Just three links this week:
(1) Mark Karlin, The End Game of Shutting Off Residential Water in Detroit Is a Likely Privatization Attempt. Buzzflash at Truthout. Mystery solved (not that this is surprising).
(2) Gretchen Morgenson, Private Equity's Free Pass. The New York Times; hat-tip TM. Morgenson's focus here is on how PE firms avoid SEC scrutiny by not being designated as "broker-dealers."
(3) David Atkins, The Four Basic Reactions to Record Inequality. Washington Monthly's Political Animal blog. This is a nice piece. It starts with Anna Bernasek's recent Times piece, The Typical Household, Now Worth a Third Less, which reports on findings in a recent Russell Sage Foundation study, according to there was a 36% decline in the inflation-adjusted net worth of the average U.S. household between 2003 and 2013. Over the same period, the net worth of households at the 95th percentile increased by 14%. And the increase for richer households was greater. What I like about the Atkins piece is that he shows how similar the views of the "neoliberal/center-left "camp (who "believe that modern inequality is a problem, but that this too shall pass and we can trudge along as usual after a recovery") are to those of true believers on the center-right.
That's it for now.
--Chris Sturr