Private Vs. Public Companies

Privately-held companies are - no surprise here - privately held. This means that, in most cases, the company is owned by the company's founders, management or a group of private investors. A public company, on the other hand, is a company that has sold a portion of itself to the public via an initial public offering of some of its stock, meaning shareholders have claim to part of the company's assets and profits.

One of the biggest differences between the two types of companies deals with public disclosure. If it's a public U.S. company, which means it is trading on a U.S. stock exchange, it is typically required to file quarterly earnings reports (among other things) with the Securities and Exchange Commission(SEC). This information is also made available to shareholders and the public. Private companies, however, are not required to disclose their financial information to anyone since they do not trade stock on a stock exchange.
The main advantage public companies have is their ability to tap the financial markets by selling stock (equity) orbonds (debt) to raise capital (i.e. cash) for expansion and projects. The main advantage to private companies is that management doesn't have to answer to stockholders and isn't required to file disclosure statements with the SEC. However, a private company can't dip into the public capital markets and must therefore turn to private funding, which can boost the cost of capital and may limit expansion. It has been said often that private companies seek to minimize the tax bite, while public companies seek to increase profits for shareholders.

The popular misconception is that privately-held companies are small and of little interest. In fact, there are many big-name companies that are also privately held - check out the Forbes.com list of the largest private companies in 2006.

(For further reading on this subject, check out Policing The Securities Market: An Overview Of The SEC.)

What the Rich do not want you to know. - From BillMoyers.com

http://billmoyers.com/episode/what-the-1-dont-want-you-to-know-2/

Thomas Piketty's 'Capital in the Twenty-First Century'

"I began with a straightforward research problematic," he says in elegant French-accented English. "I began to wonder a few years ago where was the hard data behind all the theories about inequality, from Marx to David Ricardo (the 19th-century English economist and advocate of free trade) and more contemporary thinkers. I started with Britain and America and I discovered that there wasn't much at all. And then I discovered that the data that did exist contradicted nearly all of the theories including Marx and Ricardo. And then I started to look at other countries and I saw a pattern beginning to emerge, which is that capital, and the money that it produces, accumulates faster than growth in capital societies. And this pattern, which we last saw in the 19th century, has become even more predominant since the 1980s when controls on capital were lifted in many rich countries."

"I did deliberately aim the book at the general reader," says Piketty as we begin our conversation, "and although it is obviously a book which can be read by specialists too, I wanted the information here to be made clear to everyone who wants to read it.' And indeed it has to said thatCapital in the Twenty-First Century is surprisingly readable. It is packed with anecdotes and literary references that illuminate the narrative. It also helps that it is fluently translated by Arthur Goldhammer, a literary stylist who has tackled the work of the likes of Albert Camus. But even so, as I note that Piketty's bookshelves are lined with such headache-inducing titles as The Principles of Microeconomics and The Political Influence of Keynesianism, simple folk like me still need some help here. So I asked him the most obvious question I could: what is the big idea behind this book?

"I did deliberately aim the book at the general reader," says Piketty as we begin our conversation, "and although it is obviously a book which can be read by specialists too, I wanted the information here to be made clear to everyone who wants to read it.' And indeed it has to said thatCapital in the Twenty-First Century is surprisingly readable. It is packed with anecdotes and literary references that illuminate the narrative. It also helps that it is fluently translated by Arthur Goldhammer, a literary stylist who has tackled the work of the likes of Albert Camus. But even so, as I note that Piketty's bookshelves are lined with such headache-inducing titles as The Principles of Microeconomics and The Political Influence of Keynesianism, simple folk like me still need some help here. So I asked him the most obvious question I could: what is the big idea behind this book?

"Well actually, we didn't know this, although we might have guessed at it," says Piketty, warming to his theme. "For one thing this is the first time we have accumulated the data which proves that this is the case. Second, although I am not a politician, it is obvious that this movement, which is speeding up, will have political implications – we will all be poorer in the future in every way and that creates crisis. I have proved that under the present circumstances capitalism simply cannot work."

