Category: Wealth and Power

Foreclosure Law Firm Holds Halloween Party Making Fun of Foreclosed-Upon People

On By A.P.In Wealth and PowerLeave a comment

These are picures from last year’s Halloween party at the law firm of Steven J. Baum .  The firm, which is located near Buffalo, is what is commonly referred to as a “foreclosure mill” firm, meaning it represents banks and mortgage servicers as they attempt to foreclose on homeowners and evict them from their homes. Steven J. Baum is the largest such firm in New York; it represents virtually all the giant mortgage lenders, including Citigroup, JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America and Wells Fargo.

These pictures were provided anonymously to the NYT by a former employee, who said that the snapshots are an accurate representation of the firm’s mind-set. “There is this really cavalier attitude,” she said. “It doesn’t matter that people are going to lose their homes.” Nor does the firm try to help people get mortgage modifications; the pressure, always, is to foreclose.”

Read the whole article here:  http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/29/opinion/what-the-costumes-reveal.html

The Wealthiest People in America

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Despite the stalled economy, the nation’s wealthiest are worth a combined $1.53 trillion, nearly equivalent to the GDP of  Canada.  Their total wealth is up 12% in the year through August 26, meaning they did slightly better than the markets; the S&P 500, for instance, was up 10% in that time.

Bill Gates was the richest person for the 18th straight year, worth $59 billion; the last time he didn’t rank no. 1 was in 1993 when his good friend Warren Buffett was on top. Buffett, who’s been spending a lot of time talking about raising taxes on the rich, is still no. 2 but the gap is widening. His fortune tumbled $6 billion in the past year, making him the biggest loser in terms of total dollars. He gave away $3.27 billion since last year’s rankings but was also pinched by a 10% drop in Berkshire Hathaway’s stock.

Rounding out the top 10 on The Forbes 400: Oracle founder Larry Ellison ($33 billion), industrialists Charles and David Koch ($25 billion apiece), Wal-Mart heirs Christy Walton ($24.5 billion), Jim C. Walton ($21.1 billion) and Alice Walton ($20.9 billion), hedge fund investor George Soros ($22 billion), and casino king Sheldon Adelson ($21.5 billion).

Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg added $10.6 billion to his fortune, making him the year’s biggest gainer and pushing him into the top 20 for the first time — he ranks no. 14 with a net worth of $17.5 billion. That puts him ahead of Google rivals Sergey Brin and Larry Page, who added $1.7 billion apiece to their fortunes but slipped five spots in the rankings and are tied at no. 15

The hoodie-clad 27-year-old Zuckerberg is one of 6 club members to get rich from Facebook. Others include newcomers Sean Parker and Jim Breyer, Facebook’s venture capitalist, as well as Zuckerberg’s former roommate Dustin Moskovitz, whose birthday is eight days after the Facebook chief’s, making him America’s youngest billionaire. Three other social media mavens made their debut including LinkedIn’s Reid Hoffman, Groupon’s Eric Lefkofsky and Zynga’s Mark Pincus.

Other notable entrepreneurs among the 18 newcomers include Green Mountain Coffee’s Bob Stiller, Go Daddy’s Bob Parsons, and energy tycoons Farris and Dan Wilks. Six people, including Starbucks’ Howard Schultz and Quicken’s Dan Gilbert, returned to the list after a year or more absence.

Three members of last year’s list have died: John Anderson, William Cook and Jess Jackson. Twenty-one missed the cut, including at least a dozen billionaires, like University of Phoenix’s John Sperling, whose net worths were just shy of $1.05 billion, the price of admission in 2011.

http://www.forbes.com/lists/2006/54/biz_06rich400_all_slide.html?thisSpeed=10000

The Computers Are Taking Over Wall Street

On By A.P.In The Singularity, Wealth and PowerLeave a comment

This past week, the Dow swung back and forth more than 400 points on four straight days.  Trading volume is at or near record levels, and the majority of  trading is now done through the phenomenon of ‘High Frequency Trading’ on large server farms based in New Jersey and elsewhere.

High frequency trading is what it name implies: buying large volumes of shares and selling them off quickly to make few cents per share or less in profit. It is also known as algorithmic trading where proprietary formulas on computers look for anomalies in a vast number of stocks and trade accordingly.  These trades happen several times a minute.

 High-frequency trading makes up 53% of all trading in U.S. stock markets, up from 21% in 2005, said Larry Tabb, president and CEO of market research firm Tabb Group. Other estimates put it even higher, at around 65%.

Gary Wedbush, executive vice president and head of capital markets at Wedbush Securities, told Bloomberg News on Friday that more than 80% of the firm’s orders since Aug. 1 have come from high-frequency trading clients, at five times the typical volume.

Nearly everyone on Wall Street is involved in algorithmic trading in some form, Tabb said, including large banks, hedge funds and mutual funds.

“These firms often piggyback on large orders, so it can amplify a stock’s movement,” Arnuk said.

The Securities and Exchange Commission in a report blamed high-frequency trading in part for the May 6, 2010 “flash crash,” when the Dow fell nearly 1,000 points in minutes.

High frequency trading is also associated with flash trading, in which traders can see incoming buy and sell orders and put in their orders milliseconds before them and accordingly profit. High frequency trading has also been linked to the related  practice of front running where an algorithm or trader sees orders before they are filled and acts on the information….sort of like insider trading. Front running is illegal.

http://money.cnn.com/2011/08/12/markets/high_frequency_trading/index.htm?source=cnn_bin&hpt=hp_bn3

$6.6 Billion Cash Flown From the US to Iraq for Reconstruction is Missing

On By A.P.In Crime, Human Behavior, War, Wealth and Power1 Comment

The Iraqi and U.S. governments have been unable to account for a substantial chunk of the billions of dollars in reconstruction aid the Bush administration literally airlifted into the country. If the cash proves to have been stolen, the heist could represent “the largest theft of funds in national history,” according to a report in the Los Angeles Times.

