Yves here. One of the things on our very long list of important issues we’d like to write about is the way Google, an unregulated information-screener, can dictate companies’ business models and keep information out of the public eye by how they handle search queries. Richard Smith give an example below.
Read more...I’m sure some readers will protest that comparing Jamie Dimon to Lance Armstrong is unfair. After all, Dimon is better looking than Armstrong. But this post will demonstrate that the big reason that Armstong’s reputation has crashed while Dimon’s remains largely intact is first, that bank CEOs have a powerful and largely compliant messaging apparatus in the financial media and second, that we hold sports stars to much higher standards than titans of finance and commerce.
Read more...Naked Capitalism notes that Carbon Neutral Investments, subject of a consumer warning by the UK’s FCA, has deals with Formula 1 teams McLaren and Sauber, Lord Heseltine’s publishing firm Haymarket, Newcastle United Football Club, and a host of PR and events companies, and wonders what the hell is going on.
Read more...Yves here. I hope you don’t mind additional coverage of the pending trade pacts, this from a European perspective. This is bar none the single most important geopolitical initiative underway, yet it’s getting virtually no media play. While this discussion overlaps with our chat on Bill Moyers, many of you have friends, family members, and colleagues who don’t have time to watch a video but would read an article. Please use whatever route you think will work best with the people you know to get the word out.
Read more...The Financial Times story revealing that regulators in Switzerland, Hong Kong, the UK and US have starting probing foreign exchange markets, based on evidence that currency traders were rigging markets, is thin on details because the inquiries are still underway. Nevertheless, these investigations have the potential to unearth a Libor-level scandal.
Read more...Carbon Neutral Investments and the ‘recovery room’ scam
Read more...The Gumball 3000 event is helping a deeply dodgy British firm with its marketing.
Read more...How two wide boys with shady pasts snared a leading British publisher that has major political connections.
Read more...The Sauber F1 team and their dodgy partners, Carbon Neutral Investments
Read more...Mayor Bloomberg stitched up by Italian Vogue and a dodgy financial firm: his image and words are being exploited to market carbon credit scams
Read more...Yves here. Gretchen Morgenson gives an accessible presentation of why no one should feel sorry for the fact that JP Morgan is set to pay a roughly $13 billion settlement of a raft of mortgage-related liability. And she also dispatches the myth that the Department of Justice took a tough stance.
Read more...I thought readers would have fun taking apart a reply by the Thomas Curry, the Comptroller of the Currency, to some written questions posed by Elizabeth Warren after a July 11 Senate Banking Committee hearing on systemic risk.
Read more...Yves here. I enjoyed this piece by Bill Black because 1. Anyone who tries to pretend the Administration is serious about prosecuting bank-related fraud needs to be named and shamed and 2. I like the device of using a single sentence as the basis for a post.
Read more...Nothing like watching a captured regulator like the Fed use a public hue and cry to execute a big bait and switch. Here the ploy is to change rules to further disadvantage the parties making complaints. But it takes finesse to make the finger in the eye look plausible and reasonable, so that when the well-understood bad effects show up later, the perp can pretend to be mystified.
Read more...Congressmen Alan Grayson and John Conyers have published a well-thought-out proposal on bank equity, with the objective of assuring that when banks do stupid things (which they do with great regularity, even before the era of casino banking, they’d embrace some new fad and run off the cliff together, like lemmings), they have enough capital to absorb losses. And that means a lot more capital than regulators are demanding they have now.
So I urge you to co-sign their letter (full text below) at http://nobankwelfare.com/.
Read more...