But no matter. What have we learned? Capitalism is bad. Hooray! What's the answer? Socialism? Hope so. "It is not quite so simple," he says, disappointing this former teenage Marxist. "What I argue for is a progressive tax, a global tax, based on the taxation of private property. This is the only civilised solution. The other solutions are, I think, much more barbaric – by that I mean the oligarch system of Russia, which I don't believe in, and inflation, which is really just a tax on the poor." He explains that oligarchy, particularly in the present Russian model, is quite simply the rule of the very rich over the majority. This is both tyrannical and not much more than a form of gangsterism. He adds that the very rich are not usually hurt by inflation – their wealth increases anyway – but the poor suffer worst of all with a rising cost of living. A progressive tax on wealth is the only sane solution.

When I began, simply collecting data, I was genuinely surprised by what I found, which was that inequality is growing so fast and that capitalism cannot apparently solve it. Many economists begin the other way around, by asking questions about poverty, but I wanted to understand how wealth, or super-wealth, is working to increase the inequality gap. And what I found, as I said before, is that the speed at which the inequality gap is growing is getting faster and faster. You have to ask what does this mean for ordinary people, who are not billionaires and who will never will be billionaires. Well, I think it means a deterioration in the first instance of the economic wellbeing of the collective, in other words the degradation of the public sector. You only have to look at what Obama's administration wants to do – which is to erode inequality in healthcare and so on – and how difficult it is to achieve that, to understand how important this is. There is a fundamentalist belief by capitalists that capital will save the world, and it just isn't so. Not because of what Marx said about the contradictions of capitalism, because, as I discovered, capital is an end in itself and no more."
His book is indeed long and complicated but anyone who lives in the capitalist world, which is all of us, can understand the arguments he makes about the way it works. One of the most penetrating of these is what he has to say about the rise of managers, or "super-managers", who do not produce wealth but who derive a salary from it. This, he argues, is effectively a form of theft – but this is not the worst crime of the super-managers. Most damaging is the way that they have set themselves in competition with the billionaires whose wealth, accelerating beyond the economy, is always going to be out of reach.
This creates a permanent game of catch-up, whose victims are the "losers", that is to say ordinary people who do not aspire to such status or riches but must be despised nonetheless by the chief executives, vice-presidents and other wolves of Wall Street. In this section, Piketty effectively rips apart one of the great lies of the 21st century – that super-managers deserve their money because, like footballers, they have specialized skills which belong to an almost superhuman elite. 

(In truth, they do have special abilities, of self-delusion and sociopathic elitism, and a willing ignorance of social justice or morality. These managers are a necessary evil to keep the true capital class at peace. For they can not exist without those who work to protect them and feed their wealth.)

"One of the great divisive forces at work today," he says, "is what I call meritocratic extremism. This is the conflict between billionaires, whose income comes from property and assets, such as a Saudi prince, and super-managers. Neither of these categories makes or produces anything but their wealth, which is really a super-wealth that has broken away from the everyday reality of the market, which determines how most ordinary people live. Worse still, they are competing with each other to increase their wealth, and the worst of all case scenarios is how super-managers, whose income is based effectively on greed, keep driving up their salaries regardless of the reality of the market. This is what happened to the banks in 2008, for example."

Are We Ready For the Coming 'Age of Abundance?' - Dr. Michio Kaku (Full)

The Brain Drain has robbed the world of it's immune system, allowing the cancer of corruption through 'capitalism' to infect the world. Things are about to change. These guys are wrong, but if you can identify their blind-spots, you win.

Stanford Innovation and Entrepreneurship (Free Webinar Series) XINE001

Free Webinar

Wednesday, January 29, 2014

9:00 a.m. - 10:00 a.m. Pacific 
12:00 p.m.- 1:00 p.m. Eastern

Description

The art and science of entrepreneurship

Entrepreneurship drives the success of business, education, nonprofits and government. This begs the question, can someone learn to be an entrepreneur and if they can, what is it that they need to learn and how do they start? In this one hour discussion, Professor Tom Byers and his special guest, Chi-Hua Chien, investor at Kleiner Perkins Caufield and named one of the Top VCs Under 35 by VC Journal, will draw on their wealth of experience with Silicon Valley ventures and entrepreneurs and share the secrets of entrepreneurial thinking.

