The Mortgage Foreclosure Crisis Explained By Senator Whitehouse in a Series of Questions Posed to Secretary of the Treasury Geithner

Watch this exchange and observe how Geithner declines to deal with the issues. He answers questions that were not posed.

Do you see any evidence of concern for the homeowners being victimized in this mess?

James Pilant

JPMorgan chief gets $17 million pay package (vis U.S. Business on MSNBC)

From the article -

Jamie Dimon (picture from Business Week)

After posting a $17.4 billion profit for 2010, JPMorgan Chase & Co. awarded Chief Executive Jamie Dimon restricted stock and options that could be worth $17 million.

The award is a large part of overall compensation for Dimon, who runs the second-largest U.S. bank by assets. It includes a grant of about $12 million worth of restricted stock, plus options worth about $5 million based on a commonly used valuation method.

I could comment on this but I found a far more eloquent body of thought on this subject than anything I could say by myself.

I want you to go to the comments.

When I started writing this, there were 272 comments. By the time I had finished there were 292.

There are some vigorous thoughts expressed in that section. I don’t recommend you stay too long. We probably should avoid that level of strong emotion for more than limited periods of time. Many of us have high blood pressure or are simply in need of exercise.

I also recommend that you read some of the comments, save the link and go back tomorrow. I bet there will be more than a thousand by then.

Have a good read!

James Pilant

ChamberLeaks: Plan Solicited By Chamber Lawyers Included Malware Hacking Of Activist Computers (via ThinkProgress)

The Chamber of Commerce and I do not agree on many issues ranging from outsourcing to taxes to mortgage foreclosures to financial regulations. That would probably make me in the Chamber’s judgment an “activist.” At this time, I am a very small player but that might change. But I am hardly worth a cyber attack at this time. However, I am concerned about this because against this kind of firepower, I’m a duck in a shooting gallery.

What’s more, I have complete and total confidence that federal, state and local law enforcement will have no interest in protecting my rights, my web site or my right to free speech. Those things are so “passe.”

James Pilant

From the article -

HBGary, the parent company of HBGary Federal, specializes in analyzing “malware,” computer viruses that are used to maliciously steal data from computers or networks. In other presentations, Barr makes clear that his expertise in “Information Operations” covers forms of hacking like a “computer network attack,” “custom malware development,” and “persistent software implants.” The presentation shows Barr boasting that he had knowledge of using “zero day” attacks to exploit vulnerabilities in Flash, Java, Windows 2000 and other programs to steal data from a target’s computer.

Indeed, malware hacking appears to be a key service sold by HBGary Federal. Describing a “spear phishing” strategy (an illegal form of hacking), Barr advised his colleague Greg Hoglund that “We should have a capability to do this to our adversaries.” In another e-mail chain, HBGary Federal executives discuss using a fake “patriotic video of our soldiers overseas” to induce military officials to open malicious data extraction viruses. In September, HBGary Federal executives again contemplate their success of a dummy “evite” e-mail used to maliciously hack target computers.

Some of the initial e-mails discussing the Chamber deal with Team Themis stress the fact that HBGary Federal would provide “expertise on ‘digital intellgence collection’ and social media exploitation.’”

Barr also sent another document to the Chamber’s attorney describing in greater detail Team Themis’ hacking abilities (download a copy here). In one section, Team Themis claims that “if/when Hunton & Williams LLP needs or desire,” they can use “direct engagement” to “provide valuable information that cannot be acquired through other means.” This cryptic pledge appears to be in reference to same malware data intrusion techniques proposed in the other Team Themis documents.

(Generally, I pull links out of any quoted material but these are so useful, I decided to leave them in.)

Ethics and Rigging (via Rigging & Fall Protection)

I suppose I must be naive but I had never heard the term, “value engineered.”

I want you to read this blog entry by professionals who know the importance of safety. This is business ethics on the front line of service and selling. I am very much impressed.

James Pilant

Over the past 10 years we have heard a lot of comments made in the shop or on the telephone with clients (or want-t0-be customers) about rigging products and projects.  Sometimes the customer talks to us about getting the job done s … Read More

via Rigging & Fall Protection

Woman Dies at Desk, Found the Next Day (via AOL News)

From AOL News -

A 51-year-old Los Angeles County worker died at her desk last Friday, and was not found there until the next afternoon, when a Saturday security guard was making the weekend rounds.

