafted the Democratic platform in one big net, and then deep-sixing the entire squirming and gesticulating political class with language that’s “exceptionally bloggy and aggressively casual and implicitly ironic.” And this tactic really is fair. Trap a neo-liberal in conversation next to a whiteboard, or hand them a napkin, and you can probably coax them to “educate” you by drawing the famous “Because Markets” diagram, which looks like this:
Figure 1: “Because Markets” Supply-and-demand
And when your targeted neo-liberal is done sketching, they will express the idea, with varying degrees of quasi-religious fervor, that the price set by the intersection of the downward-sloping demand curve and the upward-sloping supply curve is the right price...Except the supply and demand curve ain’t necessarily so. The other day, I saw an elegant hi-so lady eating a Krispy Kreme in Bangkok’s Siam Paragon. With a fork! That donut cost her 27 baht — 84¢, 5¢ more than the US, in a city with half the cost-of-living of New York! So, what’s going on? To her, Krispy Kreme donuts are a luxury good. How does she know that? Exactly because they have a high price! Therefore — Thorstein Veblen would be proud — those donuts have an upward sloping demand curve! (Yves, who is actually qualified to talk about this stuff, goes over these issues in more detail than I can, in ECONned.) So, empirically, seeking truth from facts, as they say, Figure 1 is by no means universal. And that’s before we get to the idea that “Because markets” isn’t appropriate for vast swaths of human endeavor; Common Pool Resources, for example, are not best managed as a form of private property.
But by “right,” your neo-liberal interlocutor will not mean right mechanically or arithmetically, but right morally; that is, the best of all possible worlds will be created when there are no pesky artificial factors interfering with the frictionless operation of the sacred curves. Note, however, that by the asymmetry of Context #1, Figure 1 does not apply to the neo-liberal practitioner themselves, nor, by the asymmetry of Context #2, to the class of people who own the markets in which the prices are set. So, if unions raise the price of human rental, that’s not just an ordinary bargaining process, it’s wrong, even evil: It’s a defilement of the sacred curves. But if a squillionaire uses their power to bust that same union, that’s not merely no problem, it’s not even part of the problem (by Context #2). Hence, we have the pleasant and realistic outcome that the price of a Walmart worker’s time isn’t enough to live on, the price of the (no doubt credentialled) neo-liberal practititioner’s time is somewhere in, er, the “middle,” and the price of a squillionaire’s time is so high they buy grotesquely expensive homes and forget they own them. Because markets.
So, to Rule #2 (reviewing): “Go die!.” Note that, unlike Rule #1, Rule #2 is cast in the imperative. However, just as in Rule #1, Contexts #1 and #2 apply. The imperative is not for everyone! That is, the 0.01% are not sent the message, along every possible channel, to “Go die!” No no. They are told — at least by themselves — to “Go to Mars!” (Which I wish they would do, and leave us alone.) Take ObamaCare. Please.
Wendell Potter, who used to do PR for the health insurance industry, explains how “Because Markets” works in that context. (I mean, they call it a “Marketplace” for a reason, right?)
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/wendell-potter/does-obamacare-offer-too_b_4890222.html
Lawmakers who wrote the Affordable Care Act fell for (assuming good faith) the health insurance industry’s insistence that Americans want “choice and competition.” (Rule #1, which lawmakers share with insurers.) Having worked in that industry for two decades, I know the real reason insurers and their allies kept reciting the “choice and competition” mantra was to scare lawmakers away from even daring to give serious thought to a single-payer health care system (which is a Rule #1 violation, at least for citizens seeking treatment).
And I also know that insurers benefit from the marketplace confusion that “choice and competition” can create. I can assure you that some insurers are counting on you becoming overwhelmed by all the choices and picking a plan that might appear at first glance to be a bargain. But beware: if you’re not careful and pick a plan without really kicking the tires, you very possibly will be buying something that could wind up costing you much more than you ever imagined if you get sick or injured.
That happened to my friend Donna Smith, who as executive director of the Health Care for All Colorado Foundation, knows more about health insurance than most of us. She spent quite a bit of time last fall on the Colorado exchange trying to figure out which plan would offer the best value for her and her husband. If she had to do it over again, she would have taken the additional step of calling the insurance companies directly after reviewing the plans they were offering on the exchange, just to be certain of what her out-of-pocket obligations would be if she had to be hospitalized during the year.
A cancer survivor, Donna knew there would be a chance she might get sick again and need expensive care (Rule #2). It never occurred to her, though, that picking a gold or platinum level plan with a higher premium would likely have been better deal than the silver Kaiser Permanente plan she opted for and that seemed to be more affordable.