Speakers

Tom Byers, Stanford University
Professor

Chi-Hua Chien, Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers
Guest Speaker 

Presented By

The Stanford Innovation and Entrepreneurship Certificate program.

For more information about the Stanford Innovation and Entrepreneurship Certificate, visit create.stanford.edu

Steps to Register

1. Scroll down to the course section at the bottom of the page
2. Click on the red "Enroll in this Section" button
3. Click on the gold "View Cart" link located in the upper right-hand corner
4. Continue with the checkout process by filling out the required information

The Gift Economy

Gifting Economy - bonus

The reason it spread so fast is because, as I alluded to above, the Gift Economy changes the entire business relationship. Instead of a situation where the client is skeptical and fears getting ripped off because they don’t understand web design and yet are being asked for a 50% deposit up front, causing the client to argue for the lowest possible bid to lower their risk, the Gift Economy places all the risk on me. I built many of my websites this year without any deposit at all, and when I was finished I turned the entire site over to the client 100%. Always, and without any strings attached. - source

The illusion of otherness is keeping us from reaching our potential. We are one with the universe. Independence and individualism is the foundation of consciousness, but to transcend the self is enlightenment. Infinite growth in a finite world consumes the resources of survival, creating scarcity and injustice. The systems are falling apart. Everything is significant. End the illusion of separation, join the flow. We control our future. We have free-will. Serve yourself, but define yourself correctly as part of the greater universe, and you will transcend the illusions.

Jugaad Innovation - the mother of invention is scarcity

Jugaad is practiced by almost all Indians in their daily lives to make the most of what they have. Jugaad applications include finding new uses for everyday objects—Indian kitchens are replete with empty Coke or Pepsi bottles reused as ad-hoc containers for dried legumes or condiments—or inventing new utilitarian tools using everyday objects, like amakeshift truck cobbled together with a diesel engine slapped onto a cart (interestingly, the origin of the word jugaad, in Punjabi, literally describes such makeshift vehicles).

The word jugaad is also applied to any use of an ingenious way to ‘‘game the system.’’ For instance, millions of cellphone users in India rely on ‘‘missed calls’’ to communicate messages to each other using a prearranged protocol between the caller and receiver: think of this as free textless text messaging. For example, your carpooling partner may give you a ‘‘missed call’’ in the morning indicating he has just left his house and is on his way to pick you up.⁵ Hence, theword jugaad carries a slightly negative connotation for some. But by and large, the entrepreneurial spirit of jugaad is practiced by millions in India simply to improvise clever—and completely legitimate—solutions to everyday problems.

In this book, we delve into the frugal and flexible mindset of thousands of ingenious entrepreneurs and enterprises practicing jugaad to creatively address critical socioeconomic issues in their communities. Jugaad innovators like Mansukh Prajapati view severe constraints, such as a lack of electricity, not as a debilitating challenge but as an opportunity to innovate and overcome these very constraints.

WageMark: the new standard

WAGEMARK 8:1
Make your mark for smart business

Wagemark is a new international wage standard used by companies, non-profit organizations, and government agencies to certify that the ratio between their highest and lowest earners is competitive and sustainable. Organizations choose to become Wagemark-certified to demonstrate their commitment to paying competitive, responsible and sustainable wages.

The Wagemark Standard builds on an important and growing body of research concerning the economic and social costs of income inequality and makes it possible for organizations to respond constructively by committing to operate within a wage range that supports greater competitiveness, workplace morale and social equity.

Wagemark compliance is certified by the applicant’s preferred chartered accountant or auditor, and does not require the disclosure of either maximum or minimum earnings — only the wage ratio between the top and bottom decile of earnings within an organization.

Wagemark-certified organizations are committed to ensuring that the wage ratio between the highest earner and lowest decile of earners within their organization does not exceed 8:1.

Manifesto

Wagemark Foundation is about establishing a new moral standard for companies and organizations that want to see a better world and are prepared to put their money where their mouth is.

