Bad Blogger

Take it away, Maureen:

It’s a good argument for nationalization, or better yet, internationalization. Outsource the jobs of these perfidious, oblivious bank executives to Bangalore; Bollywood bashes have to cost less than Hollywood ones.

The entertainment Web site TMZ broke the story Tuesday that Northern Trust of Chicago, which got $1.5 billion in bailout money and then laid off 450 workers, flew hundreds of clients and employees to Los Angeles last week and treated them to four days of posh hotel rooms, salmon and filet mignon dinners, music concerts, a PGA golf tournament at the Riviera Country Club with Mercedes shuttle rides and Tiffany swag bags.

and more…

Northern Untrustworthy even offered junketeers the chance to attend a seminar on the credit crunch where they could no doubt learn that the U.S. government is just the latest way to finance your deals and keep your office swathed in $87,000 area rugs.

finally

“A rep from the PGA told us Northern Trust wrote one big, fat check in order to sponsor the event,” TMZ reported.

…

Continue reading “Attack of the Spoiled Rich People, Part… Uh, I lost count…”

Continue reading “25 Random Reasons I Won’t Tell You 25 Random Things About Me, by Andy ITGuy”

Continue reading “from Business Insider: Alan Greenspan jumps on Bank Nationalization Bandwagon”

And I thought it already WAS a horror film…

Hey! We can kill two birds with one stone! Since UBS is handling investments in Dubai, we can take out two US Corporate (criminal) tax havens at once!

from Aug 31, 2008, zawya.com – Middle East Business Information

DUBAI(Zawya Dow Jones)— Abu Dhabi Investment Co. appointed Vincent Gilles as the new Chief Investment Officer of ADIC-UBS Infrastructure Investment Ltd.

…ADIC-UBS is a recently formed joint venture between Abu Dhabi Investment Co. and and UBS Asset Management focusing on infrastructure investments within the Middle East, North Africa, and Turkey.

Prior to joining ADIC-UBS, Gilles worked for UBS for 10 years and headed the European and Middle Eastern practice of UBS Infrastructure Asset Management, or IAM.

NOTE: April 12, 2011– I was looking through my analytics, and noticed that one of my postings was being monitored by the Swiss Government. I was, of course, curious as to what they might be interested in. I followed the link they followed, and discovered a posting I had completely forgotten I had written. Here it is: …

Continue reading “OK: Let’s invade Switzerland!”

from Fortean Times:

Somnambulism in the Internet Age
Woman emailed party invites in her sleep

A new form of somnambul­ism for the Internet age has been identified by doctors and reported in the latest edition of the medical journal Sleep Medicine. Sleep researchers from the University of Toledo, Ohio, reported the first ever case of someone using the Internet while asleep, even sending emails inviting people over for drinks and caviar.

The 44-year-old woman had gone to bed at about 10pm, but rose a couple of hours later, walked to the next room and sat down at her computer. She turned the machine on, conn­ected to the Internet and success­fully logged on with her user name and password, before composing three emails and sending them to friends. She only found out what she had done when one of them telephoned the next day to reply to the email and accept the invitation.

The mails themselves were perhaps not up to the woman’s waking standard; each was in a random mix of upper and lower case characters, badly formatted and containing odd expressions. One read: “Come tomorrow and sort this hell hole out. Dinner and drinks, 4.pm. Bring wine and caviar only.” Another said simply: “What the…”

The writers of the report have dubbed this new variation of sleepwalking ‘zzz-mailing’… …

Continue reading “post facto excuse for any bizarre PMs I may or may not have left in your inbox…”

1982 – George Deukmejian is elected Governor of California, beginning 16 years of Republican Rule in California.

1986 – Three justices appointed by previous Governor Jerry Brown are voted off the California Supreme Court after business intersts mount an aggressive campaign against them, ostensibly for their opposition to the death penalty, allowing Republican Governor George Deukmejian to stack the court with pro-business conservatives.

1990 – Republican Pete Wilson is elected Governor, and begins an aggressive campain to deregulate energy in the state of California.

From Wikipedia:

In the mid-90's, under Republican Governor Pete Wilson, California began deregulating the electricity industry…

The deregulation called for the Investor Owned Utilities, or IOUs, (primarily Pacific Gas and Electric, Southern California Edison, and San Diego Gas and Electric) to sell off a significant part of their power generation to wholly private, unregulated companies such as AES, Reliant, and Enron. The buyers of those power plants then became the wholesalers from which the IOUs needed to buy the electricity that they used to own themselves. While the selling of power plants to private companies was labeled "deregulation", in fact… the California legislature expected that there would be regulation by the FERC which would prevent manipulation. The FERC's job, in theory, is to regulate and enforce Federal law, preventing market manipulation and price manipulation of energy markets. When called upon to regulate the out-of-state privateers which were clearly manipulating the California energy market, the FERC hardly reacted at all and did not take serious action against Enron, Reliant, or any other privateers. FERC's resources are in fact quite sparse in comparison to their entrusted task of policing the energy market. Lobbying by private companies may also have slowed down regulation and enforcement.

…

Continue reading “In case you still object to the idea of cooking these people & eating them…”