Celebration at the Station this weekend

Celebration at the Station airs Sunday, May 26, 2013 at 8pm on KCPT. 

Located at Kansas City’s Union Station, music is by the Kansas City Symphony with Michael Stern, music director. This year  they're also featuring Oleta Adams, Musicorps and host Jim Birdsall with Charles Bruffy, chorus director.

Bank of America Celebration at the Station is the largest FREE Memorial Day Weekend event in the Midwest. The Kansas City Symphony, led by Music Director Michael Stern, performs patriotic favorites against the backdrop of Kansas City’s historic Union Station. The event concludes with their wonderful, annual fireworks display. The Kansas City Symphony is grateful to Bank of America for making this gift to our city possible.

This year's Celebration at the Station will also have a variety of food truck vendors on-site, offering a wide array of food and beverage options! Including The Moose Truck,New York Dawg Pound, Cajun Cabin, Monk's Roast Beef, Kona Ice-Trucks, Jerusalem Cafe Hookah Bar, Jazzy B's and CoffeeCakeKC.

Sprint labeled one of the "9 Great American Companies That Will Never Recover"

There's an article out right now, showing the companies that won't likely come back from the 2008 financial crush.

One of them is, as the title says, our own Sprint company is one of them:

"24/7 Wall St. has compiled a list of these companies that won't be making comebacks -- names that you know well, but that will never be leaders again."

What they have to say about them:

Sprint finally posted some reasonably good results recently. However, these could not mask the fact that the No. 3 wireless carrier is too small to ever really compete with AT&T and Verizon Wireless.

Sprint's $35 billion Nextel purchase in 2004 can be seen in retrospect as a key blunder. Their networks ran on different platforms, and integration issues drove customers away from the combined company. Sprint made the MSN "Customer Service Hall of Shame" several times, most recently in 2010. Its customer service has improved significantly since then, but the damage had been done.

Sprint's revenue has fallen from $41.1 billion in 2007 to $33.7 billion last year. It now has about 50 million subscribers to Verizon's 104 million and AT&T's 95 million. As a Morningstar researcher recently noted, "While Sprint has struggled, Verizon Wireless and AT&T have benefited at its expense. Fending off these much larger rivals will be increasingly difficult as data services become more important to the industry."

Not good. Not good at all.

Some of the other companies: Band of America, Dell Computer, Barnes & Noble and The New York Times.

Link: http://www.dailyfinance.com/2012/08/01/9-great-american-companies-that-will-never-recover/?icid=maing-grid7%7Chp-laptop%7Cdl2%7Csec1_lnk3%26pLid%3D188353#photo-6

Bad business news out today

There's some fairly bad economic news on at least three fronts today. First, Cisco says it's laying off 10% of its workforce or 6,500 people so that stinks. Second is that Bank of America is reporting a "huge loss". Finally, "Weak trading bites into Goldman profits," to the tune of a 9.1 billion dollar loss. Not good indicators, boys and girls, not good indicators at all. Think happy, hopeful thoughts. And keep cool, by all means.Links: http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/07/19/idUS268176494420110719; http://news.yahoo.com/bank-america-reports-9-1-bn-second-quarter-000502952.html; http://news.yahoo.com/goldman-investors-seek-answers-beyond-dreary-second-quarter-095310101.html

Sure, we'll sue a German bank...

U.S. sues German bank over home loans

Deutsche Bank is accused of unfairly sticking American taxpayers with a monster tab.

To date, the U.S. government has brought few cases against big Wall Street banks in response to the mortgage crisis that nearly toppled the world's financial system almost three years ago. But the Justice Department today filed suit against Deutsche Bank for hundreds of millions of dollars, alleging that the banking giant unfairly stuck taxpayers with the tab for bad home loans it issued.

The complaint, filed in Federal District Court in New York, accused Deutsche Bank of failing to adequately scrutinize potential borrowers, then lying to government officials about its lapses of due diligence

Yeah, we'll jump all over a foreign, in this case, German, bank.  We'll sue them.  We'll go after them for lying to and cheating and stealing from Americans but an American bank?

Where are the lawsuits against Countrywide?

And since Bank of America bought Countrywide, where are the lawsuits against them?

And while we're at it, where are the lawsuits against Goldman Sachs for both pushing junk loans in one part of the company but then betting those same junk loans will fail in a different part of the same company, all to gain billions of dollars in profits?

Where are THOSE lawsuits?

We know the answer.

The people above pay their representatives "campaign finance" money--far better and more accurately known as bribes--to get whatever they want in the form of legislation and/or, in this case, just to be quiet and leave them alone.