Calculating the Wagemark Standard

The Wagemark Standard is based on a formula for calculating the ratio between top and bottom earners within an organization. This formula is calculated and certified by a third-party chartered accountant, and compares the total earnings of the highest paid employee with the average pay of the bottom decile of earners within an organization. This decile is based on the proportion of full time and part-time employees within the organization. Earnings include all tax-reported income and benefits. Wagemark-certified organizations must achieve an 8:1 or better wage ratio.

The Greek Debt Crisis Explained in Four Minutes

You can fix the sovereign debt/government revenue problem in two ways:
1) Austerity (doesn't work)
2) Deficit Spending and increased TAX REVENUES.

NBC News - Basic Income

New Fast Food Chain Pays $15 Per Hour

New Fast Food Chain Pays $15 Per Hour

Any corporation can freely choose to be a Cooperative, an Employee Owned Business, a Non-Profit, or even just a "Fair-Profit" company. But when people incorporate or limited liability protections they always seem to choose 'FOR-PROFIT' status, and thus maximizing profits, limiting liability, and retaining control become the priorities.

America's 50 WORST CHARAITIES

Never give money to anybody until you vet them!

http://www.tampabay.com/americas-worst-charities/

$970.6 MILLION 
PAID TO SOLICITORS

Worst 50's record

A more typical split *

• $970.6 million cash paid to solicitors
• $380.3 million cash to the charities
• $49.1 million to direct cash aid

* Watchdog groups say no more than 35 percent of donations should go to fundraising costs. There is no standard for how much should be be spent on direct cash aid.

RESOURCES FOR CHECKING NONPROFITS

• A list of solicitors used by the worst 50
• A list of the worst 50, with addresses
• State charity officials, with contacts for all 50 states
• Florida's gift givers' guide for consumers
• ProPublica's Nonprofit Explorer
• Guidestar's research website
• GiveWell does in-depth research into a small number of worthy charities
• Charity Navigator's charity evaluation website
• CharityWatch's charity rating service
• The Better Business Bureau's Wise Giving website

Chris Hedges on Capitalism’s ‘Sacrifice Zones’ | Moyers & Company | BillMoyers.com

Chris Hedges on Capitalism’s ‘Sacrifice Zones’ | Moyers & Company | BillMoyers.com

What if hydrogen and nickel make copper?

Fusion?

Mello-Roos taxes explained

Mello Roos is a voluntary property tax that helps make up for the lack of property tax revenu in California due to 1978's Proposition-13. If you buy a house today, at current home prices, you will pay high taxes on that home. If your neighbor bought her home in 1976, then she only pays taxes based upon the value of her home in that year.

Now you can use INewsSource,org's application to find out if you are paying Mello Roos taxes, and how you compare to those neighbors and corporations. ( http://maps.inewsource.org/mello-roos/ )

This series of reports from KPBS in San Diego begins to demystify the system, but fails to mention key issues about how corporations and family-trusts avoid paying their fair share of property taxes, by creating shell-corporations that own real-estate property, but avoid taxes.

California doesn't have a Budget Deficit it has a REVENUE TAX LOOPHOLE!

Since 1978, California Corporations have avoided paying property taxes by using a giant tax-loophole provided in Prop. 13. 

Many people know that Proposition 13, protects homeowners from large increases in their property taxes due to California's huge average annual increase in property values, and since property owners vote, they like this protection. What most don't realize is that this same property tax exemption is available to corporations, and corporations never die. 

This is how it works, when a developer builds a new property, like a shopping mall or an office building, they create a 'SHELL CORPORATION" that owns that property. Now here is the crucial part, in CALIFORNIA Property Taxes are ONLY REASSESSED WHEN THE PROPERTY IS SOLD. The corporate ownership can change via sale of stock, but the corporation continues to own the property forever. The property never legally changes hands, and thus it is never reassessed. 

In this way anyone can incorporate their real-property and avoid property taxes as your property values increase. Unfortunately for most of us, this plan only makes economic sense if your property is worth over about $1-million dollars. 

