SEC – Shelter Elite Crooks? We have a Samberg, a Pequot, a Mack and a Morgan Stanley and an SEC investigation bogged down because John Mack and his cadre of legal wise guys have political clout with the SEC. Briefly, Mack’s pal, Arthur Samberg, founder and chief of Pequot, bought about $44 million in Heller stock immediately before its acquisition by GE Financial and pocketed $18 million in profit. Gary Aquirre, the SEC bulldog who had started to chew on the case, got fired when he wanted to take Mack’s testimony. The Senate Finance Committee is now taking a look. You might want to follow this one; it promises to be interesting provided regulators don’t get another case of the punies.
Nyet! Condi: Isn’t having Condi Dearest chastising Vlad Putin over press freedoms, restrictive laws, and tensions with neighboring countries hypocritical? Russia has problems, we have problems, but the real tragedy is how much gas our politicos waste generating headlines and reelection nausea and what none of us is doing about Darfur.
You’re F-f-f-f, er, Here’s $50 Million! Massachusetts Mutual Life Insurance Company CEO Robert J. O’Connell was fired for extramarital affairs with female employees, illegal activity in trading accounts, and misuse of company aircraft, BUT GET THIS: a three member arbitration panel said the board made a mistake and O’Connell could be entitled to as much as $50 million in benefits owed. There is a troubling suggestion in this screwy decision that the arbitration panel might have been influenced. Well, why not? If we know one fact, corruption and greed in business has run amok.
Osama for President? When Obama announced he might decide to run for president, W hurriedly called a special meeting of his war council, demanding to know who approved Osama coming out of hiding and running for president.
Rush Limbaugh is a Big Fat Idiot II! Could be the title of Al Franken’s next novel. Rush Limbaugh, in an insidious attempt to debase, said Michael J. Fox dramatized the effects of his Parkinson’s disease to garner votes for Democrats who support stem cell research. Rush, you wouldn’t even make good fertilizer for the ground Michael shakes.
Dis-Inherited? Have you ever heard of the ‘Life Settlement’ industry? Here’s the deal: You’re old, you’re broke, and let’s say you have a $1 million insurance policy you don’t need. Your heirs might disagree, but let’s be real: when you die you don’t need to a million bucks; good grief, you don’t even need pocket money. So here’s what happens: you sell your policy at a discount, get some cash, and when you die, the life settlement company gets the proceeds. It’s big business, in the billions, and the industry is laced with scammers. There’s got to be a better way.
Holy Cow! Obviously borrowing a page from Microsoft’s playbook, a Chicago law firm is moving what it calls a big chunk of its administrative functions like accounting and technical services to India. Wouldn’t it be more cost-effective for we, the people, if lawyers and courts also moved? Then, rather than Court TV, we could have something like Bombay Court Phone-In.
Darth Dick’s Smoke & Mirrors: VP Cheney likes to say that the ability to torture prisoners has given the US invaluable information. How much more or less would we have learned without torture? Was there a control group: These fifty weren’t tortured and told us nothing; these fifty were tortured and told us everything?
Jeffrey’s Big Adventure: Twenty four years and four months, probably in a medium security prison in Butner, NC, for fifty-two-year old former CEO Jeffrey K. Skilling’s unapologetic role in Enron’s spectacular collapse into the muck and murk of bankruptcy and ignominy, a term second only to Bernard Ebbers of WorldCom disfame who got thirty years. Skilling’s probably ticked that he didn’t come in first on that one either.
Comma = C$1,000,000? Next time your kid says about grammar: why do I need to know this crap anyway? you can relate the ‘Saga of the Telephone Poles.’ It seems Bell Aliant, an Atlantic Provinces telephone provider and Rogers Communications, Canada’s largest cable provider, went to court over a telephone pole contract that either could or could not be cancelled after one year. A judge ruled the placement of a comma dictated it could be canceled, costing Rogers C$1,000,000. Rogers, will, contest, of, course. Stay tuned.
Timetable, Shimetable: Memo to We, The People: Tell this government to get our troops out of Iraq now. Not in six months, twelve months, or eighteen months, but NOW! They, the government, planned this war poorly, their execution has been nothing if not shoddy, and their callous determination to perpetuate the conflict is unconscionable. To suggest there is going to be a more opportune time to withdraw our troops insults our intelligence and does nothing but line the pockets of military contractors and big oil to which they are disgracefully beholden.
$470 Million? $295 Million? $85 Million? Which one is Barry Diller’s pay for 2005? Well they all are, depending on how you count. Two things tabulators do agree on is that Diller, CEO of IAC/Interactive (Internet retailing and Home Shopping networks), was the highest paid CEO and wasn’t worth it, but they don’t say how much he should have been paid. Here’s my formula: ten times the annual salary of the lowest paid employee in the company. Naturally, Diller and other grossly overpaid executives and their current heirs don’t agree.
That’s all for this week, my friends. Stay alert; don’t get uh, twisted!
