Author: Matthew G. Saroff
So, JP Morgan Is Being Hit Up for the Money it Stole from MF Global Customers
They are, “in negotiations:
JPMorgan Chase is in talks with the authorities to turn over customer money that disappeared from MF Global when the firm went bankrupt last year.
The development, announced this week by the trustee tasked with returning money to MF Global customers, suggests that a substantial sum of client funds is still sitting at JMorgan. The statement from the trustee, James W. Giddens, said that he and JPMorgan “are presently engaged in substantive discussions regarding the resolution of claims.”
What is going on here is that JP Morgan took money from MF Global for margin calls that came from customer accounts.
The reason that they are negotiating is because they knew that the money was dirty, because they knew that MF Global had no other source of liquidity, it’s why they made the margin call in the first place.
They did something similar in the collapse of Lehman as well.
No Blogging for You!
No Soup For You!
Yeah, we are preparing frantically for the Passover Seder, so I won’t have any time today.
BTW, this is my first ever Seinfeld reference on my blog, which is interesting, since I never watched the show when it was on.
When Maureen Dowd Isn’t Playing “Too Kool for Skool” She Can Write
Yesterday, she unloaded an impressive can of whup ass on the right-wingers on the Supreme Court.
She is unimpressed with their behavior at the Obamacare hearings, and outraged at their strip search decisions.
This is the first time in a long time that she hasn’t sounded like a Jr. High School girl making fun of some other girl’s shoes.
Go read,
This is Prize
Unfortunately, the following is totally fictional, but I’d love to see some of the Facebook snooping employers get shafted like this:
One of the new terms is that every prospective new hire allow their manager to “shoulder surf” as they browse their Facebook or better still, to voluntarily log their manager into their Facebook account. If I recall correctly, she claims that we have the obligation to do a “background check” on prospective hires. I’m extremely vague on the correlation between faux-promiscuous sex or drinking and employee performance, but as she is a seasoned veteran, I have to trust her when she says that things like this overrule my judgment as to who is and who isn’t fit to be a programmer in our employ.
I was willing to go along with things and see how they panned out. But today something went seriously wrong. I have been interviewing senior hires for the crucial tech lead position on the Fizz Buzz team, and while several walked out in a huff when I asked them to let me look at their Facebook, one young lady smiled and said I could help myself. She logged into her Facebook as I requested, and as I followed the COO’s instructions to scan her timeline and friends list looking for evidence of moral turpitude, I became aware she was writing something on her iPad.
“Taking notes?” I asked politely.
“No,” she smiled, “Emailing a human rights lawyer I know.” To say that the tension in the room could be cut with a knife would be understatement of the highest order. “Oh?” I asked. I waited, and as I am an expert in out-waiting people, she eventually cracked and explained herself.
“If you are surfing my Facebook, you could reasonably be expected to discover that I am a Lesbian. Since discrimination against me on this basis is illegal in Ontario, I am just preparing myself for the possibility that you might refuse to hire me and instead hire someone who is a heterosexual but less qualified in any way. Likewise, if you do hire me, I might need to have your employment contracts disclosed to ensure you aren’t paying me less than any male and/or heterosexual colleagues with equivalent responsibilities and experience.”
I got her out of the room as quickly as possible. The next few interviews were a blur, I was shaken. And then it happened again. This time, I found myself talking to a young man fresh out of University about a development position. After allowing me to surf his Facebook, he asked me how I felt about parenting. As a parent, it was easy to say I liked the idea. Then he dropped the bombshell.
His partner was expecting, and shortly after being hired he would be taking six months of parental leave as required by Ontario law. I told him that he should not have discussed this matter with me. “Oh normally I wouldn’t, but since you’re looking through my Facebook, you know that already. Now of course, you would never refuse to hire someone because they plan to exercise their legal right to parental leave, would you?”
