By Michael Crimmins, who has worked on risk management and Sarbanes Oxley compliance for major banks
Two former finance and political influence gods (Jon Corzine and Jamie Dimon) have tumbled back to earth. Yet, troublingly, the mythology that’s cowed the political establishment and the financial press for so long remains very much intact.
Read more...Yves here. Yasha Levine and Mark Ames have launched the S.H.A.M.E. Project, which stands for “Shame the Hacks who Abuse Media Ethics.” Its approach is to provide information about the background and funding sources of well-recognized journalists and pundits so that the public will be in a better position to recognize bias and hidden agendas in their reporting and analysis. You can find a S.H.A.M.E dossier on Gladwell here.
By Yasha Levine, President of S.H.A.M.E., an investigative journalist and a founding editor of The eXiled. His work has been published by Wired, The Nation, Slate, The New York Observer and many others. He has made several guest appearances on MSNBC’s Dylan Ratigan Show.
“I’m necessarily parasitic in a way. I have done well as a parasite. But I’m still a parasite.”
– Malcolm Gladwell
Yesterday, various news and financial sites picked up the release last Friday of a report by the Treasury’s Inspector General titled “SAFETY AND SOUNDNESS: OCC’s Supervision of National Bank’s Foreclosure Practices“. The media accounts are workman-like summaries with titles like “Bank oversight office failed to spot foreclosure fraud, Treasury inspector general says.”
The problem is that these various accounts are narrowly accurate (in that they summarize the report) but missed the real story.
Read more...Paul Krugman’s partisanship has become so shameless that we are giving him the inaugural Eric Schneiderman Decoy Award for his post “Things Fall Apart“. The Schneiderman Decoy Award goes for exceptional achievement in turning one’s good name over to particularly rancid Obama Administration initiatives.
Read more...As readers may know, a recent post, “Frontline’s Astonishing Whitewash of the Crisis,”discussed the first half of the Frontline series, “Money, Power & Wall Street.” Producers Mike Wiser and Martin Smith sent a letter taking issue with this review, and I made an exception to my usual practice and posted their missive.
The major dispute is over whether their series lets the financial services industry off too lightly.
Read more...strong>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. Cross posted from New Economic Perspectives.
To know the Washington Consensus as a regular citizen is to hate the Consensus.
Read more...I received this e-mail last week. I will issue my rebuttal Tuesday during the day. Check back in then!
Read more...Adam Davidson is moving up in the world. He has gone from fellating the 1% to the top 0.1%.
Read more...I got a message from a regular reader:
Read more...Several of my savviest readers wrote expressing disappointment and consternation with the Frontline series on the crisis, “Money, Power, and Wall Street.” The first two parts of the four part series have been released, and it’s probably safe to say that this program is far enough along to be beyond redemption.
Read more...In his role as the Lord Haw-Haw of yawning income disparity, Adam Davidson reports on the world of elite nannies in his latest New York Times piece, “The Best Nanny Money Can Buy.” Child caregivers perceived to be good enough for the superrich (which means they might need to possess other skills, like speaking Mandarin, cooking restaurnt-level meals, being able to ride and groom horses or sailing) make big bucks!
Read more...Paul Starobin has a useful article at Columbia Journalism Review on the way some high profile journalists receive large speaking fees for appearing before financial services industry audiences, most often conferences for investors, when they write about the same industry.
Read more...As Winston Churchill pointed out, history is written by the victors. The big end of finance, having won decisively in the global financial crisis, is in the process of rewriting history to suit its liking. The cover story in the current Atlantic by Roger Lowenstein on Ben Bernanke, titled simply, “The Hero,” is a classic example of this type of revisionist history.
Read more...Even though the odds are against the Democrats retaking the House of Representatives, the jockeying in case that event takes place is already underway. An effort is afoot to push aside the Democratic heir presumptive of the powerful House Financial Services leadership, Maxine Waters, and install the representative from the Upper East Side’s Silk Stocking district, Carolyn Maloney.
What’s striking about the effort to take down Waters is the thinly disguised racism.
Read more...I ducked out of the Atlantic Economy Summit to see Lauren Lyster of RT TV. We talked about the hot story of the day, the New York Times op-ed by departing Goldman executive director Greg Smith that decried what he saw as a deterioration in the firm’s values over his 12 year career.
Read more...