Masters of the Universe category archive

After 15 years, an end to a land grab (much more at the link).

In a stunning loss for Old Dominion University, the state Supreme Court ruled Thursday that the Norfolk Redevelopment and Housing Authority did not have the right to condemn a nearby apartment building for ODU’s expansion.

Note that the Housing Authority was just the hit man. The University was Mr. Big issuing the hits, wrapped in the certainty that it was right because, after all, it’s an Educational Institution with a Rising Football Team. (What could possibly be more of a sign of virtue than a Rising Football Team?)

And, no, it won’t be an object lesson for anyone.

The next time a Mr. Big wants to take stuff from the little guys, he’ll go ahead and give it a shot.

It’s just what our Mr. Bigs do.

All that’s missing is the performance.

Chris Arnade explains at The Guardian:

When you’re wealthy you make mistakes. When you are poor you go to jail.

Yes, it is like comparing apples and oranges. That is the point though. We have built two very different societies with two very different sets of values. Takeesha was born into a world with limited opportunities, one where the black market has filled the void. In her world transgressions are resolved via violence, not lawyers. The law as applied to her is simple and stark, with little wiggle room.

Mr one-glove (a Wall Street trader; follow the link to learn where he got his nickname–ed.) was born into a world with many options. The laws of his land are open for interpretation, and with the right lawyer one can navigate in the vast grey area and never do anything wrong. The rules are often written by and for Mr one-glove and his friends.

Via BartCop.

The thug life.

September 7, 2013 | Posted by: Frank | Posted in: Masters of the Universe | Bookmark this post

Daniel Ruth puts it in a nutshell.

Of course it is the job of all insurance companies to take our money and then tell us we are unworthy of any compensation because our house fell down for the wrong reason. This only makes sense. Otherwise how can anyone legitimately expect insurance companies to make any money?

McClatchy’s Sarah Anderson debunks the CEO “pay for performance” scam. A nugget:

Nearly 40 percent of the top-paid CEOs fell into one or more of these “bailed out, booted, or busted” categories. A few noteworthy examples:

• Four CEOs of financial firms that received some of the largest bailouts in 2008 have reappeared on the top 25 highest-paid lists since the crash.
• Pfizer CEO Hank McKinnell got the boot in 2006 after the drugmaker’s stock plunged 40 percent. He still jumped out of the escape hatch with a golden parachute worth nearly $200 million.
• Dialysis giant Da-Vita HealthCare has had to fork over more than $350 million over the past year to settle various fraud cases. Nevertheless, CEO Kent Thiry made the top 25 highest-paid list in 2012 with more than $26 million in total compensation.

Speaking of pay for performance, explain to me just how this is “education” and not an Amway dealership.

Out on the Left Coast, some Native American folks want to build a new casino.

Others claim that it will ruin their (no doubt gated) communities.

Who’s behind the opposition?

Why, natch, it’s not the neighbors. It’s an astro-turf campaign.

It’s the other casino (in concert with the world’s biggest casino, the one in Lower Manhattan).

Dan Morain reports:

It appears to be the sort of underdog undertaking that would warm Hiram Johnson’s heart, except it’s not. Wall Street, hardly a bastion of direct democracy, is financing the campaign, along with a rich tribe that owns a nearby casino and could lose market share if the North Fork band opens a casino.

Brigade Capital Management, a secretive investment house, dumped $261,100 into the campaign to qualify the referendum earlier this month. Two other New York investment firms chipped in $89,000. Table Mountain casino, a 30-minute drive from Madera, gave $350,000, the start of a campaign that will cost millions.

This sounds like classic Abramoff.

Write a book about “how to get rich quick.”

It will find the mark(et)s.

If all else fails, play your Trump card.

Mastering the universe no more: bank no more on

Community South Bank, Parsons, Tennessee

and the sun has set on

Sunrise Bank of Arizona, Phoenix, Arizona

And aim to keep it that way.

Bringing a fuller meaning to the term “analyzing Wall Street.”