To make shopping for coverage even more challenging, Kaiser and most other insurers offer several silver plans on the Colorado exchange, so Donna had to spend time trying to figure out which silver plan would be the best deal.
Donna told me the she took the time to compare the monthly premiums, co-pays and annual deductibles of each of the silver plans before making her decision. “I felt that the one I chose offered the most coverage I could afford with my premium buying dollar,” she said.
Sure enough, within days after the plan went into effect on January 1, Donna got sick and was hospitalized for a week.
To her shock, she later found out some limitations of her coverage that made her overall financial responsibility much higher.
And I also know that insurers benefit from the marketplace confusion that “choice and competition” can create. I can assure you that some insurers are counting on you becoming overwhelmed by all the choices and picking a plan that might appear at first glance to be a bargain. But beware: if you’re not careful and pick a plan without really kicking the tires, you very possibly will be buying something that could wind up costing you much more than you ever imagined if you get sick or injured.
That happened to my friend Donna Smith, who as executive director of the Health Care for All Colorado Foundation, knows more about health insurance than most of us. She spent quite a bit of time last fall on the Colorado exchange trying to figure out which plan would offer the best value for her and her husband. If she had to do it over again, she would have taken the additional step of calling the insurance companies directly after reviewing the plans they were offering on the exchange, just to be certain of what her out-of-pocket obligations would be if she had to be hospitalized during the year.
A cancer survivor, Donna knew there would be a chance she might get sick again and need expensive care (Rule #2). It never occurred to her, though, that picking a gold or platinum level plan with a higher premium would likely have been better deal than the silver Kaiser Permanente plan she opted for and that seemed to be more affordable.
To make shopping for coverage even more challenging, Kaiser and most other insurers offer several silver plans on the Colorado exchange, so Donna had to spend time trying to figure out which silver plan would be the best deal.
Donna told me the she took the time to compare the monthly premiums, co-pays and annual deductibles of each of the silver plans before making her decision. “I felt that the one I chose offered the most coverage I could afford with my premium buying dollar,” she said.
Sure enough, within days after the plan went into effect on January 1, Donna got sick and was hospitalized for a week.
To her shock, she later found out some limitations of her coverage that made her overall financial responsibility much higher.
You can see that Smith really was making a life-and-death choice when she purchased insurance in the “Marketplace” designed by insurance companies. And if you multiply Smith’s story by millions nationwide, you’ll see that those are not good at manipulating the market to their ends, or don’t have the hours to spend that Donna does, are more likely to have lethal outcomes from their choices — choices they are mandated to make only so that parasitical health insurance rent extractors can make a buck — than those who have better skills, or have the hours to spend, or who have their insurance purchased for them by trusted agents. Statistically, and actuaries no doubt can calculate this sort of thing, a percentage of the insured will not make the choices that will get them the care they need, and, again statistically, a certain percentage of those will lose their lives. Because markets.
All of brings me to a strong story by Annie Lowrey in the Times, which was the impetus behind this post. In fact, it ticked me off so much I can hardly think straight:
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/16/business/income-gap-meet-the-longevity-gap.html
Fairfax County, Va., and McDowell County, W.Va., are separated by 350 miles, about a half-day’s drive. Traveling west from Fairfax County, the gated communities and bland architecture of military contractors give way to exurbs, then to farmland and eventually to McDowell’s coal mines and the forested slopes of the Appalachians. Perhaps the greatest distance between the two counties is this: Fairfax is a place of the haves {Contexts #1 and #2}, and McDowell of the have-nots. Just outside of Washington, fat government contracts{[that is, through policy choice} and a growing technology sector buoy the median [!!] household income in Fairfax County up to $107,000, one of the highest in the nation. McDowell, with the decline of coal, has little in the way of industry. Unemployment is high. Drug abuse is rampant. Median household income is about one-fifth that of Fairfax.
One of the starkest consequences of that divide is seen in the life expectancies of the people there. Residents of Fairfax County are among the longest-lived in the country: Men have an average life expectancy of 82 years and women, 85, about the same as in Sweden. In McDowell, the averages are 64 and 73, about the same as in Iraq….
Since the 1980s, “socioeconomic status (class) has become an even more important indicator of life expectancy.” That was the finding of a 2008 report by the Congressional Budget Office. But dollars in a bank account have never added a day to anyone’s life, researchers stress. Instead, those dollars are at work in a thousand daily-life decisions (like Donna Smith’s)— about jobs, medical care, housing, food and exercise — with a cumulative effect on longevity.
“Why might income have an effect on morbidity or mortality?” said David Kindig, an emeritus professor at the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and an expert in longevity issues. “We have these causal pathways, through better jobs, better health insurance, better choice of behaviors, he added. On top of that, “there’s the stress effects of poverty and low educational status.” …
The contrast between McDowell and Fairfax shows just how deeply entrenched these trends are, with consequences reaching all the way from people’s pocketbooks to their graves.