Now most people like Prop. 13, as they believe it saves them money, but that is a myth. The average homeowner moves every 5-7 years, so when they sell and move both they and the buyer are reassessed and they must pay taxes at the current property value. However, Corporations can change hands every day, yet their property will never be re-assessed, and corporations live forever. 

Now Property-Taxes in other states are re-assessed every year (or every few years), and they pay for basic public infrastructure: Schools, Hospitals, Libraries, Emergency Services. This may be why, in California, such public infrastructure is currently being underfunded and eviscerated. 

Property tax revenue dropped by half when Prop. 13 was first instituted, and today the estimated annual revenue loss to the State of California is approximately $40-billion/year. Strangely, this is about the same as California's current budget deficit. 

For more information about how to correct this problem and close the loophole, goto:

http://www.closetheloophole.com

PROP13 Close the Loophole

 http://www.thedailyshow.com/watch/mon-december-5-2011/california-s-direct-democracy-troubles

Daily Show: California's Direct Democracy Troubles

John Oliver heads west to report on California's direct democracy-induced financial Armageddon.

The problem with Intellectual Property

This American Life has done a series of shows about how our patent system has become the black hole of resources.  Most people don't realize just how bad things truly are, as unaccountable shell corporations try to patent everything from your DNA to general processes for communication.

Listen to the reports, and then go to your local law library, and find out more about intellectual property. You may have good ideas, but you will never be allowed to benefit from them, unless you are a Patent Lawyer.

http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/496/when-patents-attackpart-two

What is an Accredited Investor?

Accredited Investors

Under the Securities Act of 1933, a company that offers or sells its securities must register the securities with the SEC or find an exemption from the registration requirements. The Act provides companies with a number of exemptions. For some of the exemptions, such as rules 505 and506 of Regulation D, a company may sell its securities to what are known as "accredited investors."

The federal securities laws define the term accredited investor in Rule 501 of Regulation D as:

1. a bank, insurance company, registered investment company, business development company, or small business investment company;
2. an employee benefit plan, within the meaning of the Employee Retirement Income Security Act, if a bank, insurance company, or registered investment adviser makes the investment decisions, or if the plan has total assets in excess of $5 million;
3. a charitable organization, corporation, or partnership with assets exceeding $5 million;
4. a director, executive officer, or general partner of the company selling the securities;
5. a business in which all the equity owners are accredited investors;
6. a natural person who has individual net worth, or joint net worth with the person’s spouse, that exceeds $1 million at the time of the purchase, excluding the value of the primary residence of such person;
7. a natural person with income exceeding $200,000 in each of the two most recent years or joint income with a spouse exceeding $300,000 for those years and a reasonable expectation of the same income level in the current year; or
8. a trust with assets in excess of $5 million, not formed to acquire the securities offered, whose purchases a sophisticated person makes.

For more information about the SEC’s registration requirements and common exemptions, read our brochure, Q&A: Small Business & the SEC.

http://www.sec.gov/answers/accred.htm

Union Co-Ops

From It's Our Economy ...

“Too often we have seen Wall Street hollow out companies by draining their cash and assets and hollow out communities by shedding jobs and shuttering plants,” said United Steelworkers (USW) President Leo Gerard in 2009. “We need a new business model that invests in workers and invests in communities.”

As manufacturing in the United States continues in free fall, the USW is working to bring the Mondragon cooperative model to the Rust Belt. It aims to use employee-run businesses to create new, middle-class jobs to replace union work that has gone overseas.

A March 2012 report from the USW, Mondragon, and the Ohio Employee Ownership Center (OEOC), lays out a template for how “union co-ops” can function. “A union co-op is a unionized worker-owned cooperative in which worker-owners all own an equal share of the business and have an equal vote in overseeing the business,” the report states.

Drawing from Mondragon’s principles of shared prosperity for workers and democratic governance, It also has plans for a solar installers’ cooperative and a greenhouse that grows high-end salad greens and herbs for the Cleveland Clinic, as well as universities and restaurants.  

