Joe Costello Joe Costello has been involved in communications, energy and political economy for three decades. He was communications director for Jerry Brown's innovative 1992 presidential campaign and was a senior adviser for Howard Dean's effort in 2004. He's spent two decades thinking and acting on the confluence of information technologies and democratic political economy. He has written extensively on politics, finance and energy.

Viva La$ Vega$

Gonna set my soul on fire
Got a whole lot of money that’s ready to burn
So get those stakes up higher
I’m gonna keep on the run
Gonna have me some fun
If it costs me my very last dime
If I wind up broke up, well
I’ll always remember I had a swingin time
– Viva Las Vegas

The WSJ has a must read report from the currency table, which rolls 24/7. The Journal writes,

Currency trading volume around the world has hit $4 trillion a day,…the $4 trillion mark represents a 20% gain from $3.3 trillion in 2007, the last time the global foreign-exchange markets were surveyed,…

On Bigness and Reform

“The continuing survival of classical (economic) beliefs protects business autonomy and its income and serve to obscure the economic power exercised as a matter of course by the modern enterprise by declaring that all power rests, in fact, with the market.” — John Kenneth Galbraith

Michael Sandel is a professor at Harvard, who is distinguished in the last few years for one reason; he’s written on the history of American liberalism, particularly its economic roots, from an American perspective. In a new piece, he points out how until a few decades ago, American politicians weren’t so deferential to concentrated economic power.…

Broken Politics, Bubble Pricing, Environment, and Agriculture

Shed your fears and lose your guilt
Tonight we burn responsibility in the fire
We’ll watch the flames grow higher

As I was standing by the edge
I could see the faces of those who led pissing theirselves laughing
Their mad eyes bulged and their flushed faces said,
“The weak get crushed and the strong grow stronger.”
In the funeral pyre, we’ll watch the flames grow higher
– Paul Weller

However effective you think “markets” are at pricing, one thing you can say is bubbles completely distort pricing mechanisms to the point of being valueless. When you add into that a corrupt political process using government to further distort…

American Paradox

It’s time to stop lashing out at each other and start fighting back against the corporate elites who are dismantling our society.

I’m ready and hyped, plus I’m amped
Most of my heroes don’t appear on no stamps
Sample a look back, you look and find
Nothing but rednecks for 400 years if you check
Our freedom of speech is freedom or death
We got to fight the powers that be
Lemme hear you say
Fight the power
- Public Enemy

To truly appreciate America, you have to understand its paradoxes.  They are great.  The first modern republic birthed in the original sin of slavery.  A nation of immigrants that destroyed…

Shock Doctrine and Fire Sales

How the banks are reaping profits off the misery they created.

Foreman was a panic about to go in the insane
Trying to get the workers out the way of the train
Engineer blowing the whistle long and long
Can’t stop the train had to let it roll on
– Let It Rock, Professor Chuck Berry of St. Louis, Mo

A couple years ago, Naomi Klein wrote a book called The Shock Doctrine. She documented the global pattern of the last few decades where a nation hit with a crisis — natural, financial, political — would become open game for Randian, Friedmanite, University of Chicago sociopaths.…

Housing and Bubbles

Where is the real estate wreck heading?

Well, there was a meeting in DC this and the Treasury Secretary, Wall Street, banks, and MBS bondholders all agreed something should be done with Fannie and Freddie, as long as no one, except maybe homeowners, incurred any losses. Fannie and Freddie represent a lot that’s wrong with our government. It became a bipartisan cesspool of corruption, jobbery and incompetence over the past decade, for which every public revelation only led to expressions of surprise by DC officialdom. Most recently Fannie and Freddie became dumping grounds for the worst of the real estate dreck, and that’s…

Bubble, Bubble, Toil and Trouble: Rethinking our Foundations

It’s time to rethink the basis of our economy and our politics.

Me and my baby gonna get on a train that’s gonna take us away,
We’re gonna live in a tent, we’re gonna pay no more rent, we’re gonna pay no more rates,
We’re gonna live in a field, we’re gonna buy me gun to keep the policemen away.
Gonna pass me a brand new resolution,
Gonna fight me a one man revolution, someway,
Gonna start my rebellion today.
But here come the people in gray,
To take me away.
– Ray Davies

Bubble, Bubble

Gillain Tett has a must read piece (h/t Yves) in the FT regarding the heart of…

How I Learned to Quit Worrying and Love Corporate Globalization

Corporate globalization is in vogue for politicians, but it benefits no one.

General Ripper: It’s incredibly obvious isn’t it? A foreign substance is introduced into our precious bodily fluids, without the knowledge of the individual, certainly without any choice. That’s the way your hardcore Commie works.

Captain Mandrake: Tell me Jack, when did you first develop this theory?

General Ripper: Well, I first became aware of it Mandrake, during the physical act of love. A profound sense of fatigue and feeling of emptiness followed. Luckily, I was able to interpret these feelings correctly…loss of essence.

– Dr. Stangelove

One interesting thing that has happened over…

How Did Wall Street’s Looting Become Public Policy?

The economy can’t recover so long as we allow Wall Street to rob us blind.

Gretchen Morgenson has a good piece based on newly released documents concerning the single greatest crime committed by the looting class in the past two years, the bailout of Wall Street with the taxpayer payout of a hundred cents on the dollar for AIG’s worthless derivatives. Morgenson writes:

The documents also indicate that regulators ignored recommendations from their own advisers to force the banks to accept losses on their A.I.G. deals and instead paid the banks in full for the contracts. That decision, say critics of the A.I.G.…

It’s Not the 1930s!

While many are looking back to Keynesian theories, we should be coming up with some that fit our own times.

Practical men, who believe themselves to be quite exempt from any intellectual influences, are usually the slaves of some defunct economist. Madmen in authority, who hear voices in the air, are distilling their frenzy from some academic scribbler of a few years back. I am sure that the power of vested interests is vastly exaggerated compared with the gradual encroachment of ideas. Not, indeed, immediately, but after a certain interval; for in the field of economic and political philosophy there are…