Cohen Seeks Law Enforcement Help to Prevent Insider Trading at His New Hedge Fund :)

Posted on December 16, 2014 by mmjdiary

The Barometer is smiling. Mr. Cohen, the trading rules are not your problem. Every single fund manager who was with you or formerly affiliated with your firm had top-notch training. Former SEC Chairman Harvey Pitt did some of the training for SAC Capital. Your training records reflected full participation by those traders and managers who were charged with insider trading. Your managers know the trading rules. The problem is culture. As a recent court decision and some dropped charges indicate, the traders had their toes to the line in terms of legality, but may not have crossed the line. The problem is a culture Continue reading →

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Jonathan Burrows: BlackRock Fund Manager and London Fare Dodger

Posted on December 16, 2014 by mmjdiary

Jonathan Burrows, a BlackRock fund manager for 20 years, has been banished from the finance industry by Britain’s financial regulator. The reason? Well, Mr. Burrows was commuting to work from the East Sussex to London — a one hour and 22-minute trek that should have cost him 21 pounds per trek. Instead, he boarded the train at a station that had no ticket barriers and then exited the train in London Continue reading →

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The Madoff Aides Are Sentenced

Posted on December 11, 2014 by mmjdiary

The sentencing for the five aides to Bernie Madoff have been sentenced by a federal judge. In addition to their prison sentences, which range from 2.5 years to 10 years, the five defendants have been held jointly liable for $155.2 billion. What that high-dollar amount means is that there will be forfeitures of their property in order to bring some relief to the victims of the Madoff Ponzi scheme.

One of the defendants sentenced was Annette Bongiorno, Mr. Madoff’s personal assistant. At the trial, Ms. Bongiorno said she just followed her boss’s instructions and had no idea what was going on in the business. However, the federal judge who sentenced her said that the fraud “unfolded right in front of her.” She stated Continue reading →

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“I’m elated. Things are upside down. Or, really, right-side up.”

Posted on December 2, 2014 by mmjdiary

Candice Anderson, who was at the wheel of her fiancé, Gene Erickson’s, car, a Saturn Ion, when the car crashed. Mr. Erickson was killed. And with no skid marks and a trace amount of anti-anxiety medication in her bloodstream, Ms. Anderson was charged with manslaughter. She entered a guilty plea to negligent homicide and was sentenced Continue reading →

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Oops! Found Lois Lerner’s E-mails!

Posted on November 25, 2014 by mmjdiary

The long, lost Lois Lerner e-mails — 30,000 of them — have been found on back-up tape. We are assured that it will take some time to sort through them. The Barometer suggests making a copy before the sorting begins. Just saying — historical precedent when it comes to this case.

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Jonathan Gruber – “You never trust the people you cheat with; they will throw you under the bus.”

Posted on November 18, 2014 by mmjdiary

The Barometer knows many a professor just like MIT professor, Jonathan Gruber. They are professors who have theories that they believe (with the operative word being “believe”) will help businesses, government agency, and, on occasion, presidents. Full of desire to be something more than just being another college professor with a list of publications, they seek power. The goal is to become the architect of a major movement in business or government. And when they do get close to that brass ring, they are not prepared. Desire trumps discretion. Fame clouds judgment. And the consulting fees bump them up into a lifestyle they don’t want to surrender. So, for power, fame, fees, and fortune, they will do whatever it takes to stay in that inner circle. They toss aside basic principles of their field. They make unsupported assumptions and recommend courses of action that are folly.

Jonathan Gruber is an Internet sensation because of at least six videos that find him describing his critical role in the construction and passage of the Affordable Care Act. What most commentators have missed about the videos, in which Professor Gruber mocks the American public as stupid and touts his ability to game the political system, is the gleeful look on his face. He sees himself as the man, and the audience is with him ) the audience is a topic for another occasion.

Oh, but what he admits that he did. He talked about sensitive subjects such as redistribution of wealth via health care. Oh, and subsidization. And then there is his conclusion that transparency is no good in the political process – you have to obfuscate because it’s more important to pass the law. These thoughts are different from what emerged in the public eye as the ACA slogged through the legislative process. Costs will come down (despite the basic economic principle that you can’t lop 30 million more people into an already strained system and Continue reading →

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“I can’t sell it because I have a conscious [sic]. I’m just stuck with it.”

Posted on November 18, 2014 by mmjdiary

Owner of a Jeep SUV that is under a recall for fuel-tank fires. The recall was in 2013, and involves 1.6 million Jeep vehicles, but there has been a lack of parts and other problems that have resulted in only 8% of the vehicles being fixed. Anthony Jewell, the owner, has his Jeep just sitting parked because he does not feel safe driving it, and, well, the quote of this noble man appears above. Mr. Jewell is correct in his mastery of the ethical implications of his situation. Last week, a woman driving a Jeep was killed when her vehicle burst into flames — the accident was 15 miles from Chrysler headquarters. Chrysler says that it has 461,000 parts on hand and stands ready, willing, and able to make the fixes needed.