Well, that and the fact that Goldman Sachs is IN the White House, has been for years and is having their way with us.

A simple change we need from Washington

I've said repeatedly here that one of the easiest, simplest and smartest things we need to do is have one enterprising representative in Congress in Washington introduce a bill that would take away incentives to take any manufacturing or business offshore.  Here's proof of what I'm saying from an article yesterday on Alternet:

According to the non-partisan Government Accountability Office (GAO), eighty-three of the 100 largest publicly traded U.S. corporations utilize such tax havens to reduce their U.S. tax liability. Ironically, these accounting tricks aren’t available for companies that only do business in the United States, so Congress in effect is providing tax incentives to ship jobs overseas and dismantle the middle class.


It would be so easy.


And smart.


Some bright--even demagoguic--representative or senator should sponsor a bill taking away tax benefits to offshore business and first, they'd be a huge media darling, overnight.  Second, they'd be hugely popular with the people, just as quick.  Third, they would gain a great name for themselves locally, in their own districts but also nationally, in case they wanted to run for some other, higher office later.


This would be perfect for ANYONE in any political party--Democrat, Republican, Libertarian, Independent but especially a Tea Party member.


I don't understand why this isn't happening.


Well, other than the fact that some corporations might not want to give them more campaign money.  Other than that.


Link:   http://www.alternet.org/economy/150598/how_12_multinational_corporations_avoid_paying_taxes

On corporate tax dodgers (read: cheats)

From Alternet and Rainforest Action Network (RAN):

...12 of the dirtiest corporate tax dodgers: Bank of America, Citi, JPMorgan, Wells Fargo, Chevron, BP, Shell, Exxon, Massey Energy, Alpha Natural Resources, Peabody Energy and Arch Coal. These 12 banks, oil and coal companies are largely responsible for foreclosing on millions of people’s homes and polluting our air, water and climate. At the same time, we found that they pay next to nothing into a tax system that provides the very services that protect the homeless, the sick and our environment.   

Our new infographic, Dirty Corporate Tax Dodgers, shows that banks, oil and coal companies made billions in profits last year and paid much less than their fair share in taxes. In fact, we found that if these 12 banks, oil and coal companies actually paid the IRS corporate tax rate of 35% they would be giving back $62 billion this tax season. That is almost double the $38 billion in federal budget cuts. 

To add insult to injury, while these multi-billion dollar industries we raking in the profits and evading their taxes they were also paying millions in CEO compensation and lobby dollars. These corporations are happy to pay large sums to manipulate our democracy but aren’t so interested in paying to support it.   

We were shocked to find that:

• Chevron, Exxon, BP and Shell together made $1.26 trillion in gross revenues, but paid a paltry 2.04% average tax rate;
• Bank of America, Citi, JPMorgan and Wells Fargo collectively dished out $83.4 million in CEO compensation;  and, while the top 4 banks made $454.4 billion in gross revenue, the top 4 oil companies made $1.26 trillion (yes that’s a ‘t'), and the top coal corporations made $17 billion, they collectively only paid $8.74 billion in federal taxes.

...let’s get one thing straight. America is not broke, and these dirty corporations don’t need any more handouts, bailouts, or subsidies. We don’t have a money problem we have a priorities problem. We’re slashing billions from our budget, much of which will come out of social services and environmental protections, while allowing corporate giants to slip ever-increasing profits into offshore accounts.  

By reversing years of tax giveaways to the largest corporations, Congress could raise trillions in revenue not only covering our budget deficit but also enhancing education, health and environmental programs that safeguard our families and our future. 

Like the now old saying goes, "If you're not angry, you're not paying attention."

Link:  http://www.alternet.org/economy/150617/corporate_tax_dodgers%3A_the_dirtiest_dozen

Quote of the day--on taxes and fairness

"Open your wallet. Take out a dollar bill, and feel it between your fingers. That dollar is more than Bank of America, Citigroup, Verizon and Boeing all paid in U.S. income taxes last year, combined."  --The Daily Kos

Does this make any sense at all?

Does this seem like a good or wise way to run a country?

Link:  http://www.dailykos.com/story/2011/03/15/956508/-All-in-a-Month’s-WorkCrashing-BofA,-Drawing-Beck’s-IreShaming-Corporate-Tax-Dodgers-

Quote of the day--on corporations paying taxes

When corporations like Bank of America don’t pay their fair share of taxes, we have to ‘cut’ teachers, firefighters, and public servants. Do you pay your taxes? So do we. Why don’t corporations pay their fair share, just like everyone else? Bank of America is Bad for America. Bank of America pockets Billions in profits and bailouts, but $0 in American taxes — that’s immoral and un-American.
--US Uncut

Link to original post:  http://www.disinfo.com/2011/03/ever-want-to-yell-at-300-billionaires-who-helped-wreck-the-economy-video/

Why haven't we made "naked credit default swaps" illegal?

