Orange County Register Attacks Lack of Public Pension Fund Transparency, Cites Our Suit Against CalPERS
Another California newspaper criticizes the giant public pension fund CalPERS for its lack of transparency around private equity.
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Yellen Tells Whoppers to the New Yorker
A Nicholas Lemann profile of Janet Yellen in the New Yorker, based on interviews with her, is creating quite a stir, and for many of the wrong reasons. The article verges on fawning, but even after you scrape off the treacle, it’s not hard to see how aggressively and consistently the Fed chair hits her big talking point, that’s she’s on the side of the little guy. As correspondent Li put it:
She’s simultaneously Mother Teresa (spent her whole life caring about the poor without actually meeting any poor people) and Forrest Gump (present when all bad deregulatory polcies were made, but miraculously untainted by them).
Puh-lease! She’s Bernanke in a granny package, without the history lessons.
In fact, as we’ll discuss, Yellen’s record before and at the Fed shows she’s either aligned herself with banking/elite interests or played two-handed economist to sit out important policy fights. Even if she actually harbors concern for ordinary citizens, she’s never been willing to risk an ounce of career capital on it.
Read more...New York Times Hit Piece on Tom Steyer and Fossil Fuel Divestment
Word came recently that both the Philadelphia Quakers and the Unitarian General Assembly have decided to divest from fossil fuels. It followed by a few weeks the news that the Roman Catholic University of Dayton and Union Theological Seminary, the home of many a great thinker, had done likewise.
Read more...ISIS and Iraq: The T-Shirts, the Cats, the App, the Hasbara
ISIS has mastered digital strategy. But whose strategy? And what for?
Read more...Sacramento Bee Takes Up Our Fight Against Private Equity Firms’ Secrecy
On Monday, the Sacramento Bee published an editorial that took up many of the issues that we’ve raised in recent months about private equity firms’ fee abuses and the extraordinary shroud of secrecy that the industry has thrown over most of its activities.
Read more...New York’s Schneiderman Accepts Red Cross’ “Trade Secrets” Excuse to Hide Sandy Spending
It’s not clear what to make of an attorney general who opens an investigation and then accepts lame excuses for maintaining secrecy from its target, in this case, the American Red Cross. We’re flagging this example because it exemplifies an effort by organizations to use “trade secrets” as a pretext for hiding more and more of their dealings with governments. This is absurd, since the premise of Federal and state Freedom of Information Act laws is that government records should be open to the public, and that includes records of entities doing business with government agencies. In other words, if you want to have government bodies as your customers, one of the costs of doing business is having your formal interactions with them subject to public review.
Read more...New York Times Snipes at Neil Barofsky Yet Again
I was naive enough to think that the New York Times’ vendetta against former SIGTARP prosecutor Neil Barofsky was limited to bank propagandist Andrew Ross Sorkin and Administration mouthpiece Jackie Calmes, who penned a particularly ham-handed hit piece on Barofsky’s book Bailout.
It turns out the depth of loyalty of reporters at the New York Times is much deeper than I imagined. Ben Protess and Jessica Silver-Greenberg work hard to snigger and finger-wag at Barofsky for being about to land a plum assignment that will again make him a big bank nemesis: that of serving as monitor to miscreant Credit Suisse.
Read more...Peter Van Buren: Taking Down the First Amendment in Post-Constitutional America
Van Buren continues his examination of what he calls the “post-Constitutional era”. He focuses on the steady erosion of freedom of speech, particularly in the media, including limits on the ability of journalists to protect sources to more self-censorship and increased antipathy towards reporting that involves the use of confidential material.
Read more...How the Troika, the WSJ and the NYT Keep the Public Befuddled About Austerity and Deflation
Deflation proves that austerity policies are failing, but the media is doing a remarkable job of keeping readers confused and ignorant.
Read more...The KKR Capstone Scam: A Picture Worth 10,000 Words
A revealing image, and more investigation of KKR’s all-too-clever wordsmithing strongly indicate its claim that KKR Capstone is not an affiliate does not stand up to scrutiny. This is a serious charge because if the critics are right, KKR is embezzling.
Read more...Media Starting to Wake Up to Private Equity Grifting
It’s encouraging to see Dan Primack, a seasoned private equity reporter who has been careful about taking up negative stories about his industry, take the latest wave of private equity fee-skimming reports seriously.
Read more...New York Times’ New Editor Buries Important Story on Private Equity Fee Shenanigans on Holiday Weekend
In an important, well-reaserched article, Gretchen Morgenson flags several types of private equity fee abuses. Did the incoming New York Times editor, Dean Baquet, bury her story by running it Memorial Day weekend?
Read more...Andrew Ross Sorkin, Timothy Geithner, and the Three Card Monte Model of Propaganda
Truth be told, I had really wanted to ignore Andrew Ross Sorkin’s artfully packaged Timothy Geithner puff piece in the Sunday New York Times magazine. But it makes for a useful study in a not-well-recognized propaganda technique, three card monte.
Read more...Bill Moyers: Obama’s Latest Assault on Democracy – Undermining Net Neutrality
Net neutrality is on its way to being executed by the likes of Comcast and Verizon. That will mean the death of the Internet as we know it.
Read more...NY Teachers’ Retirement Fund Exhibits Stockholm Syndrome, Rejects Reuters Private Equity FOIA Out of Fear of Annoying Private Equity Funds
It is hard to grasp how successful the private equity industry has been in brainwashing investors to keep information secret.
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