bidness

Admittedly, some boycotts have worked: Glenn Beck seems to have been seriously harmed by the boycotts against his advertisers. But what happens when the corporations you want to boycott have massive market share? The American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) is a corporate-backed lobbying group that has essentially written many laws at the state level, including Wisconsin, Florida, and Michigan. One-third of all state legislators (overwhelmingly Republican) are members of ALEC, and ALEC has pushed some really awful legislation, including limiting consumer rights, environmental…

With all of the S&P hoopla, we've heard a lot about 'default'--that the U.S. government can't (false) or won't (with the teahadists, who knows?) pay the money owed on its debt. Well, there's another kind of default that's slipping under the radar (italics mine): When the small, beleaguered city of Central Falls, R.I., filed for bankruptcy this month, it sought to cut the pension checks it has been sending its retired police officers, firefighters and other workers by as much as half. All the city promises now is that its retirees, many of whom do not get Social Security, will not have…

One of the most frustrating things about the Standard and Poor's (S&P) U.S. debt downgrade is that S&P is part of the problem, as I've described before. They really aren't studious evaluators of evidence, untouched by the profit motive or ideology. They are venal hacks, as Matt Stoller reminds us of what came to light about S&P in 2008 during the aftermath of Big Shitpile (aka the housing crisis and other fun stuff): Indeed, of all the players in the financial crisis, the ratings agencies were the single most embarrassing and obvious points of failure and corruption. Why did…

Monday, I wrote about how Standard & Poor's (S&P) downgrade of U.S. debt had political motivations--avoiding fraud investigations as well as 'convincing' the Securities and Exchange Commission to remove new regulations that could undercut their business: ...I won't rule out that S&P is stupid incompetent and ideologically blinkered. But they routinely commit fraud (and I'm certain if other states investigated, they would find the same thing). They are attempting to bully the American people to prevent an investigation into the role in the housing crisis, as well as preserve their…

There's been a lot of excellent posts debunking Standard & Poor's recent downgrade of U.S. debt on the merits--it is poor assessment of risk. Yes, there are substantive economic arguments against S&P's evaluation. But S&P is also fundamentally corrupt. The Coalition of the Sane must point this out too--there is an ethical dimension here, not just an economic one. The critical point is this: during the last year, every negative statement by S&P has followed action by the federal government to investigate possible fraud by S&P (and other ratings agencies) during the…

A while ago, I discussed how the battle over credit and debit fees is really a battle over how much money should cost and whom you're paying that cost to: corporations or government. Well, the corporate takeover of the monetary base continues unabated, this time affecting Social Security. You see, in the name of efficiency, the Social Security Administration is moving to direct deposit, whether you like or it not. So what's the problem with that? Well, there are some interesting...features (italics mine): If you click on the "About the Direct Express Card" link, the second paragraph says…

It appears the de facto Congressional retirement plan is spreading to the lower orders. For those who aren't familiar with the Congressional retirement plan, here's what I mean: One of the dirty secrets about many, if not most, congressmen and senators is that they like Washington, D.C., rhetoric notwithstanding. They want to stay in town after they leave (or lose) office. Once you've tasted the Capital of the Free World, do you really want to go back to Pierre, South Dakota? (Tom Daschle comes to mind...). It's funny how many politicians, having made a career out of bashing War-Shing-…

I haven't talked about Big Shitpile (the housing-initiated economic collapse in a while), but this report from the Essex County Register of Deeds (Massachusetts) describes nothing less than the breakdown of the property title system in the U.S.: Yesterday at the Annual Conference of The International Association of Clerks, Recorders, Election Officials and Treasurers (IACREOT), Register John O'Brien revealed the results of an independent audit of his registry. The audit, which is released as a legal affidavit was performed by McDonnell Property Analytics, examined assignments of mortgage…

It's OK If You're a Republican, I suppose: Last year the Wall Street Journal reported that Cantor, the No. 2 Republican in the House, had between $1,000 and $15,000 invested in ProShares Trust Ultrashort 20+ Year Treasury EFT. The fund aggressively "shorts" long-term U.S. Treasury bonds, meaning that it performs well when U.S. debt is undesirable. (A short is when the trader hopes to profit from the decline in the value of an asset.) According to his latest financial disclosure statement, which covers the year 2010 and has been publicly available since this spring, Cantor still has up to $15,…

Over the weekend, The Washington Post actually committed journalism with a report about the growing income and wealth gap in the U.S. To place it in historical context, they compared two CEOs, one from the 1970s and the current CEO. Here's the blast from the past (italics mine): It was the 1970s, and the chief executive of a leading U.S. dairy company, Kenneth J. Douglas, lived the good life. He earned the equivalent of about $1 million today. He and his family moved from a three-bedroom home to a four-bedroom home, about a half-mile away, in River Forest, Ill., an upscale Chicago suburb.…

