In this edition of our weekly video, 2N2, Rob Kellogg discusses two companies: Banco Santander, a Spanish banking company and BAE Systems, a U.K. based aerospace and defense company.
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UQFVnT6hf2Q[/youtube]
From the monthly archives:
November 2008
When Voting Doesn’t Matter: A Dark Tale
It’s springtime but all is not well – it’s election time around here. Those officials who are in charge have decided that they know best and have selected 9 candidates for the politburo. These fellows have served in their posts for many years and earn large incomes for their devotion to the Chairman. But they have done a terrible job. The economy is in disarray, people are losing their jobs, the ones at the top are cleaning up but the rest of the people are losing their shirts. But that doesn’t matter, they know what’s good for you.
You have received your ballot and it’s time to vote. The only problem is that the Big One’s candidates are the only ones on the ballot. In the past, nobody voted for these guys because, in the end, it didn’t matter. Regardless of how many votes they received, they always won. [click to continue...]
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Why America’s Greatest Threat is From Within
The first use of the term ‘terrorism” can be traced back to the infamous “Reign of Terror” that occurred after the French Revolution in 1793. Terrorism, in its original form was used as a tool of government and was inflicted on the people of France. More than 40,000 people were killed in the name of the revolution. More than 200 years later, the definition of the term has come full circle as demonstrated by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, which serves as a weapon against the American people in the name of freedom and justice. But that is not important. What matters is that it is important for the ideologues advocating American primacy and it is important for American business. [click to continue...]
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In this video, Global Investment Watch’s John Richardson assesses Standard Chartered plc, a global banking concern.
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DpJIW_-Erlc[/youtube]
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Progressives all over the country are waking up from the nightmare of the Bush presidency and are asking themselves, “What did I eat before I went to bed eight years ago?” In point of fact, we have suffered from collective indigestion going back more than 30 years. [click to continue...]
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Alisa Gravitz, Executive Director of Co-Op America , recently wrote to members of the organization to say that corporate greenwashing has her seeing red. Gravitz cites the following examples of corporate offenders offending her with their greenwashing:
There’s GE with their "ecomagination" ad blitz featuring tree frogs and breathtaking landscapes. Meanwhile, GE was number 7 among worst polluters on the Toxic 100 index.
Ford launched a campaign featuring none-other-than the green icon himself, Kermit the Frog. Of course, there is no mention of plug-in hybrids.
Dawn dishwashing liquid’s "Make a Difference" campaign encourages people to protect marine animals. Meanwhile, Dawn’s maker, Procter and Gamble , refuses to remove potential carcinogens from its products…lobbies against minimal labor standards in China…and – you guessed it – tests their products on animals.
Gravitz goes on to explain that her organization seeks nothing less than to expose multi-billion dollar greenwashers and promote businesses that are truly green. Co-op America has a Responsible Shopper program that does just that. And apparently the program is working because Unilever called the organization to see how they could improve their practices to get a better rating on Responsible Shopper.
She concludes by saying "Greenwashing is not an innocuous PR tactic. It is a con game…" Indeed when profits come before people and planet and a corporation pretends that it is the other way around, their behavior is nothing less than criminal. We at Global Investment Watch stand by Co-op America in their efforts and we will continue to do our part in exposing corporate malfeasance.
Co-op America is based in Washington DC and will change its name to Green America in 2009. Over the years the group has employed four strategies:
- Empowering individuals to make purchasing and investing choices that promote social justice and environmental sustainability;
- Demanding an end to corporate irresponsibility through collective economic action;
- Promoting green and fair trade business principles while building the market for businesses adhering to these principles;
- Building sustainable communities in the US and abroad.
Co-op America’s agenda has similarities to that of an Obama administration. With a new green-friendly administration taking root in Washington DC, Green America’s uphill battle may level out just a bit. Let’s hope so.
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Rob Kellogg of Global Investment Watch reviews the current problems at Adidas, the second largest apparel manufacturer in the world next to Nike, along with Westpac, Australia’s fourth largest bank. GIW’s parent company – JMR Portfolio Intelligence Inc. – has recently given Adidas a “non-compliant” investment rating.
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8ZBZPSSBy64[/youtube]
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How the Bush Treasury Department Helped its Friends and Screwed America
In the waning days of the criminal enterprise known as the Bush Administration, it has been revealed that the Treasury Department has granted massive tax breaks to corporations while world attention is focused on other matters. A windfall of possibly $140 billion was achieved when a provision of the tax code was changed by a slight of hand.
No one in the Administration is taking direct credit for this fraud. However, the ideological underpinnings can be traced back to a 2007 memo written by two tax policy officials, Eric Solomon and Robert Carroll. The elimination of the “offending” rule serves as tribute to the infamous “torture” memoranda issued by the U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzalez, which was used as the legal underpinning for allowing waterboarding and other forms of prisoner abuse.
The Treasury Department memo sanctions the elimination of an I.R.S. rule that was established more than 20 years ago. In 1986, Section 382 of the tax code was established to limit the sheltering of profits through the creation of shell companies whose only “value” were the losses they held. This situation arose often in situations where a company acquired another company that was losing money. The losses from the acquired company could be used to offset profits made at the acquiring company.
While the idea of offsetting profits from losses incurred by buying another company may be subject to some debate and regulatory evaluation in the arcane world of tax policy, the Bush Administration and the Treasury Department bypassed the whole exercise through executive fiat.
Rather than go through a regulatory review process, consult with Congress or engage in some other form of democratic process, the Treasury Department wiped the slate clean and opened the door for a massive gift to the banking industry. The rule change came just 24 hours after Congress voted down the original bailout legislation in October. A number of experts named by The Washington Post suggest that this move was patently illegal.
