Tag Archives: Crony Capitalism

U.S. Deal With JPMorgan Followed a Crucial Call To Justice Department

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“On Sept. 24, four hours before the Justice Department was planning to hold a news conference to announce civil charges against the bank over its sale of troubled mortgage investments, Mr. Dimon personally called one of Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr.’s top lieutenants to reopen settlement talks, people briefed on the talks said. The rare outreach from a Wall Street C.E.O. scuttled the news conference and set in motion weeks of negotiations that have culminated in a tentative $13 billion deal.  An account of the negotiations pulls back a curtain on the private wrangling to illuminate how the bank and the government managed to negotiate what would be a record deal.”

http://dealbook.nytimes.com/2013/10/20/u-s-deal-with-jpmorgan-spurred-by-a-phone-call/?_r=0

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Alexis Breaks Down The $13 Billion Chase Settlement

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“Today, we’ll be talking about the Department of Justice’s proposed settlement with JP Morgan Chase for $13 Billion.  This settlement is about making a number of open investigations and lawsuits go away. Now the good news is the settlement does NOT immunize JPMorgan from future criminal charges, but you should know that Jamie Dimon, the CEO of JPMorgan Chase has been getting really cozy with US Attorney General Eric Holder. He’s been hacing personal phone calls with Holder and staff at the Justice Department since as early as July, negotiating his own settlement, as the NYTimes reported.”

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Senator Diane Feinstein’s Husband Selling Post Offices to Cronies, Cheap

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“The husband of powerful Senator Diane Feinstein, Richard Blum, is feeding at the Postal Service privatization trough. Blum is the chairman of C.B. Richard Ellis (CBRE) which has the exclusive contract to handle sales for the Post Office’s $85 billion of property.  CBRE is tasked with selling properties at market value or higher. But who determines what market value is? CBRE. So the fox is officially running the henhouse.  [Investigators] filed a FOIA to try to obtain the appraisals. The Post Office refused, with the intelligence-insulting excuse that the appraisals were commercially sensitive and were comparable to national security secrets.”

http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2013/09/senator-diane-feinsteins-husband-selling-post-offices-to-cronies-on-the-cheap.html

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Democrats and Republicans Have Joined Forces Against You

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“The hidden consensus amongst the U.S. political elite on matters of national security is a matter worthy of detailed investigation and reporting. So is their consensus on the failed drug war, mass incarcerations, asset forfeiture and many other matters. What are we to make of the fact that Senator Feinstein’s husband, Richard C. Blum, is heavily invested in EG&G Technical Services – a leading contractor to the federal defense and intelligence sectors? Or that congressman Mike Rogers (R-MI), chairman of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, has received almost half a million dollars in campaign contributions from defense contractors – despite having no serious challengers?”

http://thesovereigninvestor.com/2013/11/05/democrats-republicans-joined-forces/

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Japan Fukushima panel proposals include Tepco breakup

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“The task force of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe‘s Liberal Democratic Party favors reorganizing Tokyo Electric, known as Tepco, by creating a unit within the company to handle the key functions of decommissioning the reactors and cleaning up massive amounts of toxic water, the source said.  The panel will also list the options of breaking that unit off from the listed utility giant or hiving it off as a government-affiliated independent administrative agency, the source said. The amount of taxpayer money to be spent on Fukushima is a matter of fierce debate. An existing special tax for reconstruction from the 2011 earthquake and tsunami that wrecked the Fukushima facility will not be enough.”

http://www.independent.ie/world-news/asia-pacific/japan-fukushima-panel-proposals-include-tepco-breakup-source-29711221.html

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Government claims small gold miners won’t be affected by mercury ban

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“The phasing out and eventual banning of mercury, which is expected to take effect in 2022, will not have a severe impact on small miners and their operations.  This is according to Natural Resources and Environment Minister Robert Persaud. Prior to the signing, local small miners had been nervous about plans to ban the dangerous chemical, stating that there is no immediate and cheaper way to recover gold for its ore. However, he posited that the government did not see the ban having any impact on the mining sector, highlighting that it can only lead to positive benefits for the economy. This approach has been supported by the Guyana Gold and Diamond Miners’ Association.”

http://www.guyanatimesgy.com/?p=35312

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IRS to Protect Computer System Modernization From Budget Cuts [2011]

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“The plan suffered expensive glitches a decade ago and so far has cost $3.7 billion. Contractors on the project include Computer Sciences Corp. (CSC), based in Falls Church, Virginia; New York-based Deloitte Consulting LLP; andLockheed Martin Corp. (LMT), based in Bethesda, Maryland, according to Bloomberg Government data. The heart of the modernization effort involves building a database, known internally as CADE2 and projected to cost at least $1.3 billion through 2024. So far, the IRS has spent about $172 million on what some in the Government Accountability Office and the tax agency call a crown-jewel database, with $66 million going to CSC.”

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-06-24/irs-chief-tries-to-protect-crown-jewel-computer-system-from-budget-cuts.html

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How the Air Force blew $1 billion on a dud system [2012]

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“The Air Force’s controller, Jamie Morin, admitted publicly in April that the service spent seven years and $1 billion on a logistics management system that had “negligible” capability. But that’s not what drove Air Force leaders to finally cancel the Expeditionary Combat Support System project this month. And it wasn’t because technical glitches forced the Air Force to repeatedly scale back expectations for the new system — from replacing 240 legacy systems, as originally planned, to just 12. In the end, officials canceled ECSS because continuing it would have cost another $1 billion to gain a quarter of the capability it was originally supposed to have, with fielding delayed until 2020.”

http://www.federaltimes.com/article/20121126/DEPARTMENTS01/311260009/

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The FDA: A Pain From the Neck to the Big Toe

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“Colchicine can be used to treat gout, Behcet’s disease, pericarditis, and the Mediterranean fever. It has been in use as a medicine for over 3,000 years.  In the summer of 2009, the Food and Drug Administration approved Colcrys as a treatment for gout flare-ups and the Mediterranean fever. The FDA gave pharmaceutical company URL Pharma an exclusive marketing agreement for selling Colcrys in exchange for completing studies on Colcrys and paying the FDA a $45 million application fee.  This deal effectively created a patented drug with no generic alternative. URL Pharma immediately raised the price from less than a dime to nearly $5 dollars per pill.”

http://www.mises.org/daily/6567/The-FDA-A-Pain-From-the-Neck-to-the-Big-Toe

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Politicians More Like the Mob Than You Think: Peter Schweizer

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“Schweizer calls these donations ‘protection money,’ like money that businesses pay the Mob so they can stay in business. A popular form is known as ‘milker bills’–legislation introduced by members of Congress for the purpose of extracting money from businesses. The congressional sponsors ‘don’t care whether [these bills] become law or not; their purpose is to extract donations and favors from businesses.’ Referring to the Democrats and Republicans, he says, ‘[You] think these guys in the ring really hate each other but after you watch it for a while you realize that they’re in business together and that there is money to be made by hyping the sense of conflict.'”

http://finance.yahoo.com/blogs/daily-ticker/politicians-more-mob-think-peter-schweizer-153437999.html

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