Rex Ryan Keeps Wife, Changes Tattoos

Image: web.yesnetwork.com

Pro football coach Rex Ryan recently faced an identity crisis. Last month, he became top banana of the Buffalo Bills. The problem was that Mr. Ryan's body included a tattoo of Mrs. Ryan wearing the uniform of a quarterback who once played for the team Ryan formerly coached. Rex and his brain trust quickly concluded that fans in Buffalo and western New York would not be enchanted if he sported a tattoo featuring their downstate rival.

The quick-thinking Mr. Ryan decided that a visit to a tattoo parlor near the site of this year's Super Bowl game was just the place to set matters straight. According to a Wall Street Journal report summarized in nj.com, Ryan changed the tattoo from New York Jet green to Buffalo Bills blue. He kept the missus on his skin, while the quarterback...well, let's just say his contract was not renewed.

Tom Perkins: "The Creative One Percent Are Threatened"

Tom Perkins
Photo: AP, from sfgate.com

Tom Perkins, something of an eminence grise among Silicon Valley's venture capital set, recently sent a controversial, three-paragraph submission to The Wall Street Journal's Letters to the Editor which managed to cause a media feeding frenzy. In his letter, Perkins alleged that progressive American political attempts to increase taxes on the wealthiest Americans were analogous to the Nazi's anti-Semitic activities on Kristallnacht.

Perkins followed up this broadside with an interview on Bloomberg. His comments during the session were quite possibly more alarming than the disturbingly poor judgment Perkins demonstrated in his missive to the Journal.

His most revealing comments included his characterization of the richest Americans as "the creative one percent." I suppose that leaves over 195 million citizens of The Land of the Free and the Home of the Brave as mindless cannon fodder for the wealthy's wizardry. In that sense, Perkins is very much in tune with big tech's data exploiters, who contemptuously disregard American citizens' right to privacy in the name of "creativity," "progress," and profit. "Creativity" generates its own rights that do not always adhere to the so-called rule of law.

Image: bn.com

Perkins felt strongly that the wealthiest Americans were the nation's principal job creators. At one point, he claimed Silicon Valley had created more than one million jobs. He did not mention the jobs that technological "progress" had wiped out, leaving many millions of Americans facing a diminished standard of living. Perkins did not allude to the tech industry's cynical focus on the globalization of production, which directly led to loss of American jobs to cheaper overseas labor.

Perkins' belief that supremely wealthy individuals generate new employment opportunities was shared by Michael Bloomberg during his twelve years as New York's mayor. This notion was a key conceptual hook in Hizzoner's drive to complete the transformation of classist Manhattan into a cross between Monaco and Las Vegas, while encouraging a Parisian Left Bank-style enclave in Whole Foods Brooklyn. How many jobs did these fabulously rich "citizens of the world" contribute to the Big Apple? Damn few, unless you count takeout delivery coolie labor and underpaid domestics as signs of economic "progress."

The Silicon Valley sage also stated his belief that Silicon Valley's psychological and material bubble was a very desirable state of affairs. Perkins felt that this wealthy, tech-centric, no-holds-barred playpen was essential to any sort of societal "progress." The inference was that high tech's engineers would lead the way into a certainly wonderful future. Other professions (such as medicine), a sense of communal initiative, and of course non-tech thinking simply did not register. What if you were a poet, a surgeon, a social worker, or a small business owner (of course, Valley enterprises are something more than just mom and pops)? Well, tough darts: you were just a ninety-nine percenter -- someone who would need the one percent's Midas touch to lift them into....well, just what?

And there's the rub. Perkins' vision of a just society revolves around getting rich in a world where libertarian ideals rule the day. While it's an alluring vision from the penthouse, it's an unappealing vista from the ground floor. Unfortunately for Perkins, the ninety-nine percenters are not buying his vision. I suppose if Perkins is looking for solace, he can call up Mitt Romney and compare notes.

Wall Street vs. Bloomberg News

Bloomberg Terminal
(photo: wikipedia.com)

Recently, Bloomberg News acknowledged that some of its reporters used sensitive and presumably restricted data from the eponymous terminals in their journalistic pursuits. Bloomberg terminals, if you're unfamiliar with them, provide essential financial data and are vitually de rigueur on Wall Street. The price of entry into the world of Bloomberg terminals is $20,000 per year. No exceptions, including the Street's giants, as today's New York Times article on the Bloomberg News-Wall Street snafu observed.

