Masters of the Universe category archive

In Goldman’s Sacks.

David Calloway of MarketWatch points out how financial venality has become financial normality. A nugget:

When I was growing up in New York, none of my friends’ parents were bankers or investment bankers. They were pilots, or worked for food companies, in media, advertising, or as auto dealers, or in hospitals. Doctors were at the top of the social strata.

For the past 30 years, however, financial services has been the place to be. And the focus on making money has turned into a worldwide industry, with several million full-time occupants. It’s spawned the growth of the financial media industry, with companies such as MarketWatch, Bloomberg, TheStreet.com writing about Italian bond yields with the drama that our predecessors used to write about rock concerts. And it’s brought the world together in innumerable ways that both benefit, or as we’ve seen, destroy.

Read the whole thing.

The engines of foreclosure strength continue apace, attesting the wisdom of the bankster-philanderersphilosophers who master the universe.

Metro Atlanta’s average home sale price has dropped about $55,000 in three years to $161,996, pulled down in part because as many as one in four recent sales are foreclosures, auctions or bank sales.

Values have fallen so far that many potential sellers have pulled homes off the market. Fewer than 38,000 homes were for sale in the 28-county area in July, the lowest total in nearly seven years. Distress sales will likely continue to make up a big part of the inventory for some time to come.

Not just profiting from misery; creating misery for profit.

More at C&L.

Systematic, computerized three-card monte.

People who pay off their monthly credit-card bills on time are known as “deadbeats” in the banking industry because they generate little or no revenue.

If there’s a similar but more flattering sobriquet for folks who’ve made the bank-friendly mistake of overcharging their debit cards, it’s just been changed – to “plaintiffs.”

Last week, a federal judge in Miami approved a $410 million settlement in a class-action lawsuit involving more than 13 million Bank of America customers. It’s a sordid tale that, upon closer examination, looks even more sordid.

The settlement centers on claims that the banking giant – in the news lately for launching then dropping plans to charge customers $5 a month to use debit cards – tinkered with the way it processed debit card transactions in order to maximize the penalties.</blockquote>

If an appliance dealer pulled something like this, selling customers one washing machine and delivering another over and over and over again, the resulting proceedings would not be in civil court.

November 13, 2011 | Posted by: Frank | Posted in: Masters of the Universe | Bookmark this post

Bob Burnett cites Steve Benning’s description of how Dell Computers gave away their business to Asus when Asus, a manufacturer of circuit boards other components, proposed that Dell outsource manufacturing to Asus:

“Dell accepted the proposal because, from a perspective of making money, it made sense: Dell’s revenues were unaffected and its profits improved significantly … ASUSTeK took over the motherboard, the assembly of the computer, the management of the supply chain and the design of the computer. In each case Dell accepted the proposal because from a perspective of making money, it made sense: Dell’s revenues were unaffected and its profits improved significantly. However, the next time ASUSTeK came back, it wasn’t to talk to Dell. It was to talk to Best Buy and other retailers to tell them that they could offer them their own brand or any brand PC for 20% lower cost.”

Like most American corporate accountants, Dell’s financial people had a simplistic, narrow objective: do whatever would improve the current quarter’s bottom line. Because accountants don’t have a strategic perspective, Dell’s number crunchers didn’t realize the cumulative debilitating impact of the ASUSTeK transactions. Denning observed, “Decades of outsourcing manufacturing have left US industry without the means to invent the next generation of high-tech products that are key to rebuilding its economy.” Parasitic accountants have neutered our entrepreneurs.

But it’s not only high-tech companies that are infected by these parasites; American corporations from all sectors have been hypnotized by the promise of short-term profits. It’s the conventional “wisdom” that accountants and executives are taught in business school. This dysfunctional perspective is reinforced by contemporary corporate monoculture where employees live in a bubble, log obscene hours, and vacation with their co-workers. As a consequence giant corporations are dogmatically insular with their own warped code of ethics and worldview.

The other day, I was discussing the differences between yesterday’s robber barons–the Carnegies and the Rockefellers–and todays–the Jamie Diamonds and John Corzines. Though my buddy had a somewhat kinder view of yesterday’s robber barons than did I, particularly as regards their treatment of employees, we agreed on one thing:

Those folks made money by building things to last.

