Tag: Wall street

The Web Site, Striking Thoughts, has a Tough Opinion Concerning the Facebook Investment Debacle!

On By southwerkIn Business Ethics

Wall Street Bitch-slaps us (again) | Striking Thoughts

This mess will be interesting to watch as it plays out. At this point I will go as far as agreeing with Business Insider:

“In one of the biggest IPOs in history, in which a huge amount of stock was sold to small investors, privileged Wall Street insiders once again got top-notch information…and individuals got the shaft.”

Wall Street Bitch-slaps us (again) | Striking Thoughts

Striking Thoughts is right on target and I recommend you read his thoughts.

To my colleague at “Striking Thoughts” I give a hearty thumbs up!”

James Pilant

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System Rigged Against Small Investor.

On By southwerkIn Business Ethics

Facebook IPO: Retail Investors Lose Out While Wall Street Clients Make Profits

In case a reminder was needed, the fallout from the Facebook IPO illustrates that Wall Street appears to be designed to serve the well-connected at the expense of ordinary people.

Ordinary investors may have lost as much as $630 million collectively from the plunge in Facebook’s stock following its public debut, Bloomberg reports. These are the same people who used hundreds or even thousands of dollars of their prized savings to bet on the stock only to have its value drop to way below its opening price of $38 per share.

Facebook IPO: Retail Investors Lose Out While Wall Street Clients Make Profits

Is it moral or ethical to have a rule system which allows the large institutional investors to thrive while penalizing the small investors? Does this encourage responsible investment and make Americans better people?

I think not.

This kind of thing drives people away from investment and it should. That the game is rigged is obvious to the most casual observer. It takes an enormous amount of advertising and badly written text books to get people to buy stock.

Now let’s differentiate here. I heartily approve of investment, that is, buying stock in a company to collect regular dividends and over time have the value of the company go up. That is investment. It carries some risk but it is not the kind of risk carried by those that believe they can buy and sell stock hour by hour, day by day, and make a profit thereby. That is speculation and speculation is inherently risky.

But not all speculators are equal. Let Facebook be a warning to all small investors. Whether you win or lose, investment banks will win.

This is wrong.

It damages faith in the system because the system doesn’t deserve it. If people don’t believe in the basic fairness of society than they will begin to act in ways that are detrimental to that society.

More simply, if playing by the rules doesn’t work, they’ll try something else.

Justice and fairness are for everybody and when they are denied we all suffer.

We should always have in the back of our minds the basic concept of fairness in our dealings. That is how you build a just and fair society.

You punish the wicked and protect the innocent. Is it hard to understand that rule?

James Pilant

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If a Highway Robber Has to Go to Jail, Why Does the Elite on Wall Street Get to Stay Home?

On By southwerkIn Business Ethics
Phil Angelides

Will Wall Street Ever Face Justice? – NYTimes.com

Four years after the disintegration of the financial system, Americans have, rightfully, a gnawing feeling that justice has not been served. Claims of financial fraud against companies like Citigroup and Bank of America have been settled for pennies on the dollar, with no admission of wrongdoing. Executives who ran companies that made, packaged and sold trillions of dollars in toxic mortgages and mortgage-backed securities remain largely unscathed.

Meager resources have been applied to investigate the financial assault on our country, which wiped away trillions of dollars in household wealth and has resulted in 24 million people jobless or underemployed. The Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission, which Congress created to examine the full scope of the crisis, was given a budget of $9.8 million — roughly one-seventh of the budget of Oliver Stone’s “Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps.” The Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations did its work on the financial crisis with only a dozen or so Congressional staff members.

Will Wall Street Ever Face Justice? – NYTimes.com

Phil Angelides, the author of the above column, shares an identical opinion to mine. Justice has not been served.

