Category Archives: Ridiculously obvious scams

ObamaCare Rollout: Punts on Income Verification and Employer Insurance Checks, Setting Stage for Insurers to Call Mistakes “Fraud” and Rescind Policies

By lambert strether of Corrente.

Obama’s career transition from selling hope and change to selling insurance seems to be, at least so far, a wee bit rocky. Kudos to WaPo’s Sarah Kliff and Sandhya Somashekhar for breaking the story of the newest #FAIL, which required them to process 600 pages of dense HHS prose on July 5; a classic Friday document dump, with bonus points for the holiday weekend, and super double bonus sparkle pony points for following hard on the heels of another huge #FAIL, Obama’s triage of the employer reporting mandate (chirped White House apparatchick Valerie Jarrett: “We are full steam ahead for the Marketplaces [exchanges] opening on October 1.” Right onto the rocks, Val!). Kliff and Somashekhar write:

Bill Black: How Dare DOJ Insult HSBC’s Crooks as Less “Professional” than Liberty Reserve’s Crooks?

By Bill Black, the author of The Best Way to Rob a Bank is to Own One and an associate professor of economics and law at the University of Missouri-Kansas City.

Standard Chartered and HSBC’s leaders must be doubly humiliated by the description by Mythili Raman, the acting head of the U.S. Department of Justice’s (DOJ) Criminal Division, of Liberty Reserve’s money laundering operation. UK laws are, of course, very congenial to those suing for libel and I am sure that these banking titans are meeting with their solicitors to demand a retraction and apology from Raman.

Is Apple Risking Its Brand Overseas With Its Tax Gimmicks?

For those immune to Apple lust or otherwise unwilling to cut the Cupertino giant slack just because it has sleek products and cool stores, a new article by tax maven Lee Sheppard at Forbes gives a layperson-friendly overview of how Apple managed to keep $44 billion of revenues out of the hands of the tax men.

Wolf Richter: Government By Eurocrats – The Olive-Oil Dispenser Debacle

Yves here. This post illustrates a chief reason why regulation has become a bad word.

David Dayen: SEC Convenes Foot-Dragging Roundtable on Rating Agency Reform, While Securities Issuers Return to Familiar Rating-Shopping Tricks

A few months ago, I wrote a story for The American Prospect about the credit rating agencies, and their thus-far successful effort to ward off any change to their business model, despite their wretched performance during the crisis. This is true even though Dodd-Frank contained a measure, written by Al Franken, to alter the issuer-pays model that incentivizes higher ratings in the pursuit of future profits. The Franken-Wicker rule (the “Wicker” is Republican Senator Roger Wicker) would create a self-regulating organization to randomly assign securities to accredited rating agencies, with more securities over time going to the agencies that rated the most accurately.

Lynn Parramore: Your Retirement for a Bottle of Champagne – How Wall Street Fraudsters Ripped You Off, Again

By Lynn Parramore, a senior editor at Alternet. Cross posted from Alternet

The LIBOR price-fixing scam has cost at least $110 million — in the state of Oregon alone!

Obama’s Patronage System: Pritzker Nomination for Commerce Department, Limp-Wristed Dodd Frank

The consternation at the not-exactly-a-surprise nomination of billionaire Penny Pritzker to be Commerce Secretary, is sadly much less than is warranted. That suggests that the Forbes 400 member will survive her confirmation hearings. And in a telling bit of synchronicity, last week some fauxgressives set about amplifying an article in the Nation that big bank lobbying efforts were the reason Dodd Frank was amounting to very little. As we’ll discuss, both reflect how much Obama supports the interests of the FIRE sector (finance, insurance, and real estate).

Philip Pilkington: Homosexuality Leading Cause of Economic Crisis, Harvard’s Niall Ferguson Reports

By Philip Pilkington, a writer and research assistant at Kingston University in London. You can follow him on Twitter @pilkingtonphil

Over the weekend a leading member of the pro-austerity crowd came out with what is probably their most ludicrous argument yet.

Even Harsh Frontline Program on Retirement Investments Understates How Bad They Are

Wall Street must get indigestion every time Frontline rolls out another program showing the depths of its chicanery. The only problem is the industry deserves much worse punishment.

More Foreclosure Review Fiasco: Paying Agent Rust Consulting Sends Letters to Different Addresses Than on Borrower Letters, Refuses to Make Corrections

Hedge fund manager and famed short seller David Einhorn is right: no matter how bad you think it is, it’s worse.

Obama Honors Thatcher with TVA “Privatization” Plan, Kicks Ordinary People in the Stomach Again

Nathan Tankus is a student and research assistant at the University of Ottawa. You can follow him on Twitter at @NathanTankus

President Obama adopted a reflective tone to mark the passing of Maggie Thatcher. Commenting on her death, he stated “the world has lost one of the great champions of freedom and liberty.” In Obama’s proposed budget, we found out what the terms “freedom” and “liberty” mean: the freedom for the old to go hungry and the freedom of the poor to go cold.

New Zealand: Pseudo-Financial Companies, and GT Group, Both Still Going Strong.

By Richard Smith, who would be a member of the International Consortium of Interfering Bloggers, if there was such a thing.

Promontory Decides to Reinvest Part of its $1 Billion of Ill Gotten Gains from Botched Foreclosure Reviews By Buying Hiring Former SEC Chief Shapiro

As regular readers may recall, Promontory Financial Group was one of the huge winners from the joke on the public otherwise known as the Independent Foreclosure Review. The only accurate word in that label, it turns out, was “foreclosure”.

So how is Promontory using all its lucre? Buying up even more former regulators to further its reputation as a connected insider. Mary Shapiro had barely left the SEC when she was nominated for a board seat at General Electric, which despite its image as a manufacturer, has for over two decades had nearly half its revenues coming from financial services. And now Shapiro has been signed by Promontory to help arm-twist regulators not to do their job.