Free enterprise, except when it isn’t.

Back in April, the California company’s (Tesla–ed.) request to operate a dealership was denied by the state Department of Motor Vehicles based on a law that prohibits auto manufacturers from being dealers. Since 1998, DMV has made 14 exceptions to the dealer rule for makers of specialty motorcycles, trucks and trailers.

(snip)

Traditional auto dealers applied the emergency brake last year when Tesla initially sought approval for a sales location in Virginia.

The president of the state auto dealers association, Don Hall, said his group doesn’t oppose Tesla, it just wants the company to heed Virginia rules of the road for car buyers’ own good. What would happen, Hall wondered, if Tesla failed and left cars in circulation without the network of service technicians to maintain them, such as those at franchise dealerships?

Because car dealers always think of the customer first.

Like the venus flytrap, they lure their victim, then suck out its vital juices.

Bank of America Corp. and UBS AG have been given priority over other bankruptcy claimants, meaning chiefly the pensioners, for payments due on interest rate swaps they entered into with the city. Interest rate swaps – the exchange of interest rate payments between counterparties – are sold by Wall Street banks as a form of insurance, something municipal governments “should” do to protect their loans from an unanticipated increase in rates. Unlike ordinary insurance, however, swaps are actually just bets; and if the municipality loses the bet, it can owe the house, and owe big. The swap casino is almost entirely unregulated, and it is a rigged game that the house virtually always wins. Interest rate swaps are based on the LIBOR rate, which has now been proven to be manipulated by the rate-setting banks; and they were a major contributor to Detroit’s bankruptcy.

“The banking casino, it seems, trumps even the state constitution. The banks win and the workers lose once again.”

Some insurance: when you need it, they revoke the policy and raid your pantry. In this casino, the game is fixed.

More at the link, if you can stomach it.

At MarketWatch, Paul B. Farrell asks a question:

Bogle saw a “happy conspiracy”>Let me remind you again of John C. Bogle’s great classic, “The Battle for the Soul of Capitalism: How the Financial System Undermined Social Ideals, Damaged Trust in the Markets, Robbed Investors of Trillions.” That was 2005, Vanguard’s founder warned us Adam Smith’s “invisible hand” was no longer driving “capitalism in a healthy, positive direction.”

Bogle saw a “happy conspiracy” of Wall Street, Washington and Corporate America was spreading a “pathological mutation of capitalism” driven by the new “invisible hands” of this conspiracy pushing their selfish agenda in a war to control American democracy and capitalism. Goldman Sachs had a winning hand, and the competition wanted one too.

They won: Democracy is dead. Capitalism is dead. Our moral compass is broken. More proof? See for yourself the 13 signs of the “pathological mutation of capitalism” that Bogle fears. How it’s metasticized right under our noses. How Goldman’s pathogens spread so rapidly since the 2008 crash they are infecting every other Wall Street bank, plus the global Big Banks Conspiracy, the world’s top hundred banks?

Follow the link for his answer.

Unsettling settlements.

Via C&L.

The masters of the universe continue to upend themselves. There’s one fewer bank tonight.

Shed no tears for

Bank of Wausau, Wausau, Wisconsin

The U.S. Justice Department is investigating JPMorgan Chase (and others–ed.) over mortgage-backed investments the bank sold in the run-up to the financial crisis.

The New York-based bank said in a regulatory filing that it is responding to investigations by the civil and criminal divisions of the U.S. Attorney’s office for the Eastern District of California. In May, the civil division informed JPMorgan that it had “preliminarily concluded” that the bank had violated federal securities laws in connection with certain mortgage-backed investments it sold from 2005 to 2007.

The banksters were selling bags of air, er, derivatives in a colossal Ponzi scheme fueled by the myth that “Flip this house; real estate prices will never go down, because God ain’t makin’ no more land.”

God may not be makin’ no more land, but real estate prices went down-derry-down in the murky gloom when the wheels came off the Ponzi sedan.

But nothing will come of this, because free markets and three-piece suits.