Category Archives: Corruption
Whistle While You Work
Bloomberg reports Solyndra’s boarded up factory was lavish and spa-like, complete with whistling robots.
Walk the Walk
Wall Street wasn’t an innocent bystander but Gretchen Morgenson and Joshua Rosner pin the blame for the financial meltdown on Fannie Mae in their book Reckless Endangerment. They say Fannie head, James Johnson figured out how to monetize the outfit’s government backing.
Under Johnson, an important Democratic operative, Fannie Mae became, Morgenson and Rosner say, “the largest and most powerful financial institution in the world.” Its power derived from the unstated certainty that the government would be ultimately liable for Fannie’s obligations. This assumption and other perquisites were subsidies to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac worth an estimated $7 billion a year. They retained about a third of this.
Morgenson and Rosner report that in 1998, when Fannie Mae’s lending hit $1 trillion, its top officials began manipulating the company’s results to generate bonuses for themselves. That year Johnson’s $1.9 million bonus brought his compensation to $21 million. In nine years, Johnson received $100 million.
Fannie Mae’s political machine dispensed campaign contributions, gave jobs to friends and relatives of legislators, hired armies of lobbyists (even paying lobbyists not to lobby against it), paid academics who wrote papers validating the homeownership mania, and spread “charitable” contributions to housing advocates across the congressional map.
Tear Down That Wall
There was something for everyone in Obama’s speech last week – a new brand for Israel, 1967 Classic, and a new work ethic for the rest of the Mideast.
Bobbing along with the president’s verbal flotsam of Egyptian debt relief, enterprise funds, and IMF / World Bank schemes was this proclamation:
“Prosperity also requires tearing down walls that stand in the way of progress -– the corruption of elites who steal from their people; the red tape that stops an idea from becoming a business;”
Doc Fix
Baby Doc showed up in Haiti without a passport. Seems he’s down to his last $6 million, and that’s frozen in a Swiss bank account. Former Georgia congressman Bob Barr feels his pain, “He’s a man that cares very deeply about his country. He’s hurt deeply as we are when we see the devastation and utter waste of money, U.S. taxpayer money.”
The Indians got More for Manhattan
Five Ohio State football players have been suspended for the first 5 games of next season but not for the upcoming Sugar Bowl. Their offense was to trade championship rings and trinkets for tattoos.
It was tough to decide which target to fire a cartoon at. NCAA greed and hypocrisy for suspending the players, but not until after the big money Sugar Bowl? NCAA greed and hypocrisy for claiming control over the right of free people to exchange their personal property? The stupidity of the players?
It was a tough call, but I went with NCAA greed and hypocrisy number 2.
