Should Argentina Now Pay the Ransom to Its Hostage-Takers?
Argentina’s vultures keep pressing for higher and higher settlement terms, while giving the impression that at some point they would settle. What is the end game?
Read more...Category Archives: Ridiculously obvious scams
Bill Black: The AEI and Brookings Sell Marriage as the Solution for Poverty
Marriage is the new cheap fix for poverty…which means by implication that single low income women are a new category of the undeserving poor.
Read more...John Helmer: Strauss-Kahn Finds a New Way of Dropping His Pants
Strauss-Kahn demonstrates that even tarnished brand names can still be monetized.
Read more...The North Korean Connections of US Billionaire Naguib Sawiris and US Defence Company Contrack Watts
US Billionaire Naguib Sawiris and his Contrack Watts, a major US defence contractor, turn out to have ties to North Korea, via an amazingly profitable mobile phone company
Read more...Bill Black: Lenders’ Lies about Liar’s Loans and “Rigorous Underwriting”
Believe it or not, liar’s loans may be back.
Read more...Our Richard Smith Speaks on Taxcast
Our Richard Smith discusses his international fraud gumshoe work on Scottish limited partnerships on the Tax Justice Network’s Taxcast.
Read more...Not Going to Take it Anymore – Doctors in the Pacific Northwest Unionize
Unionizing doctors are at odds with management because management cares only about profit while they prioritize the quality of care.
Read more...SEC Data Show Reduction in Criminal Prosecutions Since 2010
Every year the SEC delivers an annual report right around the holidays that gets virtually forgotten by everyone. But a tipster highlighted one part of the document that matches recent research about the way in which the agency plays with numbers. Urska Velikonja, assistant professor at Emory School of Law, released the study late last […]
Read more...Why Letting the Koch Brothers Create a “Center for Free Enterprise” at Public University WCU is a Bad Idea
The hidden strings in a Koch Brothers gift to Western Carolina University, and why its faculty is opposed.
Read more...Geithner Ghostwriter Mike Grunwald Tries to Shift Financial Crisis Narrative Away From The Big Short
It’s sad that you have to be something of a detective to decipher what passes for content at most major American news outlets. In the case of Michael Grunwald, however, we have a decent set of indicators about the normally hidden agenda. The Politico writer worked with Tim Geithner on his memoir. In fact, I believe he has said publicly that he didn’t know a lot about finance before meeting Geithner. So when Grunwald decides to leap into anything involving this topic, we can assume the end result is not altogether different than what it would look like if Geithner wrote it with his own byline.
The latest example is a nominal review of The Big Short, which is not really a review. It’s an attempt to steer the narrative of what happened, in the financial crisis and its aftermath, to territory that comforts elites.
Read more...How Corporations and Politicians Lie With Numbers — and How Not to Be Fooled
Some of the most commonly-used “lying with figures” tricks and how to learn to recognize them.
Read more...Wolf Richter: America’s Largest Utility Jacks up Rates the Most Since 2006 Despite Total Collapse of Natural Gas Prices
PG&E, America’s biggest utility, is a case study in the power of monopoly and regulatory capture.
Read more...What Influence Does Wall Street Have Over Candidates Clinton and Sanders?
Clinton plays with figures to understate her degree of Wall Street campaign support, and that ignores past support to the Clinton Foundation.
Read more...How Prefunding Retiree Health Benefits Impacts the Postal Service’s Bottom Line – and How Brookings Got it Wrong
Exposing the serious numerical and conceptual flaws of yet another study that uses the trumped-up claim that the Postal Service is trouble to justify dismembering it.
Read more...Oxford City Football Club and its Onanistic Owner, Thomas Guerriero
Let’s start our latest illustration of how easily a reckless, internationally mobile crook can sidestep national regulators, with a helpful observation by Bess Levin at Dealbreaker in May 2010: Let it be known: if you are not interested in having your supervisor (circle all that apply:) send you videos of himself masturbating, texts about the […]
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