Masters of the Universe category archive

Such as this possible side effect of Romney’s sense of entitlement to the Presidency:

Mitt Romney’s campaign for the Republican presidential nomination may be costing his private- equity backers a lot more than they bargained for.

Attacks by opponents portraying Bain Capital LLC, Romney and other buyout managers as corporate looters who enrich themselves at the expense of ordinary workers have put a spotlight on the industry that will affect negotiations about future investments,

(snip)

“Private-equity managers’ wealth and tax rates are on display at a time when pensions are getting squeezed,” said Joseph Alejandro, treasurer of the New York City Patrolmen’s Benevolent Association. “Public investors should raise questions about whether the business is overly generous for managers. I hope the renewed attention on the industry will lead to discussions on fees and greater controls like claw-backs.”

The more scrutiny they get, the worse they are going to look.

The shadows are their best friends.

Listen to this episode of Radio Times, which explores the complexities of the U. S. Income Tax code, including (and this is the part that pains) the rationales for the favoritism to the rich over the poor and the middle class.

It will make your brain hurt.

“So much money he can’t count it all.” TPM:

Thursday afternoon, the LA Times reported that Romney’s tax returns listed 23 funds and partnerships that did not appear on Mitt Romney’s personal financial statements — the disclosure forms candidates are required by federal law to file with the Federal Elections Commission.

Details at the link.

Bank accounts all over the world, tonight,
all over the world the sound of money in banks . . .

Atrios:

Romney has said he was unemployed. He’s right. He actually does nothing to earn most of his income. He’s just in possession of a giant pile of cash

As atrios points out, the “anti-piracy” bills in Congress aren’t about piracy.

They are about putting Hollywood in charge of the internet.

Dan Gillmor discusses this in the Guardian. A nugget:

Hollywood and its censor-the-internet allies are never going to stop pushing for what I’m convinced they really want: a way to bring technology under control. Although they claim otherwise, Sopa and Pipa would – among many other negative impacts – essentially require innovators in digital media to get permission from the copyright cartel before launching new products and services that might challenge, even tangentially, the interests of the Big Copyright industry.

Imprisoning for fun and profit, except for the whole “bankrupting the town” thing.

More here.

Just when you thought no more banks could fail, the banksters prove that their capacity for financial shenanigans has not yet been exhausted.

American Eagle Savings Bank, Boothwyn, Pennsylvania

First State Bank, Stockbridge, Georgia

Central Florida State Bank, Belleview, Florida

(Link fixed)

Eric Zorn talks with an expert about how “private equity” works and considers whether “parasite capitalism” would be a more descriptive term than “vulture capitalism.”

He points out that they borrow money from a successful business, use that money to buy said successful business, then suck it dry, carve it up, and sell the pieces, illustrating this with the story of his hypothetical “Zorn Co.”

OK, so Josh Co. is humming along. And Zorn Capital buys it for $100 million.

We cut a check for $20 million — our down payment. The other $80 million comes from a loan that Josh Co. takes out in effect to pay for its own purchase.

And that $20 million investment by Zorn Capital? Only $2 million comes directly from us, assuming this is a typical private-equity deal, says Kosman. The other $18 million comes from our investors, whom we charge a 2 percent annual investment-management fee.

Also, Zorn Capital will be charging Josh Co. an annual $50,000 “monitoring fee” to oversee the business.

But wait! There’s more! Follow the link for the rest of the story.

It’s sort of like getting the dogs to pay the ticks for services rendered.

Mitt the Flip this Company, the Michael Milkin of today.

Alyona explores how “private equity” firms make money by forcing companies to cannibalize themselves:

It’s supply and demand. Foreclosures provide supply; cheap mortgage rates provide demand. Such bankster genius.

The Real Estate Information Network, the Virginia Beach-based multiple-listing service, reported that 938 existing homes sold last month, up 10 percent from November and 12 percent from December 2010. It was the sixth consecutive month of year-over-year increases in sales.

(snip)

Increases in the sales volume can be attributed in part to distressed sales, which played a major role in Hampton Roads in the past year. Last month, foreclosures and sales by homeowners whose homes are worth less than their mortgage balances – known as short sales – accounted for 33 percent of all sales.

“The market these days is being driven by distressed sales,” said Vinod Agarwal, an economist at Old Dominion University. “They’re selling faster and the non-distressed are not selling as fast.”

E. J. Dionne meditates on the different types of capitalists, as different at Romney fils and Romney pere.

Capitalists of Mr. Romney’s sort never want to acknowledge how much their ability to make money depends on what government does. How does it structure the laws related to property, taxation and debt? What rules does it write on how companies can be acquired and how power within firms is apportioned among shareholders, employees, managers and other stakeholders? These are not natural laws. They are the work of politicians and the lobbyists who influence them.

Which leads to this observation from Mr. Gingrich: “I think there’s a real difference,” he said, “between people who believed in the free market and people who go around, take financial advantage, loot companies, leave behind broken families, broken towns, people on unemployment.”

Yes, there are different kinds of capitalism.

I’m including the Gingrich quote to illustrate what my old boss used to say

Even a blind pig finds an acorn sometimes.

You can follow the link for the rest.

An example of how the three-card monte works and of the integrity of our Galtian overlords, courtesy of a whistle-blower:

He provided step-by-step details on how the bank allegedly overcharged clients “in a massive foreign exchange fraud” by adding hidden spreads to trades that it executed on their behalf, according to materials provided by Mr. Wilson’s attorneys to Florida’s attorney general, who sued BNY Mellon in August.

When BNY Mellon learned its practices might be scrutinized by investigators, Mr. Wilson alleged, the bank moved to hide its deception by altering its website, removing the words “free of charge” from the description of its foreign currency services.

At one point, Mr. Wilson told prosecutors, the bank was concerned that one client was about to hire someone “smart” . . . .

Read the rest at the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.

According to the fee marketers, there is nothing like letting the market winnow the winners from the losers.

Global regulators may expand the definition of a too-big-to-fail financial firm, signing up domestic lenders, clearing houses and insurers to capital rules designed for the world’s biggest banks.

The “framework should be in place for domestically systemically important banks by the end of the year,” Mark Carney, chairman of the Financial Stability Board, said yesterday after a meeting of the group in Basel, Switzerland.

This is nothing like letting the market winnow the winners from the losers.

Incompetence, the new route to financier financial success.

At the Guardian, Jason Farago argues that Mitt the Flip’s nomination is a done deal. He points to the one issue on which Mitt has not flipped: his unwavering loyalty to and identification with the corporate masters of the Republican Party and his belief in plutocracy uber alles.

But on one issue Mitt Romney has never flip-flopped. From his time at Bain Capital, where he squeezed companies to death to extract billions for investors, to his tenure in office and his eternal campaigning since, Romney is the best friend a corporate raider or titan of finance could ask for.

(snip)

The fiction that Romney doesn’t believe in anything shows just how successfully the business absolutism he espouses has positioned itself outside ideological terms – beyond question, self-evident.

Follow the link for the rest.

Meanwhile, Field, who did part of his growing up in Michigan, remembers Mitt’s father:

I also remember the governor of Michigan for a short time that we were there being a man my father always spoke glowingly about long after we left the Great Lakes state. The man pushed for civil rights when it was not popular to do so, and he clashed with his own church on the issue. Well, unfortunately, the apple in this case, has fallen very far from the tree.

To measure how far fell the apple from the tree, remember that George Romney made his pile by building a company. Mitt made his by destroying companies.