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?

NY Times Discovers Gambling in GE Casino

The New York Times, in its Friday editions, made a splash about General Electric's skill at avoiding tax liability. Prominently displayed in the piece was a photograph showing President Obama applauding GE boss Jeff Immelt. Apparently, readers were supposed to be appalled by the multinational firm's corrupt practices.

The article, written by David Kociniewski, left out as much as it included. Here are a few items to ponder:

1. The piece strongly implies Congressman Charles Rangel accepted a GE payoff. In case readers didn't get the first reference to the alleged dirty deed (about halfway through the article), inquiring minds get another, detailed reminder as the article wrapped up.

2. The Times does not mention that Kociniewski had previously gone after Rangel's finances in episodes entirely unrelated to General Electric.

3. The article does not mention other governmental officials whom GE might have "influenced," except a New York colleague of Rangel's. It's very, very hard to believe GE's reach was limited to one African-American congressman.

4. Inexplicably, GE Capital's acceptance of TARP money was not noted. This episode was among the highlights of the bailout scandal, although it passed like a ship on a foggy night. If you're curious, here's a link on this rather quiet, but very disturbing story.

5. The mainstream media and financial analysts treated GE with deference during the era in which GE owned NBC. Let's just say times have changed.

6. GE Capital remains something of a financial black box. Many analysts, without really wanting to say so publicly, have never trusted GE Capital's financial reporting. GE just kept getting AAA ratings until 2008. The reporting about GE was either inept or designed to deceive.

7. Why was the Times piece released now, and on a max news day such as Friday? This was an article that could have been written months, even years ago. What was the real point of the article? That GE's practices exemplified the legal leveraging of a system to its benefit (a marvelous definition of corruption, by the way)? Does that justify the Times implying Obama sold his soul to Immelt and that GE bribed Rangel?

8. Not so long ago, GE's managers were considered among the world's best at what they did. That aura has diminished in conjunction with GE's tarnished reputation. What changed so quickly? It's not as if a cadre of world-class suits suddenly became incompetent overnight.

9. Maybe the article is the Times' warning shot across Obama's bows, now that The One's re-election campaign has begun in earnest. Nothing nurses a grudge quite as deeply as a major media outlet scorned -- or betrayed. Keep in mind "All the News That's Fit to Print" was an ardent Obama supporter during the 2008 presidential primaries and general election campaign.

The Times article peeks into how a corporate, legal, and lobbying apparatus protects, leverages, and expands big-time firms' financial advantages, while obscuring its true intent behind some bullshit about duties to shareholders. However, the newspaper's motives appear more connected to settling scores with politicians, rather than exploring and illuminating the structure and basis of American corruption. We need something better than that. The discontent and impatience the public feels about the condition of the nation is palpable. One gets the ominous sense that the legitimacy of the American ruling classes is in play. And where that energy might go, no one knows -- least of all The New York Times.