NewsTrust - Corruption - Most Recent Stories: Opinion (Mainstream)

Bain Capital and our screwed-up culture

Sat, 26 May 2012 00:00:00 -0700

Seattle Times - By Fromma Harrop - May. 26 (Opinion) - The problem is not the profession. It's what one does in the course of business. But even among those intent on making it big, people with a conscience will not cross certain lines. Bain blew across them.

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Why Obama's JOBS Act Couldn't Suck Worse

Wed, 11 Apr 2012 00:00:00 -0700

Rolling Stone - By Matt Taibbi - Apr. 11 (Opinion) - The "Jumpstart Our Business Startups Act" (in addition to everything else, the Act has an annoying, redundant title) will very nearly legalize fraud in the stock market. In fact, one could say this law is not just a sweeping piece of deregulation that will have an increase in securities fraud as an accidental, ancillary consequence. No, this law actually appears to have been specifically written to encourage fraud in the stock markets.

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Income inequality does matter

Tue, 27 Mar 2012 00:00:00 -0700

USA Today - By Philip Meyer - Mar. 27 (Opinion) - Despite its emergence as a concern in the 2012 presidential campaign, the issue of income inequality does not bother most of us. Maybe we haven't thought about it enough. A recent Gallup Poll found that only 46% believe it "extremely important" or "very important" for the federal government to enact policies that would reduce the gap between rich and poor.

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The Good, Bad and Ugly of Capitalism

Sat, 17 Mar 2012 00:00:00 -0700

New York Times - By Joe Nocera - Mar. 17 (Opinion) - Goldman Sachs displayed one side of capitalism this week that seemed to strike a chord with many. Starbucks is displaying a different side.

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Why Wall Street Should Stop Whining

Fri, 10 Feb 2012 00:00:00 -0800

Rolling Stone - By Matt Taibbi - Feb. 10 (Opinion) - When I read things like this I'm simultaneously amazed by two things. The first is the unbelievable tone-deafness of people who would complain out loud, during a time when millions of people around the country are literally losing their homes, that their bonuses - not their total compensation, mind you, but just their cash bonuses, paid in addition to their salaries and their stock packages - are barely enough to cover the mortgage payments for their new condos, the taxis they take when walking is too burdensome, and their girlfriends with expensive tastes. The second thing that amazes me is that Sherman is buying all this.

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SEC No Evil

Fri, 19 Aug 2011 00:00:00 -0700

Countdown - By Keith Olbermann, Matt Taibbi - Aug. 19 (Interview) - 'In this 'Countdown' exclusive interview, Keith sits down with Rolling Stone contributing editor Matt Taibbi to discuss breaking the story about the Securities and Exchange Commission destroying the records of promising cases in the years leading up to the financial meltdown.'

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For lesson in shared sacrifice, send Congress to boot camp

Tue, 02 Aug 2011 00:00:00 -0700

CNN - By Russel L Honore - Aug. 02 (Editorial) - Like most veterans, the men and women who have worn our nation's uniform to defend this country, I am furious with and disappointed in the state of indecision that plagued Washington these past few weeks. Whether or not to raise the debt ceiling so our country can continue to pay our bills and maintain our global credit rating didn't seem like such a difficult decision.

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Cameron, Coulson and the press: The irony of the prime minister's predicament

Sun, 10 Jul 2011 00:00:00 -0700

Economist - Jul. 10 (Editorial) - Almost all prime ministers have a kind of moral half-life; their personal credibility starts off strong and then declines incrementally in office as they are buffeted by scandals and misjudgements. Gordon Brown is the only recent example of a prime minister who lost his moral authority in one go; the snap election fiasco in effect doomed his premiership after just a few months in office. I believe that, although Coulson-gate is the gravest moment of David Cameron's career (and could get worse), it still falls into the first category of prime ministerial crisis. It is an event that will sap his personal credibility, and therefore popular appeal, but it is not enough by itself to remove that credibility entirely and irrevocably. It is more like Tony Blair's tobacco-advertising scandal in 1997 than Mr Brown's botched flirtation with an early election a decade later. (The caveat is that we do not know where this story is going; there may yet be revelations that make the crisis more wounding for the prime minister.) The great irony of Mr Cameron's predicament is that he has managed to get himself embroiled in a crisis concerning something he has never really cared about: newspapers. It is an open secret in Westminster that the prime minister believes the influence wielded by print media is vastly overrated. If you want to reach and move voters, he reckons, television is the medium that matters.

