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Executives at U.S. companies are taking advantage of the biggest stock-market rally in 71 years to sell their shares at the fastest pace since credit markets started to seize up two years ago.
Insiders of Standard & Poor’s 500 Index companies were net sellers for 14 straight weeks as the gauge rose 36 percent, data compiled by InsiderScore.com show. Amgen Inc. Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Kevin Sharer and five other officials sold $8.2 million of stock. Christopher Donahue, the CEO of Federated Investors Inc., and his brother, Chief Financial Officer Thomas Donahue, offered the most in three years.
Sales by CEOs, directors and senior officers have accelerated to the highest level since June 2007, two months before credit markets froze, as the S&P 500 rebounded from its 12-year low in March. The increase is making investors more skittish because executives presumably have the best information about their companies’ prospects.
A state judge on Thursday ordered former HealthSouth CEO Richard Scrushy to pay nearly $2.9 billion to shareholders who sued over a massive accounting fraud that nearly sent the rehabilitation chain into bankruptcy.
The judgment is very good for America.
Why?
Because the current incentive for high-level corporate people is to commit fraud. Even if they are caught and go to jail, they'll be rich when they get out.
Hitting the crooks in the wallet is the only thing which will motivate people not to rip off their shareholders, the taxpayers and the American treasury.
As Paul Volcker says, the incentive systems at financial firms are broken.
More than two-thirds of researchers said they knew of colleagues who had committed "questionable" practices and one in seven said that included inventing findings.
But when scientists were asked about their own behaviour only two per cent admitted to having faked results.
They may be crying about General Motors' bankruptcy today. But dumping 40,000 of the last 60,000 union jobs into a mass grave won't spoil Jamie Dimon's day.
Dimon is the CEO of JP Morgan Chase bank. While GM workers are losing their retirement health benefits, their jobs, their life savings; while shareholders are getting zilch and many creditors getting hosed, a few privileged GM lenders – led by Morgan and Citibank – expect to get back 100% of their loans to GM, a stunning $6 billion.
The way these banks are getting their $6 billion bonanza is stone cold illegal.
I smell a rat.
Stevie the Rat, to be precise. Steven Rattner, Barack Obama's 'Car Czar' - the man who essentially ordered GM into bankruptcy this morning.
This is a revealing film about how the people who own and control corporations use their wealth and power to get whatever they want, regardless of the damage to society or human life as a whole. It's all about power and money and everything else be damned. This film zeros in on the tobacco industry, specifically Phillip Morris.
Don't you feel so much safer now that the FBI has shifted the bulk of it's manpower and resources to policing YOU rather than the criminals it's supposed to have been set up for?
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
By ERIC LICHTBLAU, DAVID JOHNSTON and RON NIXON
WASHINGTON — The Federal Bureau of Investigation is struggling to find enough agents and resources to investigate criminal wrongdoing tied to the country’s economic crisis, according to current and former bureau officials.
The bureau slashed its criminal investigative work force to expand its national security role after the Sept. 11 attacks, shifting more than 1,800 agents, or nearly one-third of all agents in criminal programs, to terrorism and intelligence duties. Current and former officials say the cutbacks have left the bureau seriously exposed in investigating areas like white-collar crime, which has taken on urgent importance in recent weeks because of the nation’s economic woes.
The pressure on the F.B.I. has recently increased with the disclosure of criminal investigations into some of the largest players in the financial collapse, including Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. The F.B.I. is planning to double the number of agents working financial crimes by reassigning several hundred agents amid a mood of national alarm. But some people inside and out of the Justice Department wonder where the agents will come from and whether they will be enough.
Wednesday, October 08 2008 @ 10:21 AM MDT
Contributed by: BMcDonald
Views: 1,085
Check it out folks. If you think this is some kind of rare event, your head is probably somewhere it really shouldn't be. THIS IS EXACTLY THE CHARACTER OF ALL THE CRIMINALS THAT HAVE CAUSED THE FINANCIAL MELTDOWN! This is who these people are, arrogant, selfish, criminals! And Congress just handed them a blank check and immunity from prosecution!
