CalPERS Admits It Has No Idea What It is Paying in Private Equity Carry Fees
We are not making it up. Private equity limited partners like CalPERS have no idea what they are paying in carry fees, one of the biggest costs they incur.
Read more...Category Archives: Ridiculously obvious scams
Memo to Readers: If You Want to Beat Big Finance, You Need to Be Able to Take the Fight to Their Terrain
We are now 35 years into a finance-led counterrevolution. If you care about income inequality, student loan debt slavery, foreclosure abuses, and other products of the success of this effort, it behooves you, as Sun Tzu urged, to understand your enemy.
Read more...The Shafting, Um, Sharing Economy
The Wall Street Journal, of all places, describes the dark economic underbelly of Uber and other Orwellianly-named “sharing” services.
Read more...Good News on TPP, as Senate Passes Fast Track Bill with Human Trafficking Poison Pill
Revenge is a dish best served cold. Senator Bob Menendez just served an even bigger plate than he intended via an amendment to Obama’s Fast Track bill that thanks to some Republican help, didn’t get modified into mere symbolism. Ooops!
Read more...More on the Myth of Outsourcing’s Efficiency
Why outsourcing winds up producing cost creep over time.
Read more...Belvedere Management and its $16Bn: Now Looking More Like a Huge Collapsing Scam
As the regulatory actions accumulate, Belvedere Management looks less and less like a maligned fund manager, and more and more like a giant fraud. How much of the $16Bn it purported to manage is left?
Read more...Private Equity Standard-Setter Confirms That Investors Have No Idea What Firms Charge Them
Investors keep their heads deeply in the sand as far as the true cost of investing in private equity is concerned.
Read more...Fast Track/TPP: The Death of National Sovereignty, State Sovereignty, Separation of Powers, and Democracy
How the TPP, if passed and implemented, would create profound governance changes in the United States without benefit of the constitutional amendments that would normally be required to accomplish such changes.
Read more...John Helmer: Ukraine Readies Itself for War When No One Wants to Pay for It
The IMF is finding it hard to put enough lipstick on the pig of financing Ukraine.
Read more...MSNBC’s Egalitarian Krystal Ball, and Her Husband Jonathan Dariyanani, Star of Numerous International Pump and Dumps
A shallow dive into the financial dealings of Krystal Ball of MSNBC and her husband Jonathan Dariyanani
Read more...Quick Note on Slavery, Finance, Minsky, and the Panic of 1837
Looking at slavery from the financial perspective, 1837 looks a lot like the Crash of 2007 – 2008.
Read more...Dubious FX Broker CWM FX Claims Sports Celebrity Scalps, but Princess Anne Remains Unmolested
The CWM FX fraud bust, a murder, Princess Anne and some groping. It’s BAU in the world of sports sponsorship.
Read more...John Helmer: Auction House Bonhams, Sued Over Frauds and Forgeries, Casts Pall Over Russian Art Market
We’ve said that fraud is the fastest growing business in the US, but the US is far from having a lock on that market. One of the proofs is the way our Richard Smith has turned chasing international scammers into a full-time activity.
Scamming has strong links to money laundering. That seems to have exploded as more and more of the global rich seek to move cash across borders in ways not readily tracked by tax men and border officials. The New York Times, for instance, did a major expose on high end real estate as a money laundering vehicle, focusing on one building, the Time Warner Center in Manhattan.
John Helmer looks at another nexus, that of art and very high end collectables, through the lens of auction house Bonhams. However, there are intriguing extra wrinkles with Bonhams which puts it closer to the Graham Greene world of shadowy dealing than is the norm for the art world. And since Bonhams is a major dealer in Russian art, the collateral damage extends to the Russian art market, as well as Bonham’s efforts to sell itself.
Read more...Bryan Cook in the Media: How the Scammers Behind Virgin Gold Mining Corporation Bit Off More Than They Could Chew (IX)
The Virgin Gold scam hits the press, along with London Capital and Bryan Cook
Read more...Stanford Law School Covers Up SEC’s Andrew Bowden’s Embarrassing Remarks by Deep-Sixing Conference Video
Stanford Law School Covers Up SEC’s Andrew Bowden’s Embarrassing Remarks by Deep-Sixing Conference Video
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