Category: Corporate Statism

The sliding scale of justice

~ susie ~ 3 Comments

Photo
Matt Taibbi’s new book is about how the rich are never punished for their crimes.

“The Divide” marks a shift in Taibbi’s tone. More Lincoln Steffens than Hunter Thompson, Taibbi drops most of the histrionics to reveal the corruption and injustice at hand. He even goes out of his way to be reasonable. He acknowledges that prosecuting financial cases can be expensive and risky, especially when the alleged crimes are complex and the defendants have vast legal resources at their disposal. That fact motivates prosecutors to settle such cases rather than try them in criminal court. He also concedes that many disadvantaged neighborhoods may benefit from tough policing. But he maintains that when combined, the two law-enforcement strategies add up to a glaring injustice. He also notes that it’s far too easy to introduce jurisdictional complications in financial cases that would never be allowed in less consequential cases. To make that point, he recounts a horrific case in which high-profile Wall Street financiers escaped punishment after trying to destroy a company they bet against as well as harassing its executives and their family members.

Taibbi’s is an important voice, especially in today’s media ecology. Support for investigative reporting has never been a given; when it comes to muckraking, you take it where you can get it. Taibbi has shown that he can deliver the goods, and “The Divide” is his most important book-length contribution to date. One wonders what the future holds for him. In February, he announced he was leaving Rolling Stone to join First Look Media, where his website will feature investigative stories with a satirical edge. In describing his new venture, he linked his Russian experience to his current interests. “There was a certain kind of corruption that I got to see up close in the ’90s,” he said, “and I think that a version of it is being repeated here in the United States.”

Too big to jail

~ susie ~ 1 Comment

david Cay Johnston

David Cay Johnston really lets the Obama administration have it for refusing to prosecute bankers:

With a track record like that, you might think Black would have been the first person President Barack Obama called when he took office five years ago as the economy was being gutted because of reckless and rapacious banking practices that plundered profits through subprime mortgages and devilish derivatives. A second Great Depression was stalking America, as the stock market was tanking and businesses small and large were hemorrhaging jobs.

The economy is still recovering from those cynical depredations, and many people are still wondering why no one has gone to jail for pushing us all to the brink of ruin.

But to this, day no one in the White House or the Justice Department, no one in the banking regulatory agencies, will return Black’s calls. In 2012 he did get invited to brief Capitol Hill staffers on fraud by banks. He bought plane tickets to D.C. from Kansas City, Mo., where he teaches law and economics at the University of Missouri’s law school there. But before the plane took off his phone rang. “I was told not to come,” Black recalls. “The staff said they were afraid I would engage in too much bank bashing.”
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Judge boots NFL concussion settlement

~ susie ~ 1 Comment

American football
She says (and I agree) that the amount is nowhere near enough:

PHILADELPHIA (AP) — A federal judge in Philadelphia has declined to approve deals for another batch of retired players suing the NFL over concussion-linked claims.

U.S. District Judge Anita Brody’s preliminary ruling Wednesday follows a similar ruling in January on the proposed $765 million umbrella settlement. She is skeptical that the fund is large enough to cover up to 20,000 players for 65 years, as intended.

Brody’s latest ruling involves a group of plaintiffs led by Kevin Turner, a former Philadelphia Eagle now battling Lou Gehrig’s disease. The judge also denied the Turner group class-action status, at least for now.

Attorney Sol Weiss, representing the players, insists the deal is fair and sufficient to cover their needs. Weiss says he believes most players will sign on rather than spend years fighting the NFL in court.

The surprise settlement emerged last summer, after several months of closed-door meetings with a mediator.

I can dream, can’t I?

~ susie ~ 1 Comment

wwjd

Wouldn’t it be nice to see some bankers go to jail?

ALBANY, N.Y. (AP) — An official familiar with the investigation said the New York Attorney General’s Office has issued subpoenas to six firms and sent a letter to another for details about split-second stock trading and any unfair advantages.

The official told The Associated Press Wednesday that the subpoenas went last week to trading firms including Chicago-based Jump Trading LLC and Chopper Trading LLC and Tower Research Capital in New York. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because he wasn’t authorized to publicly discuss the subpoenas. He said he did not know the names of the other companies.

Jump Trading, Chopper Trading and Tower Research did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Attorney General Eric Schneiderman has said advantages in computer hardware and placement enable some traders to get millisecond timing advances to make “rapid and often risk-free trades before the rest of the market can catch up.”

Tax extenders

~ susie ~ 1 Comment

The United States Capitol is the meeting place of the United States Congress, the legislature of the U.S. federal government. Located in Washington, D.C. Shot with CANON S100

Lots of political will for these babies — unlike the unemployment insurance extension that sank like a stone! An entire bundle of big-ticket special interest tax exemptions will always slide through Congress:

No one in Congress really likes doing things this way, agreeing that the better approach would be to evaluate each tax break on its merits, decide which would become a permanent part of the tax code, and junk the rest. That’s the basic logic behind comprehensive tax reform. But Congress has already given up on any hope of that any time soon. In fact, the major driving forces behind tax reform have already left Congress (former Senate Finance Chair Max Baucus) or are headed for the exits (retiring House Ways and Means Chair Dave Camp).