Income Gap, Meet the Longevity Gap
Fairfax County, Va., and McDowell County, W.Va., are separated by 350 miles, about a half-day’s drive. Traveling west from Fairfax County, the gated communities and bland architecture of military contractors give way to exurbs, then to farmland and eventually to McDowell’s coal mines and the forested slopes of the Appalachians. Perhaps the greatest distance between the two counties is this: Fairfax is a place of the haves {Contexts #1 and #2}, and McDowell of the have-nots. Just outside of Washington, fat government contracts{[that is, through policy choice} and a growing technology sector buoy the median [!!] household income in Fairfax County up to $107,000, one of the highest in the nation. McDowell, with the decline of coal, has little in the way of industry. Unemployment is high. Drug abuse is rampant. Median household income is about one-fifth that of Fairfax.
One of the starkest consequences of that divide is seen in the life expectancies of the people there. Residents of Fairfax County are among the longest-lived in the country: Men have an average life expectancy of 82 years and women, 85, about the same as in Sweden. In McDowell, the averages are 64 and 73, about the same as in Iraq….
Since the 1980s, “socioeconomic status (class) has become an even more important indicator of life expectancy.” That was the finding of a 2008 report by the Congressional Budget Office. But dollars in a bank account have never added a day to anyone’s life, researchers stress. Instead, those dollars are at work in a thousand daily-life decisions (like Donna Smith’s)— about jobs, medical care, housing, food and exercise — with a cumulative effect on longevity.
“Why might income have an effect on morbidity or mortality?” said David Kindig, an emeritus professor at the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and an expert in longevity issues. “We have these causal pathways, through better jobs, better health insurance, better choice of behaviors, he added. On top of that, “there’s the stress effects of poverty and low educational status.” …
The contrast between McDowell and Fairfax shows just how deeply entrenched these trends are, with consequences reaching all the way from people’s pocketbooks to their graves.
Because markets. Go die!{4}
NOTES
- The social experiment of the moment, squillionaires with big ideas, has yet to play out in the media. Too soon to tell!
- Until it’s too late, but that is a theme for another day.
- Via a podcast from sadly decayed New Yorker. It’s quite a treat to hear Herzberg and Remnick gradually allow themselves to dimly understand that they know literally nothing of the experience of the average person buying Obamacare because they have never had to buy their own insurance since they get it corporately (see Context #1).
- Again from Lowrey, a fine example of Rule #2:
“These things are not nearly as clear as they seem, or as clear as epidemiologists seem to think,” said Angus Deaton, an economist at Princeton.
Just doing his job….
**************************************************************
UPDATE Adding, I’m not claiming that I’ve synthesized the neo-liberal literature. My claim is that if you engage a neo-liberal in conversation on policy (“at the whiteboard”), at some point you will be able to reduce what they say to rule #1 as a premise and rule #2 as an injunction, given the asymmetrical contexts #1 and #2. It’s rather like the famous headline “Ford to City: Drop Dead,” but on a society-wide scale, and with the 0.01% in the place of Ford.
http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2015/02/convicted-fraudster-jonathan-hay-harvards-man-who-wrecked-russia-resurfaces-in-ukraine.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+NakedCapitalism+%28naked+capitalism%29
Posted on February 4, 2015 by Yves Smith
Yves here. You cannot make this stuff up. One of the sorriest chapters in recent American history was how we allowed an unprecedented opportunity to assist Russia in managing the end of its Communist era to turn into a looting exercise by well-placed insiders, including advisors under contract to Harvard.
If you are unfamiliar with this fiasco, which was also the true proximate cause of Larry Summers’ ouster from Harvard, you must read an extraordinary expose, How Harvard Lost Russia, from Institutional Investor. I am told copies of this article were stuffed in every Harvard faculty member’s inbox the day Summers got a vote of no confidence and resigned shortly thereafter.
Jonathan Hay ran the day-to-day operations of the Russia Project. He was found guilty of violating three counts of the False Claims Act and was debarred from serving in USAID. But he’s managed to resurface in Ukraine, working in the local operations of a Polish think tank. Nicely played.
By John Helmer, the longest continuously serving foreign correspondent in Russia, and the only western journalist to direct his own bureau independent of single national or commercial ties. Helmer has also been a professor of political science, and an advisor to government heads in Greece, the United States, and Asia. He is the first and only member of a US presidential administration (Jimmy Carter) to establish himself in Russia. Originally published at Dances with Bears
There are about 450 think-tanks in Europe and the US currently focusing on international relations, war, peace, and economic security. Of these, about one hundred regularly analyse Russian affairs. And of these, less than ten aren’t committed antagonists of Russia. That’s barely two percent of the intellectual materiel which can be counted as non-partisan or neutral in the infowar now underway between the NATO alliance and Russia. In this balance of forces, think-tanks behave like tanks – that’s the weapon, not the cistern.