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Noam Chomsky denounces old friend Hugo Chávez for 'assault' on democracy

Sun, 03 Jul 2011 00:00:00 -0700

The Guardian - By Rory Carroll - Jul. 03 (Opinion) - Renowned American intellectual accuses the Venezuelan leader of concentrating too much power in his own hands Hugo Chávez has long considered Noam Chomsky one of his best friends in the west. He has basked in the renowned scholar's praise for Venezuela's socialist revolution and echoed his denunciations of US imperialism. Venezuela's president, who hasrevealed that he has had surgery in Cuba to remove a cancerous tumour, turned one of Chomsky's books into an overnight bestseller after brandishing it during a UN speech. He hosted Chomsky in Caracas with smiles and pomp. Earlier this year Chávez even suggested Washington make Chomsky the US ambassador to Venezuela. The president may be about to have second thoughts about that, because his favourite intellectual has now turned his guns on Chávez. Speaking to the Observer last week, Chomsky has accused the socialist leader of amassing too much power and of making an "assault" on Venezuela's democracy. "Concentration of executive power, ...

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Goldman Sachs Executives Lied To Their Customers And Congress

Tue, 17 May 2011 00:00:00 -0700

Rolling Stone - By Henry Blodget, Matt Taibbi - May. 17 (Interview) - Taibbi argues that Goldman Sachs executives lied when they testified in front of Congress in the aftermath of the crisis. Unlike other commentators who grouse about how Wall Street execs should be tossed in jail, Taibbi actually provides specifics. He takes quotes from some of the Goldman execs who testified, including CEO Lloyd Blankfein and CFO David Viniar, and then juxtaposes them with what he believes to be the truth at the time.

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The People vs. Goldman Sachs

Fri, 13 May 2011 00:00:00 -0700

Rolling Stone - By Matt Taibbi - May. 13 (Editorial) - To recap: Goldman, to get $1.2 billion in crap off its books, dumps a huge lot of deadly mortgages on its clients, lies about where that crap came from and claims it believes in the product even as it's betting $2 billion against it. When its victims try to run out of the burning house, Goldman stands in the doorway, blasts them all with gasoline before they can escape, and then has the balls to send a bill overcharging its victims for the pleasure of getting fried.

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Liberty University sure is skilled at sucking on the government teat

Wed, 06 Apr 2011 00:00:00 -0700

ScienceBlogs.com - By PZ Myers - Apr. 06 (Opinion) - Liberty University gets half a billion dollars a year in federal aid.

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Another Inside Job

Mon, 14 Mar 2011 00:00:00 -0700

New York Times - By Paul Krugman - Mar. 14 (Opinion) - The rich are different from you and me: when they break the law, it’s the prosecutors who find themselves on trial.

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Shock Doctrine, U.S.A.

Sat, 26 Feb 2011 00:00:00 -0800

New York Times - By Paul Krugman - Feb. 26 (Opinion) - Here's a thought: maybe Madison, Wis., isn't Cairo after all. Maybe it's Baghdad — specifically, Baghdad in 2003, when the Bush administration put Iraq under the rule of officials chosen for loyalty and political reliability rather than experience and competence.

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The Crying Shame of John Boehner

Thu, 06 Jan 2011 00:00:00 -0800

Rolling Stone - By Matt Taibbi - Jan. 06 (Opinion) - John Boehner is the ultimate Beltway hack, a man whose unmatched and self-serving skill at political survival has made him, after two decades in Washington, the hairy blue mold on the American congressional sandwich. The biographer who somewhere down the line tackles the question of Boehner's legacy will do well to simply throw out any references to party affiliation, because the thing that has made Boehner who he is — the thing that has finally lifted him to the apex of legislative power in America — has almost nothing to do with his being a Republican.

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The Bipartisanship Racket

Sun, 19 Dec 2010 00:00:00 -0800

New York Times - By Frank Rich - Dec. 19 (Opinion) - 'JEEZ, can't we all just get along? Can't we be civilized? Can't we reach across the aisle, find common ground and get things done? Can't we have a new Morning in America as clubby and chipper as MSNBC's daily gabfest, 'Morning Joe'?'