What could I say? I guess we have another hire whether he’s qualified or not. Here’s the bottom line: My ability to select the best candidates for our positions has been irreparably compromised by looking into their private lives. I’ve been “tainted” by knowledge of their sexual orientation, illnesses, religion, political affiliations, and other factors that expose us to anti-discrimination legislation. We can’t even claim that the employee improperly disclosed these matters to us, as we are the ones initiating the investigation of their private doings
Worse, I cannot manage these people once they’re hired. I would be diffident about censuring them or passing them over for advancement for fear of incurring a lawsuit that would be a distraction to our business and damaging to our reputation as fair employers.
You know I think that this may very well be true.
If you look at someone’s Facebook page, you might very well determine that they are a member of a protected group (no discrimination on the basis of race, sex, religion, national origin, sexual preference [in some states], etc.)
So in addition to having Mark Zuckerberg suing you for hacking Facebook, which is what coercing a password against their TOS is, you might very well have a discrimination suit on your hands.
Oopsie.
It’s Jobless Thursday
More good news on the jobless front, 357K initial jobless claims, which is a bit less than last week, though primarily because last weeks numbers were revised upward a bit.
Still decent numbers.
Yes
Does the Supreme Court Have It In for the Democratic Party?
This has been another episode of simple answers to simple questions.
Kevin Drum is wondering whether the Supreme Court, or more accurately its 5 conservative justices, are acting out of a desire to gain political advantage for the Republican Party, rather than just conservative judicial philosophy:
When it comes to judicial activism, conservatives claim that we liberals have nothing to complain about. The Warren Court was famously activist in a liberal direction, after all, and we lefties thought that was just fine. But there’s a real difference here. The famous Warren Court decisions — ending school segregation, expanding the right to counsel, enforcing one-man-one vote, banning organized school prayer — were obviously decisions that conservatives didn’t like. But there was nothing in them that was especially damaging to the interests of the Republican Party.
But things are different this time around.
Indeed.
Undoubtedly.
The tell was in 2001, when they wrote an opinion that amounted to a coup d’etat and said that it could never be used as precedent in Bush v. Gore.
When a judge says you can’t use a ruling as precedent, it’s kind of like a banker telling you that it would they don’t want you purchasing in high commission financial products from them, you had better literally be naked in bed with them, because like it or not, someone is getting f%$#ed.
Well, Here’s Something that You Do Not See Every Day
A business requesting that they be boycotted:
Open Letter to National Organization for Marriage Requesting Boycott of Law Office of Bruce Godfrey
Original Letter
3 April 2012
National Organization for Marriage
Open Letter
By facsimile: (888) 894-3604
Re: Request to Join Boycott List
Dear Madam or Sir:
I write your organization to request that the Law Office of Bruce Godfrey be placed on the boycott list for corporate and business advocates for the recognition of lawful civil same-sex marriage. I would be most grateful for recognition of my small law office as an opponent of your cause in Maryland as you have recognized companies such as Starbucks. While Maryland attorney ethics rules place strict prohibitions on attorney solicitations of prospective clients for hire, no ethics rules prohibit an attorney from asking to join a boycott – as a target.
Bruce Godfrey has been a loud and notorious advocate of lawful civil same-sex marriage recognition in his home state of Maryland for many years. His unapologetic advocacy of equal protection principles and of the equal rights amendment of the Maryland Declaration of Rights advocacy has cost him friendships and business relationships. Godfrey is an inveterate opponent of your cause and a strong supporter of your most implacable legislative foes in the Maryland State House and General Assembly. He earned your boycott through loud commentary on this issue as a straight ally of equal protection of the laws on Facebook alone, and will continue to advocate for equal protection of the laws in Maryland per his Maryland Attorney Oath.
It was said of the late actor Paul Newman that his proudest life achievement was being placed on the infamous “enemies short list” of President Nixon during the Watergate era. If NOM requires a certain amount of achievement in opposition to your aims to merit a boycott, please receive this as a request for the clarification of your boycott criteria so that the Law Office of Bruce Godfrey may, through diligence and honest effort, merit that honor. Please target Bruce Godfrey for boycott; he intends to earn it.
Very truly yours,
Bruce Godfrey, Attorney (MD/DC)
Attorney at Law
Kewl
Had Dinner with My Non-Hairy Brother Tonight
First time we’ve been face to face in a while.
