Rakoff on "Willful Blindness" and other links

This and  that before I leave town.

(1) Judge Rakoff Excoriates Justice Dept. on Failure to Prosecute Banksters:

• Jed S. Rakoff, The Financial Crisis: Why Have No High-Level Executives Been Prosecuted? New York Review of Books.
• The Times' Adam Liptak on Rakoff's article: Stern Words for Wall Street's Watchdogs, From a Judge. The headline doesn't make sense unless you read "watchdog" as what they are supposed to do.

(2) Dean Baker on Pensions:

• Dean Baker, Truthout:  Pension Theft: Class Warfare Goes to the Next Stage.  We'll be covering this more in our Jan/Feb issue.

(3) Mandela:

• Peter Finocchiaro, Salon, How the right tried to ruin Nelson Mandela
• Michael Roberts, at his blog, Mandela’s economic legacy. Hat-tip to Phil G.
• Andrew Ross Sorkin, Times, How Mandela Shifted Views on Freedom of Markets
• Patrick Bond, Global Research, Mandela Led Fight Against Apartheid, But Not Against Extreme Inequality (interview by same title at the Real News Network); plus the lengthy piece in Counterpunch, The Mandela Years in Power.

(4) Volcker Rule:

• David Dayen, New Republic, The Volcker Rule: How It Will Work, and Why It May Still Fail
• Yves Smith, Naked Capitalism, Volcker Rule: The Devil’s in the Unimpressive Enforcement Details  Quotes someone who quotes my oldest friend, Marcus Stanley, an economist with Americans for Financial Reform.  He was interviewed on Morning Edition last week about the Volcker Rule (hat-tip TM), but I can't find any link to it.
• Alexis Goldstein, The Nation, The Volcker Rule: Wins, Losses and Toss-ups.

(5) Snowden Letter to Brazil:

• Edward Snowden, An Open Letter to the People of Brazil. Asking for asylum. Better to read from the source than to read the Times' piece on this. though reading the comments on that was instructive (including getting the link to his letter, and also seeing how many nutbags out there think he's a traitor).

(6) Budget Deal:

I don't have much to post on this because it makes me so sick I have avoided reading about it.  But here's an interview from Democracy Now! (via the Real News Network) with David Cay Johnston, "Makes Absolutely No Sense": David Cay Johnston on Budget Deal That Helps Billionaires, Not the Poor.

That's it for now.

--Chris Sturr