Catch and Kill Protection Rackets: Trump, Weinstein, Epstein and Wall Street

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: April 26, 2024 ~ Editor’s Note: This article has been edited and updated from an earlier version, published in 2020. Trump and Catch and Kill: Yesterday, David Pecker, the former Chairman and CEO of American Media Inc. (AMI), the parent company of the National Enquirer tabloid, testified for a third day in the 34-count criminal trial of former President Donald Trump in New York. Pecker continued to expand on the sordid details of a catch and kill operation he had agreed to operate with the active involvement of Trump and his then attorney, Michael Cohen. The operation involved buying up stories about Trump’s salacious affairs with women and then killing them from publication in order to help Trump’s campaign for the presidency in 2016. There was also an understanding that Pecker would run negative articles about Trump’s political opponents in the National Enquirer. During opening … Continue reading →

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According to The Hill the New FAFSA forms were supposed to be easier and shorter. Shorter yes, nut not so easy. There is a list of 2024-24 FAFSA issues which are confounding parents and students attempting to complete the FAFSA so as to be eligible for student aid. FAFSA forms were changed in 2023 and […]

The post Governor Katie Hobbs Announces $500K in FAFSA Initiatives to Assist Arizona Families Afford College appeared first on Angry Bear.

 – by New Deal democrat The Bonddad Blog Most of the commentary you will read about Q1 GDP that was released this morning will be about the core coincident components. For that I will simply outsource to Harvard’s Prof. Jason Furman: “much of the slowdown was in non-inertial items like inventories (-0.35pp) and net exports (-0.86pp). […]

The post Leading indicators in the Q1 GDP report are mixed appeared first on Angry Bear.

by Lora Kelly The Atlantic A plan to simplify the Free Application for Federal Student Aid process, better known as FAFSA has been a few years in the making. In 2020, as part of a spending bill, Congress ordered the Department of Education to create a shorter version of the FAFSA form. The new application […]

The post College Financial Aid Scramble appeared first on Angry Bear.

 – by New Deal democrat The Bonddad Blog [Note: I’ll put up a post discussing Q1 GDP later today.] Initial and continuing claims continued their snooze-fest this week. Initial claims declined -5,000 to 207,000, continuing their nearly 3 month long range of between 200-220,000 per week. The four week average declined 1,250 to 213,250. This […]

The post Jobless claims continue their snooze-fest appeared first on Angry Bear.

by Alan Collinge Medium A number of beltway “experts” are currently claiming that cancelling student loans would unduly benefit the wealthy. These claims are based upon blatantly flawed research, They have been used by very well-coordinated media/social media campaigns, designed to kill the push for student loan cancellation, and have flooded the zeitgeist in recent […]

The post Claims of Student Loan Cancellation Benefiting the Wealthy are Still False appeared first on Angry Bear.

Wall Street’s Judge Shopping Continues: It’s Trying to Stop the FTC’s Ban on Worker Handcuffs Known as Non-Compete Agreements 

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: April 25, 2024 ~ Sullivan & Cromwell, the go-to law firm for Wall Street in the past, has become a case study in how not to manage one’s corporate reputation. (See Wall Street’s Go-To Law Firm, Sullivan & Cromwell, Got in Bed with Crypto; Now Its Reputation Is Being Hammered.) Apparently, having previously represented FTX fraudster, Sam Bankman-Fried, and then grabbing FTX’s bankruptcy proceeding and billing $180 million, is not enough shame for Sullivan & Cromwell to heap on its reputation. It is now listed as the Big Law firm that filed a federal lawsuit yesterday on behalf of the corporate front groups, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the Business Roundtable, and others, to stop the Federal Trade Commission’s (FTC’s) new rule banning non-compete agreements for most workers. (An 8-attorney law firm in Texas, Potter Minton, is also listed on the filing for the plaintiffs.) Sullivan … Continue reading →

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And the grift goes on: “Jerry Dean McLain first bet on former president Donald Trump’s Truth Social two years ago, buying into the Trump company’s planned merger partner, Digital World Acquisition, at $90 a share. Over time, as the price changed, he kept buying, amassing hundreds of shares for $25,000 — pretty much his “whole […]

The post One born every minute appeared first on Angry Bear.

A high court decision in favor of Idaho puts at risk the federal government’s ability to set national environmental, labor and consumer protection standards. by Merrill Goozner Angry Bear can not add to Merrill’s remarks on Idaho’s stance banning abortion in almost all circumstances and their claims to preempt the federal Emergency Medical Treatment and […]

The post The preemption stakes in Idaho vs. U.S. appeared first on Angry Bear.

