Masters of the Universe category archive

It’s all just one big game of three-card monte.

Via Job’s Anger.

A 40-year-old St. Louis woman isn’t dead, but she said she spent months trying to convince credit reporting agencies that she’s alive.

Alexandria Goree is suing Experian, TransUnion and Equifax over the glitch, contending that it was difficult to get loans or a new home, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch (http://bit.ly/1SnvzRT ) reported.

For some reason, this hampered her attempts to get credit. For some more fool reason, it has taken her months to convince them that she’s not dead.

The credit reporting agencies have no comment because of course they don’t.

More stupid at the link.

John Gelles explains how Visa and Mastercard’s new credit card chips won’t live up to their billing as protecting against fraud. Here’s the crucial bit (emphasis added), but I recommend following the link and reading the entire article:

The Merchant Advisory Group, a coalition of companies reliant on plastic payments, had long urged Visa and MasterCard to adopt the chip cards as an anti-fraud tool – and to require PINs with them, as are used almost everywhere else.

Why did it fail? Mark Horwedel, the group’s CEO, says a key reason is that different rules cover different kinds of fraud – and that, once again, Visa, MasterCard, and the big banks are chiefly taking care of themselves.

(snip)

Studies show that PINs cut fraud losses by as much as 85 percent or more–one reason their use is also urged by such advocates as U.S. PIRG’s Ed Mierzwinski, who says consumers ultimately pay the costs of fraud either indirectly or as its victims.

Via Bad Tux.

A new Dickensian tale, in which Artful Dodger gives up the streets and the gangs, gets a three-piece suit, and becomes a banker.

Robert Reich explains how Goldman Sach helped Greece the skids, while filling its sacks. A snippet:

The crisis was exacerbated years ago by a deal with Goldman Sachs, engineered by Goldman’s current CEO, Lloyd Blankfein. Blankfein and his Goldman team helped Greece hide the true extent of its debt, and in the process almost doubled it. And just as with the American subprime crisis, and the current plight of many American cities, Wall Street’s predatory lending played an important although little-recognized role.

Follow the link, where Reich explains the mechanics of the con worked.

I don’t pretend to understand the nuts and bolts of what’s going on with the EU, Germany, and Greece, and I’ve been busy studying BSD because it’s fun.

Bad Tux, though, has studied up on it and thinks it’s not just about the money.

The California labor commissioner sees through the con:

The California labor commissioner has ruled that an Uber driver is an employee of the company, not a contract worker as Uber has insisted all its drivers are, setting up another battle between state regulators and the ride-hailing giant.

Uber, natch, will fight back, because where’s the fun in treating workers fairly? Remember, in the “sharing” economy, “sharing” goes in only one direction.

Much more at the link.

Via Job’s Anger.

The Charlotte Observer’s Eric Frazier has a question for you:

A justice system pop quiz:

Defendant A – A young con artist who cooks up a luxury home-buying scheme that helps him steal more than $75 million from investors and banks over seven years. It prompts one of the largest mortgage fraud investigations in U.S. history.

Defendant B – The CEO of what was once the nation’s fourth-largest bank. His aggressive pursuit of subprime mortgage assets helps precipitate the 2008 banking meltdown and the Great Recession. During the crisis, he conveys ownership of a $13.75 million Florida mansion to his wife and the firm manipulates its balance sheet to hide $50 billion worth of risky assets.

Follow the link for the answer.

Eric Alterman wonders about what’s left unsaid:

Take, for example, a recent story by Neil Irwin that appeared in The New York Times’s “Upshot” section, purported to be the paper’s most thoughtful and knowledgeable organ of political analysis. Irwin argues that Americans’ alleged disinclination to “soak the rich” is reflected in “the actual policies espoused by candidates for office and enacted by Congress.” When he notes that taxes on the wealthy have fallen in the past decade, he offers both a “liberal” and a “conservative” explanation for why this happened. Irwin and his editors don’t appear to think it worth mentioning that fewer than 1 percent of Americans contribute more than 80 percent of the campaign funding for the politicians who write these laws.

Read the rest.

How to steal a house.

Via Job’s Anger.