Mammon category archive
Unbranding 0
Much of the real estate that bears Donald Trump’s name is not owned by him or his organization. Rather, the name is licensed because the owners think that the Trump name and mystique are good advertising.
There are hints that this may be changing.
In a statement, the new owner, JCF Capital, said it had reached an agreement to end the Trump Organization’s contract to manage the hotel and condominium complex. Both sides, which declined to reveal the transaction’s terms, sought to put a positive spin on it.
Disconnected 0
Bruch Schneier reports and Amazon has patented a method to stop you from using your mobile device to comparison shop in a store.
Given that Amazon in the past has encouraged such comparison shopping, hoping that you would buy whatever it was from them, I agree with Schneier that this is all very strange.
Computer Games 0
My local rag reports on a stock manipulator who tried to bite Fitbit by fraudulently driving its stock price up, but ended up getting bit himself.
Investigators were able to see what websites the user of that email account had visited and found he had checked out at least two on Nov. 8 to see whether his computer’s IP address was disguised.
Investigators also connected the email account behind the fake tender offer to Murray by researching information the user provided when it was set up. Among other things, investigators discovered there was a backup email address on file.
More on how they tracked him down at the link.
The Unregulated 0
A letter to the editor at my local rag nails it.
No Place To Hide 0
A columnist at the San Francisco Chronicle sums up Alexa (and all those other “digital assistants”).
“C’mon Caille, we can train her and everything. And she was a gift!”
“So was the Trojan Horse.”
Old Wine In Neo Bottles 0
Thom summarizes the history and failure of Neo-Liberalism, in particular its role in molding oligarchies.
Puerto Ripped-Off 0
Warning: Language.
Kitchen Cabinet, 21st Century Style 0
You can’t make this stuff up.
Sentenced Friday to 1½ years in prison, Brent Meisner was found to have left about $170,000 in income off his 2009 tax return. Federal prosecutors continue to contend, though, that the omission to the IRS was the least among Meisner’s crimes.
(snip)
“Meisner was not merely a tax cheat,” the prosecutors said in court papers. “He was a bully, a narcissist, and a white-collar gangster. He felt entitled to things to which he clearly was not. He took things from others, justifying the theft with an oversized sense of self-entitlement and self-worth. …
By the by, does that last bit of the remind you of anyone else?
“Making Lazy Circles in the Sky” 0
At the Boston Review, K. Sabeel Rahman discusses the return of “Vulture Capitalism.” Here’s how he starts his essay:
But behind the monopolies lay an even more dangerous force: the financiers who jointly invested in these companies through a variety of legal and corporate vehicles. For Brandeis, this “money trust” of “banker-barons” was the ultimate villain in the industrial economy since it existed beyond the ordinary scope of traditional checks and balances. In his famous pamphlet, Other People’s Money, he warned that financiers had “acquired control so extensive as to menace the public welfare.”
Follow the link for the rest. The time it takes to read it will be well spent, because all that was old is new again.