The Centre for Social and Economic Research (CASE) has been based in Warsaw since 1991. It claims on its website to be “an independent non-profit economic and public policy research institution founded on the idea that evidence-based policy making is vital to the economic welfare of societies.” In its 2013 annual report, declares: “we seek to maintain a strict sense of non-partisanship in all of our research, advisory and educational activities.” Three-quarters of CASE’s annual revenues come from the European Commission; another 9% from American and other international organizations. According to CASE, that’s “an indication of progressive diversification of CASE revenue sources.” CASE Ukraine is a branch of this Polish think-tank, and at the same time a descendant, it claims, of a Harvard University-funded group which was active between 1996 and 1999. Registered since 1999 as CASE Ukraine, this calls itself “an independent Ukrainian NGO specializing in economic research, macroeconomic policy analysis and forecasting.” According to parent CASE in Warsaw, one of the group’s goals is “promoting cooperation and integration with the neighboring partners of Europe”. This means, not only CASE Ukraine, but CASE Kyrgyzstan, CASE Moldova, CASE Georgia, and in Russia, the Gaidar Institute for Economic Policy. Independent is what CASE swears; independent isn’t what CASE represents. Investigate the names, the associations, the sources of money, the secret service engagements, and what you have is a family, a front, a cover, a closed shop, a mafia. Founders of CASE Ukraine like the American Jonathan Hay and operators of CASE Poland like the Balcerowiz family reveal a well-known anti-Russian alliance. So what are a director of the Gazprom board, Vladimir Mau; a professor of the Higher School of Economics in Moscow, Marek Dabrowski; and Simeon Djankov, Rector of the New Economic School in Moscow, and a protégé of First Deputy Prime Minister Igor Shuvalov, doing on the CASE side?
The latest US survey of the think-tanks in the world counted 6,826 in all as of August 2013. One-quarter (1,828) of those is located in the US; 426 in China; 287 in the UK; 194 in Germany; and 122 in Russia. In a perverse ranking, the only Russian think-tank, so called, to make it to the top 20 of the non-American batch, according to a panel of experts employed by the Think Tanks and Civil Societies Program (TTCSP) of the University of Pennsylvania, isn’t Russian at all. It’s the US-funded and directed Carnegie Moscow Centre (ranking 18th). At the 46th rank is the first genuine Russian think-tank – the Institute of World Economy and International Relations (IMEMO) in Moscow. When US think-tanks are counted, along with the non-American ones, Carnegie Moscow slips to 28th; IMEMO rises to 32nd.
think tank chart Jonathan Hay
Source: http://gotothinktank.com
CASE ranks at the modest 58th peg of the non-American batch; 68th when the Americans are included. It does much better when ranked geographically against think-tanks in Europe. There, according to TTCSP, it’s in first place, out-classing Carnegie Moscow, which is at no. 2, and IMEMO at no. 4. Comparing think-tanks with an economic policy specialization, but counting worldwide, CASE slips again – to 16th. CASE Ukraine starts with the name of Jonathan Hay, whom CASE lists as a member of its founding Supervisory Board. According to a 100-page judgement issued in 2006 by US District Court Judge Douglas Woodlock in Boston, Hay is a convicted fraudster, inside-trader, self-dealer, and corrupt manipulator of US Government funds for the benefit of himself, his lover, and his friends. The judgement ordered Hay to pay a multimillion dollar penalty and restitution. His Harvard University co-conspirators, Andrei Shleifer and his wife, Nancy Zimmerman, were also convicted and fined. Harvard University, Hay’s and Shleifer’s contractor, was ordered to pay $26.5 million; Hay up to $2 million. Here is the US Government’s release, after Hay’s conviction. This also claims that Hay was “debarred” from taking pay from the US Agency for International Development (USAID) in future. The full story of Hay’s profiteering from the Russian asset sale schemes of Yegor Gaidar (below right), the short-lived proponent of shock therapy in Boris Yeltsin’s first term, and his privatization director, Anatoly Chubais (left), can be read here and here. SEE LINK FOR CITATIONS Before his plea bargain in the Boston court, Hay reacted by threatening Moscow reporters investigating his activities. Unbeknownst to those who researched Hay’s misconduct in Russia at the time is that Hay moved on to a similar line of business in Ukrainian privatization. CASE was one of the instruments – and USAID was paying again. At present, CASE doesn’t list Hay on its current Supervisory Board. Dmitro Boyarchuk, the executive director of CASE in Kiev, explained today that there are two empty seats on the board, and that Hay has gone. Added Boyarchuk, this was two years ago. For seven years following his conviction in the US, Hay helped run CASE Ukraine.
