Wall Street Greed

Dishonest Bankers Are At It Again

                In the 1976 film “Network,” anchorman Howard Beale goes off the deep end and delivers one of the greatest soliloquies of American cinema, a long and loud tirade about banks, unemployment, and crime. He urges his television viewers to throw open the windows and yell, “I’m mad as hell and I’m not going to take it anymore!” 

                Recently I wanted to channel Howard Beale when the news broke that foreign exchange traders at six major banks manipulated currency markets for personal profit.

               Just as the U.S. economy is healing after six long years of pain induced by the 2008 Wall Street financial collapse, we learn that Citigroup, JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America, USB, Royal Bank of Scotland and HSBC Holdings employed liars and cheats who hoodwinked millions of investors.

With apologies for vulgarity, the average consumer once again has been screwed and tattooed.

         Regulators suspect that the money perps used their knowledge of what currencies their clients wanted to buy and sell to nudge market prices against them (and in their own favor).  By rigging the benchmarks they got bigger bonuses. 

        More than $5 trillion changes hands every day on the global foreign exchange market, also known as forex.  Manipulation of the exchange rates has "a profound effect on the economy," says Aitan Goelman, director of the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission.  A host of financial investments bought and sold by major investors such as pension funds are based on benchmark rates, set daily, for pairs of currencies.  As for individual investors, it’s fair to say that millions hold positions in forex investments in their retirement account mutual funds.

                The theft aggravates wounds that have not yet healed.  When the global financial collapse occurred in 2008 --what some have called the “heist of the century” -- the cost was tens of trillions of dollars in wealth destruction.  It also caused vast, unquantifiable human suffering, from unemployment, home foreclosures, lost retirements, and obliterated college funds.  For many it caused a loss of faith in the American Dream. 

                A hefty $4.3 billion in fines have been leveled against the banks that employed the corrupt forex traders by regulators in the U.S., the U.K. and Switzerland.  Yet they are just another bullet point in a long list of penalties for banking misdeeds. The reality is corruption is endemic on Wall Street.

                According to John Maxfield, who covers banking for The Motley Fool, between 2012 and 2013 eight banks -- UBS, The Royal Bank of Scotland, Rabobank, Deutsche Bank, Societe Generale, Barclays, JPMorgan Chase, and Citigroup -- paid $6 billion to settle allegations they manipulated the interbank lending rates.  Maxfield notes a bevy of other recent misdeeds. 

                In 2013, JPMorgan Chase paid $410 million in penalties and disgorgement for rigging electricity markets in California and the Midwest. That same year more than a dozen major banks paid a combined $9.3 billion to make amends for systematically submitting fraudulent documents to courts in foreclosure proceedings.

                In 2010, Bank of America paid $137 million to settle charges of securities fraud for rigging bids in the municipal bond market.  It was joined by JPMorgan Chase, UBS and others.

                Goldman Sachs was hauled before Congress in 2010 to answer for its role in constructing toxic derivatives that it then sold to unwitting clients just as the subprime mortgage market started to buckle – a move that was duplicated at JPMorgan Chase.

                Meanwhile, the investigation into the exchange rate ruse continues. The U.S. Justice Department has given banks until mid-December to come clean about their wrongdoing. Attorney General Eric Holder said the department will finish its investigation soon, moving toward both civil and criminal resolutions.

               I think I can speak for millions of everyday investors: The noxious odor of corruption emanating from Wall Street must be stopped before we resort to stashing our hard-earned dollars under our mattresses.

Report: Those Who Earn Less Are Giving More

"Let me tell you about the very rich. They are different from you and me," wrote F. Scott Fitzgerald in a short story entitled 'The Rich Boy,' in 1926.  The famed writer knew his topic well; a year earlier his book, “The Great Gatsby” was published, illuminating the excesses and decadent lifestyles of wealthy residents on Long Island.

