Wednesday, May 27, 2020

The Golden Age of White Collar Crime 

"High Tatra Mountaintops inspire leaders but Kangaroo valleys mature them.” 
– Winston Churchill misquoted

The Golden Age of White Collar Crime HuffPost 
China Will Use Its Digital Currency To Compete With The USD Forbes (Kevin W). *Sigh*. The way to become a reserve currency is 1. Run persistent trade deficits so your currency is held by parties outside your country and 2. Give them some OK places to park your currency besides cash. The US has Treasuries and other government guaranteed bonds, a well-regulated stock market for those who like to walk on the wilder side, as well as (until recently) cities with good airport access plus shopping, restaurants, museums and other attractions so that foreigners holding US currency might park it in US residential real estate

 They should have said: No Minister


By DAVID SOLOMON | On 22 May 2020

One of the worst aspects of the sports rorts affair is the way elements of the public service turned a deliberate blind eye to what was known, or assumed, to be a failure by the Minister to be bound by the requirements of the law governing the way the grants could be approved. Continue reading →



ICAC wants charges laid over 'ghost guard' scam

Prosecutors should consider charging a former police officer and five others involved in the University of Sydney "ghost guard" work scam, the NSW corruption watchdog says.


I think that the tweet referred to in this clip too important not to note:

Rumour has the tweet was a mistake, being sent to the wrong account by whoever wrote it.
And yet the sentiment was, I am sure, genuine and shared widely.
Worse, no doubt there will be an enquiry to identify who did this, but there will not be about Cummings.

Advice was given that a generic online form should be used to contact PM’s office, highlighting flaws in corruption reporting regime


If we want to narrow the North-South divide that threatens our world, some limits on tax competition are inevitable. The world faces a crucial choice in the 2020s. We can either continue retreating from globalization in favor of xenophobic nationalism, tariffs, immigration restrictions, and exchange controls. That road leads ultimately to war, as it did in the 1930s. Or we can revive globalization by investing in a robust social safety net, infrastructure, education, and job creation.




 Vox – A former State Department watchdog on what they do — and why they matter.“Late Friday night [May 16, 2020], President Donald Trump fired State Department Inspector General Steve Linick. It was the fourth abrupt dismissal of an inspector general in about as many weeks, and the latest case in which Trump claimed he’d lost confidence in the IG when it very much seemed like something else was going on. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo confirmed recommending that Trump fire Linick. That’s an important detail, because it seems Linick — who, as inspector general, was in charge of oversight at the State Department — might have been zeroing in on Pompeo himself, including the secretary’s alleged use of a political appointee to run his personal errands. Linick was also reportedly probing the administration’s $8 billion arms deal with Saudi Arabia, which sidestepped Congress. Congressional Democrats are now investigating Linick’s firing. But Linick is not the first IG to go. In April, Trump fired Michael Atkinson, the intelligence community’s inspector general, who had brought forward a credible whistleblower report about the president’s inappropriate phone call with the Ukrainian president that ultimately led to Trump’s impeachment. Trump had “lost confidence” in Atkinson, too. Earlier this month, Trump also moved to replace the acting inspector general for the Department of Health and Human Services, who had written a report highlighting shortages of personal protective equipment and coronavirus tests in US hospitals, which Trump called “wrong.” And Trump replaced the acting Defense Department inspector general, who’d been tasked with overseeing the $2 trillion in funds from the coronavirus stimulus package, making him ineligible to oversee pandemic spending. Trump’s purge of inspectors general is unprecedented. But his ire for these internal watchdogs is not…”


Scott Morrison takes aim at Australia's industrial relations system, reaches out to business and unions


Twitter Bots Are Spreading Coronavirus Conspiracy Theories Rolling Stone 


Why Do Food Delivery Companies Lose Money? Josh Barro, New York Magazine. It is enormously frustrating to see economists act like ants pushing grains of rice around until they manage to stumble across a hole for it to fall into. Hubert Horan explained this all years ago with respect to Uber, and did a similar kneecapping of various app-based local transportation product extensions. It’s really not that hard to look at the economics of delivery and see that adding an app adds zero or even potentially negative improvements in production costs (due to moar overheads) but no one ex Hubert seemed willing to do the work.

The Time Is Ripe for More SocialismNathan J. Robinson, Newsweek (!).
2. BuildAtmos.com — Home building, simplified.

3. Short essay on how an ex-CDC person sees things.  From my point of view off base, but fascinating in any case and of course you should read that side of the story.




Posted by at