CASE annual reports also reveal that in 2005 Hay was working at CASE Ukraine on sponsorship of the UN Development Programme (UNDP) for teaching the “high-level” and “key” Ukrainian policymakers “problems of Ukraine’s economic and institutional reforms after the Orange Revolution and in the context of Ukraine’s strategic plans for Euro-Atlantic integration.” Helping hands with Hay that year were Gaidar and Anders Aslund, the current chairman of CASE’s Advisory Council.
On April 25, 2013, President Putin publicly identified Hay as a CIA agent. Referring to Hay’s work on Russian asset privatization for Chubais, and the subsequent US prosecution, Putin said: “we learned today that officers of the United States’ CIA operated as consultants to Anatoly Chubais. But it is even funnier that upon returning to the US, they were prosecuted for violating their country’s laws and illegally enriching themselves in the course of privatisation in the Russian Federation. They did not have the right to do this as active CIA officers. In accordance with US law, they were not allowed to engage in any kind of commercial activity, but they couldn’t resist – it’s corruption, you see.” Note Putin’s reference to when he was briefed – April 25, 2013. According to Boyarchuk of CASE Ukraine, Hay was then supervising that organization.
MUCH MORE AT LINK, INCLUDING THE ELUSIVE HILLARY/PINCHUK DUO
Posted on February 4, 2015 by Yves Smith
Yves here. You cannot make this stuff up. One of the sorriest chapters in recent American history was how we allowed an unprecedented opportunity to assist Russia in managing the end of its Communist era to turn into a looting exercise by well-placed insiders, including advisors under contract to Harvard.
If you are unfamiliar with this fiasco, which was also the true proximate cause of Larry Summers’ ouster from Harvard, you must read an extraordinary expose, How Harvard Lost Russia, from Institutional Investor. I am told copies of this article were stuffed in every Harvard faculty member’s inbox the day Summers got a vote of no confidence and resigned shortly thereafter.
Jonathan Hay ran the day-to-day operations of the Russia Project. He was found guilty of violating three counts of the False Claims Act and was debarred from serving in USAID. But he’s managed to resurface in Ukraine, working in the local operations of a Polish think tank. Nicely played.
By John Helmer, the longest continuously serving foreign correspondent in Russia, and the only western journalist to direct his own bureau independent of single national or commercial ties. Helmer has also been a professor of political science, and an advisor to government heads in Greece, the United States, and Asia. He is the first and only member of a US presidential administration (Jimmy Carter) to establish himself in Russia. Originally published at Dances with Bears
There are about 450 think-tanks in Europe and the US currently focusing on international relations, war, peace, and economic security. Of these, about one hundred regularly analyse Russian affairs. And of these, less than ten aren’t committed antagonists of Russia. That’s barely two percent of the intellectual materiel which can be counted as non-partisan or neutral in the infowar now underway between the NATO alliance and Russia. In this balance of forces, think-tanks behave like tanks – that’s the weapon, not the cistern.
The Centre for Social and Economic Research (CASE) has been based in Warsaw since 1991. It claims on its website to be “an independent non-profit economic and public policy research institution founded on the idea that evidence-based policy making is vital to the economic welfare of societies.” In its 2013 annual report, declares: “we seek to maintain a strict sense of non-partisanship in all of our research, advisory and educational activities.” Three-quarters of CASE’s annual revenues come from the European Commission; another 9% from American and other international organizations. According to CASE, that’s “an indication of progressive diversification of CASE revenue sources.” CASE Ukraine is a branch of this Polish think-tank, and at the same time a descendant, it claims, of a Harvard University-funded group which was active between 1996 and 1999. Registered since 1999 as CASE Ukraine, this calls itself “an independent Ukrainian NGO specializing in economic research, macroeconomic policy analysis and forecasting.” According to parent CASE in Warsaw, one of the group’s goals is “promoting cooperation and integration with the neighboring partners of Europe”. This means, not only CASE Ukraine, but CASE Kyrgyzstan, CASE Moldova, CASE Georgia, and in Russia, the Gaidar Institute for Economic Policy. Independent is what CASE swears; independent isn’t what CASE represents. Investigate the names, the associations, the sources of money, the secret service engagements, and what you have is a family, a front, a cover, a closed shop, a mafia. Founders of CASE Ukraine like the American Jonathan Hay and operators of CASE Poland like the Balcerowiz family reveal a well-known anti-Russian alliance. So what are a director of the Gazprom board, Vladimir Mau; a professor of the Higher School of Economics in Moscow, Marek Dabrowski; and Simeon Djankov, Rector of the New Economic School in Moscow, and a protégé of First Deputy Prime Minister Igor Shuvalov, doing on the CASE side?