Some people do the right thing even though not responsible for the original defect.

Note: the spelling error “conscience” vs. “conscious” in the Wall Street Journal‘s error, not Mr. Jewell’s.

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Veracity, Docs, Nurses, and Ebola

Posted on November 1, 2014 by mmjdiary

The Barometer and others understand that we don’t know everything about Ebola. We also understand that panic does not always walk on the same side of the street as rational thought. However, panic is tough to conquer when a disease with a 70% death rate (give or take 10-30%) creeps into the country. We are lectured, daily, by Nurse Kaci Hickox, a Doctors Without Borders nurse, who landed in Newark from Sierra Leone after having spent weeks there helping to stamp out this scourge. Ms. Hickox ended up in a tent outside a hospital in Newark. The Barometer understands her indignation. Newark is tough town for campers. Newark is a tough town for those who are fully armed and housed in permanent buildings. We could abide the lectures and accept the assurances from Ms. Hickox that she does not have Ebola save it be for one troubling issue: veracity. According to papers filed by the state of Maine is this temper tantrum of a case, Ms. Hickox’s roomie in Sierra Leone had Ebola. Withholding Continue reading →

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“[Don’t] give me any of that ethics crap.”

Posted on October 30, 2014 by mmjdiary

With a hat tip to ethics expert, Jane Antonio, for getting this breaking news to the Barometer, we can offer this classic from one of the vice presidents at DaVita Health Care Partners in response to now former employee, David Barbetta, when he raised questions about the company’s referral practices. DaVita, the third largest company in Denver, runs dialysis clinics and was offering doctors leads and opportunities on joint ventures in clinics in exchange for referrals. DaVita’s patients are 79% Medicare and Medicaid, so Mr. Barbetta, troubled by the conflicts, quit his job at DaVita and blew the whistle to the federal government. Now he and his lawyers will receive 15-25% of the $389 million Continue reading →

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“Legal but shady.”

Posted on October 14, 2014 by mmjdiary

A Federal Reserve regulator in a taped discussion of a deal Goldman Sachs was proposed. After the team sent questions to Goldman, the obsequious Federal Reserve staff added, “Don’t mistake our inquisitiveness, and our desire to understand more about the marketplace in general as a criticism of you as a firm necessarily.” Appalling grammar aside, the Barometer hasn’t seen groveling at this level since Jane Austen’s Mr. Collins went to Lady Catherine de Bourgh’s castle for dinner.

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“He’s what p.r. people desperately try to train their clients to be.”

Posted on October 14, 2014 by mmjdiary

A sports reporter (Sports Illustrated, September 29, 2014) on Derek Jeter. There’s some chicken and egg here. Maybe if the clients just behaved like adults, they wouldn’t need the PR folks. And maybe the PR folks should understand that you can’t make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear. “Desperately try” would be the operative words here.

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“Countrywide was one of the greatest companies in the history of this country. [It] probably made more of a difference to society, to the integrity of our society, than any company in the history of America.”

Posted on August 30, 2014 by mmjdiary

Angelo Mozilo, the former CEO of Countrywide FInancial, a subprime mortgage company acquired by Bank of America, a bank that just paid $17 billion to settle claims related to the mortgages and related transactions that Countrywide entered into. Mr. Mozilo resides in a parallel universe, where everyone has a tan and cuff-linked shirts and facts are irrelevant. Great companies throughout history are duly offended. Those companies with integrity are dumbstruck. The Barometer has now officially heard it all when it comes to chutzpah.

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Sheryl Sandberg “Leans In” A Little Too Much on Facebook Users

Posted on July 5, 2014 by mmjdiary

Facebook published a study that indicated it was fooling around with newsfeeds to its users (unbeknownst to those users) to determine whether its scientists could affect users’ emotions with positive and negative news. The problem is that the 700,000 users who were the subjects in the 2012 one-week study were unaware that they were part of the experiment. Those users are fit to be tied, as are government regulators in Britain and Ireland. However, COO Sheryl Sandberg of “Lean In” book and foundation fame, has some reassuring words, “We clearly communicated really badly about this, and that we really regret. We do research in an ongoing way, in a very privacy-protective way, to improve our services, and that was done with this goal.”

Some questions for Facebook users about this statement: Continue reading →

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“The dog ate my homework. And then, well, believe it or not, something ate the dog! And now we can’t even find the something!”

Posted on June 22, 2014 by mmjdiary

The IRS has given schoolchildren everywhere new insights for homework excuses.

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