I wrote extensively about the mortgage crisis back when business writers considered it a matter of a few small mistakes in the paperwork that weren’t worth getting upset over. I watched day by day as we learned about robo-signing, error laden foreclosures sometimes on homes that the client owned outright, and the use of a federal government program called HAMP to push people out of their homes and force them to pay outrageous penalties. The federal government did not even keep records of what HAMP was doing for the first six months and the fact that it was run by a twenty year bank veteran did not surprise. There wasn’t any fox in the hen-house, there was a rabid lion operating with permission to prey at will.

Millions of Americans suffered. Barely treading water, troubled by lost jobs, debts and predatory banks, the hard-working people of America were thrown an anvil by a federal government laden with former bankers in every conceivable position. It’s a sad story and reflects badly on the President of the United States who promised us better.

I was not surprised when the claims of homeowners and criminal prosecution of these mortgages companies were settled for a pittance. It would have been one of the saddest days of my life if in the months leading up to the settlement I had not experienced over and over again a federal government immune to the calls of justice and accountability. The settlement was just another nail in the coffin of fairness, a level playing field of law for the middle class and those who would prey upon them.

It remains to be seen whether or not a White House now deserted by its Wall Street Financial Backers will pursue a tougher attitude toward enforcement of the law.

James Pilant

Phil Angelides talk about the real cause of the financial shortcomings in state budgets

(Banksters are to blame NOT TEACHERS)

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Wall Street Suffers “Hard Times”

On By southwerkIn Corpoorate Social Responsibility

A few weeks ago there was a controversy over grants given to Planned Parenthood by the Susan Komen foundation. The vice president confronted by complaints that poor women would lose their access to health care responded dramatically –

Karen Handel, a former GOP candidate who ran on a pro-life platform, shows her true colors. She just happens to be Susan G. Komen’s Vice President of Public Policy now. “Just like a pro-abortion group to turn a cancer orgs decision into a political bomb to throw. Cry me a freaking river”

Disdain for poor women and their need for medical currently fashionable among some groups of Americans. There is a suspicion in some quarters that the top 1% find paying for social services an welcome burden.

Now, of course this behavior is contrary to the Greek concept of virtue ethics, modern Protestant business ethics and Catholic social doctrine. However a proportion of the the 1% are getting their comeuppance. It is a small comeuppance but nevertheless, any comeuppance is better than none.

Please read this excerpt –

Wall Street’s Average Cash Bonus Expected To Fall To $121,000

Wall Street cash bonuses for 2011 are expected to drop 14 percent and profits are expected to drop by half for the second year in a row, according to a forecast Wednesday by New York state Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli.

That would result in cash bonuses of $19.7 billion. Profits are expected to be less than $13.5 billion in 2011, compared to $27.6 billion in 2010.

The average cash bonus is expected to be $121,150 for 2011, down from $138,940 in 2010. Bonuses peaked before the recession in 2006 at $191,360.

Wall Street’s Average Cash Bonus Expected To Fall To $121,000

You read it right. Wall Street bonuses will only be $13.5 billion dollars. It’s a trifle, a small amount of money. Of course, it would pay for all the college tuition in the United States for the next year and still have a couple of billion walking around money left. But like I said that’s just a smidgeon on Wall Street.

You probably noticed that the average payout on Wall Street will be $121,000.

Let’s see what is said about this –

The average cash bonus is expected to be $121,150 for 2011, down from $138,940 in 2010. Bonuses peaked before the recession in 2006 at $191,360.

DiNapoli said the forecast for this bonus season shows continued hard times on Wall Street two years after the recession officially ended. The securities industry lost 28,000 jobs, including 9,600 that had been briefly recovered before the slide began in April.

“Continued hard times!” Wow! $121,150 is almost three times the average salary in the United Stand and these people also draw a regular salary. Average salary at Goldman Sachs is $367,057. But we know they’re suffering. 

Well to quote the former vice president of the Susan Komen Foundation, “Cry me a freakin river!”

James Pilant

Here is my take on the 1% with a little help from Garfunkel and Oates.

Save the Rich

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Banker Really Sticks it to the 99%!

