Get real, alex-tard! That tripe means absolutely nothing. These corporations have been disobeying the law, and should all be jailed and heavily fined. Please don't forget that GAO study between the years 1996-2000 which found that 61% of all American corporations paid NO FED TAXES - due mostly to the process of "profit laundering" in the Caymans and various other joints.
Now, that figure has risen to around, or over 73%. This "obligation to the shareholders" baloney is a nifty neocon mindless chant, but since so many of the American laws have been written - in a concentrated fashion over the previous 20 years - giving special privileges to corporations - and making almost everything illegal now for the citizens - such crapola doesn't cut it. Legalizing fraud don't make it right, doodette.....
Dood! Commodore64, guy! Ballmer, a nice guy? Ballmer, a real American?
Get real, dood!
Perhaps Mc$oft should move all there jobs to the SAME PLACE where they cause all those health and environmental problems, thus economically aiding those they are ALSO exploiting....
" If California's standard of living drops, then wages will drop,.."
HUH??? Cali is bankrupt, chump! Catch a clue --- those clowns keep voting the likes of Nixon, Reagan and now Schwarzenneger - vote the slime, catch the crime.....
Hacking (or blackjacking, to use the vernacular) cells has been in existence for quite awhile, with probably Thai coders taking the lead, with Chinese, Americans, Germans and Brits coming up from the rear.....
While you are technically correct, you are assuming that such a flaw was unknown. Similarly, when Micro$oft claims an error of their's was "by design" they are aware it was in actuality an error in software design.
If one goes back and reviews the Monetary Control Act of 1980, together with the Financial Services Modernization Act of 1999 (a k a the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act) and the Commodity Futures Modernization Act of 2000, one will note the overall plan: The FSMA allows for the creation of ultra-monopolies, while the CFMA kills oversight and allows for ultra-leveraging by those ultra-monopolies. And yes, there are conspiracies - conspiracies are the norm, at least to anyone who's bothered to read history.....
While I am not finding fault with your post, per se, I do think you are overcomplicating the situation, richg74: this is simply a reverse insurance risk pool, i.e., instead of spreading the risk across the greatest pool, the risk is being compounded to infinity (I'm stealing this phrase from others, etc.) - such that an infinite number of credit default swaps may be bought, created, etc., against one borrower, which dramatically skews the risk, not hedges against it. It is basically a fraud scheme, nothing anti-risk about it......
You are sooooo on target, Great Citizen Lumpy. As a kid, I won a newspaper-subscription selling contest many eons ago, with a trip to the NY World's Fair (circa 1964). There, I "accidentally" forgot to return to my group and "got lost" in the GM Futurama exhibit, a truly awesome experience for a technoid kid at that time. During that short time (I spent several nights there, hidden, of course) I became familiar with some outstanding project engineers and savored the delights of a future which could have been.
Sadly, that future we aren't existing in due to the ultra-greed factor which so prevails in our society today. Our technologies are simply incremental, resulting from the offshoots of the space program, with very little real innovation and invention resulting today - due to that prevailing greed factor and the disassembling of American society, economy and education.
I think we're safe as long as they refrain from injecting any brain cells into Britney Spears. Wasn't there a film about this, though? I think it was called The Mouse That Roared??
"We'll have to wait to see what innovations come out of this downturn to figure out what the next job boom will be."
Sorry, guy, but anyone who believes that: (a) this is a "downturn" and, (b) "innovations" will come out of this, is truly on some type of mind-altering drug, or has been existing in a cave for the previous years.
We are living through a possibly unique situation where Capitalism is dead. Our so-called NEWS might not have been covering reality (what with 5 corporations controlling the majority of our censored news in the USA, at least - globally it's around 6 major corps.), but reality is taking place regardless.....
Dood, these people are the FBI -- they know EVERYTHING (DCS 1000, plus gruvy software by number one intel contractor, S.A.I.C.). Also, I have the same false positives whenever I download porn, too......
"The Guardian, a paper that is further to the left than NPR,..."
And as a previous poster mentioned, it is indeed the product, not the delivery system, and NPR is most definitely a corporate McMedia outlet - seldom does one hear any real content, completely at variance with The Guardian, a fine newspaper. Now Fox, that's simply propaganda for the blithering idiot crowd, completely unworthy of any mention.>
In the USA, one becomes frustrated with the hopeles and mindless drivel of the moronic newsies who whine about the Zero-content newspapers going under --- who bothers to read such drivel? Counterpunch.org, economicpopulist.com, nakedcapitalism.com, globalresearch.ca, crytogon.com, btlonline,com, etc., etc., etc., provides the reality.....
