Matt Taibbi of Rolling Stone and Yves Smith of Naked Capitalism explain to Bill Moyers how similar are the workings of the big banks to organized crime syndicates. Taibbi had an article where he expanded on this idea. [Read more…]
Recently the employees of a chain of convenience stores called QC Mart got the following memo: [Read more…]
Remember the infamous Nigerian 419 scam? I wrote three years ago about how annoying it was to get these bogus offers practically every other day and expressed surprise that anyone would still fall for it now that it was well known. Thankfully I seem to have been dropped from the mailing lists and have not received any such offers for well over a year now, but it turns out that a variation of the scam using cashier’s checks has been used to defraud even fancy law firms for hundreds of thousands of dollars. [Read more…]
You can’t say the one-percenters don’t care about the environment. Ferrari is releasing a hybrid version of their car for a mere $850,000. [Read more…]
Like many people, I watch the occasional TED talk, usually because someone else recommended it to me. From watching the talks, I had a vague idea that they were given at a conference of some kind but was not curious enough to try and find out what the conferences were about and who attended. [Read more…]
Cleveland has just opened its first casino with great fanfare after a great deal of debate on the morality of the gambling, and there have been long lines of people waiting to get in. I don’t really see gambling as a moral issue because there does not seem to be anything intrinsically wrong with people betting on random outcomes as a means of generating pleasure and excitement. [Read more…]