Molly Ivins: A few rotten apples

[Dudley_DUright]

Holy smokes! I know hellzapoppin' with the news here lately, but let's try keeping our eye on the shell with the pea under it. Fascinating as all this inside-D.C. stuff is about Rummy and Cheney, and who leaked the CIA agent's name, there's some major stuff being buried in the business section.

The manipulation of mutual funds -- nice, safe, comfortable old mutual funds -- is a story heating up nicely. In addition, if you are following the trial of Frank Quattrone in the nasty case of manipulating high-tech IPOs, you already have been whomperjawed over the goings on.

Add The New York Times Sunday account of how states and municipalities have been talked into bond issues by investment banking firms to cover pension costs, with highly unfortunate results, and you have a creepy and getting-creepier picture of the entire financial services industry.

"On a risk-adjusted basis, the only people who can make money on this are the investment bankers," Robert C. North, chief actuary for New York City's five pension funds, told the Times. In New Orleans, city officials who had expected to make money by selling bonds in late 2000 now find they will cost the city over $280 million.

more...

http://www.workingforchange.com/article.cfm?itemid=15808

[realFedUp]

1. arrrrgggghhhhhh.

It's hard to follow this stuff but we need to...
Thanks Molly!

[BigLed]

2. Interesting coincidence

Krugman today,"So is America safe, despite its scary numbers?

Third world countries typically suffer from institutional weaknesses. They have poor corporate governance: you can't trust business accounting, and insiders often enrich themselves at stockholders' expense. Meanwhile, cronyism is rampant, with close personal and financial links between powerful politicians and the very companies that benefit from public largesse. Luckily, in America we don't have any of these weaknesses. Oh, wait. . . . (Isn't that all history? No. According to The Wall Street Journal, we are again hearing warnings that "optimism is based on massaged earnings.")"

and Molly chimes in with her usual astuteness saying much the same thing.

I'm recurrently amazed at the optimism I felt about the future a mere three years ago.

We have to take this country away from the scoundrels. I don't say take this country back, we ever really had it, not in my lifetime, (53.)