Here in Dallas we don’t have to look far to find an example.  Investor Sam Wyly is looking at a possible $300 million forfeiture order for using offshore trusts to hide stock and make illegal trades. (Dallas Morning News, Oct. 23). The 13-year fraud made Sam and his brother at least $550 million.

While the Securities and Exchange Commission decides just how much he must turn over, Wyly filed a Chapter 11 bankruptcy petition in an effort to his preserve assets. Then he began spending money like a drunken sailor on shore leave.  Shelling out cash at a “burn rate” of about $3.75 million a month, Wyly apparently wanted to erase assets to make an asset freeze by the SEC necessary, thereby further protecting his wealth from creditors – the two biggest being the Internal Revenue Service and the SEC itself.

On my, what simple lives most of us lead compared to the super-rich.  Perhaps this is Fitzgerald’s intended message.

As Americans, our view toward money and how to use it varies widely.  According to a recent report in the Chronicle of Philanthropy, poor and middle-class earners dug deep into their pockets to give a larger percentage of their incomes to charity.  According to the Chronicle’s analysis of tax data, wealthy Americans earned more, but the portion of the income they gave to charity declined.

The wealthiest Americans—those who earned $200,000 or more—reduced the share of income they gave to charity by 4.6 percent from 2006 to 2012. Meanwhile, Americans who earned less than $100,000 chipped in 4.5 percent more of their income during the same time period.  

What are we to make of this seeming paradox?  To me the answer is simple and clear:  Those who earn less have witnessed – perhaps even experiencing – poverty in an up-close and personal way.  There are more of us who have felt the blow of job losses, foreclosures, business failures, unemployment and life on hand-to-mouth budgets.

According to Federal Reserve Chairman Janice Yellen, income equality is the worst it has been since the 1920s.  America’s top one percent owns 41.8 percent of all wealth while the bottom 60 percent own just 1.7 percent.

There is a story about a church in the eastern U.S. with many wealthy parishioners.  One Sunday they eagerly awaited the inaugural appearance of their new minister.  Before the service began, a dirty, disheveled and obviously homeless bum walks in and sits in a pew near the front of the church.  Ragged, shabby and smelly, his presence makes congregants visibly uncomfortable. 

When the service begins, the senior warden appears and announces that it’s a great day for the church because he is there to introduce their new pastor.  He says, “Please welcome the Reverend Paul Angel” (not his real name).

The bum stands up and walks to the pulpit.  He thanks the senior warden for the kind introduction and assures the congregants he doesn’t normally dress like a homeless man.  But then he adds, paraphrasing scripture, “Whatever you do for the least of your brothers, you do for yourselves.” 

During a recent trip to Dallas, former President Jimmy Carter and wife Rosalyn set an inspiring example.  They spent a week in the area doing hard physical labor for Habitat for Humanity.  Said the 90-year-old ex-president, “No matter what your faith may be, we are taught to share what we have with poor people.” 

I wonder how much Sam Wylie shared.

Photo courtesy of Giving USA 2014 Report.

Remembering Charles Kuralt on the Road in Wyoming

Some folks believe nothing happens by accident.  I’m not so sure.  But I do believe in serendipity, which raised its graceful head recently when I was packing up to leave Wyoming.  I ran across a CBS Television transcript of “On the Road with Charles Kuralt.”

The transcript is dated July 21, 1978.  It is the verbatim report from the legendary Kuralt in the high plains and mountain meadows of the Snowy Range region in southeast Wyoming.  In his inimitable fashion, his poignant words are a combination of adoration, praise and wonderment at nature’s astonishing variety:

“In a day and a half, we took pictures of 50 species of wildflowers.  And with the help of Dr. Dennis Knight of the University of Wyoming, identified them.  Dr. Knight says if we want to see all of Wyoming’s wildflowers, we have about 950 to go.”

That report aired 36 years ago. Wyoming’s beauty still is blessedly pretty much the same.  That’s why I love it here.