Wolfram.....? Say, wasn't he the guy who published that book a year or two ago claiming he invented the universe???? Or was he the one on the Wheaties box???
Great advice, fm6, it's never smart to screw with any police personnel - given the history of brutal responses (sometimes justified) - together with past convictions of police as murderers (and remember, those are only the ones that caught).
Plus, they deal with douchebags all day long (and no one at/. is a douchebag, remember!) and aren't in a great mood to begin with.
Now for the tinfoil summary: there are police departments in some cities (I'm not suggesting this is one of them) which receive financial inducements dependent on the number of perps they send to jail - which in many cases are now private prisons. It is interesting to note who owns the most private prisons in the USA? Very interesting to trace the actual ownership of Prison Realty Corporation, etc. (Hint: same guys who brokered the deal for the WTC just prior to 9/11/01, and then received that Captive Insurance Fund from FEMA ($1 billion), which they structured as a hedge fund --- but I'm sure it's all just a COINICDENCE.)
Excellent point, Good Citizen commodore64_love, although the parent post (kdawson) appears to be unaware of Coporate American ownership by their remarks:
"French corporations and government are entangled in ways that Americans might find unfamiliar.":
I would suggest that she/he/it take a quick look at this article on coporate ownership of the American government.....
"That is really a huge blow to the reputation of Elsevier... of course they publish hundreds (thousands?) of journals, so in absolute terms maybe it is not that big a deal,.."
I would respectfully disagree. I believe LexisNexis is their American subsidiary, therefore EVERYTHING about LexisNexis is now suspect.
Which branch of the military did you serve in? Are you clueless as to the number of military veterans with highly-rated military specialties and advanced education who don't believe in those flimsy Bush conspiracies? Ever read any actual books lately?
Have problems with arithmetic? Don't need to bother about high school physics - obviously weren't up to that.....
Read the following books then get back to me, dood: Family of Secrets, by Russ Baker --- Brothers, by David Talbot --- JFK and the Unspeakable, by James W. Douglas --- Other People's Money, by Nomi Prins --- Hot Money and the Politics of Debt, by R. T. Naylor --- John Kenneth Galbraith, His Life, His Politics, His Economics, by Richard Parker
"The problem wasn't the securitization of mortgages itself. The problem was that financial institutions borrowed money to buy more mortgage securities than they had in available cash, creating an insatiable demand for securitized mortgages."
Forgive my negative response, but I'm afraid P(etroleum)B(roadcasting)S(system) got it wrong, but is still propagandizing correctly. The problem was indeed the securitization of mortgages - which created an enormous number of hyper-leveraged financial products, from one original and often shaky financial instrument - thus incredibly increasing the amounts brokers, and banks and investment houses, and insurance companies (and combinations of all three institutions) earned, again and again and again. The entire point of Credit Default Swaps (CDS) and credit derivatives is super-leveraging while compounding risk to infinity. The problem is the credit derivative - and its various subcategories - which create super- and ultra-leveraging - which allows for a small number to illegitimately become billionaires at the expense of the rest of us - because that super-leveraging then becomes super- and ultr-deleveraging!
It doesn't matter whether or not you can understand it, what matters is that it occurs - there is a colossal transfer of wealth - and the rest of us honest types are royally screwed!
"First, moving a company offshore and utilizing legal tax provisions is hardly the moral equivalent of shoving people in ovens or eating them."
Negative - destroying the tax base (the vast majority of corporations pay no federal taxes - per GAO studies, and numerous other independent studies - and thereby account for 7% or less than the federal revenue tax base), while dramatically spreading poverty with their credit derivatives' scams is indeed comparable.
Suggesting mark-to-market is unrealistic - when all it does is establish fair market value is a nonsensical comeback - and suggesting there is governmental control over the banks, when the reality is that the banksters exert control over the government (note the recent Senate vote on cram down, plus everything else voted on) is either completely dishonest or completely ignorant.
Suggest you peruse this article then next follow it with this article and perhaps then you will be a bit more educated on the matters at hand.
"And actually, the evil businesses he is targeting are not cheats. They followed the law to the letter. Blame congress for leaving the loop holes."
Holy Mother of Godzilla, dood, what pharmaceuticals have you been imbibing? During WWII in Nazi Germany, stuffing people into ovens was "legal" - but amoral! During Idie Amin's reign, cannibalizing his ex-mistresses was "legal" but amoral! The Israeli treatment of Palestinians is "legal" - but amoral! The imprisoning of marijuana smokers is "legal" in America (and no, I've never taken any drugs, nor smoked, for that matter) - but amoral!