Benefiting from this change were several major banks that have reaped the rewards of this fraud. Wells Fargo Bank is at the top of that list.
The Wells Fargo Ruling
Wells Fargo Bank was looking to acquire Wachovia Bank. Wells Fargo had made some furtive attempts at acquiring Wachovia but had walked away from the deal because the numbers didn’t work. However, once Section 382 was eliminated, it created a $25 billion incentive for Wells Fargo and the deal went through within hours.
According to the Washington Post, two more bank mergers were completed on the coattails of this regulatory scheme. PNC acquired National City and saw a $5.1 billion savings from the repealed regulation. Banco Santander bought Sovereign Bancorp and is expected to see a $2 billion savings from the change in the law.
By one account, this questionable regulatory action will cost taxpayers as much as $140 billion in lost tax revenues. Unfortunately, the floodgates have been opened and to disallow the tax breaks granted to these companies in the current economic climate would ensure a possible meltdown in the capital markets. Somehow, hearing Treasury Secretary Paulson announcing to the public that “we made a mistake and the repealed tax rule will now go back into effect. Wells Fargo, you now owe us $5 billion in taxes,” sounds like financial suicide even to the economic anarchists amongst us.
The Means Justify the Ends
I am reminded of an interview I heard on National Public Radio shortly after 9/11. Interviewed by Diane Rehm, Lynn Chaney, the wife of Vice President Chaney made the argument that the use of torture was justified as a means to an end – the protection of America – regardless of it illegality under the Constitution. The trumpets of corruption blare as the anthem for all subsequent deregulation, refusal to enforce laws and convoluted interpretation of the law that have been the hallmarks of this administration.
Undoubtedly the Treasury officials responsible for this fraud believe that the means justified the ends. However, when the rule of law gets tossed out the window, far greater risk is imposed on the American system of government, which is in tatters from its many years of manipulation by the Administration and its friends in high places.
Of course, we are now learning today that this shadow governance is not limited to the financial world. In today’s papers, it’s reported that George Bush’s Defense Secretary, Donald Rumsfeld issued a secret memo that authorized incursions into other countries to pursue terrorists.
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Lou Dobbs? Why am I attacking this lovable guy, you ask? It’s simple really: to make a point about the subtle but prevalent use of hateful language to influence public discourse in America. Lou Dobbs, like many of his like-minded conservative commentators on the airwaves and the Internet, has mastered the use of linguistic shortcuts to rally the uninformed behind his ideological causes: illegal aliens, socialists, liberals. The list goes on. This is intellectually dishonest and reflects a certain ethical corruption in mainstream journalism.
What differentiates my headline from Lou’s use of words is subtlety. My headline is a frontal assault. It’s a straightforward if not a bit harsh statement about CNN’s token conservative. It’s also easily dismissed as a possibly rash and rude comment about a member of the pundit class. What if I had called him a communist or a liberal? If he had even a scintilla of a leaning to the left of center, I suppose that would have some impact.
What’s important here is that language matters. Words cast about in the public domain have meaning and can move mountains. For instance, labeling someone a “terrorist” adds gravitas to the public discourse about that person. During the presidential race, it was suggested that Rashid Khalidi, who had a passing professional relationship with Barack Obama, was a terrorist. The word stuck.
It’s worth noting that these characterizations of Mr. Khalidi are false. A little digging reveals that he was an adviser to the Palestinian delegation in Madrid in 1991. The way the conference proceeded was by the US and Israel selecting the Palestinian delegation (not from the PLO), and, in turn, the PLO would OK or object to the delegate. Khalidi was chosen because he is from a prominent Palestinian family from Jerusalem and is a renown scholar of the Middle East. At the time, Rashid Khalidi had been extremely critical of the PLO, which was later affirmed in his scholarly work.[1. NoQuarter.com]
What’s interesting here is that the word “terrorist” sweeps away this entire discussion of the man and elevates his status to that of an anti-American monster.
Back to Lou Dobbs.
He is not the first conservative commentator to use the subtlety of language to polarize otherwise rational discussion. On any given evening, I watch various news programs. I will occasionally land on CNN. Thursday night, just after the presidential elections, Lou was ranting about the socialist presidency of Barack Obama. Apparently, President-Elect Obama had the temerity to suggest that there needs to be some balance in the way in which Americans are treated. Public corporations and the wealthiest individuals in America have received more than their fair share of tax breaks and benefits from the economy. It’s now time for ordinary Americans to get a share of the action. That, according to Lou Dobbs, is socialism. Forget about drilling down until he reaches the facts.
Now if he were to call Obama a democrat or a republican, that wouldn’t amount to much. However, the word “socialism” is a rallying cry for conservatives. A short cut of sorts to quickly define, in the most pejorative of terms, a reversal of policies that actually harmed most working Americans for the last eight years. It doesn’t matter that Obama is not a socialist and has no avowed socialist leanings. Perhaps Lou would be more honest with himself and the listening public if he used the “N” word instead. After all, he is not trying to further the public discourse on economic change. He is trying to inflict harm on the integrity of our new president.
This use of language has been the hallmark of the conservative wing of the Republican Party for more than a decade. On Tuesday, they lost the battle if not the war for their cause. Their use of language as a weapon in the culture war to secure the American landscape for their cause has been severely wounded.
Will Lou Dobbs put down his linguistic weapons? Will he begin a real dialogue about the issues that concern him?
Probably not.
Good night Lou.
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The “Subprime Primer” explains how we got into this financial mess. In case you haven’t come across this cartoon, take a look. It’s hysterical but sickeningly true.
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q8hjUei-Nwo[/youtube]
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