Besides proudly claiming Wyoming as my place of birth, what had prompted me to request the transcript was Kuralt’s sky-high status as a television journalist.  Back then I was a freshly minted print journalist, just beginning to apply my love affair with the language.  And although we “print people” felt superior to journalists who worked in broadcast, I knew his reporting was special.  There wasn’t another person in the world of television (which at that time was made up entirely of only three networks – CBS, NBC, and ABC) who could craft feature stories like Kuralt.  His words were poetic.  Combined with the superb videography that went along with them, his work was art.  Let your imagination appreciate this:

“We climbed up to the snow line.  Oh yes, Wyoming has a snow line in July. But as soon as the snow melts, guess what?  Dandelions. Everybody with a lawn knows how rugged dandelions are.  But who would expect to find fragile marsh marigolds way up here challenging a snowbank?  These Wyoming wildflowers are tougher than they look.  The state flower is the Indian paintbrush.  But the whole state is painted bright colors.”

As I prepare for my departure from this grand state – headed for the Big City and what I hope will be better job prospects – a feeling of sadness descends.  So it’s fitting that I note one last quote from Kuralt’s report:

“And right up here on top of the Snowy Range at 10,800 feet is where I found my favorite.  In one of the harshest environments on the continent, the most delicate flower I’ve ever seen:  Alpine forget-me-nots.”

Here’s to the ‘No Fear’ Approach to Technology

The renowned Consumer Electronics Show is to new gadgets what Mardi Gras is to merrymaking.  Held in Las Vegas every January, the show is the world’s biggest candy store for geeks.  This year there were dozens of exhibitors insisting the smart phones that worked perfectly fine last month are now horribly antiquated.   Now you can buy a smaller, thinner, faster, smarter, more intuitive, and better connected device.  And you’d better do it now or you’ll look horribly out-of-date!

News from the annual tech fest wasn’t only about smartphones.  Among the thousands of products that were introduced to the public was a 700-pound iPod docking station/boom box called the iNuke Boom.  As one reporter noted, “At $29,999.00, the iNuke Boom is conveniently priced for you to choose between one semester of college and an unwieldy, totally impractical iPod dock that may kill you and everyone you love when operated.  If there is a device that can induce a bowel movement, I suppose this is it.”

           Elsewhere at the show, more than 2,700 exhibitors flashed a far-reaching array of excessive, high tech gadgetry that kept attendees oohing, aahing and even gasping for breath.  Motorola gave them the opportunity to recover:  Its booth offered flavored oxygen to inhale.
           When it comes to high technology, there are few things more intriguing to the buying public.  There also is nothing that will induce a more sheep-like behavior . . . nor, perhaps, make us feel more like an idiot when trying to learn.  This is especially true when it comes to personal communication devices, formerly known as telephones, which recently became America’s largest selling consumer electronics device according to market research firm Gartner.  In 2011, smartphones outsold personal computers for the first time ever.   
          So the question is, are you one of the millions of Americans struggling to figure out how some new gizmo works?  It’s important to remember you are not alone.  People everywhere are grumbling about the steep learning curve involved in trying to master the ever-expanding panoply of digital gear.  Whether it’s learning to use a smartphone, post a message to Facebook, or operate a DVD player, technology may be driving us nuts.
          In his book "User Unfriendly: Consumer Struggles with Personal Technologies,” author Joseph J. Corn describes the anxiety and frustrations associated with adopting new machines.

“Personal technologies have always been seductive. They augment our strength and extend our capabilities," writes Corn. “Yet while we find these new technologies alluring, we pay a high price.  When a new fancy gadget comes on the market we invariably understand little about it.  We don't know how it works or how to operate it.”  And once we buy it, the frustration begins. 

Here, then, are three simple rules to help you get through the exasperating experience of learning a new technology.