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AIG Spa Trip Fuels Fury on Hill Pressing Executives to Concede Mistakes, Lawmakers Blast Them About Bonuses
By Peter Whoriskey
For some people at AIG, the insurance giant rescued last month with an $85 billion federal bailout, the good times keep rolling.
Joseph Cassano, the financial products manager whose complex investments led to American International Group's near collapse, is receiving $1 million a month in consulting fees.
Former chief executive Martin J. Sullivan, whose three-year tenure coincided with much of the company's ill-fated risk-taking, is receiving a $5 million performance bonus.
And just last week, about 70 of the company's top performers were rewarded with a week-long stay at the luxury St. Regis Resort in Monarch Beach, Calif., where they ran up a tab of $440,000.
But Washington, Wall Street, and ethanol and oil and gas companies want you to think there is, says automotive expert Ed Wallace
by Ed Wallace
"They see speculation in the market, I see decline in global inventories. I don't think this is a big surprise, that we've had a jump in price when there has been a decrease in crude inventories."— Energy Secretary Sam Bodman, Bloomberg News, Mar. 5, 2008
"It should be obvious to you all that the [gasoline] demand is outstripping supply, which causes prices to go up." — President George W. Bush, Associated Press, Mar. 5, 2008
One wonders if verifiable facts ever get in the way of this administration's statements on issues that are critical to the average American's wellbeing. After all, last time I checked, when politicians are elected to public office, or appointed, as is Energy Secretary Samuel W. Bodman, they must take an oath to the American people before assuming their new positions. How can they forget a sacred oath so quickly? Were they daydreaming when they took it, so it never meant anything to begin with? Maybe it's just another promise you have to make to get into office: When you're securely incumbent you can ignore even solemn oaths you took.
Sunday, June 01 2008 @ 08:46 AM MDT
Contributed by: BMcDonald
Views: 426
by Russell Mokhiber and Robert Weissman
Multinational Monitor
The U.S. public holds Big Business in shockingly low regard.
A November 2007 Harris poll found that less than 15 percent of the population believes each of the following industries to be "generally honest and trustworthy:" tobacco companies (3 percent); oil companies (3 percent); managed care companies such as HMOs (5 percent); health insurance companies (7 percent); telephone companies (10 percent); life insurance companies (10 percent); online retailers (10 percent); pharmaceutical and drug companies (11 percent); car manufacturers (11 percent); airlines (11 percent); packaged food companies (12 percent); electric and gas utilities (15 percent). Only 32 percent of adults said they trusted the best-rated industry about which Harris surveyed, supermarkets.
Thursday, May 15 2008 @ 10:00 AM MDT
Contributed by: AWallenwein
Views: 3,089
Stagnant pools of water are breeding grounds for all kinds of pests - and so is Congress. Help us get some motion into this cesspool by turning 99% of it over at every election!
The USA PATRIOT Act, the Military Commissions Act, and all kinds of freedom-destroying and unconstitutional laws are passed in Congress on a routine basis. Congressmen are also hugely invested in defense contractors in Iraq - which probably explains its failure to get us out of Iraq after the Dems took over in 2006. That's why all of them MUST GO - regardless of party politics.
You have the absolute, unquestioned power to make it reality - THIS YEAR, in 2008!
Most people don't know the Federal Reserve is controlled by the largest private banks. They are using their control of the Fed to destroy the dollar, our economy and wipe out the middle class so they can replace it with a system and currency they have even MORE control of. If we don't shut down the bankers, the Federal Reserve, this nation is history! The Congress can REPEAL THE FEDERAL RESERVE ACT and return control over our currency to "We The People." We have to take back control of Congress and DEMAND THIS HAPPEN in the upcoming election!
Be a courageous
Huffington Post 
Screw the autoworkers.
This is a revealing film about how the people who own and control corporations use their wealth and power to get whatever they want, regardless of the damage to society or human life as a whole. It's all about power and money and everything else be damned. This film zeros in on the tobacco industry, specifically Phillip Morris. 
For some people at AIG, the insurance giant rescued last month with an $85 billion federal bailout, the good times keep rolling.