On By southwerkIn Economic Justice

I’ve read from time to time about the sense of entitlement of the 1%. They feel they deserve their money. Now, they often make it with public money speculating against the interests of their fellow citizens, but they would argue that if we would get off our lazy butts, we too could manipulate Congress and parley our influence into millions of dollars. I think I will continue to work my two jobs and not use the government to become rich. I think that makes me stupid by the standards of Wall Street and the “very serious” people who deal out the loathsome pap we get for news and commentary.

Well, here is entitlement, hard core nastiness delivered with the joy of a gangbanger stabbing you for two bucks in a back alley.

James Pilant

BY THE WAY: The banker is unable to use percentages correctly! Apparently the skill set for banking doesn’t include mathematics.

Banker Leaves 1% Tip On $133 Lunch Bill In Defiance of ‘The 99%’ [UPDATED]

Courtesy of futureexbanker.wordpress

A banker left a 1% tip in defiance of ‘the 99%’ at a Newport Beach restaurant the other week, according to his dining companion and underling who snapped a photo of the receipt and posted it to his blog, Future Ex Banker. (Update: the blog is now offline.)

Banker Leaves 1% Tip On $133 Lunch Bill In Defiance of ‘The 99%’ [UPDATED]

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Bill Moyers Fights the Good Fight

On By southwerkIn Economic Justice

Here is a selection of the words of Bill Moyers. The first is from Salon and is in print today, February 14th, Valentine’s day. The next three are closing remarks from episodes of Bill Moyers’ Journal. You might say that this is a valentine to Bill. May he live a hundred years and continue to inspire us every day of that time.

James Pilant

America’s billionaire-run democracy – 2012 Elections – Salon.com

We are drowning here, with gaping holes torn into the hull of the ship of state from charges detonated by the owners and manipulators of capital. Their wealth has become a demonic force in politics. Nothing can stop them. Not the law, which has been written to accommodate them. Not scrutiny — they have no shame. Not a decent respect for the welfare of others — the people without means, their safety net shredded, left helpless before events beyond their control.

The obstacles facing the millennial generation didn’t just happen. Take an economy skewed to the top, low wages and missing jobs, predatory interest rates on college loans: these are politically engineered consequences of government of, by and for the 1 percent. So, too, is our tax code the product of money and politics, influence and favoritism, lobbyists and the laws they draft for rented politicians to enact.

America’s billionaire-run democracy – 2012 Elections – Salon.com

Plutocracy and Democracy Do Not Mix

Bill Moyers on Greed

Bill Moyers on the American Dream

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A Song For Occupy Wall Street

On By southwerkIn Politics

Nathan Shaffer – Come Back America – YouTube

(Something I found on You Tube – You can buy the music and other works by the artist online.)

Sometimes the music has a message.
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When Banks Break the Law, Families Suffer

On By southwerkIn Business Ethics
Half million dollar house in Salinas, Californ...

Image via Wikipedia

We can see from the full article excerpted below that  the banks’ evasion of State recording statutes and poor internal bookkeeping has led many families to disaster.

I have read some bloggers who talk about deadbeat buyers but where are they now when it is obvious that widespread fraud and incompetence were common in the industry for years?

The decision of a family to buy a home is almost always the single most important financial decision of their lives.

Beginning in 2000, that investment became a chip in a Wall Street game of financial speculation. But the industry found that those chips were heavily regulated by law. Not like modern regulations but regulations older than this nation itself. The rules were that property ownership had to carefully recorded, geographically correct and a chain of ownership clearly established. Owning property was considered a critical part in an individual’s life and was protected by the law from injustice.

But this inhibited trading, so the industry created their own system of property transfer (MERS) and we know from the many lawsuits in sloppy or virtually non-existent records keeping to accelerate the process. Today, those injustices have come back to haunt middle class homeowners.

Please read the attached article and get a fell for what economic injustice feels like when the affliction has human face.