Rule Number One:   Employ the ‘No Fear’ rule. Do not be intimidated.  Unlike a classroom situation, nobody is teaching you how to use the new widget and the written instructions are little or no help.  Be fearless.  There will NOT be a test.  If you make a mistake you will not be fined or imprisoned.

              Rule Number Two:  Give yourself plenty of time . . . . say, six months to a year.  Again, no one is teaching you how to operate the darn thing.  Think of it as a no-pressure learning situation with no deadline, no quiz and no grade at the end of the semester.

             Rule Number Three:  Forgive yourself if you make a mistake.  Did you accidentally misspell a word while texting and use profanity?  Do not beat yourself up.  Instead, enjoy a chuckle and shrug it off. Keep in mind that using any new tool with roughly 100-plus digital functions doesn’t happen naturally . . . .  no matter how “intuitive” the manufacturer says it is. 

And if an error occurs, you can always blame it on the device.  As the prominent mountaineer and naturalist David Bower said, "All technology should be assumed guilty until proven innocent.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

This Is My Home, Where Microwaves (Sometimes) Roam

 

My parents made sure to instill in their children the feeling of being proud that we are Wyomingites.  This pride stems not from conceit or arrogance, rather from the fact that Wyoming is unique and special in so many ways.  Its landscape, history, people and culture all make being born and raised here an extraordinary experience.
               
After college I lived in a metropolis of eight million people for many years, and when I told others about my home state they registered a wide-eyed sense of awe and curiosity.  Many showed downright admiration. 
                
They always had lots of questions.  ‘What’s it like growing up there?’ usually was the first thing out of their mouths.  I would tell them I grew up in a very small town in northwest Wyoming (Basin) that has about 1,100 people and is about an hour from Yellowstone National Park.  Many times I would grab a pen and reach for a cocktail napkin, a convenient, made-to-match visual aid of Wyoming’s boundaries on which I would sketch our many scenic points of interest.  How many other states are lucky enough to have such a handy drawing canvass?
               
I developed many ways to describe how tiny and insular my hometown is.  I would tell them that it is so small there is no stoplight; in drivers’ education class we had to drive seven miles to Greybull to practice on its two stoplights.  That it is so small residents ask the clerk to open their boxes at the post office if they have forgotten their keys.  That we never locked our homes or cars when I was growing up.  And that integrity was universal and accountability essential to one’s good standing in the community.
                           
Sometimes the uniqueness of a place can be captured with a single example.  The relatively slow advancement of high tech communications in Wyoming fits the cowboy bill.  Because of our sparse population and wide-open spaces, it is fair to say our state was probably not on the cutting edge compared to more populated areas.  Cell towers, for example, were once as scarce as Democrats.

 

When cell telephones first came to the Big Horn Basin, many thought it was a perfect fit.  After all, using a cell phone in a small town basically is the same as using a walk-talkie if you are calling locally. Unfortunately, if a call was placed to an out-of-town destination, we joined the rest of the nation in the oft-repeated phrase ‘Can you hear me now? Can you hear me now?’  Even today when driving through, say, the Wind River Canyon, you might as well turn your phone off.  The spectacular handiwork of our state's landscape prevents cell phone “coverage.”

 

Which brings me to my elderly mother, who was a Basin resident her entire life.  Before she passed away two years ago she did not have an answering machine, let alone a cell phone or computer.  She and most of her contemporaries fondly remembered the days when a call could be placed using only four digits.

For many years, her children told her that she didn’t have to speak so loudly over a landline telephone.  Her retort was that she was taught to speak audibly and clearly as a matter of upbringing.  Speak to be understood and do not mumble, she often reminded us.  Frankly, I think she spoke loudly because in the early days of Ma Bell telephones the audio quality was as muddled as cell phones often are today.
            
She also was taught to speak loudly because when she was young many of her parents’ older friends were losing their hearing.  It was during the time before hearing aids and after tin ear trumpets were used.

