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Tuesday, April 22, 2014
Repeal of Glass-Steagall and the Too Big To Fail Culture
During the 1990’s the conventional economic wisdom supported the repeal of Glass-Steagall. However, " 10 years later, the end of Glass-Steagall has been blamed by some for many of the problems that led to last fall’s (2008) financial
crisis. While the majority of problems that occurred centered mostly on the pure-play investment banks like Lehman Brothers, the huge banks born out of the revocation of Glass-Steagall, especially Citigroup, and the insurance companies that were allowed to deal in securities, like the American International Group, would not have run into trouble had the law still been in place."
Tuesday, April 15, 2014
High-Frequency Insider Trading
No one has ever claimed that the financial markets are a level playing field. Equities, bonds,
currencies, options and futures are not arenas that operate by equivalent standards for all parties. Great fortunes were built
not by chance, but on superior information, known to the few. Professional traders are not risk gamblers, but operate on the
premise of special advantage. Through advance and proprietary techniques that reduce exposure hazards and provide exclusive
head start triggers, which virtually guarantee profits, the elite firms dominate Wall Street.
Tuesday, April 8, 2014
Corporate Profits and Tax Loopholes
Record US corporate profits are the beneficiary of easy money, near zero interest rates and monopolist aided government tax policies. The upward
surge in earnings since the depths of the financial collapse proves one incontrovertible fact; namely, tax regulations, implemented
to aid favorite companies, is the operational model of the corporatist economy. Americans for tax fairness for 2013 report
on 10 Companies and Their Tax Loopholes. Included in this examination on Bank of America, Citigroup, ExxonMobil, FedEx, General Electric, Honeywell, Merck, Microsoft,
Pfizer and Verizon, indicated "corporations have stepped into the fray with some of the most aggressive lobbying we’ve
seen in years – calling for cuts to corporate tax rates, a widening of offshore tax loopholes."
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