OEOC Director Bill McIntyre worked with the Cleveland Foundation on crafting the organizational framework for the Evergreen Cooperatives. At a March 2012 press event at United Steelworkers headquarters, he observed that employee-owners more often kept their jobs during the recent economic meltdown. “Employee-owned companies,” he said, “have more stable, loyal, and experienced work forces, which translates into real cost savings, productivity, and quality advantages.”
But union co-ops don’t address some difficult issues. For instance, they do not directly address the forces of global competition that have been undermining the U.S. manufacturing base. In particular, by adopting NAFTA-model “free trade” agreements, the United States has encouraged corporations to seek out competitive advantage in places with the lowest wages and fewest environmental regulations. At best, co-ops such as the Evergreen co-ops in Cleveland work around this problem by limiting themselves to making goods or providing services that cannot be offshored, like growing heirloom salad greens for local consumption.

“Now there’s a renewed interest in manufacturing as labor wages rise in developing countries,” he says. Moreover, he believes the recent economic crisis has also expanded public receptivity: “Even in the outer regions of the Midwest, where I spend a lot of time, people know that they’ve been victimized,” Peck says.

More...

Venture Capital - The new entrepreneurs

>Something Ventured is a documentary about silicon valley. It spans the last half of the 20th Century, from the beginning of Fairchild Semiconductor, the first computer startup, through Apple to Google. Offering vital insight in to the way venture capital works and how to sell yourself and your corporation to rase the necessary capital to capture the world's imagination. 

“Steve Jobs is a national treasure. He is so visionary, and so bright...uh, I had to fire him though.” - Arthur Rock, Visionary Venture Capitalist

“You know it wasn’t my goal to start an industry, my goal was to, um, make sure the science got translated into an endeavor that would be useful to people.” - Herbert Boyer, Founder of Genentech

“You gotta get money from strong people because weak people don’t invest in tough times. But that’s when most of the big winners are created.” - Jimmy Treybig, Founder of Tandem Computers

“I’m not interested in entrepreneurs who will do it our way. I’m not interested in entrepreneurs who think there’s a dress code. I’m interested in entrepreneurs who have a vision of doing something consequential—preferably that becomes BIG.” - Don Valentine, Founder of Sequoia Capital and early investor in Apple, Cisco and Atari

SOMETHING VENTURED tells the story of the creation of an industry that went on to become the single greatest engine of innovation and economic growth in the 20th century. It is told by the visionary risk-takers who dared to make it happen…Tom Perkins, Don Valentine, Arthur Rock, Dick Kramlich and others. The film also includes some of our finest entrepreneurs sharing how they worked with these venture capitalists to grow world-class companies like Intel, Apple, Cisco, Atari, Genentech, Tandem and others.

Beginning in the late 1950′s, this small group of high rollers fostered a one-of-a-kind business culture that encouraged extraordinary risk and made possible unprecedented rewards. They laid the groundwork for America’s start-up economy, providing not just the working capital but the guidance to allow seedling companies to reach their full potential. Our lives would be dramatically different without the contributions that these venture capitalists made to the creation of PCs, the Internet and life-saving drugs.

SOMETHING VENTURED was conceived by Paul Holland, a Silicon Valley venture capitalist. Paul, a general partner with Foundation Capital, is co-executive producer of the film along with Molly Davis of Rainmaker Communications. The film was directed by Emmy-Award-winning filmmakers Dan Geller and Dayna Goldfine.

What Happened After Steve was Fired from Apple?

The Venture Capitalists:
Arthur Rock	Early investor in Fairchild Semiconductor, Intel, Apple and Teledyne
Tom Perkins	Founder of Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, early investor in companies linke Genentech and Tandem
Don Valentine	Founder of Sequoia Capital; early investor in companies like Apple, Cisco, Oracle, Electronic Arts and LSI Logic
Dick Kramlich	Founder of New Enterprise Associates, investor in companies like PowerPoint, Juniper Networks, Macromedia and Dallas Semiconductor
Reid Dennis	Founder of Institutional Venture Partners
Bill Draper	Founder of Sutter Hill Ventures; Founder of Draper Richards
Pitch Johnson	Co-founder of Draper and Johnson Investment; Founder of Asset Management Company
Bill Bowes	Founder of US Venture Partners
Bill Edwards	Founder of Bryan and Edwards
Jim Gaither	One of the early developers of the venture financing structure still in use today

