Archive for the ‘andrew cuomo’ tag
Is Wall Street and US banking bad for the economy?
First there’s Andrew Cuomo going after Charles Schwab for their misdeeds.
In an official notice sent to Charles Schwab & Co. Friday, Attorney General Andrew Cuomo warned that his office plans to sue the largest online brokerage firm for civil fraud over its marketing and sales of auction-rate securities to clients. Emails and testimony cited in the letter show Schwab’s brokers had little idea of what they were selling and later failed to tell clients that the market was collapsing.
Auction-rate securities — short-term debt instruments whose prices reset in periodic auctions — caused billions in losses for investors after the $330 billion market collapsed in early 2008.
They’ve played their part in harming our economy. But as Robert Kuttner says they’re not the only ones.
In addition, the financial sector has not yet returned to health, despite outsized profits (and bonuses) reported by the likes of Goldman Sachs. This is the kind of purely financial engineering that caused the collapse. The fevered activity at Goldman is a sign of lingering economic illness, not economic health. The rest of the economy, which depends on the financial sector for real investment capital, is still deeply depressed.
The banks with their bailouts are like vampires sucking the US economy dry it would seem. I also think the first paragraph of Kuttner’s piece neatly describes the current state.
We are still at the stage of the recession where economic downdrafts are producing more downdrafts. Reduced purchasing power leads to fewer retail and factory sales and more layoffs, further reducing consumer demand. The Obama stimulus package, about 2.5 percent of GDP for each of two years, doesn’t make up enough of the difference. But the federal deficit, caused mainly by falling revenues and not by increased public spending, is alarming the budget hawks. The administration worries, correctly, that deficits will be high for several years to come and wonders who will keep lending Uncle Sam the money. Yet cutting back spending before recovery comes would be suicidal.
At this point how can you trust the financial sector? What is worse is their refusal to be regulated.
Andrew Cuomo smacks down astroturfing corporation Lifestlye Lift
Keep the face you have and turn away from Lifestyle Lift.
A company has been fined for using astroturfers to promote its products online, a US first. The company, Lifestyle Lift, also had a history of using trademark and copyright to threaten and silence its critics. The company settled with AG Andrew Cuomo’s office for a mere $300K. I favor the corporate death-penalty here — this company spent years defrauding the public and used the law to bully whistle-blowers. They don’t deserve to be in business for one more second.
How many other corporations are there out there doing this sort of thing?
Andrew Cuomo laying the smackdown on Riverstone and the Carlyle Group
Nothing smells better than the scent of regulation and investigation in the air.
A second private equity firm, Riverstone Holdings, agreed to pay $30 million on Thursday to resolve its role in a widening public pension fund investigation by the New York attorney general, Andrew M. Cuomo.
In making the settlement, Riverstone follows its joint venture partner, the Carlyle Group, which paid a $20 million settlement earlier this month.
So how corrupt is Albany?
In a telephone conference call, Mr. Cuomo said that the $30 million payment was a “significant amount of money” and praised Riverstone for adopting a code of behavior that is intended to end “pay-to-play” practices — making campaign contributions to state officials and using placement agents and lobbyists to obtain millions in state pension business.
“If you knew and paid the right people, you could do business in New York,” Mr. Cuomo said. “Hundreds of millions of dollars in taxpayer money went to people who were politically connected. That’s not going to be allowed any more.”
Add that to the Espada Jr. and Montseratte debacle in the state senate and fixing Albany could very well be a potent campaign slogan. If only we could do this sort of investigation at the federal level. It would be great if we could Change Congress and limit campaign contrubtions from corporations to politicians. We could just limit contributions from anyone to $100 a candidate with a maximum amount per year set.