The new Senate Finance Committee chair Ron Wyden promises this will be the very last time that Congress goes through this exercise. “This is a bi-partisan product and the Chairman has made it clear this will be the final extension,” Wyden’s office said in a statement after the bill passed out of committee. “We need to create certainty now for business and families while we work on the bigger goal of comprehensive reform—which will include putting a spotlight on each provision before deciding which deserve a permanent spot in a modern tax code.”

But there’s anger on both left and right that Congress will inevitably find a way to continue these tax breaks, as it’s done so many times before, despite Congress’s seeming inability to get anything else done. “It is also troubling how quickly senators appear to be able to work out a deal on tax extenders that are unpaid for and largely benefit corporations while spending months crafting an emergency unemployment

benefits package that is paid for by cutting other spending,” Frank Clemente, executive director of Americans for Tax Fairness.

Andrew Cuomo, honorary chairman

~ susie ~ 5 Comments

Weasel (1) - Elmley

Of course he is, the little weasel:

ALBANY—Governor Andrew Cuomo will headline an education retreat next month in Lake Placid hosted by hedge-fund managers who support the Common Core standards, charter schools, mayoral control of schools, testing and student-data collection.

Cuomo is the “honorary chairman” of Camp Philos, “a philosopher’s camp on education reform” presented by Education Reform Now, a group that has donated $65,000 to Cuomo since 2010 through its political action committee. The group, led by hedge funders who are active in the charter-school movement, is hosting the conference at Whiteface Lodge on May 4 to 6.

Nothing to brag about

~ susie ~ 4 Comments

Budget Battle

I was just talking to a friend about this, that Obama’s fixation on the deficit meant that Americans were deprived of social services at a time when they needed them the most. I don’t want to hear any crap about how “his hands were tied.” Bullshit. He validated this wingnut bullshit every time he opened his mouth, and I won’t ever forget it:

WASHINGTON–The U.S. government’s gap between spending and revenue will be narrower both this year and later in the decade compared with prior estimates, driven in part by reductions in near-term military spending and falling longer-run costs associated with the Affordable Care Act, the Congressional Budget Office said.

The CBO, a nonpartisan agency that advises Congress on budget policy, on Monday said the adjustments will lower its forecast for the 2014 deficit to $492 billion, or $23 billion less than it estimated two months ago. That’s equivalent to 2.8% of gross domestic product, marking the smallest deficit since 2007. Since 1980, the deficit has averaged roughly 3.2% of GDP.

CBO also reduced the government’s projected 10-year deficit by $286 billion, to $7.6 trillion, mainly because of lower subsidies related to the health-care law. Future Medicare spending was also revised lower.

The estimates come during a brief period of rapidly shrinking budget deficits, forcing both political parties to rethink their approaches to taxes and spending heading into the November midterm elections. The White House and Republican lawmakers have battled over the deficit for years, primarily through protracted debates over how much revenue to collect and how to structure government programs.

Comcastic!

~ susie

7 Quotes That Tell You Everything About the Comcast-Time Warner Cable Merger Hearing

They’re so ingenious, aren’t they?

There was no stronger pro-merger witness at Wednesday’s Senate hearing on the proposed Comcast-Time Warner Cable deal than University of Pennsylvania Law School Professor Christopher Yoo.

A well-known professor of law, communications and information science, Yoo told members of the Senate Judiciary Committee the $45 billion merger wouldn’t jeopardize competition in cable.

What Yoo didn’t tell the lawmakers was that David Cohen, the Comcast executive sitting five chairs to his right, is the chairman of the board of trustees at Penn.

The possible conflict, while unknown to the senators and their staff, did raise eyebrows in the media world.
“I was stunned to see the committee would allow it, because of at least the appearance of a conflict,” said one person who watched the proceedings. “It’s a little odd.”

As is typical, the committee selected three witnesses who were against the merger and three who were in favor of it.
A call to the committee chairman, Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.), was referred to the ranking member, Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), who selected Yoo.

A spokeswoman for Grassley said Yoo had been approved by both the majority and minority members of the committee.
The Cohen-Yoo Penn connection was likely not known, the spokeswoman said.

SEC was colluding with the banks on CDO prosecutions

~ susie ~ 1 Comment

Lloyd

If I hear one more nitwit “explaining” to me that giving mortgages to brown people destroyed the economy, I will scream — especially when it was brought down by massive system fraud and de facto deregulation. Felix Salmon:

Back in 2011, I asked whether the SEC was colluding with banks on CDO prosecutions. And now, thanks to an American Lawyer Freedom of Information Request, we have the answer: yes, they were.

This comes as little surprise: it beggared belief, after all, that every bank would end up being prosecuted for one and only one CDO. But now we have chapter and verse: the key precedent, it seems, was the first one, Goldman Sachs.

The SEC filed its case against Goldman and Tourre on April 16, 2010. Three days later Goldman reached out with a $500 million settlement offer, according to an email that Reisner sent Khuzami. Although that proposal was close to the final payment, it took another three months to announce a settlement. As Khuzami described to Kotz, Goldman wanted a global settlement that resolved not just the Abacus investigation but the SEC’s probes into roughly a dozen other Goldman CDOs.
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