The latest US survey of the think-tanks in the world counted 6,826 in all as of August 2013. One-quarter (1,828) of those is located in the US; 426 in China; 287 in the UK; 194 in Germany; and 122 in Russia. In a perverse ranking, the only Russian think-tank, so called, to make it to the top 20 of the non-American batch, according to a panel of experts employed by the Think Tanks and Civil Societies Program (TTCSP) of the University of Pennsylvania, isn’t Russian at all. It’s the US-funded and directed Carnegie Moscow Centre (ranking 18th). At the 46th rank is the first genuine Russian think-tank – the Institute of World Economy and International Relations (IMEMO) in Moscow. When US think-tanks are counted, along with the non-American ones, Carnegie Moscow slips to 28th; IMEMO rises to 32nd.
think tank chart Jonathan Hay
Source: http://gotothinktank.com
CASE ranks at the modest 58th peg of the non-American batch; 68th when the Americans are included. It does much better when ranked geographically against think-tanks in Europe. There, according to TTCSP, it’s in first place, out-classing Carnegie Moscow, which is at no. 2, and IMEMO at no. 4. Comparing think-tanks with an economic policy specialization, but counting worldwide, CASE slips again – to 16th. CASE Ukraine starts with the name of Jonathan Hay, whom CASE lists as a member of its founding Supervisory Board. According to a 100-page judgement issued in 2006 by US District Court Judge Douglas Woodlock in Boston, Hay is a convicted fraudster, inside-trader, self-dealer, and corrupt manipulator of US Government funds for the benefit of himself, his lover, and his friends. The judgement ordered Hay to pay a multimillion dollar penalty and restitution. His Harvard University co-conspirators, Andrei Shleifer and his wife, Nancy Zimmerman, were also convicted and fined. Harvard University, Hay’s and Shleifer’s contractor, was ordered to pay $26.5 million; Hay up to $2 million. Here is the US Government’s release, after Hay’s conviction. This also claims that Hay was “debarred” from taking pay from the US Agency for International Development (USAID) in future. The full story of Hay’s profiteering from the Russian asset sale schemes of Yegor Gaidar (below right), the short-lived proponent of shock therapy in Boris Yeltsin’s first term, and his privatization director, Anatoly Chubais (left), can be read here and here. SEE LINK FOR CITATIONS Before his plea bargain in the Boston court, Hay reacted by threatening Moscow reporters investigating his activities. Unbeknownst to those who researched Hay’s misconduct in Russia at the time is that Hay moved on to a similar line of business in Ukrainian privatization. CASE was one of the instruments – and USAID was paying again. At present, CASE doesn’t list Hay on its current Supervisory Board. Dmitro Boyarchuk, the executive director of CASE in Kiev, explained today that there are two empty seats on the board, and that Hay has gone. Added Boyarchuk, this was two years ago. For seven years following his conviction in the US, Hay helped run CASE Ukraine.
CASE annual reports also reveal that in 2005 Hay was working at CASE Ukraine on sponsorship of the UN Development Programme (UNDP) for teaching the “high-level” and “key” Ukrainian policymakers “problems of Ukraine’s economic and institutional reforms after the Orange Revolution and in the context of Ukraine’s strategic plans for Euro-Atlantic integration.” Helping hands with Hay that year were Gaidar and Anders Aslund, the current chairman of CASE’s Advisory Council.
On April 25, 2013, President Putin publicly identified Hay as a CIA agent. Referring to Hay’s work on Russian asset privatization for Chubais, and the subsequent US prosecution, Putin said: “we learned today that officers of the United States’ CIA operated as consultants to Anatoly Chubais. But it is even funnier that upon returning to the US, they were prosecuted for violating their country’s laws and illegally enriching themselves in the course of privatisation in the Russian Federation. They did not have the right to do this as active CIA officers. In accordance with US law, they were not allowed to engage in any kind of commercial activity, but they couldn’t resist – it’s corruption, you see.” Note Putin’s reference to when he was briefed – April 25, 2013. According to Boyarchuk of CASE Ukraine, Hay was then supervising that organization.
