Masters of the Universe category archive

Another master of the universe is missing in action.

Columbia Savings Bank, Cincinnati, Ohio

Another one bites the dust. All gone is

AztecAmerica Bank, Berwyn, Illinois

Via Bob Cesca’s Awesome Blog.

Via Truthout.

Citing conversations she has heard in which persons classed bankers as disgusting,Valerie Curtis straight-out wonders, “Are bankers disgusting?” She finds an answer in evolution.

I don’t know to what extent I agree with her reasoning. Much “evolutionary psychology” is, quite frankly, distinguished more for the glib superficiality of its reasoning (e. g., if a=b, then c=f) than for its roots in demonstrable experimentation. Nevertheless, it sure as heck is a fun read. A snippet:

Money is a recent invention and bankers and financiers weren’t around in the Pleistocene, so how can we have an instinctive disgust response to them? The reason is as ancient as human sociality. The same response that we use to keep parasites at bay is a useful way to keep social parasites under control . . .

They get the card for getting out of jail free.

Leonard Pitts, Jr., cites Matt Taibbi’s latest book:

We have, Taibbi argues, evolved a two-track system under which crimes committed while wearing suit and tie – or pumps – are no longer considered jailable offenses. Taibbi said recently on “The Daily Show” that prosecutors have actually told him they no longer go after white-collar criminals because such people are not considered “appropriate for jail.”

Who is “appropriate”? Do you even have to ask?

Black people. Brown people. Poor people of whatever hue.

More at the link.

Shaun Mullen writes the obit. A snippet:

. . . it will take historians many years — if not necessarily generations — to conclude that the defining event of the early years of the 21st century was not the 9/11 terror attacks, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan or the election of Barack Obama. It was the death of American democracy.

This catastrophe has not occurred because of those events. Yes, the attacks, wars and election all have had enormous ramifications, but the death of American democracy, a slow-motion process that has taken years to become apparent, is a result of the corruption of capitalism by powerful oligarchs who have been enormously successful in milking the positive aspects of that once vaunted economic system for their own gain while not just allowing, but encouraging the negative aspects to run rampant.

Read the rest.

Another blanked bank. All gone is

Allendale County Bank, Fairfax, South Carolina

It hasn’t gone away; it’s just relocated north from Floida to New Jersey.

Early this year, banking and real-estate analysts concluded that New Jersey had achieved a dubious distinction, passing Florida to become the state with the highest percentage of foreclosure among mortgaged homes, 6.2 percent as calculated by CoreLogic, a leader in real-estate analytics. (That percentage was actually an improvement from a year earlier.)

(snip)

New Jersey courts closed 12,639 foreclosure cases by entering default judgments against the borrowers in 2013. But CoreLogic found only 5,888 homes actually went to sheriff’s sale in that time. The borrowers or tenants might still occupy some foreclosed properties, but many stand vacant, “zombie foreclosures.” Even after obtaining foreclosure judgments, banks do not have to maintain a property until taking possession at a sheriff’s sale.

I’ve mentioned this before, but here’s another angle.

Via Zandar.

They are delicate flowers of humanity.

Read Paul Rosenberg’s article.

I’m old enough to remember the great Individual Retirement Account scam. The banksters and the bosses convinced employees that they could forego their pensions for IRAs and retire with millions in the bank. It would be golden years with lots of gold. In return, the banksters got to use pension funds to play three-card monte.

So, how’s that working out for you now?

Put the brakes on the banksters’ three-card monte.

FDIC blanks it some banks. Bank no more on

Millennium Bank, NA, Sterling, Virginia

Vantage Point Bank, Horsham, Pennsylvania

At Psychology Today Blogs, Thomas Hills highlights the fraud of of the bonus babies. A nugget:

Forbes 500 CEOs in 2008 were paid almost 200 times more than the average worker. Meanwhile, polls in the U.S. indicate that the majority of Americans agree that CEOs should have their pay limited. Should they?

A recent article by Jacquart and Armstrong looks at the evidence. Their evidence consists of a review of numerous experimental studies and records of performance of thousands of firms and CEOs.

The conclusion is as simple as a day old bird: CEO incentives do not buy better performance. If anything, incentives make performance worse.

Follow the link for the evidence.