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Skeptical Debunker

Prudential-AIG Deal Another Case of Corporate Empire Building - 0 views

moneymorning.com/...prudential-aig

AIG Prudential deal analysis

shared by Skeptical Debunker on 05 Mar 10 - Cached
  • In spite of its new whizz-bang CEO, Prudential is a slow-moving but very reliable organization with a level of integrity that is trusted by policyholders. Frankly, that's what you want in an insurance company. I have had a modest U.K. pension with one of its competitors since 1980, and I am constantly worried that some leveraged buyout (LBO) artist will step in, take it over, change the computer system so that information gets lost, outsource customer service, and drive the company into bankruptcy. If you're buying life insurance or pension services, you want a company that's not going to disappear in the next 30 years, and doesn't change its address or computer system too often. Avoid a company like the plague if it is run by whiz kids. However, that's what AIG was like. We know how AIG operated; a guy who thought betting the ranch on the credit default swap market was a good idea ran it. Its Asian operation is no doubt full of similarly clever ideas. Even in the unlikely event that everything there is on the level, the cultural clash with an old-fashioned British insurance company is huge. And why would you pay a PREMIUM for an AIG operation? Like the Kraft/Cadbury deal, Prudential's takeover of AIA is value-destroying. Also like Kraft/Cadbury, it looks likely to destroy a valuable part of the British economy that millions of people have relied upon for generations - only this time the destruction will be caused by the buyer rather than the target. As shareholders we need a new form of corporate governance. Those in management are hired hands. In the old days, large shareholders used to treat management as they would have treated their butler - and management was equally deferential to the owners of substantial percentages of the company's capital. That's how capitalism is supposed to work - with resources deployed in the interests of the owners of capital. We know that system works; economics shows us why it works. The alternative, with resources deployed to satisfy the egos and fill the pockets of the hired hands, has no theoretical justification and little practicality - just as a big country house run in the interests of the butler would be a mess. As capitalists, we must work together to restore capitalism!
  • Skeptical Debunker on 05 Mar 10
     
    To inattentive observers, the recent announcement that the British insurance company Prudential PLC (NYSE ADR: PUK) would pay $35.5 billion for American International Group Inc.'s (NYSE: AIG) Asian insurance operation, AIA, might seem like just another belated expansion of the old British Empire - a strange contrast to the sale of the premier British chocolate company Cadbury PLC (NYSE ADR: CBY) to Kraft Foods Inc. (NYSE: KFT) last month. Yet in reality both deals are examples of Empire-building that for shareholders is much more dangerous than the benign British variety - Empire-building by corporate management that runs contrary to capitalist ideals.
  • Skeptical Debunker on 05 Mar 10
     
    Monopolies - BAD (Adam Smith even said so!) Companies controlled and run by management (as if it were their own personal fiefdom and with their hands always in the "cookie jar"), rather than shareholders - BAD. BOTH ANTI-CAPITALISTIC. Both the "norm" for "the titans" of "modern [anti] capitalism". We no longer have capitalism (if that, like communism, ever existed in a more or less "pure" form!). We have a kleptocracy of the rich and corporate aristocracy (as incestuously intertwined as the European nobles ever were!).
thinkahol *

Chris Hedges: This Time We're Taking the Whole Planet With Us - Chris Hedges' Columns -... - 0 views

www.truthdig.com/..._whole_planet_with_us_20110307

Chris Hedges: This Time We're Taking the Whole Planet With Us - Hedges' Columns Truthdig