And colossal fraud on an unprecedented level has been "legalized" in America (along with usury - once highly illegal) - but it is amoral.
Dwell on this: 16 of the top banks in the USA are insolvent, yet those bankers and senior management affiliated with them became millionaires, billionaires, and in some cases, trillionaires -- now where do you suppose all that mulloh disappeared to???
A GAO study of American corporations found that between 1996 and 2000 61% of them paid NO taxes....and during the Bush administration that percentage went up considerably!
Slashdot Mirror
Now, that figure has risen to around, or over 73%. This "obligation to the shareholders" baloney is a nifty neocon mindless chant, but since so many of the American laws have been written - in a concentrated fashion over the previous 20 years - giving special privileges to corporations - and making almost everything illegal now for the citizens - such crapola doesn't cut it. Legalizing fraud don't make it right, doodette.....
Get real, dood!
Perhaps Mc$oft should move all there jobs to the SAME PLACE where they cause all those health and environmental problems, thus economically aiding those they are ALSO exploiting....
" If California's standard of living drops, then wages will drop,.."
HUH??? Cali is bankrupt, chump! Catch a clue --- those clowns keep voting the likes of Nixon, Reagan and now Schwarzenneger - vote the slime, catch the crime.....
Hacking (or blackjacking, to use the vernacular) cells has been in existence for quite awhile, with probably Thai coders taking the lead, with Chinese, Americans, Germans and Brits coming up from the rear.....
While you are technically correct, you are assuming that such a flaw was unknown. Similarly, when Micro$oft claims an error of their's was "by design" they are aware it was in actuality an error in software design.
If one goes back and reviews the Monetary Control Act of 1980, together with the Financial Services Modernization Act of 1999 (a k a the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act) and the Commodity Futures Modernization Act of 2000, one will note the overall plan: The FSMA allows for the creation of ultra-monopolies, while the CFMA kills oversight and allows for ultra-leveraging by those ultra-monopolies. And yes, there are conspiracies - conspiracies are the norm, at least to anyone who's bothered to read history.....
While I am not finding fault with your post, per se, I do think you are overcomplicating the situation, richg74: this is simply a reverse insurance risk pool, i.e., instead of spreading the risk across the greatest pool, the risk is being compounded to infinity (I'm stealing this phrase from others, etc.) - such that an infinite number of credit default swaps may be bought, created, etc., against one borrower, which dramatically skews the risk, not hedges against it. It is basically a fraud scheme, nothing anti-risk about it......
Sadly, that future we aren't existing in due to the ultra-greed factor which so prevails in our society today. Our technologies are simply incremental, resulting from the offshoots of the space program, with very little real innovation and invention resulting today - due to that prevailing greed factor and the disassembling of American society, economy and education.
I think we're safe as long as they refrain from injecting any brain cells into Britney Spears. Wasn't there a film about this, though? I think it was called The Mouse That Roared??
Because of such wondrous appointments as: Geithner, Summers, Shapiro, Altman, et al.........
Sorry, guy, but anyone who believes that: (a) this is a "downturn" and, (b) "innovations" will come out of this, is truly on some type of mind-altering drug, or has been existing in a cave for the previous years.
We are living through a possibly unique situation where Capitalism is dead. Our so-called NEWS might not have been covering reality (what with 5 corporations controlling the majority of our censored news in the USA, at least - globally it's around 6 major corps.), but reality is taking place regardless.....
Dood, these people are the FBI -- they know EVERYTHING (DCS 1000, plus gruvy software by number one intel contractor, S.A.I.C.). Also, I have the same false positives whenever I download porn, too......
You said it, Good Citizen anaesthetica:
"The Guardian, a paper that is further to the left than NPR,..."
And as a previous poster mentioned, it is indeed the product, not the delivery system, and NPR is most definitely a corporate McMedia outlet - seldom does one hear any real content, completely at variance with The Guardian, a fine newspaper. Now Fox, that's simply propaganda for the blithering idiot crowd, completely unworthy of any mention.>
In the USA, one becomes frustrated with the hopeles and mindless drivel of the moronic newsies who whine about the Zero-content newspapers going under --- who bothers to read such drivel? Counterpunch.org, economicpopulist.com, nakedcapitalism.com, globalresearch.ca, crytogon.com, btlonline,com, etc., etc., etc., provides the reality.....
