Saturday, February 17, 2018

On Educated Representatives and Large Districts: A Critique of Democracy

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Democrat Georgia Congressman Hank Johnson said during an Armed Services Committee hearing in late March, 2010 that Guam would be in danger ...

God's Gold on Wall St.: A Vaunted Self-Assessment of God's Work

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A year after the financial crisis of 2008, Lloyd Blankfein, the CEO of Goldman Sachs,  found himself vilified for his firm’s quick return t...

Physicians and Lawyers: On the Presumption of Ignorance

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It would surprise virtually every American (but only a few Europeans) to know that neither the JD nor the MD degree is a doctorate.    Eac...

Corporate America's Apathy toward Federalism

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In October of 2009, the U.S. House Financial Services Committee voted to give the federal government the power to block the states from reg...

Off Target: Corporate Spending as "Speech" against Gay Rights

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In a 5-4 decision on January 21, 2010, the US Supreme Court ruled in Citizens United  that federal restrictions on corporate spending in el...
Tuesday, February 13, 2018

Instant Gratification Rules in American Fiscal Policy

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With an expected deficit of $1.2 trillion for 2018-2019, the U.S. Government in December, 2017 enacted a tax cut with an expected revenue l...
Sunday, February 11, 2018

Foreign Policy in International Business: BP Trading a Libyan Terrorist for Libyan Oil

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Senator Kirsten Gillibrand, D-NY, claimed in July of 2010 that the UK government should investigate what role BP played in Britain’s decisi...

On the Danger to the United States of Living off Government Debt: The Case of the Dollar as World Reserve in 2010

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Given the $13 trillion of U.S. Government debt in 2010, the dollar was losing out at the time in percentage terms to other currencies as th...
Sunday, January 28, 2018

Wealth as a Societal Value in the E.U. and U.S.: The Case of Financial Reform

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The E.U. and U.S differ markedly in the degree to which the interests of big business are etched in the respective societies and polities. ...

On the Influence of Wall Street in Congress: The Proposal to Distinguish Financial and Commercial Derivatives

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In the process whereby financial reform legislation made its way through Congress after the financial crisis of 2008, the U.S. House and Se...

Westboro Church's Anti-Gay and John Galliano's Anti-Semitic Opinions: The U.S. and E.U. Contrasted

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The First Amendment protects free speech in the U.S. even if it is as hurtful as signs at a Marine funeral proclaiming "Thank God for ...
Friday, January 26, 2018

Lessons Learned from the Arab Spring

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"When a leader's only means of staying in power is to use mass violence against his own people, he has lost the legitimacy to rule...

The Banking Lobby Amid Goldman Sachs' Culpability: A Danger to the Republic?

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To simplify how Goldman Sachs got into trouble with the SEC: According to Annie Lowrey, the hedge fund Paulson & Co. handpicked mortgag...

The Increasing Decadence in American Business (and Society): The Case of On-Screen Distractions during Television Programs

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While watching Lord of the Rings on TBS in 2010, I noticed that the network was posting not only its logo on the bottom right of the scree...

The Volcker Rule: Taking in Water on Proprietary Trading

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Under the Dodd-Frank financial reform law of 2010, Goldman Sachs had to break up its principal strategies group, the trading unit that had ...