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This comes from Ryan Chittum of the Columbia Journalism Review:
Whatever Tim Geithner’s New York Fed was trying to hide in the AIG backdoor bailout was so volatile it was deemed worthy of national-security-like classification, and the Fed reacted to media FOIA requests for information by withholding more information.
Reuters, gets the scoop on emails that detail [...]

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I wrote this in April 2009 about the Federal Reserve’s machinations:
You should note that only the fiscal stimulus required legislative approval. All of the other ’stimulus’ has been done without Congressional approval and largely without Congressional oversight. These activities have been specifically designed to be opaque. The government’s claims of wanting to increase transparency ring [...]

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I picked up this Robert Reich quote from Politico’s Open Mic section, which echoes the sentiments expressed by a Massachusetts voter in my recent post “President Obama, are you listening?”:
A third political party is emerging in America. Call it the I’m-Mad-As-Hell party.
It’s a mistake to see the Mad-As-Hell party as just a right-wing phenomenon [...]

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Earlier in the week, I wrote a post-mortem on the Massachusetts Senate race won by Scott Brown. I saw the results as a signal that Americans are worn out by fraud and corruption. I found one comment from a registered Democrat particularly instructive regarding the mood of the electorate and am publishing the heart of [...]

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This is pretty funny.  Hat tip Linda.

 
By the way, Linda, this is not my Libertarian ideal! It’s called anarchy.

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I just put this in the links but it deserves a post of its own!

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Reading the news today, I came across an NPR article that I believe captured the political mood in the U.S. rather well.  While the stress of the article is on disillusionment from Obama’s base of supporters, I believe much the same dynamic is at play for crossover independent voters. But, apparently, the base has a [...]

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I want to talk about the drubbing the Democrats are going to take in this year’s elections and what it means, if anything.  As a sort of pre-amble, I will lead into this with some thoughts on tax cut propaganda and today’s piece by the conservative Reuters columnist James Pethoukoukis called The campaign against Larry [...]

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Back in September I posted “Now watch this drive” to explain voters’ increasing alarm at Obama’s detachment from the economic problems of ordinary Americans.  Commenting on a video featuring a famous George W. Bush gaffe, I said:

As I see it, the man in video number one shows extreme callousness when switching abruptly from a serious [...]

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Below are two videos and an article recounting the recent social unrest in Iran.

Also see Biggest protests in months take place in Iran from the FT