shared by thinkahol * on 09 Mar 11 - No Cached
  • thinkahol * on 09 Mar 11
     
    Civilizations rise, decay and die. Time, as the ancient Greeks argued, for individuals and for states is cyclical. As societies become more complex they become inevitably more precarious. They become increasingly vulnerable. And as they begin to break down there is a strange retreat by a terrified and confused population from reality, an inability to acknowledge the self-evident fragility and impending collapse. The elites at the end speak in phrases and jargon that do not correlate to reality. They retreat into isolated compounds, whether at the court at Versailles, the Forbidden City or modern palatial estates. The elites indulge in unchecked hedonism, the accumulation of vaster wealth and extravagant consumption. They are deaf to the suffering of the masses who are repressed with greater and greater ferocity. Resources are more ruthlessly depleted until they are exhausted. And then the hollowed-out edifice collapses. The Roman and Sumerian empires fell this way. The Mayan elites, after clearing their forests and polluting their streams with silt and acids, retreated backward into primitivism. As food and water shortages expand across the globe, as mounting poverty and misery trigger street protests in the Middle East, Africa and Europe, the elites do what all elites do. They launch more wars, build grander monuments to themselves, plunge their nations deeper into debt, and as it all unravels they take it out on the backs of workers and the poor. The collapse of the global economy, which wiped out a staggering $40 trillion in wealth, was caused when our elites, after destroying our manufacturing base, sold massive quantities of fraudulent mortgage-backed securities to pension funds, small investors, banks, universities, state and foreign governments and shareholders. The elites, to cover the losses, then looted the public treasury to begin the speculation over again. They also, in the name of austerity, began dismantling basic social services, set out to break th
thinkahol *

Massachusetts County Claims 75% Of Mortgages Assignments Are Invalid And Ineligible For... - 0 views

www.businessinsider.com/ank-fraud-massachusetts-2011-7

Massachusetts County Claims 75% Of Mortgages Assignments Are Invalid And Ineligible For Foreclosure

shared by thinkahol * on 15 Jul 11 - No Cached
  • thinkahol * on 15 Jul 11
     
    The Register of Deeds of South Essex County, Mass. is waging war on the banks over predatory lending and mortgage fraud (via Total Mortgage). John O'Brien's case hinges on the fact that the MERS system set up to expedite the bundling of mortgage backed securities skirted numerous local transaction fees. O'Brien figures his town lost as much as $22 million in revenue since 1998. To get some of it back he commissioned an audit of 2010 mortgage assignments. 16% of the assignments were valid, 75% were invalid, and 9% were deemed questionable. Of those that are invalid, 27% were fraudulent, 35% showed evidence of robo-signing, and 10% violated the Massachusetts Mortgage Fraud Statute. The proper owner of the mortgages could only be determined 60% of the time. In a release by his office O'Brien said: "This evidence has made it clear to me that the only way we can ever determine the total economic loss and the amount damage done to the taxpayers is by conducting a full forensic audit of all registry of deeds in Massachusetts. I suspect that at the end of the day we are going to find that the taxpayers have been bilked in this state alone of over 400 million dollars not including the accrued interest plus costs and penalties. The Audit makes the finding that this was not only a MERS problem, but a scheme also perpetuated by MERS shareholder banks such Bank of America, Wells Fargo, JP Morgan and others. I am stunned and appalled by the fact that America's biggest banks have played fast and loose with people's biggest asset - their homes.  This is disgusting, and this is criminal."
thinkahol *

Dr. George Reisman and the Curious Case of the Missing Crony Capitalists, or, Moral Bli... - 0 views

mises.org/...s-helps-me-to-see-clearly.aspx

Dr. George Reisman and the Curious Case of Missing Crony Capitalists or Moral Blindness Helps Me to See Clearly - TT's Lost in Tokyo

shared by thinkahol * on 28 Oct 11 - No Cached
  • thinkahol * on 28 Oct 11
     
    Those whom Reisman is actually defending are not pure capitalists, acting under laissez faire competition, but largely rapacious and irresponsible CEOs of large, listed companies, who, freed from any control of their erstwhile shareholder 'owners,' use government to crush competition, etc. In effect, Dr. Reisman is defending the very people MOST RESPONSIBLE for DESTROYING laissez faire capitalism. For shame, George!
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