The Times' story, released on a slow news Saturday, is a curious one. A key player, if the article is to be taken at face value, is a Goldman Sachs PR exec and managing director named Jake Siewert. His resume includes a stint as an aide to former Treasury secretary Tim Geithner during the Obama administration. He was also White House press secretary during the Clinton Administration. Siewert called his JP Morgan counterpart and they began comparing notes about Bloomberg News leads and activities that aroused suspicions regarding their origin.

Jake Siewert
(photo: The New York Post)

An upset Goldman began to, as the phrase goes, "look into the matter." Keep in mind this is the same firm that employed Chelsea Clinton's husband. Let's just say Goldman, unflatteringly known as "the squid," has many friends in the public, private, and shadow sectors. JP Morgan, meanwhile, was in the middle of Jamie Diamon's very visible fight to retain both his chairmanship and CEO status at the firm. Keeping the media in line, especially a snoopy Bloomberg News, would be in JP Morgan's interest. There's nothing quite like a scandal over news coverage techniques to temporarily diminish a news organization's sharper edges. All Diamon needed was a little time and a little less media curiosity.

According to the Times piece, Siewert or others associated with Goldman Sachs contacted former Bloomberg News reporters for confirmation regarding surreptitious news gathering activity on the Bloomberg terminals. Intriguingly, the anonymous reporters cited in the story worked for Bloomberg News competitor The Wall Street Journal. Now, you'll get extra credit if you can guess which media platform broke the Bloomberg News-Wall Street story. If you said The New York Post, you would be correct. If you're keeping score at home, Rupert Murdoch owns both the Journal and the Post.

Mark DeCambre
(photo: twitter.com)

Among the coincidences in this tale is Post reporter Mark DeCambre's role in the affair. He filed a piece on Goldman's hiring of Siewert in November, 2012, which highlighted his potential fast track path to managing partner (roughly equivalent to landing a place in Wall Street's Olympus). According to today's Times article, he also broke the story about the Bloomberg News-Goldman Sachs flap.

Bloomberg News eventually issued something of a half-hearted mea culpa for its journalistic faux pas. Whether Bloomberg has offered a deal on yearly rates for its terminals was not noted.

Report: Apple Blocks Java Due To "Security Issues"

In a story many mainstream publications didn't touch, Apple blocked Java applications from running on  Mac computers. The story, originally published by the Associated Press, appeared in the Mercury News.

The rationale for Apple's actions was that Java was notably vulnerable to "security issues." According to the AP file, the Department of Homeland Security issued a recommendation earlier this month for users to disable Java to "avoid potential hacking attacks." Oracle, which owns Java, has tried to provide fixes for the allegedly dangerous issues. It seems curious that Apple's decision was made now. Java has a relatively long history of use and is not an obscure programming langauge. It's hard to believe Java's security issues are just being discovered.

The timing of these episodes is curious. Today's New York Times put on a full-court press, including a top-of-the-paper story, about the hacking of its computer systems allegedly committed by agents of the government of the People's Republic of China. The Wall Street Journal also claimed it was the victim of Chinese hackers. Earlier this month, reports circulated about supposed Iranian hacking of Western banks and Saudi Arabian institutions.

Whistleblower at CBO Fights Conspiracy of Silence About Still-Funky Housing Markets

Lan Pham

The corruption of the mortgage and housing markets formed the core of the financial disaster that exploded in 2008 and remain a significant debilitating element in the world economy. The United States government, the banking industry, and the mortgage crowd have made halfhearted attempts to clean up robosignings and other illegal industry practices. However, their efforts have been marred by servicers' unwillingness to modify their own sleazy business habits.

To perpetuate this financial fantasyland, statistics must be "managed" so that the public imagines that happy housing days are here again. Rain cannot be permitted to fall on this parade. Consequently, whistle blowers in the stat houses are especially unwelcome; a Mafia-like spirit of omerta is encouraged in stat land.

