A couple weeks ago, Elizabeth Mozley of Broadridge Financial Solutions (BR) invited me to join a working group to develop best practices for conducting virtual annual meetings. I was torn about participating. On one hand, Broadridge has a too-substantial financial interest in the outcome, as they have a near monopoly on the technology for conducting [...]
This Is What Democracy Looks Like.
Yesterday, I headed over to Dewey Square for my first visit to Occupy Boston. I found more than I expected, and less. The closely spaced tents are a cacophony of colors, nestled among office buildings. To one corner is the venerable South Station, completed in 1899. The aluminum Federal Reserve building towers above, aging ungracefully. People [...]
“The World’s Largest Hedge Fund Is A Fraud.”
I recently attended a screening of the new documentary Chasing Madoff about a financial analyst, Harry Markopolos, who uncovered Bernie Madoff’s Ponzi scheme and spent almost a decade trying to get the SEC to investigate. One of his filing with the SEC was entitled The World’s Largest Hedge Fund Is A Fraud, but that wasn’t enough [...]
Hot Coffee and the Threat to Our Legal System
We have all heard the story of the woman who burned herself spilling McDonald’s coffee in her lap: she sued the company and won $160,000 in compensatory damages plus $2.7 million in punitive damages. The case became the butt of jokes on late night television and radio talk shows. It illustrated, for millions of Americans, [...]
Economic Interests and the American Civil War
Tuesday, April 12, 2011 marks the 150th anniversary of the Confederate attack on Fort Sumter. The ensuing Civil War was a conflict of the industrial revolution. New technologies, such as rifles, railroads and steamships, facilitated bloodletting on a horrific scale. It consolidated power in the federal government in ways the founders had hoped to prevent. [...]
CEO Pay at Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac
The inspector general of the Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA) has released a devastating report on executive compensation at Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac in the wake of the government’s $153 billion bailout of those firms.
SEC Enforcement: Will They or Won’t They?
The SEC has a reputation of enforcing regulations against two-bit players in the financial arena while tiptoeing around the big boys. Back in December, Apache Corp. (APA) announced plans to flaunt US securities laws. The Commission’s response has been three months of unbroken silence. Apache’s CEO, G. Steven Farris, is waging a war against shareowner [...]
Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire
March 25, 2011 marks the hundred year anniversary of the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire. One hundred forty-six workers perished in a blaze that engulfed the ten story Asch Building in lower Manhattan. Most were young seamstresses who worked six days a week for a pittance. The tragedy unfolded blocks from where, ninety years later, the twin towers [...]
Kudos to the SEC
Yesterday, Goldman Sachs blinked, announcing their “private placement” of Facebook stock would be closed to US investors. They claimed this “was not required or requested by any other party”, but the transaction was under scrutiny from the SEC. Facebook will still get their financing. There is every reason to believe Goldman can fill their $1.5 [...]
Financial Reform: Sound Bites and Window Dressing
On Thursday, Representative Michele Bachmann (Tea Party Republican of Minnesota) introduced a bill to repeal the Dodd-Frank financial reform. With the Senate and Obama standing in the way, it won’t go anywhere. But who cares? The 2008 market crisis should have prompted serious reforms. Instead, we got sweeping window dressing. Dodd-Frank left in place the [...]
Facebook and Goldman Sachs: What You Should Know
If you are one of the lucky few investors Goldman Sachs is offering pre-IPO shares of Facebook to, buy all you can afford! The deal will be squeaky clean, and you will make gobs of money. Goldman Sachs will do everything possible to ensure you do. How do I know? Let’s connect a few dots. [...]
Janus Before the Supreme Court
If you have not been following Janus Capital Group v. First Derivative Traders, now before the US Supreme Court, you should. No one expected the court to hear the case, but it was an opportunity to further trample investors’ rights, and the Roberts court jumped at it. Now the court appears split. Depending on how [...]
Broadridge Smokes Their Own Dope
The rudimentary software Broadridge offers corporations for running virtual annual meetings disenfranchises shareowners. This was on display when Symantec Corp. hosted a virtual-only annual meeting with the software in September. It was again on display yesterday. There is an old saying that cautions “never smoke your own dope.” Broadridge didn’t heed that advice yesterday when [...]
Inside Job – Movie Recommendation
If you see just one movie this year, make it the documentary Inside Job. Then tell everyone you know to see it. In just two hours, through interviews with financiers, politicians and academics, it builds a case that greed and deregulation have corrupted not only Wall Street, but Washington and academia as well. If you don’t know [...]
Not Your Parents’ Stock Market
After the 2000 tech bubble, followed by the broader market collapse in 2001-2002, it didn’t take long for individual Investors to return to the stock market. This time is different. The Investment Company Institute reports that Investors actually withdrew a whopping $33 billion from domestic equity mutual funds in the first seven months of this [...]
SEC: Defender of the Elite
Yesterday, the Securities and Exchange Commission settled a suite against New Jersey by issuing a cease and desist order, which the state accepted, neither admitting nor denying wrongdoing. Apparently the state had been misleading bond investors about its funding of pension liabilities, substituting an accounting gimmick for certain contributions to the plan over a period [...]
Barney Frank: Gambling is a Financial Service.
On Wednesday, the House Financial Services Committee approved two bills to legalize Internet gambling. The committee is supposed to oversee Wall Street. They are the same body that rubber stamped much of the financial deregulation that lead to the 2001 and 2008 stock market panics. These same people spearheaded the loophole-riddled financial regulatory reform Barack [...]
“Savvy” as a Substitute for “Ethical”
The SEC just announced that Goldman Sachs has agreed to pay $550 million to settle charges of defrauding investors through sales of collateralized debt obligations. Not surprisingly, Goldman’s stock surged on the announcement. Can you believe this? What is more, the firm’s corporate and institutional clients have not abandoned it as the sordid findings of [...]
Race To the Bottom
In recent months, a number of studies have been released addressing the question of whether burdensome US financial regulations are making US financial markets less competitive—driving fledgling corporations to go public in other, more lightly regulated jurisdictions. The first study was released last November by a recently formed Committee on Capital Markets Regulation (CCMR). Another [...]
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Inside Job – Movie Recommendation
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CEO Pay at Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac
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Broadridge Fumbles a Virtual Meeting on Virtual Meetings.
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Somebody Nudge the New York Times.
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Race To the Bottom
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Barney Frank: Gambling is a Financial Service.
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“Savvy” as a Substitute for “Ethical”
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SEC: Defender of the Elite
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Not Your Parents’ Stock Market
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Locking Out Shareowners (For a Fee)
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Broadridge Fumbles a Virtual Meeting on Virtual Meetings.
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Somebody Nudge the New York Times.
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Abolishing Corporate Personhood: Be Careful What You Ask For.
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This Is What Democracy Looks Like.
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“The World’s Largest Hedge Fund Is A Fraud.”
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Hot Coffee and the Threat to Our Legal System
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How To Steal a Corporate Election
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Economic Interests and the American Civil War
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James McRitchie: While I certainly share Glyn’s frustration with ...
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James McRitchie: I'd be happy to contribute to such an effort. We ...
- Risk Archive: Preserving a Financial Knowledge Base | GlynHolton.com: [...] But if you would like a little history on R...
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Claire F: There are a couple of different approaches here: 1...
