Three Christmas Eve Stealth Stories: GE Bid-Rigging, ATT Spectrum Bonanza, NFL TV Deals' Financial Impact on Fans

Saturdays have historically been a day for backdoor news. These stories typically involve unflattering stories about institutions, such as legal settlements, forced executive retirements, unpopular government actions, or poor corporate performance. Consequently, I make it a point to carefully read Saturday news stories.

This year, Saturday doubles down with Christmas Eve to create a nearly ideal "hidden news" environment. There are plenty of gifts under the holiday news tree today. Here are some examples:

*  GE settles SEC probe into municipal bond bid rigging. The Bloomberg News story provides the unsavory details. (The official SEC press release provides more details on the matter.) Remember when GE was considered the gold standard for corporate performance and behavior? The former "AAA" firm is now just another TBTF enterprise lusting for Federal corporate welfare. GE's saving grace is that it actually manufactures useful products, such as jet engines.

*  ATT gets final FCC approval for $1.93 billion purchase of Qualcomm spectrum. This is a great deal for ATT, and one hell of a consolation prize for ATT, in light of its highly public, abandoned bid for T-Mobile. The big losers in this deal are rural telephone providers, as Bloomberg News noted in its story on the ATT coup. The FCC originally recommended approving the deal on November 22nd, which just happened to be the beginning of the Thanksgiving holiday period.

* According to a Los Angeles Times blog post, the NFL's new and highly lucrative television deals could impact consumers with higher cable TV bills. The deals also threaten smaller cable distributors that don't offer a steady diet of pro sports. I find the fees for sports packages outrageously expensive. I stopped subscribing to them long ago, and as a result annually keep five hundred dollars for other purposes. And no, I don't spend the saved money on tickets to ball games. Do you really feel good spending hundreds of dollars for a nothing special seat at any pro sports event?