Murdoch, at 78, doesn’t, practically speaking, have the time to see the online world into maturity—nor the intellectual interest to want to be part of the effort. Rather, his strategic effort may more logically be to slow it down.
Vanity Fair columnist and Newser co-founder Michael Wolff • Discussing Rupert Murdoch’s stance on online media and forcing consumers to pay for the news. Wolff suggests that Murdoch is old and probably isn’t thinking long-term about the industry at the moment, but short-term at his bank account. Murdoch owns enough of the media industry that people would notice if he started charging for some of it. • source
The clients are not just harmless victims. They knew what they wanted to evade. But they trusted the bank that it would work. Now we have to correct that.
UBS chairman Kaspar Villiger • Describing the clients that they just had to rat out to the U.S. government for hiding their income in Swiss bank accounts to avoid taxes. While they transferred their information to the U.S., they claim no responsibility to actually make sure those clients actually pay taxes. • source
Daniel James Murray was arrested … at a casino. First of all, if you’re so worried about the safety of the American economy that you threatened to kill the president, why are you at a casino? But anyway, the man, who bizarrely deposited $85,000 at a Utah bank and then withdrew it a week later while making crazy comments all the while, has been detained by the Secret Service. By the way, the New York Daily News reports that Murray likes wearing capes and talking to himself. source
The sheer size of the program … is so large and the leverage being provided to the private equity participants so beneficial, that the taxpayer risk is many times that of the private parties, thereby potentially skewing the economic incentives.
Inspector General Neil Barofksy • In a massive quarterly report on the Troubled Asset Relief Program. Sound like fun? It totally is. We hope, if the banks defraud us taxpayers, they do it in really cool ways, like buying themselves gold houses and rocket cars. • source
Things are going tremendously. It has never been this good.
Darren Johnson • A “real estate owned” foreclosure agent from Detroit, talking about how well the foreclosure industry is going at the moment. Glad to know that someone’s doing OK. • source