Pentagon officials determined that one giant C-130 Hercules cargo plane could carry $2.4 billion in shrink-wrapped bricks of $100 bills. They sent an initial full planeload of cash, followed by 20 other flights to Iraq by May 2004 in a $12-billion haul that U.S. officials believe to be the biggest international cash airlift of all time.

Special inspector general for Iraqi reconstruction Stuart Bowen told the paper the missing $6.6 billion may be “the largest theft of funds in national history.”

Iraqi officials say it was the U.S. government’s job to keep track of the funds, which were brought in as an emergency measure to keep basic infrastructure going after Saddam Hussein’s ouster. House Government Reform Committee investigators found in 2005 evidence of “substantial waste, fraud and abuse in the actual spending and disbursement of the Iraqi funds.”

Witnesses testified that millions of dollars were shoved into “gunnysacks” and disbursed to Iraqi contractors on pick-up trucks, with what seemed to be little financial controls or accounting on the part of the U.S. government.

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-missing-billions-20110613,0,4414060.story

Thanks to Mr. Cuomo for bringing this to the attention of the It’s Interesting community.

Lunch With Warren Buffet

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The bidding for the annual power lunch with Warren Buffet ended with a new record in New York with a final bid of $2,626,411 – just $100 higher from the previous year.

The winner, along with seven other guests of his/her choice, will have the opportunity to spend lunch with the “Oracle of Omaha” at the Smith & Wollensky steak house in New York CityRead more: http://technorati.com/business/article/winner-of-power-lunch-with-warren/#ixzz1PJQx9OMJ

Thin Women and Heavier Men Earn More Money

On By A.P.In Health, Human Behavior, Wealth and PowerLeave a comment

The Journal of Applied Psychology found that women who are 25 lbs. below average weight take home an additional $15,572 each year.

On the other hand, men who are 25 lbs. below average weight take home $8,437 less each year.

“Perhaps the most startling finding of this investigation is that men and women experience opposite incentives regarding weight in the very thin to average weight range. Whereas women are punished for any weight gain, very thin women receive the most severe punishment for their first few pounds of weight gain. This finding is consistent with research showing that the media’s consistent depiction of an unrealistically thin female ideal leads people to see this ideal as normative, expected, and central to female attractiveness.“

“Studies have demonstrated that people assign positive personality traits to drawings or photographs of mesomorphic (muscular) men and mostly negative traits to nonmesomorphic men. For example traits ascribed to mesomorphic men were very positive (i.e., best friend, has lots of friends, polite, happy, helps others, brave, healthy, smart, and neat). By contrast … ectomorphic (slender) men were described with a different set of negative traits (i.e., nervous, sneaky, afraid, sad, weak, and sick).”

Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/skinny-women-make-more-money-2011-6#ixzz1PGurvRmL

$131,000 for Princess Beatrice’s ridiculous Royal Wedding hat

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“I’ve been amazed by the amount of attention the hat has attracted,” Beatrice is quoted as saying in the auction listing. “It’s a wonderful opportunity to raise as much money as possible for two fantastic charities. I hope whoever wins the auction has as much fun with the hat as I have.”

http://www.cnn.com/2011/SHOWBIZ/celebrity.news.gossip/05/22/beatrice.hat/index.html?hpt=C2

The Brain-Drain to Wall Street

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Recent trends indicate that the financial sector is sucking talent and entrepreneurial energy from more socially beneficial sectors of the economy.  Harvard graduates, for example, enter financial occupations at a far higher rate now than they did in the 1970s.  The trend has accelerated markedly in the past decade, as the computerization of finance has made the profession both more lucrative and more intellectually challenging.  The proportion of graduates from MIT, for example, who went to Wall Street rose from 18% in 2003 to 25% in 2006.
Read more: http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,2061220,00.html#ixzz1IW6Rz4wC

and here: 

http://www.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://www.campusprogress.org/campus_files/uploads/images/elitecolleges_thumb.jpg&imgrefurl=http://www.campusprogress.org/articles/wall_street_brain_drain/&usg=__ESZim_XUAAnUpGceXPYr2eGSfsU=&h=92&w=140&sz=12&hl=en&start=2&sig2=mR4q_QozrVL5DcrQhLhZoQ&zoom=1&itbs=1&tbnid=Sd1StRetW4BWRM:&tbnh=61&tbnw=93&prev=/images%3Fq%3Dbrain%2Bwall%2Bstreet%26hl%3Den%26gbv%3D2%26tbs%3Disch:1&ei=XCiZTZqvC4W_0QGlk8GADA

and here:  http://blogs.wsj.com/deals/2008/01/17/the-wall-street-brain-drain/

Thanks to Mr. C for bringing this to the attention of the It’s Interesting community.

The Real Housewives of Wall Street

On By A.P.In Government, Wealth and PowerLeave a comment

Why is the Federal Reserve forking over $220 million in bailout money to the wives of two Morgan Stanley bigwigs?

Read about it here in this article from Rolling Stone: 

 http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/the-real-housewives-of-wall-street-look-whos-cashing-in-on-the-bailout-20110411

Thanks to Kedmobee for bringing this to the attention of the It’s Interesting Community.