Rebecca Wells, who was employed by the L.A. County Department of Internal Services in the risk management division, was last seen alive by co-workers on Friday at about 9AM. “She was always working,” commented one co-worker. The exact time of her death has not been determined.

I am a little disturbed by this, although the facts seem routine enough.

The idea of leaving this life while surrounded by people who didn’t know sounds more like an episode in a novel.

I would prefer these kinds of things to remain fictional.

James Pilant

Corporate Killing?

For most, my title might suggest that I accuse corporations of killing with vaccines. I mean nothing of the sort.

I am angry. I am angry that this tragedy ever happened. No child needed to die because of vaccine fear.

What I mean by corporate killing is corporate lies. Lies so pervasive, so expected, so routine, that when educated parents were given a choice between people who were little more than cranks and corporate information, they went with the cranks.

Did the parents have a choice of not believing the pharmaceutical companies but then going with the government’s analysis? No. Why not? Because the governmental agencies that are supposed to be protecting us are just as PR soaked and lacking in credibility as the corporations that have usually captured them.

That is pitiful.

As individuals and as a society, the facts we need to make good decisions are tainted. They are tainted by a corporate and governmental philosophy of damage control and psychological manipulation over any concern with the truth.

How do you make good decisions in a world of deception? A world in which these lies are so pervasive that you begin to wonder if the government and corporations sometimes lie out of force of habit.

Lies kill. The truth makes for good decision. Lies make for bad decisions and bad decisions can kill directly or as they accumulate over time.

It’s the corporate culture of deception that kills. And in this case it was effective.

James Pilant

From the Slate article – How Sane Parents Got Paranoid About Vaccines by Anna B. Reisman -

In his engaging, provocative, and angry new book, The Panic Virus: A True Story of Medicine, Science and Fear, Seth Mnookin traces the history of the myth that vaccines cause developmental disorders like autism. In the process, he profiles a number of mothers with autistic children who followed their gut instinct away from conventional medicine and ended up on the front lines of vaccine paranoia.

From later in the article -

Here is what baffles Mnookin most: How so many caring, well-educated, affluent parents came to buy leaky theories that vaccines cause autism. How 48 states allow parents to exempt their kids from vaccines for religious reasons, and how in 18 states all you need is a philosophical reason. How, in 2010, the journal Pediatrics reported that a staggering 25 percent of parents believed that vaccines can cause developmental disorders in healthy children. How, even after a 2002 study in the New England Journal of Medicine found no link between MMR and autism, the anti-vaccine camp grew stronger.

Here is a video of the author, Seth Mnookin, reading from his book.

Bernie Madoff Targets Banks and Hedge Funds: “They Had to Know” (via Sense On Cents)

Larry Doyle

From Larry Doyle’s Blog, Sense on ¢ents:

Bernie Madoff deserves zero sympathy and less attention. On the other hand, those seriously impacted by his crimes deserve not only sympathy but also recompense. Irving Picard, the trustee pursuing that recompense on behalf of Madoff investors, is making some high profile claims and has generated substantial results. That said, selected Madoff investors have informed me that they give Picard very mixed reviews.

Doyle goes on to discuss Madoff’s recent comments that others had to know about what he was doing. Doyle believes like me that it is not possible to move that kind of money around without someone realizing that something was wrong.

The article continues -

I have no doubt that the Wall Street banks and a variety of hedge funds knew, should have known, or did not want to know what was truly transpiring within Madoff’s operation.

But, let’s go deeper than that. Who is charged with keeping these banks honest? What about the regulators? Not that Bernie has any real credibility, but why isn’t he compelled to provide further testimony about those who regulated his enterprise, specifically the NASD, its offspring FINRA, and the SEC?

Right. How come the various federal agencies are not investigating this?

Because they don’t want to.

Because it would be embarrassing.

Because there would be political fallout.

It wouldn’t stop the feds from putting any of us in jail but assisting Madoff is no big deal because it wasn’t done by people like “us.”

James Pilant