The Entrepreneurs:
Gordon Moore	Founder of Intel; one of Fairchild Semiconductor’s “Traitorous Eight”
Jimmy Treybig	Founder of Tandem
Nolan Bushnell	Founder of Atari
Dr. Herbert Boyer	Co-founder of Genentech
Mike Markkula	Early CEO of Apple
Sandy Lerner	Co-founder of Cisco
John Morgridge	Early CEO of Cisco
Robert Campbell SOMETHING VENTURED is available as a consumer DVD here. It can also be purchased at Amazon.com, iTune,s and Barnes & Noble.com. Educational DVDs are available here. To host a private screening, contact Ben Crossley-Mara of Zeitgeist Films atben@zeitgeistfilms.com or 212-274-1989.	Founder of PowerPoint "Something Ventured" is on Facebook, and you can follow @venturemovie on Twitter (#somethingventured, #venturemovie). Molly Davis Co-executive Producer SOMETHING VENTURED molly@rainmakercommunications.com 925-296-610

Rolling Jubilee - Buying your debt for 5-cents

I always wondered why banks would forclose upon someone's house and sell it for a fraction of the mortgage debt, yet wouldn't refinance the home'owner' and accept that same amount from the people living in their home? If I had the authority, I'd just forgive the debt and keep people in their homes. So when I found out about the Rolling Jubilee I decided it was genius. I'm starting one for San Diego.

http://www.cbc.ca/day6/blog/2012/11/16/rolling-jubilee/

http://rollingjubilee.org/

Strange Fruit

I always wondered why there were never any whistle-blowers from the Wall Street Crash? It seems there is one, but even he doesn't give specifics about the criminal behavior at Goldman. I think they all have made big money and are afraid of breaking their non-disclosure contracts.

Listen to the interview on CBC DAY6:

Former Goldman Sachs VP Greg Smith made a splash with a very public resignation from the financial firm in March with an op-ed in the New York Times. In it, he detailed why he believes the culture of the firm turned toxic, and accused his co-workers of callously ripping clients off. His new book Why I Left Goldman Sachs: A Wall Street Story was releasesd this week.

End Debt Slavery; OptOutPrescreen.com

Among other things you can do to free yourself from the cycle of debt-slavery, including moving all financial accounts from banks to local credit-unions, moving all investments out of wall street brokers like Goldman Sachs into government bonds and local small businesses, and end your use of credit cards.

Now you can permanently remove yourself from all credit card prescreen mailing lists, so you will never be tempted by 0% interest bait and switch deals.

Simply go to https://www.optoutprescreen.com
Fill out the form, print and mail it in.

The consumer credit reporting industry (i.e. monopoly) will stop including your name when they sell their lists:

• Equifax 
• Experiean 
• Innovis 
• Transunion

If you choose to Opt-Out, you will no longer be included in firm offer lists provided by these four consumer credit reporting companies.  

Clinton Global Inishitive

Bill Clinton is the best man for the job of bringing bright minds together to cooperate and build solutions to some of our most critical global problems.

Legal requirement to maximize profits.

The lesson is don't incorporate as a for-profit, and don't sell stock to raise money.

But what I think should be the law — and what a couple politically-biased professors claim is the law — isn’t necessarily the law. Under eBay v. Newman, the law is as Franken said:  “it is literally malfeasance for a corporation not to do everything it legally can to maximize its profits.” Just ask Jim and Craig; no one disputes it’s their company, but they’re legally prohibited from taking steps to preserve the profit-alongside-community-service mission that’s served them well. Maximize profits, or else. 

The impact of this duty-to-maximize-profits stretches far beyond mere investments. Under Citizens United, corporations now have the First Amendment right to influence our fragile democracy however they want, since they’re “people,” just like you and me, albeit profit-maximizing zombies who care not for truth, justice, or the American way.

http://www.litigationandtrial.com/2010/09/articles/series/special-comment/ebay-v-newmark-al-franken-was-right-corporations-are-legally-required-to-maximize-profits/