So when my mother called one day – on her friend’s cell phone – and I could not hear her, I was astonished to hear myself say, “It’s okay, Mom.  You can talk loudly after all.”  To which she gamely whispered with her dry Wyoming wit, “Can you hear me now?”
 

A Brief Screed about Facebook

I’m going to start by paraphrasing something Wyoming’s former U.S. Senator Alan Simpson said: ‘If you don’t piss at least one person off, you’re not doing a good job.’

My topic today is Facebook and the astonishing things people post. Granted, in the grand scheme of things Facebook is in its infancy.  We all are still learning the intricacies of this worldwide phenomenon.  Its myriad options, choices and user tools (which, by the way, keep changing in the name of improvement) require months, perhaps years, to learn. But I think it’s time those who have been using it a while to graduate. Look for the classroom labeled “Better Taste.” It will instruct you how to be more discreet about what you share.

Specifically, I am referring to the outlandish pictures I see posted by my FB friends.  Examples abound.  One person posted an up-close picture of her mother’s face.  It would have been fine had her mother not been in a horrific car accident and hospitalized with a battered face. The poor woman, 84 years-old, looked like the grand prize winner from a Zombie Fest. She had cuts, abrasions, purple bruises, stitches and bloody bandages all over her forehead, cheeks, chin and nose. It was macabre. I had to look away. 

Another post came from a friend who provided a blow-by-blow progress report of her bathroom remodeling project. The coup de grâs of this long drawn-out process came when we were treated to a view of her new toilet.  Really? 

And then there was the post from a woman delighted about her new pedicure. ‘Nothing makes a girl feel better than a good foot pampering,’ she chirped.  I. disagree, but that’s beside the point.

If Facebook were a person, it would be only nine-years-old, apparently about the same age as the good judgment of some who post. Launched in February 2004, by September 2006 the network had extended itself beyond educational institutions to include anyone with a registered email address.

One of its niftiest tools is the ability to create a new list or create a group.  Both of these options appear on the left-hand menu.  If you create a group, you will have three options: 1) To make it “open” so anyone can see the group, who is in it and what members post; 2) To make it “closed.” Anyone can see it and who belongs, but only members can post; and 3) To make it “secret.” Only secret members see the group, who is in it and what other members post.

The revolutionary thing about Facebook --  and social media in general -- is that users have complete control over what they say and who can see it.  So if you want your siblings and cousins to see the terrible shape your mother is in after her car accident, post it for them – and only them.  If grungy bathrooms are a running joke among you and your college sorority sisters, show your remodeling project to them – and only them.

And if your toe-sucking boyfriend with a foot fetish will quiver with glee when he hears about your pedicure, skip Facebook altogether and pick up the phone.

 

 

A Big-Hearted State

It's been said Wyoming is just one big neighborhood connected by very long roads.  After many years of living in a huge, impersonal city of more than two million people, this wonderful sense of community is one of the many reasons I am thrilled to be back.

You see, Wyoming is my home state. It's where I was born and raised and learned my basic "operating principles."  And it's where I know folks to be some of the kindest and most generous people of any state in the nation.

Cheyenne's annual Day of Giving proves my point.  For the seventh year in a row, the call went out to local businesses, individuals, community groups, civic volunteers and religious congregations to help support people in need.  From all corners of the county, people came to the Kiwanis Community House at Lion's Park to show they care.  The results speak for themselves.  Here is what they contributed:

9,810 pounds of non-perishable food and personal care items
795 pounds of medical supplies
416 pounds of leftover prescription medications
201 pieces of durable medical equipment
865 pairs of used eyeglasses
$5,169.66 in cash donations
85 people showed up to donate blood and 31 bone marrow donors were registered
In addition, businesses and community groups donated $8,350. 

An outpouring of generostiy? . . . a heartwarming show of support? . . . an over-the-top response to help those in need?  Yes, all of these things.  And above all, it's affirmation that people who call Wyoming home have hearts as big as the wide open spaces we live in.