His new job has him coming down to DC a few times a year.
It was a lovely dinner, but I think that something triggered an allergy: I had a sneezing fit on the way home, my eyes are running so badly now, I can barely see.
I just took enough benadryl to trank a hippo, so I’m going to bed now.
Just Saw Olbermann on Letterman
They talked about his firing, and Olbermann was pretty magnanimous about his exit. He basically said that it wasn’t a good match, and that Current TV just couldn’t handle the demands of the show.
I’m not sure how this will all end up, but it was a remarkably fun and light hearted bit.
It’s Tuesday, So There Are Primaries
And Romney sweeps the primaries, Maryland, DC, and Wisconsin.
The fat lady is singing. About the only interesting thing is that Santorum was not on the ballot in DC, and none of the votes went to either Gingrich or Paul. (Romney 70.2%, Paul 12%, Gingrich, 10.8%)
Such are the vicissitudes of the Maryland electoral that I didn’t even bother to vote.
Only congressmen and a senators were up for elections, and Ben Cardin is Senator for as long as he wants to be, and Jon Cardin is my rep for life.
There was a bit of drama in the 6th district, where the Republican octogenarian Roscoe Bartlett was challenged by 7 opponents in the primary, but won with a plurality, and on the Democratic side, there was what was supposed to a close race between John Delaney and State Senator Rob Garagiola wasn’t close:
A wealthy Potomac businessman whose very candidacy challenged state Democratic leaders won a congressional primary in Western Maryland on Tuesday, setting up a battle for the seat in November that will help decide control of the House of Representatives.
John Delaney, a banker and first-time candidate, managed to topple state Sen. Rob Garagiola in the race, even though leading Democratics in Annapolis such as Senate President Thomas V. Mike Miller had the legislator in mind when they redrew the 6th Congressional District last year to make it more competitive.
Garagiola was endorsed by Governor O’Malley, and Delaney was endorsed by Bill Clinton, and Delaney spent a lot more money, but given the dynamics of of western Maryland, my guess is that the voters in the region, at least in the old 6th, resented the idea of having their district redrawn for the benefit of one guy.
Atrios is an Ill Conceived Son of a Wombat
You see, he’s been blogging for 10 years, so in honor of this, he is doing a list of the top ten wankers of the decade, a list I will follow with some enthusiam.
That being said, he is getting above, or below himself:
It’s time to begin the weeks long celebration of 10 years of the world’s suckiest blog, hosted by yours truly, the world’s suckiest blogger. There will be some laughs, some tears, and of course there will be lots and lots of wankers. Some our old friends, the ponies, might make some guest appearances if we put some appropriate snacks out to tempt them. We’ll start counting down to the ONE TRUE WANKER OF THE DECADE, beginning with roughly daily announcements of the 9 runners up, with #9 being announced today at precisely noon o’clock. The determination of all the winners has been made using the highly scientific system known as “what I happened to remember this morning,” though I did give a slight bit of thought on what to emphasize. It’s the wanker of the decade, not the wanker of the day, so I’ll try hard to reach into the past to remind us of some quality wanking from the Golden Age Of Wanking. Emphasis will be on media figures, though I’m not entirely ruling out politicians or similar. No posthumous awards, excluding some otherwise likely candidates.
(emphasis mine)
I object, I’m the world’s suckiest blogger.
That being said, his list promises to be entertaining, if somewhat scary.
Why scary? Because number 10 on his list is Megan McArdle, aka Jane Galt.
It’s not scary that she is on the list, but it’s scary that she is so low on the list. If she’s number 10, I would peg Ms. “Math is hard” at number 3, this could get scary.
Even money says that Tom Friedman is number 1.
Quote of the Day
A few months ago, I was standing in a crowded elevator when Jamie Dimon, the chief executive of JPMorgan Chase, stepped in. When he saw me, he said in a voice loud enough for everyone to hear: “Why does The New York Times hate the banks?”
It’s not The New York Times, Mr. Dimon. It really isn’t. It’s the country that hates the banks these days. If you want to understand why, I would direct your attention to the bible of your industry, The American Banker. On Monday, it published the third part in its depressing — and infuriating — series on credit card debt collection practices.