 – by New Deal democrat The Bonddad Blog First off, let me reiterate that my focus this year is on manufacturing and construction. That’s because these are the two sectors the waxing and waning of which have almost always determined if the US economy is growing or not. By contrast, for the past half century or […]

The post In addition to housing, manufacturing is range-bound as well appeared first on Angry Bear.

by Andrea Hsu National Public Radio The Starbucks case is more a battle over which approach Appeals courts should use when they consider requests for injunctions like this one over labor violations. The Supreme Court appears to be weighing in on their decisions. The impact of the Supreme Court decision will weigh heavily on unions […]

The post How the Starbucks case at the Supreme Court could affect unions everywhere appeared first on Angry Bear.

It is getting serious now. Kroger is willing to sell off more stores in order to consolidate with Albertsons. The one thing we keep on seeing is the manipulation of supply chain due to circumstance to achieve manufacturing shortfall, and influence, to maximize profits. Much of what we have and are experiencing was avoidable. The […]

The post Manipulating Supply Chains and Manufacturing, for Corporate Influence and Profit . . . Redux appeared first on Angry Bear.

In many capitalist European countries, college students do not have to pay tuition fees out of their own pockets. Here in America, most students have to fund their own college costs, which for many students means student loans. Whether or not they complete the degree, student loan borrowers can’t discharge these loans through bankruptcy. Of […]

The post It’s a start appeared first on Angry Bear.

 – by New Deal democrat The Bonddad Blog As per my usual caveat, while new home sales are the most leading of the housing construction metrics, they are noisy and heavily revised.  That was true again this month, as sales (blue in the graph below) increased almost 9% m/m to 693,000 annualized, after February was revised downward […]

The post The range-bound new home sales market continues appeared first on Angry Bear.

The Fed Tallies Up a Big Threat to Financial Stability in the U.S.: “Runnables” at $21.3 Trillion

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: April 23, 2024 ~ Last Friday, the Federal Reserve released its semi-annual Financial Stability Report. In the prior five years, the spring edition of the Fed’s Financial Stability Report was released in May. This year, for reasons we can only guess at (nervously), the Fed released the spring edition early, in April. Given that last spring the second, third and fourth largest bank failures in U.S. history occurred, handing over $30 billion in losses to the federal Deposit Insurance Fund, and one of those banks (Silicon Valley Bank) experienced the fastest run on its deposits in U.S. history, one particular item in the new report that caught our attention was this: “Overall, estimated runnable money-like financial liabilities grew 8.8 percent to $21.3 trillion (75 percent of nominal GDP) over the past year, as a decline in uninsured deposits was more than offset by an increase in assets under management … Continue reading →

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https://www.economist.com/briefing/2024/04/11/homeowners-face-a-25trn-bill-from-climate-change

The post Open Thread April 23 2024 Homeowners face a $25trn bill from climate change appeared first on Angry Bear.

by Suzanne Gordon and Steve Early Washington Monthly Trump has mocked veterans and privatized their health care. Biden honors them but hasn’t challenged Trump’s privatization policies. Currently, they are moving more and more veterans to commercial healthcare. This rather than restoring VA healthcare to a better place for veterans to be and at a lower […]

The post Trump vs. Biden: Who Got More Done for Veterans? appeared first on Angry Bear.

by Tom Dinger The Bell A commentary by an acquaintance of mine and from years ago. I believe there is only one person who might recognize the author. He was well liked amongst his fellow writers. Americans Doubting the Big Bang Is a Healthy Thing A new Associated Press-GfK poll asked approximately one thousand U.S. adults to […]

The post Science and the Tinkerbell Effect appeared first on Angry Bear.

 – by New Deal democrat The Bonddad Blog This is an update of some information I last posted several months ago. Real median household income is one of the best measures of average Americans’ well-being. However, the official measure is only reported once a year, in September of the following year. So right now the most […]

The post Real median wage and income growth through March continued the recent increasing trend appeared first on Angry Bear.

Billionaire-Owned Media Has Gone Full Throttle to Save Fellow Billionaire, Jamie Dimon

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: April 22, 2024 ~ The Washington Post Editorial Board appears to have sipped the same kool aid as Bloomberg News. As we’ve frequently reported in the past, Bloomberg News has spent the better part of the last decade attempting to brainwash the public into believing that the head of JPMorgan Chase, Jamie Dimon, is a respected statesman of Wall Street. (See here, here, and here.) In reality, JPMorgan Chase has admitted to an unprecedented five criminal felony counts with Dimon at the helm and paid fines in the tens of billions of dollars for an additional crime wave that rivals an organized crime family. Billionaire Michael Bloomberg, the former Mayor of New York, is the majority owner of Bloomberg LP, the owner of Bloomberg News. In 2016, Michael Bloomberg even co-authored an opinion piece with Dimon. The same year, the New York Post reported that JPMorgan Chase was … Continue reading →

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