Twitter 2, JP Morgan, 0: Bythe Masters Withdraws After One Day Appointment as CFTC Advisor
This was not a world-record revolving door stint, but the head-spinning was of the good sort for a change.
Read more...Category Archives: Ridiculously obvious scams
Wall Street Journal Exposes Entirely New Private Equity Tax Scam
Yet another private equity tax swindle has come to light.
Read more...Nate Heckmann: Peter Schiff is Wrong About Everything
Yves here. I’m of two minds about featuring a post about Peter Schiff, since criticizing him treats him as being a more legitimate commentator than he is. But some targets ask so hard for a debunking that it’s hard to resist.
Read more...Quelle Surprise! Bond Investors Notice that Servicers Let Houses Fall Apart
Investors cry crocodile tears over subprime blight even though it helped line their pockets.
Read more...Why George Lucas, Eric Schmidt, (and yes, Steve Jobs) Should Go to Jail: Conspiring to Reduce Wages of 100,000 Tech Pros
One big difference between West Coast and East Coast oligarchs is that a lot fewer people lionize the Eastern ones. But a pending lawsuit may finally tarnish some Silicon Valley halos.
Read more...David Dayen: Elizabeth Warren, Tom Coburn Introduce “Naked Capitalism Was Right About the Corruption of Financial Regulators Act” (Not Actually Called That)
I’ve been going out of my mind the past few days seeing the easily duped traditional media uncritically printing statistical analysis from JPMorgan Chase’s roundelay of get-out-of-jail-almost-free settlements. The gist of it, and this must have been in a Department of Justice release somewhere, is that JPM has “paid” $20 billion over the last calendar year to resolve a variety of disputes, the most recent being their admission that they knew the bogus nature of Bernie Madoff’s business and never generated any suspicious activity reports or raised red flags for regulators (the fact that they took their money out of Madoff feeder funds right before he was arrested being a smoking gun)… $20 billion is a FAKE NUMBER.
Read more...The Misdirected Outrage Over The Wolf of Wall Street
Martin Scorsese’s film about a boiler-room stockbroker who managed to reach the major leagues of financial services industry swindling, The Wolf of Wall Street, has garnered both strong box office sales and heated denunciations.
Read more...Whistleblower Describes How Private Equity Firms Flagrantly Violate SEC Broker-Dealer Requirements
Last week, Crain’s Business Daily and Fortune reported that a whistleblower has provided the SEC with evidence of massive, ongoing violations of securities laws, specifically, the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, by several unnamed private equity firms.
Read more...Yanis Varoufakis Discuses Bitcoin and Litecoin on RT
Yves here. Yanis makes a couple of observations which won’t sit well with digital currency enthusiasts.
Read more...New Zealand’s Latest Dodgy Export: Why FX Investors Should be Wary of Software Sold by Irish Company Paymark Autotrader
A dubious FX trading software operation closes down in New Zealand and sets up shop in Ireland.
Read more...How a British Carbon Credit Pusher Got a Listing on a Danish Stock Exchange, Brokered by a New Zealand Financial Company Run by an Australian Residing in Switzerland
How a British Carbon Credit Pusher Got a Listing on a Danish Stock Exchange, Brokered by a New Zealand Financial Company Run by an Australian Residing in Switzerland
Read more...CNI (UK) and its Lawyers Complain to Blogs, But Appear to Shy Away From the Daily Mail
CNI (UK)’s confusing attitude to its connections with Carbon Neutral Investments, service provider to carbon scams
Read more...Another Lurking Obamacare Problem: Balance Billing
One of the proofs that Obamacare is really about helping insurers and Big Pharma rather than ordinary Americans is its failure to do much about the seamy practice known as balance billing.
Read more...What Nobody Seems to Understand About Bitcoin
This has been around a couple of weeks, but I managed to miss it, and I suspect many NC reader might have as well. Plus we can always more levity. God knows we need it.
Read more...David Dayen: IRS Confirms that $12 Billion in “Mortgage Relief” in National Mortgage Settlement Completely Worthless
The IRS settles something I noticed a while ago and has now been finally confirmed. In short: big banks who robbed homes from Americans got a penalty that entailed, quite literally, giving homeowners worthless allowances.
The issue concerns the Mortgage Forgiveness Debt Relief Act, which expires at the end of the year. After December 31, all mortgage relief that involves debt forgiveness of any kind will be taxable to the borrower. This affects principal reductions, of course, but also short sales, with the idea being that this involves the bank “forgiving” the difference between the total owed on the mortgage and the price of the short sale. There are hardships exemptions to this but they involve the functional equivalent of bankruptcy – you have to prove that your total liabilities exceed your total assets.
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