(emphasis mine)
As an aside, while I still have issues with him, Nocera is not a totally useless NYT Columnist. (See Friedman, Thomas)
Rasmussen?
Rasmussen is a very Republican pollster.
Whenever you see their numbers, as Ed Kilgore observes, you probably want to move the dial around 5% toward the Republican side of the dial.
So the news that their latest poll has a a majority of respondents supporting the recall of Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker, 52%-47%, it means that that weasel is in some serious trouble.
My only concern is about the primary to select his opponent. It’s beginning to look like Secretary of State Doug La Follette is working hard to form a circular firing squad.
Nice Takedown
Once again, the stupidest journalist in America, Juan Williams is doing what he is bought and paid for, being a tool who alibis for racism, and is claiming, in response to the Trayvon Martin killing, that the black community is ignoring black on black violence.
Ta-Nehisi Coates notes that if Williams knew how to use the Google, he would have found multiple mass actions against violence within the community.
I’m not surprised that Juan Williams did not mention these folks. After all, he’s probably afraid to go into those neighborhoods.
It’s Stalker in a box!
There is an iPhone App called Girls Around Me, and it is way beyond evil.
Basically, it integrates Facebook and Foursquare to allow you to find easy girls:
………
It’s an app that can be interpreted many ways. It is as innocent as it is insidious; it is just as likely to be reacted to with laughter as it is with tears; it is as much of a novelty as it has the potential to be used a tool for rapists and stalkers.
Girls Around Me is a standard geolocation based maps app, similar to any other app that attempts to alert you to things of interest in your immediate vicinity: whether it be parties, clubs, deals, or what have you. When you load it up, the first thing Girls Around Me does is figure out where you are and load up a Google Map centered around your location. …
…Immediately, Girls Around Me went into radar mode, and after just a few seconds, the map around us was filled with pictures of girls who were in the neighborhood. Since I was showing off the app on a Saturday night, there were dozens of girls out on the town in our local area.
………
“How does it know where these girls are? Do you know all these girls? Is it plucking data from your address book or something?” another friend asked.
“Not at all. These are all girls with publicly visible Facebook profiles who have checked into these locations recently using Foursquare. Girls Around Me then shows you a map where all the girls in your area trackable by Foursquare area. If there’s more than one girl at a location, you see the number of girls there in a red bubble. Click on that, and you can see pictures of all the girls who are at that location at any given time. The pictures you are seeing are their social network profile pictures.”
………
I tapped on Zoe. Girls Around Me quickly loaded up a fullscreen render of her Facebook profile picture. The app then told me where Zoe had last been seen (The Independent) and when (15 minutes ago). A big green button at the bottom reading “Photos & Messaging” just begged to be tapped, and when I did, I was whisked away to Zoe’s Facebook profile.
“Okay, so here’s Zoe. Most of her information is visible, so I now know her full name. I can see at a glance that she’s single, that she is 24, that she went to Stoneham High School and Bunker Hill Community College, that she likes to travel, that her favorite book is Gone With The Wind and her favorite musician is Tori Amos, and that she’s a liberal. I can see the names of her family and friends. I can see her birthday.”
“All of that is visible on Facebook?” one of the other girls in our group asked.
“More, depending on how your privacy settings are configured! For example, I can also look at Zoe’s pictures.”
I tapped on the photo album, and a collection of hundreds of publicly visible photos loaded up. I quickly browsed them.
“Okay, so it looks like Zoe is my kind of girl. From her photo albums, I can see that she likes to party, and given the number of guys she takes photos with at bars and clubs at night, I can deduce that she’s frisky when she’s drunk, and her favorite drink is a frosty margarita. She appears to have recently been in Rome. Also, since her photo album contains pictures she took at the beach, I now know what Zoe looks like in a bikini… which, as it happens, is pretty damn good.”
My girlfriend scowled at me. I assured her Zoe in a bikini was no comparison, and moved on.
