The "end game" memo from Larry Summers.

[JDPriestly]

37. Don't let the snap in Greg Palast's writing style throw you off. He researches

his sources carefully and is pretty reliable as far as I can tell. He just has a very, very readable writing style.

Our financial sector has overpowered, outmaneuvered and out-politicked the rest of our economy. And we are left with a domestic economy gutted by the plutocracy.

Greg Palast is one of the few who explains how this happened and who is to blame for it.

We either change the balance in our economy so that our real, productive economy leads the financial sector or our economy will collapse and our democracy with it. We already see an experiment in dictatorship imposed on Detroit based on the excise of bankruptcy.

The financial sector has the ability to bankrupt any municipality. Will that be the excuse for ending municipal self-government. Does that then spread to the state level?

This may sound to you like an extreme conspiracy theory, but our trade agreements already threaten the ability of the people to decide for themselves many issues at state and local levels. NAFTA and international trade courts can decide how products are labelled in your supermarket, how our nations natural resources (I'm thinking of Canadian lumber), who can drive in your state and with what license, etc.

Right now, the biggest immediate threat is the TPP. That has financial sector dominance written all over it. We have to stop it. Summers will never help us in that regard.

My problem is that I don't know much about Yellin. People of conscience, people who see the problems we face as a nation and who understand that the dominance of the financial sector is one of the basic ones, are opposing Summers. But no one says much about Yellin. Seems to me she could have done a little more to bring our economy back into balance. So if anyone knows about her, I would like to hear more.

But Greg Palast is OK>

From The Economist:

Ms Yellen’s views are an open book. She has written and spoken extensively on monetary policy and the thinking behind the Fed’s current strategy. And she has argued that more could be done to help the jobless given the Fed’s dual mandate: price stability and maximum employment.

A chairman’s greatest challenge is to anticipate—and react to—surprises. Mr Summers’s backers argue that no one can match his nimble mind. Ms Yellen’s partisans contrast Mr Summers’s past enthusiasm for financial engineering with her prescient forecasting record. She was the most accurate of Fed officials between 2009 and 2012, according to a recent survey.

Some wonder whether the net for candidates should have been cast wider. Under Mr Bernanke the Fed has performed well relative to peers but has repeatedly missed its own inflation and unemployment targets. A true outsider is unlikely to be appointed but could be just the thing.

http://www.economist.com/news/finance-and-economics/21583276-what-does-it-take-run-americas-central-bank-summers-v-yellen

So, I digressed from the topic of Greg Palast. But you can pretty much trust him because he used to report for the BBC and may still be doing that.