MUCH MORE AT LINK, INCLUDING THE ELUSIVE HILLARY/PINCHUK DUO
http://www.bloombergview.com/articles/2015-03-27/putin-s-economic-team-plays-houdini
Last week, the Russian central bank's currency reserves increased for the first time since last July, showing that the economy may have moved past the panic caused by last year's oil price slump. Perhaps Russia's improving indicators will convince Western governments that economic sanctions are having no discernible effect and that President Vladimir Putin's regime and the country it runs aren't facing imminent collapse. Russia has lost a little more than a quarter of its foreign reserves since mid-July 2014:
The decline was particularly sharp last December, as the central bank frantically sought a way to stop the ruble from losing value against the dollar. The much gentler slope on the chart -- beginning in January -- says more about the structure of Russia's foreign reserves than about chronic depletion. In January 2014, Russia held $131.8 billion of U.S. debt. As its relationship with the U.S. deteriorated after the revolution in Ukraine and the annexation of Crimea, Russia began shrinking its dollar reserves and increasing the share of euros and gold. While the reserves as a whole dropped 23.9 percent in 2014, the holdings of U.S. debt fell 37.6 percent, to $82.2 billion. Russia now holds less U.S. Treasury securities than Ireland, Turkey or Singapore. The total value of foreign reserves is expressed in dollars, so Russia's euro-heavy stockpile took a hit from the dollar's rapid appreciation against the euro this year. The central bank no longer had to prop up the ruble with big foreign exchange sales: The currency has been doing OK so far this year, partly because oil has bounced back from January lows, and partly because Russia, with an interest rate of 17 percent at the beginning of the year and 14 percent now, became an attractive, though risky, carry trade destination. A glance at the relationship between the ruble and the price of Brent crude shows that the currency is now doing better than the oil benchmark -- that's a sign that the carry trade, in which speculators borrow in dollars and lend in rubles, is pushing it upward: In the week ended March 20, the euro gained a little more than 3 percent against the U.S. dollar; that was the reason for the $1.2 billion uptick in Russian foreign reserves.
Many of the unfavorable forecasts for the Russian economy -- such as the one published a month ago by Anders Aslund of the Peterson Institute for International Economics -- were predicated on the melting away of currency reserves. "Russia's reserve situation is approaching a critical limit," Aslund wrote. "At present, Russia loses more than $10 billion a month, which means that a real reserve crisis will erupt in the third quarter." That, however, is not going to happen unless the price of oil starts going down steeply again. Analysts are divided about the future of oil prices, with predictions ranging from $50 to $90 per barrel of Brent in the fourth quarter of this year. But the consensus forecast compiled by Bloomberg put it at $68.65 today -- higher than the actual price of $57.5. The Russian Economy Ministry has also suggested raising the official oil price forecast from $50 per barrel -- in line with the most pessimistic of analysts -- but the government has so far resisted these calls, preferring to remain cautious.
The current government forecast says the Russian economy will shrink 3 percent. If oil is higher than budgeted, however, the decline -- which is inevitable for structural reasons, and because of the abnormally high interest rates left over from last year's defense of the ruble and that remain useful because they attract the carry trade -- will be even less pronounced. Economists polled by Bloomberg still expect, on average, a 4 percent drop, but Goldman Sachs, for example, now predicts a decline of only 2.7 percent -- in line with some forecasts from Russian liberal economists. To be sure, that's hardly a stellar economic performance. It's painful for a country as big as Russia to have its crucial economic indicators depend so heavily on civil strife in Yemen and the debt problems of U.S. frackers -- both important determinants of the oil price. The country's oil dependency won't end anytime soon, however, and so far Russia's key market has stabilized at an acceptable level.
So where do the Western sanctions come in? They don't. It's easy to see how Russian economic indicators react to developments in oil and foreign exchange markets, but not to the trade and funding restrictions. They are a nuisance to a number of Russian companies, but Sberbank, the mammoth state institution now unable to obtain Western funding, still reported a healthy profit of $7.7 billion for 2014. That's less than for the year before, but still far from tragic. Russia's economic managers, especially at the Central Bank and the Finance Ministry, should be given their due: In a difficult environment, they have avoided major mistakes and managed to keep open Russia's economy. Putin has plenty of advisers who would prefer a different approach, arguing for "fortress Russia," but despite the instincts that feed the president's own siege mentality, he has chosen wisely whom to empower. Despite the Soviet revival theatrics Putin has employed -- at a recent meeting, he pointedly addressed top operatives of Russia's FSB domestic intelligence as "comrades" -- Russia remains a major market economy that cannot be derailed by a few timid restrictions. That makes it both a bigger threat to weak neighbors such as Ukraine, as well as an underrated land of opportunity. It's not for nothing that in its 2015 investor sentiment survey, the CFA Institute -- a global association of investment professionals -- named Russia one of the top markets for equity performance this year, along with the U.S., China and India.