“So now I know everything to know about Zoe. I know where she is. I know what she looks like, both clothed and mostly disrobed. I know her full name, her parents’ full names, her brother’s full name. I know what she likes to drink. I know where she went to school. I know what she likes and dislikes. All I need to do now is go down to the Independent, ask her if she remembers me from Stoneham High, ask her how her brother Mike is doing, buy her a frosty margarita, and start waxing eloquently about that beautiful summer I spent in Roma.”
And if it doesn’t work with Zoe, you have a dozen other women at the club for whom you also have a dossier.
Let’s be clear: If you were stalking A girl, it probably wouldn’t help you much, you would already have her data from Facebook and Foursquare. This allows you to go after every girl in the immediate vicinity.
This is not quite digital roofies, its victims, assuming that they are adults, have a lot more independent agency than someone who has been drugged, but seriously, this is some evil sh%$.
It’s beyond creepy.
If They Get Arrested, I Will Pay for the Gloves
By a 5-4 majority, the Supreme Court has said that authorities can strip search you whenever they arrest you.
When juxtaposed with another ruling that allows cops to arrest you for anything, (Seriously, not fastening a seat belt, because the cop in question had a vendetta, and for taking a sip of coke eating one french fry on the DC subway) it means that Rush Limbaugh’s constant refrain of, “Grab your ankles,” has become reality.
Light Posting for the Next Few Days
Between frantic (as if there is any other kind) cleaning for Passover, and a long(ish) form piece that I am working on, my posting volume may be off for a while.
I’m Not Doing April Fools
I figure that if you are willing to read my drivel, the joke is already on you.
The same world view does does not apply to my son though:
Huh, I Interviewed There
RedX Defense, where we now have allegations of self dealing on DARPA contracts:
Top Pentagon research arm Darpa gave a well-connected firm millions of dollars to build bomb-detectors — despite deep internal reservations about the technology involved. After years of work and millions spent, the company’s sensor was less effective than “a coin flip” in spotting homemade explosives, in the words of one military insider.
By itself, the washout wouldn’t be terribly remarkable. Darpa’s charter is to try out risky technologies, many of which don’t pan out. It’s that dedication to high-risk, high-reward projects that leads to breakthroughs like GPS and the internet. But these contracts were given to RedX Defense, a company partially owned by outgoing Darpa director Regina Dugan and led by Dugan’s family. Agency bosses were repeatedly told that investing in RedX was a waste of time — and moved ahead with the contracts anyway. The bottom line, says a second source familiar with RedX’s work: “The technology just didn’t work.”
………
Then, in July of 2009, Dugan was named the director of Darpa. Her father, Vince, became RedX’s CEO. Her sister, Christina Haney, worked as vice president of marketing. Some Darpa employees assumed Dugan would sell her shares in RedX, since the firm continued to pursue contracts from an agency now headed by its co-founder and former chief executive. Dugan didn’t sell those shares, however. Nor did she forgive the $250,000 loan she gave to RedX.
Dugan did officially recuse herself from any business dealings between the agency and the company. An internal Pentagon review later found that the recusal was “consistent with the letter and spirit of relevant laws, regulations, and policies governing conflict of interest,” according to Lt. Col. Melinda Morgan, a Pentagon spokesperson. But the move wasn’t consistent with Darpa’s recent history. Under previous director Tony Tether, contracts that posed a potential conflict of interest were passed to someone higher up in the Pentagon hierarchy, who would theoretically be immune to pressure from subordinates. Instead, Dugan left the decisions about RedX to her employees — people acutely aware of their new boss’s background and her family ties to RedX.
A few weeks after Dugan assumed command of the agency, her family firm submitted a proposal to fund MAE WEST for $3.5 million. The proposal ignited a firestorm within the agency, one source familiar with the inspector general’s investigation says. Not only was the company tied to the new director, there were glaring gaps in the proposal — everything from the schedule of experiments to the scientific approach involved. Nevertheless, this source contends, agency deputy director Ken Gabriel told employees to put the RedX proposal at the “top of the list.”
“No other program had this kind of pressure,” the source adds. “Or even this much interest.”
Dogs still work better than anything else, FYI.
The revolving door is spinning awfully fast.