Author Archives: BeatrizKingsmil

Trump Foundation Involved in Yet More Corruption

by BeatrizKingsmil Posted on September 20, 2016

Mother Jones

Donald Trump’s foundation is in the news again:

Donald Trump spent more than a quarter-million dollars from his charitable foundation to settle lawsuits that involved the billionaire’s for-profit businesses, according to interviews and a review of legal documents.

In one case, from 2007, Trump’s Mar-a-Lago Club faced $120,000 in unpaid fines from the town of Palm Beach, Fla., resulting from a dispute over the size of a flagpole. In a settlement, Palm Beach agreed to waive those fines — if Trump’s club made a $100,000 donation to a specific charity for veterans. Instead, Trump sent a check from the Donald J. Trump Foundation, a charity funded almost entirely by other people’s money, according to tax records.

Sorry Donald. You’re not allowed to use your charity to pay off your business obligations:

“I represent 700 nonprofits a year, and I’ve never encountered anything so brazen,” said Jeffrey Tenenbaum, who advises charities at the Venable law firm in Washington. After The Post described the details of these Trump Foundation gifts, Tenenbaum described them as “really shocking.”

“If he’s using other people’s money — run through his foundation — to satisfy his personal obligations, then that’s about as blatant an example of self-dealing as I’ve seen in a while,” Tenenbaum said.

I don’t think I can count the number of reporters who have investigated the Clinton Foundation or the number of pieces they’ve written. The net result has been (a) no actual serious misconduct uncovered, but (b) a steady drumbeat of stories implying that something improper was going on.

Now then: how many reporters have been investigating the Trump Foundation? I might be missing someone, but basically the answer is one: David Fahrenthold of the Washington Post. The net result has been (a) plenty of actual misconduct uncovered, but (b) very little in the way of public attention to it.

This is why so many people can somehow believe that Hillary Clinton is less trustworthy than Donald Trump. In truth, it’s not even close. Trump is probably the world champion in the sport of lying; he cares about nothing but enriching himself and getting even with his enemies; and his political positions change with the wind. He’s just about the least trustworthy person on the planet.

But he’s entertaining. Gotta give him that. And really, isn’t that what matters?

See original article:

Trump Foundation Involved in Yet More Corruption

Posted in FF, G & F, GE, LG, ONA, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Trump Foundation Involved in Yet More Corruption

Big Banks Plead Guilty to Collusion, But Fines are Pocket Change

by BeatrizKingsmil Posted on May 20, 2015

Mother Jones

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC “-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN” “http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd”>

Five of the planet’s biggest banks have finally been forced to plea guilty to collusion charges in the foreign exchange market:

The Justice Department forced four of the banks — Citigroup, JPMorgan Chase, Barclays and the Royal Bank of Scotland — to plead guilty to antitrust violations in the foreign exchange market as part of a scheme that padded the banks’ profits and enriched the traders who carried out the plot….Underscoring the collusive nature of their contact, which often occurred in online chat rooms, one group of traders called themselves “the cartel,” an invitation-only club where stakes were so high that a newcomer was warned, “Mess this up and sleep with one eye open.” To carry out the scheme, one trader would typically build a huge position in a currency and then unload it at a crucial moment, hoping to move prices. Traders at the other banks agreed to, as New York State’s financial regulator put it, “stay out of each other’s way.”

….The guilty pleas, which the banks are expected to enter in federal court later on Wednesday, represent a first in a financial industry that has been dogged by numerous scandals and investigations since the 2008 financial crisis. Until now, banks have either had their biggest banking units or small subsidiaries plead guilty.

….As part of the criminal deal with the Justice Department, a fifth bank, UBS, will plead guilty to manipulating the London Interbank Offered Rate, or Libor, a benchmark rate that underpins the cost of trillions of dollars in credit cards and other loans.

The total fine is about $5 billion, and it’s about damn time this happened. Unfortunately, I assume that a billion dollars each is basically pocket change that’s already been fully reserved on their balance sheets. Needless to say, not a single dime of this will hit the actual people running the banks, who couldn’t possibly be expected to know that any of this stuff was going on. They were too busy drinking their lunches and remodeling their corner offices to know what a few rogue traders on the 23rd floor were doing. The Times confirms that life will go on as usual:

For the banks, though, life as a felon is likely to carry more symbolic shame than practical problems. Although they could be technically barred by American regulators from managing mutual funds or corporate pension plans or perform certain other securities activities, the banks have obtained waivers from the Securities and Exchange Commission that will allow them to conduct business as usual. In fact, the cases were not announced until after the S.E.C. had time to act.

It’s good to be king.

This article:  

Big Banks Plead Guilty to Collusion, But Fines are Pocket Change

Posted in FF, GE, LG, ONA, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Big Banks Plead Guilty to Collusion, But Fines are Pocket Change