Category: The Corporation

October 19, 2008

Financial Crisis Followup: Blackwater to Help with Evictions

Now that most real estate lies in the hands of the American government, it won’t be long before Blackwater comes knocking on the door of those who are trying to make one last go at holding on to their homes. Eviction notices will be deliverd by one of the world’s largest and fierce mercenary armies, thanks to a lot of funding during the Iraq war, […]

October 19, 2008

Questions Related to Financial 9/11

This article poses a number of questions related to what’s being called the Financial 9/11. At the root of the questions lies a great mistrust of the speed at which things ‘had to be done’.  Were financial markets unravelling because the people behind them were inept or because the regulations had been stripped so raw by free-market fundamentalists or because there was some other deep-seated […]

October 19, 2008

Fiddling While Rome Burns: Bonuses at All Time High

A record $70 billion in bonuses are planned for Wall Street ‘genuises’this year, despite the worst show of abuse of capitalism in the last 80 years. At one point last week the Morgan Stanley $10.7bn pay pot for the year to date was greater than the entire stock market value of the business. In effect, staff, on receiving their remuneration, could club together and buy […]

October 18, 2008

The Solution to Casino-Capitalism?

Ralph Nader has some timely suggestions for reducing or eliminating what he calls ‘casino-capitalism’:  a tax on transactions. Full story here. So what do you think?  Would the powers that be even remotely consider a tax on their own transactions?  No. That would be like asking a Ford to impose a tax on its own engines. I’m sorry if I sound resistant to the idea.  […]

October 13, 2008

$400 Billion in Lehman Assets ‘lost’

Virtually overnight, nearly $400 billion in assets with Lehman Brothers were ‘lost’ weeks before last week’s global financial debacle. Story from Bloomberg here . Conspiract story here . What do this mean? Is Lehman the only commercial enterprise where assets are disappearing just before bailouts are being rewarded like treats for Pavlovian dogs? This kind of a story begs a lot of questions. For example, […]