James Pilant

Foreclosure From Old Mortgages ‘Most Egregious Manifestation’ Of Broken Housing Market

Diane Thompson, an attorney with the National Consumer Law Center, says she has defended hundreds of foreclosure cases, and in nearly all of them, the homeowner was not in default. “The record-keeping on the part of the mortgage servicers is not to be trusted.”
The problems grew from a lot of sloppy recordkeeping that began during the housing boom, when Wall Street built a quick-and-dirty back-office operation to process mortgages quickly so lenders could sell as many loans as possible. As the loans were later sold to investors, and then resold around the world, the back office system sidestepped crucial legal procedures.
Now it’s becoming clear just how dysfunctional and, according to several state attorneys general, how fraudulent the whole system was.
Depositions from “affidavit slaves” depict a surreal, assembly-line world in which the banks and their partner firms hired hair stylists, fast-food kids and Wal-Mart floor workers, paying them $10 a day, to pose as bank vice presidents, assistant secretaries and corporate attorneys.

Foreclosure From Old Mortgages ‘Most Egregious Manifestation’ Of Broken Housing Market

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The Banking Industry Gives Obama the Squeeze

On By southwerkIn Economic Justice
President Barack Obama addresses reporters abo...

Image via Wikipedia

Big banks have picked their candidate, and it’s Romney – from McClatchy

“We’ve seen a massive shift from Obama to the Republican candidates on the part of the financial industry,” said Carmen Balber of Consumer Watchdog, a California nonprofit that advocates for taxpayers and consumers. “Obviously, part of that has to do with a competitive primary. But we’ve definitely seen the financial services industry publicly chastise the president for going after financial reform.”

Big banks have picked their candidate, and it’s Romney | McClatchy

Isn’t this sweet? Barack Obama bails out the banks, protects them from prosecution for their crimes, installs banking industry figures in virtually every possible position in the government, pretended that the mortgage crisis wasn’t happening and was careful to give only the most measured criticism of the financial industry and the 1% – and his reward is massive contributions to this likely opponent.

For all of his compromise, for all of his favoritism, for all of his abandonment of the goals of justice and accountability, the President got less than nothing.

This was hardly unpredictable. The dramatic reactions of the wealthy investment to class to Obama’s mile criticism, the weak legislation of Dodd-Frank financial reform law, and the Occupy Wall Street movement demonstrated that Wall Street’s sense of entitlement and worthiness is fragile at the very least.

Only the most slavish devotion, only agreement on every point and only an acceptance of the financial industry as worthy, doing God’s Work, is adequate for the malefactors of great wealth.

The President should have realized this.

James Pilant

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The 1% Hit Back

On By southwerkIn Economic Justice

The knives are out. The corporations, the wealthy and their well paid minions (think of a crowd of Igors in an old Frankenstein movies) are going to portray the Occupy movement as anarchists and Marxists. An even casual reading of the news stories shows that as a lie. Can you find anarchists and Marxist in the movement? Of course you can; the same as you can find Klansmen and Christian Reconstructionists in the Tea Party and the Republican Party.

The question isn’t whether there are unpopular political beliefs in some participants of the movement but do they run it or is their influence the deciding factor in decisions. Neither of those things are true. I have no doubt that the primary motivations of Occupy Wall Street movement is the predominant influence the financial sector has in the government. There are also concerns for the decline of the middle class and the lack of penalties for those on Wall Street who did so much harm to the world economy.

Those are legitimate complaints held by millions of American. Take a look at this poll, this poll or this poll.

Does this new documentary wish to identify millions and millions of Americans as closet Marxists?

The hit job on the movement is expected. All criticism of the 1% is answered immediately, often borderline slander and almost always lies. The crude right wing message machine will say anything to keep Americans divided and powerless.

We can do better.

James Pilant

Right-wing documentary targets Occupy

Citizens United, which specializes in making documentaries with strong right-wing messages, is currently in production for a film about the Occupy movement, a spokesman for the group confirms to Salon.

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