It seems America’s bankers are tired of all the abuse. They’ve decided to speak out.

True, they’re doing it from behind the ropeline, in front of friendly crowds at industry conferences and country clubs, meaning they don’t have to look the rest of America in the eye when they call us all imbeciles and complain that they shouldn’t have to apologize for being so successful.

Over the weekend, Fitch -- the major rating company that, with its fellow majors, Moody's and Standard and Poor's, dominate the business of assessing the riskiness of debt instruments -- took a highly publi­cized step. It downgraded the credit-worthiness of the sovereign debts of many European countries. What a spectacle! These rating companies were dis­tinguished by their laughably inaccurate (to be ex­tremely polite) assessments of the risks associated with asset-backed securi­ties. Those assessments contributed to the economic crisis we are living through.

Dear Readers, thanks to the Google alerts utility these three articles were brought to my attention. This is a four part series, and the fourth piece has not be published yet. It is from a somewhat different viewpoint though kindred to the MMT/FF perspective. I'm being held hostage by a clutch of local trolls that are perpetrating a seemingly endless project of mischief. It seems to be a local reflection of the same sort of pernicious nonsense, as has been perpetrated by the financial and political trolls who have captured our process of governance. for now, Tadit Anderson

I write this column as I am flying home from presenting a keynote address Friday to the 32nd annual Burgenstock Meeting (now held in Interlaken, Switzerland). The Burgenstock meeting is one of the top international meetings on financial derivatives and attracts a mixture of senior regulators, market participants, and a scattering of academics. I changed the presentation I intended to make entirely in order to respond to Thursday’s famous Thursday keynote presenter, Dr. Hummler, the head of the oldest private bank in Swizerland. Dr.

Readers, this article by its publication date is a bit dated, and I will suggest that it is ever more relevant now, and fundamental to understanding how priorities are set as economic policy. The slow waltz transfer of alliances and spheres of influence is becoming an invitation to the closing of these. It all seems to be from a strategy to glut the transnational oligarchy into more stupidity and more greed. The finer point is that the ideology of financialized corporate capitalism has gone through the supposed maturing to being based upon appearances only.

The calls for better bank regulation are many. This column argues that regulators have the concepts right, but the mechanisms are in need of repair.

This article is extracted from a larger essay entitled the "Professionalization of Philosophy." It digs rather deeply into the failings of professionalized intellectual discourse. In effect the article examines the politics of the professionalization of both philosophy and of economics. A close reading of The Structure Of Scientific Revolutions by T. S. Kuhn produces similar conclusions, that "science" progresses by the mortality of the loyalists to specific paradigms, not by the intrusions or innovations of extraordinary science.

Readers, (hand waving in the air) I can answer that. Much of what passes as liberal or left political economics has been coopted by the deeply fascist nature of our institutions. That Pope Benedict is declaring this is mostly a joke given that he has never given up his fascist association with the brown shirts of Hitler's era. That he is speaking on this, is primarily an indication of how bad the situation has become, not that he or the Roman Catholic Church would advocate anything other that a reversal of the Reformation and of the Renaissance.

Hello readers, in my opinion what Black is describing is the definition of fascism. Forty years back this corporatist strategy came at the same time as the establishment of various fascist strategies which included the funding of the Heritage Foundation et al. In every case the intent has been the subversion of the rule of law under a democratic society. Here in my use of the word "democratic" centers upon the economic effects of the rule of law.

A SEC whistle-blower claims that over the past two decades, the agency has destroyed records of thousands of investigations, whitewashing the files of some of the nation's worst financial criminals.