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The rigged, revolving door: Our Peter Orszag problem

Thu, 16 Dec 2010 00:00:00 -0800

Economist - Dec. 16 (Opinion) - Progressives laudably seek to oppose injustice by deploying government power as a countervailing force against the imagined opressive and exploitative tendencies of market institutions. Yet it seems that time and again market institutions find ways to use the government's regulatory and insurer-of-last-resort functions as countervailing forces against their competitors and, in the end, against the very public these functions were meant to protect.

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The secret Wall Street bailout

Sun, 12 Dec 2010 00:00:00 -0800

Aljazeera - By Danny Schechter - Dec. 12 (Opinion) - Wall Street: master of puppets The myth that the media continues to truck in, is that somehow the Congress and the President are in charge of the economy. They aren't. Wall Street and the corporate world are clearly running the show, with little restraint so far, effective oversight or regulation. Back to Degraw: "The Federal Reserve was secretly throwing around our money in unprecedented fashion, and it wasn’t just to the usual suspects like Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan, Citigroup, Bank of America, etc.; it was to the entire Global Banking Cartel. To central banks throughout the world: Australia, Denmark, Japan, Mexico, Norway, South Korea, Sweden, Switzerland, England… To the Fed’s foreign primary dealers like Credit Suisse (Switzerland), Deutsche Bank (Germany), Royal Bank of Scotland (UK), Barclays (UK), BNP Paribas (France)… All their Ponzi players were 'gifted.' All the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organisations got their cut."

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Russia on trial

Mon, 08 Nov 2010 00:00:00 -0800

Washington Post - By Jackson Diehl - Nov. 08 (Opinion) - Russia's tradition of autocracy has always been matched by that of the suffering, ascetic dissident who speaks truth to power. In the modern era there was Solzhenitsyn. There were Sharansky and Sakharov. And now, somewhat improbably, comes Mikhail Khodorkovsky. Unlike his recent predecessors, Khodorkovsky is not a great writer or a human rights activist. He is an entrepreneur who played by the rough rules of Russia's immediate post-Soviet era. "I am not at all an ideal man," he says. And yet, thanks to Vladimir Putin and Dmitry Medvedev, he has become his country's latest moral champion.

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Peddling politics in America

Sat, 30 Oct 2010 00:00:00 -0700

Aljazeera - By Danny Schechter - Oct. 30 (Opinion) - Midterm contributions soar to record levels in 2010, a sign that the US campaign finance system is tainted as ever.

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Mountains of money on nasty ads: How the wealthy wage class war

Mon, 11 Oct 2010 00:00:00 -0700

Seattle Times - By E. J. Dionne - Oct. 11 (Opinion) - An election-year spending spree (facilitated by the U.S. Supreme Court) has produced a strange development. While President Obama has been working overtime to save capitalism, corporations are pouring tens of millions of dollars into attack ads aimed almost exclusively at Democrats.

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Blagojevich and Legal Bribery

Tue, 17 Aug 2010 00:00:00 -0700

New York Times - By Scott Turow - Aug. 17 (Opinion) - i suspect the jury's indecision might have been a reaction at some level to the hypocritical mess our campaign financing system has become....

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This crime was a symptom of a wider sickness in the police

Thu, 15 Jul 2010 00:00:00 -0700

The Independent - By Tracie Washington - Jul. 15 (Opinion) - These charges have been a long time coming. I was in New Orleans throughout the floods and in the days after, and I still remember the sense that something had gone amiss when we first heard of the incident on Danziger Bridge, the way our anger grew.

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Corruption fight begins at home

Fri, 25 Jun 2010 00:00:00 -0700

Boston Globe - By Garry Emmons - Jun. 25 (Opinion) - DURING THE G8/G20 summits that begin today in Canada, the global economy and international development will be topics of earnest discussion. Lurking at the margins of this polite conversation will be the skunk at the garden party: corruption.

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Why Bad Guys Matter

Tue, 22 Jun 2010 00:00:00 -0700

Foreign Policy - By Paul Collier - Jun. 22 (Opinion) - Leaders matter, for better or, more likely, for worse. Sure, some of Asia's "benign" autocrats have turned their ambitions to building strong national economies. But not in Africa and many of the other countries that I call the bottom billion -- quite a number of which crowd the upper reaches of the Failed States Index. There, the most common form of autocracy is anything but benign. These leaders not only neglect to build the economy, they actively avoid doing so. The best-known instance is President Mobutu Sese Seko's order to "build no roads" in the vast country then known as Zaire. Why? Because without roads, it was harder for opponents to organize a rebellion against him.

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