The tale of Dr. Lan Pham is a case in point. She worked for the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) for a few months and made the fatal career mistake of telling the truth when the institutional fix was in for a "controlled" version of events. According to a recent Wall Street Journal story, Pham alleges was fired for releasing "pessimistic outlooks for the banking and housing sectors in 2010." The article also notes Pham also alleges that "supervisors stifled opinions that contradicted economic fixes endorsed by some on Wall Street, including research from a Morgan Stanley economist who served as a CBO adviser."

This story, is true in detail, would suggest the corruption at the heart of the housing catastrophe is still very much with us. It's especially depressing news as the CBO has a reputation for political impartiality, a quality desperately needed today.

The entire story is available in the financial blog zerohedge.com.

US Housing Establishment Tying Up Loose Ends From 2008 Crash

Remember when the housing bubble burst? Now that we're in the midst of a faintly felt and quite possibly illusory "recovery," apparently the US housing establishment intends to tie up loose ends from the debacle. The "establishment," in this case, refers to the unholy alliance of federal agencies, financial services firms, and propaganda arms (such as the National Association of Realtors) which created and fostered the housing disaster.

Exhibit A comes from the recent settlement of an FDIC lawsuit against three Washington Mutual (WaMu) executives for their impetuous, greedy risk taking in the housing market. In case you don't remember, WaMu was one of the more spectacular bank failures of the past half-dozen years. The three executives in question, however, earned more than $95 million between 2005 and 2008. The settlement, according to online editions of Bloomberg News, will pay $64 million to the FDIC. However, "the cash payments made by the three former officers," the Bloomberg News report states, will total about $400,000. The remainder will come from a WaMu insurance policy. The former execs' had chutzpah and a highly developed sense of entitlement: they had sued for retirement benefits and "golden parachute" payments totaling many millions of dollars. The settlement, meanwhile, is perceived as a face-saving expedient for the FDIC, whose boss at the time involved in the litigation, Sheila Bair, is something of a financial media darling.

Sheila Bair

Intriguingly, a December 11th Bloomberg Business Week story noted that Ms. Bair "is a top candidate among state officials to ensure banks comply with any settlement of a nationwide foreclosure probe."

Exhibit B centers on housing data supplied by the National Association of Realtors (NAR). It turns out the NAR has suddenly discovered it has "accidentally" pumped up housing sale figures for a number of years. The NAR's methodology and stats were publicly questioned in a February, 2011 Wall Street Journal article, according to a post in the financial blog Zero Hedge. Well, by gosh and by golly, it only took the NAR ten months to confirm there was gambling inside its own casino. What are some implications of the NAR's dip into glasnost?

Lawrence Yun

Let's hear it from NAR frontman Lawrence Yun: "For the real estate business, this means the housing market's downturn was deeper than what was initially thought." Meanwhile, left unsaid was that the below-the-surface portion of the housing iceberg -- the shadow foreclosure market -- is likely to emerge and become much more visible in 2012. The disruptive emergence of low-cost housing is a nightmare for American economic and social policy makers. Consequently, it may be time to get the public ready for "continued sluggishness in the housing market." Given that a home in most Americans' primary financial asset, the recast housing figures would imply continued devaluation of residential home prices. If you're among the 99% crowd, that's bad news.

Exhibit C is recondite, but gets to the heart of the corruption's machinery. According to a Bloomberg News report, Morgan Stanley has settled a lawsuit against MBIA over the latter firm's credit default swaps. The deal means Morgan Stanley gets paid over a billion dollars, while MBIA drops a $300 million-plus counterclaim against MS. The significance of MBIA's action was that it had targeted   $233 million of Morgan's residential mortgage-backed securities, and thus keeps them away from unwanted publicity.

As the Bloomberg News story notes, this litigation was just part of the many lawsuits major Wall Street and other financial services launched against MBIA. Basically, the contention was that MBIA created a "fraudulent conveyance" to ship out horseshit mortgage-backed securities, while keeping MBIA's valuable state and municipal bond guarantee business intact. (This episode was a very big deal in 2009, and then forgotten about, except in the war rooms of major money players.)

The question that arises is why issues associated with the housing market's corruption are being tidied up now?