Wolfram.....? Say, wasn't he the guy who published that book a year or two ago claiming he invented the universe???? Or was he the one on the Wheaties box???
Good Citizen, David Gerard, your post cannot be improved upon - BRAVO!
Naaah....you should get modded as a troillet....
Plus, they deal with douchebags all day long (and no one at /. is a douchebag, remember!) and aren't in a great mood to begin with.
Now for the tinfoil summary: there are police departments in some cities (I'm not suggesting this is one of them) which receive financial inducements dependent on the number of perps they send to jail - which in many cases are now private prisons. It is interesting to note who owns the most private prisons in the USA? Very interesting to trace the actual ownership of Prison Realty Corporation, etc. (Hint: same guys who brokered the deal for the WTC just prior to 9/11/01, and then received that Captive Insurance Fund from FEMA ($1 billion), which they structured as a hedge fund --- but I'm sure it's all just a COINICDENCE.)
And now a word about our economy
"Corporations are a danger to liberty only if they control politicians and get laws changed against liberty."
He must not have read this report nor this wonderful letter with the accompanying corp slimes listing....
"French corporations and government are entangled in ways that Americans might find unfamiliar.":
I would suggest that she/he/it take a quick look at this article on coporate ownership of the American government.....
I would respectfully disagree. I believe LexisNexis is their American subsidiary, therefore EVERYTHING about LexisNexis is now suspect.
Why, in my day we had to battle giant spiders on our way to school......
War is Peace ..... Poverty is Wealth..... Insolvent banks are healthy banks
Which branch of the military did you serve in? Are you clueless as to the number of military veterans with highly-rated military specialties and advanced education who don't believe in those flimsy Bush conspiracies? Ever read any actual books lately?
Have problems with arithmetic? Don't need to bother about high school physics - obviously weren't up to that.....
Read the following books then get back to me, dood: Family of Secrets, by Russ Baker --- Brothers, by David Talbot --- JFK and the Unspeakable, by James W. Douglas --- Other People's Money, by Nomi Prins --- Hot Money and the Politics of Debt, by R. T. Naylor --- John Kenneth Galbraith, His Life, His Politics, His Economics, by Richard Parker
Forgive my negative response, but I'm afraid P(etroleum)B(roadcasting)S(system) got it wrong, but is still propagandizing correctly. The problem was indeed the securitization of mortgages - which created an enormous number of hyper-leveraged financial products, from one original and often shaky financial instrument - thus incredibly increasing the amounts brokers, and banks and investment houses, and insurance companies (and combinations of all three institutions) earned, again and again and again. The entire point of Credit Default Swaps (CDS) and credit derivatives is super-leveraging while compounding risk to infinity. The problem is the credit derivative - and its various subcategories - which create super- and ultra-leveraging - which allows for a small number to illegitimately become billionaires at the expense of the rest of us - because that super-leveraging then becomes super- and ultr-deleveraging!
It doesn't matter whether or not you can understand it, what matters is that it occurs - there is a colossal transfer of wealth - and the rest of us honest types are royally screwed!
Negative - destroying the tax base (the vast majority of corporations pay no federal taxes - per GAO studies, and numerous other independent studies - and thereby account for 7% or less than the federal revenue tax base), while dramatically spreading poverty with their credit derivatives' scams is indeed comparable.
Suggesting mark-to-market is unrealistic - when all it does is establish fair market value is a nonsensical comeback - and suggesting there is governmental control over the banks, when the reality is that the banksters exert control over the government (note the recent Senate vote on cram down, plus everything else voted on) is either completely dishonest or completely ignorant.
Suggest you peruse this article then next follow it with this article and perhaps then you will be a bit more educated on the matters at hand.
Holy Mother of Godzilla, dood, what pharmaceuticals have you been imbibing? During WWII in Nazi Germany, stuffing people into ovens was "legal" - but amoral! During Idie Amin's reign, cannibalizing his ex-mistresses was "legal" but amoral! The Israeli treatment of Palestinians is "legal" - but amoral! The imprisoning of marijuana smokers is "legal" in America (and no, I've never taken any drugs, nor smoked, for that matter) - but amoral!
And colossal fraud on an unprecedented level has been "legalized" in America (along with usury - once highly illegal) - but it is amoral.
Dwell on this: 16 of the top banks in the USA are insolvent, yet those bankers and senior management affiliated with them became millionaires, billionaires, and in some cases, trillionaires -- now where do you suppose all that mulloh disappeared to???
A GAO study of American corporations found that between 1996 and 2000 61% of them paid NO taxes....and during the Bush administration that percentage went up considerably!