Lawsuit Targets No-Pay Huffington Post; Taibbi Article Targets Wall Street Wives' TARP Deal

Today was a tough day for those who believe they are entitled to get something for nothing.

First up is Huffington Post. It is currently a defendant, along with new HuffPost owner AOL, in a lawsuit filed in a New York U.S. District Court. The suit claims that the plaintiff and other contributors to Arianna Huffington's website were not "paid appropriately" for their work. The story appears in today's LA Times. The suit points out that "none of the $315 million AOL paid to buy the Huffington Post has gone to the writers and producers of the news and opinion website..."

The plaintiff in this case is Jonathan Tasini. If you don't know him, let's just say it's not a name that gets prominent play in The New York Times. He was the lead plaintiff in a landmark electronic rights case involving freelance contributions to media publications. The defendant in that case was none other than The New York Times.

Next up is the curious case of Mrs. John Mack and a close female friend. Mack's spouse, John, was the head of Morgan Stanley during the days of the 2008-2009 financial crisis. According to Matt Taibbi's piece in the upcoming edition of Rolling Stone, Mrs. M. and her pal decided to start an offshore enterprise called Waterfall TALF. Its purpose was to invest in student loans and commercial mortgages. According to Taibbi's story, for "an upfront investment of $15 million, (Waterfall TALF) quickly received $220 million in cash from the Fed, most of which they used to purchase student loans and commercial mortgages. The loans were set up so that (Mrs. Mack and her friend) would keep 100 percent of the gains on the deals, while the Fed and the Treasury [read: the taxpayer] would eat 90 percent of the losses." Nice work if you can get it, don't you think?

The information bubbled to the surface as a consequence of the Fed losing a lawsuit to Bloomberg and Fox News over the right of citizens to have access to government records. The Fed fiercely fought the lawsuit, insisting its secret banking practices were essential to world harmony. The US Supreme Court ruled otherwise, and the Fed reluctantly opened its records to public scrutiny.

The financial blog Zero Hedge cited the Taibbi article; the link to the post is noted here. The photo shows Christy Mack (a/k/a Mrs. Mack) during an appearance on Charlie Rose in which she discussed alternative medicine, one of her cherished causes. She declined to comment on Taibbi's article.