First, a definition:


Credit Default Swap:  A "swap" (trade) designed to transfer the credit exposure of fixed income products between parties.


Or there's this definition:


A specific kind of counterparty agreement which allows the transfer of third party credit risk from one party to the other. One party in the swap is a lender and faces credit riskfrom a third party, and the counterparty in the credit defaultswap agrees to insure this risk in exchange of regularperiodic payments (essentially an insurance premium). If the third party defaults, the party providing insurance will have to purchase from the insured party the defaulted asset. Inturn, the insurer pays the insured the remaining interest on the debt, as well as the principal.


Good luck with a definition of a credit default swap.  Trust me on this.  Google "credit default swap" and go through the list, see if you can understand it.  


Here's the best, simplest definition I could find:  The buyer of a credit swap receives credit protection, whereas the seller of the swap guarantees the credit worthiness of the product. By doing this, the risk of default is transferred from the holder of the fixed income security to the seller of the swap. 


What it boils down to is a giant ripoff, designed by JP Morgan and company:


The first CDS contract was introduced by JP Morgan in 1997 and by mid-2007, the value of the market had ballooned to an estimated $45 trillion, according to the International Swaps and Derivatives Association - over twice the size of the U.S. stock market.


And as anyone who has read anything by Matt Taibbi of Rolling Stone magazine would know, these are a) not really, officially "insurance" at all and so b) are not regulated by the Federal Government.  The banking community created a $45 trillion dollar market and has kept it away from any regulation which would be fine but if this market crashes, as it nearly did in 2008, it could take down not just the US markets but the world's.


So here's what's been going on, and what a "naked credit default swap" is, as told by that same Matt Taibbi, on his blog (link below):  


In insurance...you can’t buy policies on someone else’s property. But in finance, you can buy credit default protection on anything, whether you own the underlying property or not. This is called a naked credit default swap. So if Bank of America is holding a billion dollars in mortgage-backed securities, Goldman Sachs can actually buy swaps on all of those MBS, even though it doesn’t own them. Your problem with this is that you don’t understand it because you think it doesn’t make sense, and that’s because it doesn’t make sense – a naked CDS is totally indistinguishable from gambling, but it’s legal. There was an ill-fated attempt by Byron Dorgan to outlaw naked CDS in the negotiations for the Dodd-Frank bill, but that attempt failed. 


So, other than the fact that Goldman Sachs is inside the White House and has been for at least decades and the fact that the banking industry virtually runs, if not owns our government, why have we not made "credit default swaps" and especially "naked credit default swaps" illegal?  It's a great question.  CDS's and the banking industry nearly wrecked our economy and they're still running the game.


Why are you not mad as hell?


And why aren't you raising hell with your Congressman about this?


(Well, other than the fact that we're all just trying to keep our jobs, not have our unions wrecked by the Republicans, keep up our payments on our homes and our outrageously-high health care, etc., etc.)


Final note:  If you want to get a great, enjoyable, even fun, if sick read that will also tell you where America has been economically for the last decade or so and where we likely still are, go get Matt Taibbi's
 book Griftopia:  Bubble Machines, Vampire Squids, and the Long Con That Is Breaking America.  You'll be very glad you did.


Links:  http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/blogs/taibblog/mailbag-friedman-naked-swaps-and-madoff-20110228
http://www.investopedia.com/articles/optioninvestor/08/cds.asp
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Credit_default_swap
http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/exclusive-excerpt-america-on-sale-from-matt-taibbis-griftopia-20101018
http://www.randomhouse.com/catalog/display.pperl/9780385529952.html

Terrific, even important, art exhibits in town right now

 

It turns out, this is really quite an art weekend for Kansas City.

Last evening was "1st Friday" in the Crossroads area, of course and while that's behind us, two exhibits are available right now, very different from one another, that are "can't miss" exhibits.

The Kemper Gallery of Contemporary Art has an exhibit of pieces by Wyeth family members--N.C., Andrew, James and Henriette--that is a knockout. Thanks to the Kemper family, of course, for both the gallery itself and now for several of these artworks, you can enjoy quite a range of talent and style.

Then, at Union Station, you can see a terrific display of Andy Warhol originals.

They're being shown as part of a Bank of America sponsorship and tour of the country. It's inexpensive, at only $12.00 per person and it doesn't take 2 or 3 hours to see.

