Search Results for: koch

By Pam Martens: February 27, 2012 Gary Weiss, long time Wall Street reporter and author, has written a new book, due out this week from St. Martin’s Press, on the rising influence of Ayn Rand in modern politics. Titled Ayn Rand Nation: The Hidden Struggle for America’s Soul, the book removes the propaganda mask that has been so adroitly affixed to Alan Greenspan’s page-boy coiffed goddess of laissez-faire capitalism and the Tea Party’s mother ship. While lecturing others for most of her life on the meaning of morality, Rand had extramarital sex for more than a decade with a younger man who worked for her. His wife was among her inner circle of friends and Rand herself was married. A believer in acquiescence to selfish desires, Rand published a 1964 collection of essays with Nathaniel Branden titled The Virtue of Selfishness: A New Concept of Egoism. Adding particular poignancy to … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens: March 12, 2012 Public relations experts understand one thing about a messy legal battle: the side that triumphs in public perception from the outset can leverage the momentum. Right now, that momentum is clearly with the Cato Institute in its court fight to prevent the oil billionaires, Charles and David Koch, from gaining majority control of the libertarian think tank through a shareholder lawsuit. Yes, I said “shareholder.” This nonprofit, subsidized by taxpayers, is currently 50 percent owned by the Koch brothers and if they win in court, they will become majority owners as a result of a tricked up contract and the death of a 25 percent owner last October. The Cato Institute, in a week’s time, has transformed its image from a pro deregulation, pro Social Security privatization, anti Federal school lunch, anti minimum wage, anti collective bargaining think tank taking tens of millions from … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens: September 12, 2011 When Larry Kudlow of CNBC, WABC Radio and National Review speaks, who’s really talking?  Is it Kudlow or is it the $332,500 he has pocketed from the Koch-funded Mercatus Center.  While Kudlow did previously acknowledge accepting $50,000 from Enron after he wrote an article about the company and failed to disclose it, he has not disclosed the Mercatus money to readers of his columns, blog or to viewers of his programs as he openly pitches the Mercatus/Koch agenda. When John Stossel gives us his free market shtick on his weekly program on the Fox Business Network, who’s putting the words in his mouth?  Is Stossel a muckracker or a buckracker in the debt of a web of shadowy right wing nonprofits that manage his name and message? How about Stephen Moore, member of the Wall Street Journal’s editorial board and a frequent opinion writer on … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens: October 3, 2011 For the past three years the U.S. has been served up a heaping dose of free market creative destruction that is the sine qua non of legions of corporate funded front groups.  First Wall Street, then housing, now the nation’s highest court has been brought low by its force.  As it turns out, creative destruction is 90 percent corruption and 10 percent creative. The Citizens United case, decided by the U.S. Supreme Court on January 21, 2010, opened the spigots to unlimited corporate money in elections and put free speech for inanimate, unfeeling corporations on equal footing with free speech for humans with a brain and a heart.  But it didn’t pass the smell test from day one; four of the nine Justices on the court said so in a scathing dissent that raised the issue of unprincipled behavior on the part of the … Continue reading →

In-depth research on public interest topics frequently ignored by corporate media. (For most recent reports, scroll to the end.) Maria Bartiromo and the Co-Branding of CNBC and Citigroup: February 2, 2007 The cozy nexus between CNBC and Citigroup, the company on which it is supposed to be providing objective reporting. Madoff and the SEC’s Revolving Door: August 31, 2009 …the background of the member of the team heading up the Inspector General’s Office of Investigations, J. David Fielder, should have sounded alarm bells to Congressional investigators. Wall Street Titans Use Aliases to Foreclose on Families: October 5, 2009 A federal agency tasked with expanding the American dream of home ownership and affordable housing free from discrimination to people of modest means has been quietly moving a chunk of that role to Wall Street since 2002.  In a stealth partial privatization, the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) farmed out … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens: June 21, 2008 If you want to flush out market manipulation, don’t turn to the sleuths in Congress.  They’ve been probing trading of the oil markets for two years and completely missed a company at the center of the action.  During that period, a barrel of crude oil has risen from $50 to $140, leaving a wide swatch of Americans facing a choice this coming winter of buying food or paying their heating bill. The company that Congress overlooked should have been an easy suspect. It launched the oil trading career of the infamous fugitive, Marc Rich, pardoned by President Clinton in the final hours of his presidency.  It was at one time the largest oil and metals trader in the world. In the late 90s it bought up 129 million ounces of silver for legendary investor Warren Buffet’s company, Berkshire Hathaway, in London’s unregulated over-the-counter market.   … Continue reading →