Today’s robber barons are making their money by tearing those things down.

The FDIC dined early this week because of the holiday. I almost missed it.

More Masters of the Universe are ISO gainful employment, having failed at the ill-gotten-gainful kind:

Community Bank of Rockmart, Rockmart, Georgia

One wonders, does Georgia have any native Georgian banks left?

From the description:

Bank of America has become the poster-child for corruption and incompetence ever since they took a taxpayer-funded bailout to save themselves from their own incompetence. They then took that bailout money and paid record-breaking bonuses to their executives, and raised fees for their own customers. And today, it looks like the company is poised to repeat history again. Sam Seder talks about the next round of troubles facing Bank of America with William Black, author of the book “The Best Way to Rob a Bank is to Own One.”

Via Bartcop.

Should process servers worry about their long-term employment?

Lenders issued 916 foreclosure-related notices last month, one more than the 915 issued in September, according to RealtyTrac, an online foreclosure-monitoring service based in Irvine, Calif.

However, the volume of new foreclosures was roughly half its level a year ago, the service reported.

Read more »

And just how is this different from a “leveraged buyout” followed by laying off all the employees, selling the assets off, and running off with the money?

Find ’em, fleece ’em, fire ’em, forget ’em.

The jobs crisis has left so many people out of work for so long that most of America’s unemployed are no longer receiving unemployment benefits.

Early last year, 75 percent were receiving checks. The figure is now 48 percent — a shift that points to a growing crisis of long-term unemployment. Nearly one-third of America’s 14 million unemployed have had no job for a year or more.

The FDIC is nibbling its way through the Midwest and West this evening.

Bank no more on these turkeys:

SunFirst Bank, St. George, Utah

Mid City Bank, Omaha, Nebraska

You’d think they’d run out of master of the universe in need of emasterculating.

It’s not just about money. It’s how you use the money.

More here.

MarketWatch reports that J. P. Morgan is trying to re-up the real estate bubble:

A recent report from J.P. Morgan Asset Management, titled “Housing: A time to buy,” written by David Kelly and David Lebovitz, made the case for why a home may be a wise purchase.

Investors can find opportunities in apartment and shopping-mall REITs, according to Marty Cohen of real-estate fund manager Cohen & Steers, who advises caution around single-family housing, commercial and retirement properties. Jonathan Burton reports.

“Although the U.S. housing market remains extremely depressed, we believe that given current valuations and demographic dynamics, now may be the time to consider an investment in housing,” the report said.

Methinks they are feeling the pinch of the decline in commissions.

New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman:

“One of the things that concerns me right now is this effort to rewrite history, to move us away from the fact that it was bad deregulatory moves and greedy, risky conduct that caused this to happen and that it wasn’t the fault of the teachers and cops and firefighters who now seem to be the targets of this effort to cut spending. The markets didn’t crash because we were paying too much to teachers.”

Six things about you probably didn’t know about Ayn Rand.

H/T Mr. Feastingonroadkill for the link.

Horrors! This slow the engine of growth in jobs for process servers and foreclosure estate agents.

As many as 4.5 million homeowners who think their foreclosures were mishandled can request a free, independent review under an action by federal bank regulators outlined on Tuesday. If a review uncovers bank misdeeds, homeowners will be entitled to compensation.

Oh, wait. Later in the story, we find that the banksters will still be in control:

To qualify, homeowners must be customers of the servicers participating in the program. They are: America’s Servicing Co., Aurora Loan Services, Bank of America, Beneficial, Chase, Citibank, CitiFinancial, CitiMortgage, Countrywide, EMC, EverBank/Everhome Mortgage, First Horizon, GMAC Mortgage, HFC, HSBC, IndyMac, MetLife, National City, PNC, Sovereign Bank, SunTrust Mortgage, U.S. Bank, Wachovia, Washington Mutual and Wells Fargo.

Mortgage servicers will send letters to customers who qualify for reviews, but borrowers can apply proactively as well. Information is at www.independentforeclosurereview.com.

Not to worry. There can be no question about the integrity of the process, given the track record of those responsible fiscals.

No question at all.