I would recommend you go down at 2 or 3 in the afternoon, though. When we arrived, at about 1:30 pm, we had to pay $5.00 to park. My immediate, knee-jerk reaction was to dislike it. But then I got to thinking about supporting Union Station and this type touring exhibit and I thought it made sense and was fair. However, when we came back to the car an hour later, the barricades and money-takers were gone. It made no sense. We were back to feeling taken advantage of again. Oh, well.

One last note, I've put some pictures up from Union Station and our tour at my photography blog: www.kcphotogblog.blogspot.com.

Have a great weekend, y'all.

No one burns through money like Americans, Part Two

Okay, here's another story you may or may not have seen.

While all the big banks were in big trouble and needing millions and yes, billions of dollars of our government, tax dollars to save their collective butts, these same banks--Goldman Sachs, AIG, Citibank (as Bill Maher refers to them--and that they've earned--"Shittybank"), Morgan Stanley, Bank of America, etc.--they were also handing out many, many million dollar bonuses to their employees.

Check this out:

"At Goldman Sachs, for example, bonuses of more than $1 million went to 953 traders and bankers..."

Do the math.

One million dollars times 953 traders is perilously close to one trillion dollars, folks.

For one company.

One company.

953 employees.

One million dollars each.

Can you even imagine?

One million dollars as a bonus?

On top of your salary?

Where is the perspective?

To continue:

"Even at weaker banks like Citigroup and Bank of America, million dollar awards were distributed to hundreds of workers."

How nice.

"...Morgan Stanley awarded seven-figure bonuses to 428 employees."

Let's see. 953--million--plus 428--million--and pretty soon you're very near one and a half billion dollars in bonuses.

Even though you're company is going to heck in a handbasket, largely due to how the company was handled and choices made in the organization.

This is insane.

This is insanity.

The banks screwed up, big time, by screwing their clients, largely in mortgages and other really ugly vehicles, then they were going down and losing money but they then handed out million dollar bonuses to hundreds and hundreds of employess--after receiving government money to save their butts.

Oh, yeah.

Americans burn through money like no one else.

We've given billions, maybe trillions of dollars, to these banks, to save their collective butts and they turned around and gave million dollar bonuses to hundreds and hundreds of their employees.

As though they'd done a good job.

Link to story:
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/31/business/31pay.html?_r=1&th&emc=th

What The New York Times thinks, anyway

In today's New York Times, it seems very clear what they, at least, think should happen.

First, they covered John Thain's fleecing of his company and the American people, when he was at the head of Merrill Lynch. You probably heard about this guy--he had his private bathroom done for $1.2 million dollars, for starters and then gave away billions of dollars of bonuses, for God's sake, just before Bank of America bought them and just before B of A had to get billions of dollars of your and my tax money to cover all their lossed, these included.

Let it be said now and into the future and in the American history books that John Thain is and was a thief and scumbag.

Second, the Times had an editorial by Paul Krugman, saying we need, as a country, to nationalize banks in the country and the sooner the better.

Third, there was an editorial column saying the same thing.

Finally, there is a fourth separate article pointing out how Sweden's advice to the US in the financial mess we're in would be to, repeat after me--nationalize the banks--or some of them, anyway.

So it's pretty clear what some people and groups in the US think we should be doing.

It will likely happen, too, for a few reasons:

1) It will be called "nationalizing" the banks, not socialism;

2) It will be stated that it's intended to be temporary and finally

3) We're in one hell of an ugly financial crisis and our government leaders don't know what else to do, other than also borrow and hand out trillions of dollars of money.

The banks and their leaders were incredibly irresponsible and greedy, which is why we're in this mess, and that's what the John Thain piggery makes so clear.

One thing is for sure--we need a quick return to good, strong, clear and complete regulation of our banking system, now and forever.

Are we done yet?

Could we now, once and for all, put to rest the ridiculous, short-sighted and irresponsible idea that the banking industry in the United States doesn't have to be regulated by government?

Please?

That same deregulation of banking in the US allowed for the huge scale of unsupportable, irresponsible loans to people who should never have had them and couldn't afford them in the first place. While it got these institutions absurd, large and, again, unsupportable short-term benefits and false profits, it has brought about the largest collapse of the international banking system since the Great Depression. This is no longer debatable.

The government, while we do want it small, efficient and responsible, is extremely important for its role as watchdog, particularly against corruption within corporations and multinational corporations.

We are now paying the price for not having scrutinized our banking sector. Indeed, the world is paying this price, really, due to the collapse in confidence of the credit markets.

Can we agree that government has its role in the world and move on?