A while ago, I discussed Republican Senator Tom Coburn's NSF snipe hunt. Well, the EU has a doozy of an actual research-related scandal: Italian authorities and the European Anti-Fraud Office (OLAF) in Brussels, Belgium, have confirmed that they are prosecuting members of a large network accused of pocketing more than â¬50 million (US$72 million) in EC grants for fake research projects. In Milan, Italy, the Finance Police last month charged several individuals in relation to the fraud. In Brussels, meanwhile, the EC has terminated four collaborative projects in information technology, and…

Peer review, the process in which scientific publication has to pass muster with critical reviewers, has a lot of problems. But a widely-cited report by McKinsey & Company consulting which claimed that Obamacare will result in one-third of companies dropping healthcare coverage for their employees is worth examining (italics mine): The predictable fallout led Democrats, and several reporters, to press McKinsey for the survey itself -- a request McKinsey has declined on the grounds that the material is proprietary. But multiple sources both within and outside the firm tell TPM the survey…

I'll get to creationism in a bit, but first... Last week, Yves Smith started a wee lil' ruckus among progressives with a post titled "Bribes Work: How Peterson, the Enemy of Social Security, Bought the Roosevelt Name." In that post, she argued: Bribes work. AT&T gave money to GLAAD, and now the gay rights organization is supporting the AT&T-T-Mobile merger. La Raza is mouthing the talking points of the Mortgage Bankers Association on down payments. The NAACP is fighting on debit card rules. The Center for Budget and Policy Priorities and the Economic Policy Institute supported…

...well, it still sucks. And JPMorgan Chase isn't helping: The Washington State Department of Social and Health Services says it wants to know why JPMorgan Chase is charging welfare recipients 85 cents each time they withdraw money from one of its bank machines, according to Rebecca Henrie, a spokesperson with DSHS's Community Services Division. In the first four months of 2011, Chase, one of the nation's largest banks, took in a total of $465,000 in ATM fees from some of the state's poorest people: single mothers on Temporary Assistance to Needy Families, a program that DSHS administers.…

It might come as a shock to some readers, but I actually don't mind investing--that is, long-term value investing--as long as it's not valued more than labor through the tax code (Got Capital Gains Tax?). But this isn't value investing, but surfing electrons: The most striking periodicity involves large peaks of activity separated by almost exactly 1000 milliseconds: they occur 10-30 milliseconds after the 'tick' of each second. The spasms, in contrast, seem to be governed not directly by clock time but by an event: the execution of a buy or sell order, the cancellation of an order, or the…

Dan Froomkin has a great article about the role that financial speculation plays in driving up gasoline prices*. Keep in mind that even Goldman Sachs, the largest oil trader, admits that speculation drives up oil prices. But what really disgusting is how this speculation-based rise in prices serves as a wealth transfer from, well, just about everybody to oil company executives (italics mine): By and large, the oil companies' profits are not finding their way back into the communities from which they came; are not being used to create more jobs; and are not being invested in new equipment…

It's an odd-sounding question, but, if you use a debit card, a very important one. I bring this up as The Huffington Post recently published an article about the political battle over the fees banks charge stores when customers use their credit and debit cards. While the article--and much of the ensuing commentary--has focused on the spectacle of Congress being available to the highest bidder (you needed this issue to tell you that?), it missed the far more important issue: how much should it cost to use money and whom do you ending paying to do so? Because focusing on what one Senator…

A few years back, Dick Cavett made the following observation about the misuse of the phrase "presumption of innocence": Cast your mind back about a dozen years to Tonya Harding. For the newly born, she was the young skater who hired a goon acquaintance to lurch out of the shadows and whack rival skater Nancy Kerrigan in the leg. The attack effectively put Nancy out of commission and delivered to sportsmanship a black eye the size of Cleveland. Despite all this, gritty Tonya's fanatical admirers remained loyal. On the TV news one of these ardent supporters -- in this case an adenoidal female…

I'm a bit late to this story, but, if you missed it, the LA Times had a superb article about how IKEA treats and pays workers at its U.S. facilities much worse than at its Swedish factories: Workers complain of eliminated raises, a frenzied pace and mandatory overtime. Several said it's common to find out on Friday evening that they'll have to pull a weekend shift, with disciplinary action for those who can't or don't show up.... Laborers in Swedwood plants in Sweden produce bookcases and tables similar to those manufactured in Danville. The big difference is that the Europeans enjoy a…

The NY Times has a good article about how few prosecutions have even been attempted in the aftermath of Big Shitpile (the housing crisis and the following good times). One of the key players was Countrywide, led by CEO Chris Mozilo, which initiated so many bad loans (that were then, through financial alchemy, turned into AAA securities). Enough background, here's a nut (italics mine): Historically, Countrywide's bank subsidiary was overseen by the comptroller, while the Federal Reserve supervised its home loans unit. But in March 2007, Countrywide switched oversight of both units to the…