Last week, the Russian central bank's currency reserves increased for the first time since last July, showing that the economy may have moved past the panic caused by last year's oil price slump. Perhaps Russia's improving indicators will convince Western governments that economic sanctions are having no discernible effect and that President Vladimir Putin's regime and the country it runs aren't facing imminent collapse. Russia has lost a little more than a quarter of its foreign reserves since mid-July 2014:
The decline was particularly sharp last December, as the central bank frantically sought a way to stop the ruble from losing value against the dollar. The much gentler slope on the chart -- beginning in January -- says more about the structure of Russia's foreign reserves than about chronic depletion. In January 2014, Russia held $131.8 billion of U.S. debt. As its relationship with the U.S. deteriorated after the revolution in Ukraine and the annexation of Crimea, Russia began shrinking its dollar reserves and increasing the share of euros and gold. While the reserves as a whole dropped 23.9 percent in 2014, the holdings of U.S. debt fell 37.6 percent, to $82.2 billion. Russia now holds less U.S. Treasury securities than Ireland, Turkey or Singapore. The total value of foreign reserves is expressed in dollars, so Russia's euro-heavy stockpile took a hit from the dollar's rapid appreciation against the euro this year. The central bank no longer had to prop up the ruble with big foreign exchange sales: The currency has been doing OK so far this year, partly because oil has bounced back from January lows, and partly because Russia, with an interest rate of 17 percent at the beginning of the year and 14 percent now, became an attractive, though risky, carry trade destination. A glance at the relationship between the ruble and the price of Brent crude shows that the currency is now doing better than the oil benchmark -- that's a sign that the carry trade, in which speculators borrow in dollars and lend in rubles, is pushing it upward: In the week ended March 20, the euro gained a little more than 3 percent against the U.S. dollar; that was the reason for the $1.2 billion uptick in Russian foreign reserves.
Many of the unfavorable forecasts for the Russian economy -- such as the one published a month ago by Anders Aslund of the Peterson Institute for International Economics -- were predicated on the melting away of currency reserves. "Russia's reserve situation is approaching a critical limit," Aslund wrote. "At present, Russia loses more than $10 billion a month, which means that a real reserve crisis will erupt in the third quarter." That, however, is not going to happen unless the price of oil starts going down steeply again. Analysts are divided about the future of oil prices, with predictions ranging from $50 to $90 per barrel of Brent in the fourth quarter of this year. But the consensus forecast compiled by Bloomberg put it at $68.65 today -- higher than the actual price of $57.5. The Russian Economy Ministry has also suggested raising the official oil price forecast from $50 per barrel -- in line with the most pessimistic of analysts -- but the government has so far resisted these calls, preferring to remain cautious.
The current government forecast says the Russian economy will shrink 3 percent. If oil is higher than budgeted, however, the decline -- which is inevitable for structural reasons, and because of the abnormally high interest rates left over from last year's defense of the ruble and that remain useful because they attract the carry trade -- will be even less pronounced. Economists polled by Bloomberg still expect, on average, a 4 percent drop, but Goldman Sachs, for example, now predicts a decline of only 2.7 percent -- in line with some forecasts from Russian liberal economists. To be sure, that's hardly a stellar economic performance. It's painful for a country as big as Russia to have its crucial economic indicators depend so heavily on civil strife in Yemen and the debt problems of U.S. frackers -- both important determinants of the oil price. The country's oil dependency won't end anytime soon, however, and so far Russia's key market has stabilized at an acceptable level.
So where do the Western sanctions come in? They don't. It's easy to see how Russian economic indicators react to developments in oil and foreign exchange markets, but not to the trade and funding restrictions. They are a nuisance to a number of Russian companies, but Sberbank, the mammoth state institution now unable to obtain Western funding, still reported a healthy profit of $7.7 billion for 2014. That's less than for the year before, but still far from tragic. Russia's economic managers, especially at the Central Bank and the Finance Ministry, should be given their due: In a difficult environment, they have avoided major mistakes and managed to keep open Russia's economy. Putin has plenty of advisers who would prefer a different approach, arguing for "fortress Russia," but despite the instincts that feed the president's own siege mentality, he has chosen wisely whom to empower. Despite the Soviet revival theatrics Putin has employed -- at a recent meeting, he pointedly addressed top operatives of Russia's FSB domestic intelligence as "comrades" -- Russia remains a major market economy that cannot be derailed by a few timid restrictions. That makes it both a bigger threat to weak neighbors such as Ukraine, as well as an underrated land of opportunity. It's not for nothing that in its 2015 investor sentiment survey, the CFA Institute -- a global association of investment professionals -- named Russia one of the top markets for equity performance this year, along with the U.S., China and India.