Post Tagged with: "law"
Government coercion in the financial blogosphere
I must be incredibly sleep-deprived because my last post overlooked a critical case in the financial blogosphere where the same issues of blogging and government coercion are at issue. I completely forgot that the Implode-o-Meter sites are taking an enormous hit right now because of their coverage on the housing bubble. You may recall, back
Blogging and the tyranny of government
Michael Arrington, a prolific blogger in the Tech community, has written a thoughtful piece on bloggers’ right/duty to protect confidential sources in the face of government pressure to do otherwise. I’d like to post a portion of that article here and ask you what you think of his arguments. He says: Last week two bloggers,
‘I’m going to shop around and find a rip-off bank that works for me’
Cynical? Yes. Spot on? Of course. This is what happens when government stops trying to defend consumer interests for the benefit of business interests. Source ‘I’m going to shop around and find a rip-off bank that works for me’ – Kipper Williams, Guardian See also OFT gives up unfair bank charges fight and OFT drops
Bernie Madoff is seen as a ‘godfather’ to fellow inmates
Today is the first anniversary of Bernie Madoff’s scam of the century which defrauded investors out of tens of billions. The former fund manager and head of NASDAQ who ran the world’s largest ever financial fraud seems to be a hit in prison though. See videos below. Update: these two articles touch on the same
A reminder about eminent domain and government power
Last week after the Thanksgiving holidays, the Supreme Court started to hear oral arguments in Stop the Beach Renourishment v. Florida Dep’t of Environmental Protection, a case of eminent domain. This is the biggest case since the court extended the use of eminent domain in the landmark Kelo v. City of New London case in
New York to use eminent domain to build a basketball stadium
The New York State Court of Appeals has ruled that the Atlantic Yards basketball project can go forward as planned, dislocating the residents in the Brooklyn, NY area where the stadium is to be built. In essence, the decision means the state can evict you from your own home, seize your property, and give you
Citibank Belgium to pay ‘duped’ savers 128mn for bad Lehman deal
This is my translation of a Dutch-language article which appeared today in Belgian daily De Tijd. Let’s see if this news is picked up in the U.S. Citibank Belgium never should have recommended the controversial Lehman Brothers investments to its customers. So states the writ of the Brussels public prosecutor on the case. The collapse
What are the legal rights of lenders and homeowners in foreclosure?
After I published the recent story on the case against servicing agent MERS in the Kansas Supreme court, I noticed a lot of chatter about some mortgage servicing line items in Wells Fargo’s earnings report. So I wanted to quote a few blurbs from the Kansas Appeals Court and Supreme Court decisions as background for
Why mortgages aren’t modified and what a ruling stopping foreclosures means
In August, the Kansas Supreme Court issued a ruling against a mortgage tracking service which may prove very costly to banks in foreclosure, leading to massive writedowns. It could be a life saver for many trapped in the foreclosure process. The case goes to the core of the functioning of massive markets in securitization and
Nationalized Citi Mexicana Redux
Back in March when the US Government felt compelled to bail out out Citigroup, Tracy Alloway over at FT Alphaville noticed a curious thing – Citigroup had effectively been nationalized. No, they were not seized by government, but Citi was controlled by government. The Feds had 36% of shares outstanding, which in many cases is
Divorcing and re-marrying to collect a pension
In my recent post on greed, I wrote about how for the last generation corporations have been trying to get out of as many of their expensive obligations to workers as they can reasonably get away with. The list of obligations includes but is not limited to pensions, health care and job security. One can
Obama to re-authorise three provisions of Patriot Act
After the arrest of suspects based in Colorado and New York in an alleged ‘varsity level’ terrorist plot, the spectre of terrorism in the United States has re-emerged as an issue, one that also has economic overtones because of the fragility of recovery. President Obama is following his predecessor George W. Bush in restricting civil