THE OTHER SHOE DROPS: Updates To Previous Posts
† The Perfect Getaway Vehicle?: After nearly a month on the lam in a luxurious RV, fugitive hedge-fund honcho Samuel Israel III, 48, has surrendered to police in Southwick, MA. He will be turned over to federal authorities to begin serving a 20-year prison term. It is unclear whether he will face additional charges or penalties for this escapade.
† Après Spitzer: The Appellate Division of the New York State Supreme Court dismissed then-Attorney General Eliot Spitzer’s 2004 charges against former New York Stock Exchange chairman Richard A. Grasso alleging that his $187.5 million compensation package violated the Not-for-Profit Corporation Law. The court ruled 3-1 that the exchange's conversion to a for-profit corporation when it merged with Archipelago Holdings Inc. extinguished the attorney general's authority to prosecute, reports New York Law Journal. “We have reviewed the Court's opinion and determined that an appeal would not be warranted. Thus, for all intents and purposes, the Grasso case is over,” wrote current NY AG Andrew Cuomo’s press secretary Alex Detrick in an e-mailed statement to the media.
The Wall Street Journal characterizes the ruling as “a setback for Mr. Cuomo, who has also seen recent court rulings pare back the ability of his office to police not-for-profit companies such as hospitals, universities and charities in the state”:
On a wider scale, the case was one of the biggest defeats suffered by authorities in the past decade in white-collar civil and criminal cases aimed at alleged financial improprieties. While federal prosecutions of accounting frauds at Enron Corp., WorldCom Inc. and other companies resulted in convictions that sent executives to prison, it has been tougher for authorities to win legal fights involving allegations of excessive compensation.
State officials took consolation in the court's view that the ruling wouldn't protect officials at not-for-profit companies that sought to evade prosecution by merging with a for-profit company.
With this ruling, the “steamroller” has finally run out of gas.
† How Did We Get From A Knowledge Economy To An Unskilled And Illiterate Economy?: While The Wall Street Journal, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and other pro-illegal immigration shills insist that the
For almost any nation other than
After years of boom and bust, the administration of President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva is projecting a period of sustained growth, with the gross domestic product increasing 5 percent a year, from now to 2010, and about 3 and 4 percent annually for the decade after.
But many companies and economists, including some inside the government, say the dearth of highly skilled labor, particularly engineers and tradesmen, will jeopardize those goals, and
The lack of civil and construction engineers threatens infrastructure projects; areas like banking, aircraft manufacture, petrochemicals and metals are all competing for the same top graduates. In the booming oil and gas industries, companies are turning to foreign labor because there are not enough qualified Brazilians to go around. …
One official said he believed that shortages were limited to certain sectors and could be overcome in the short term by hiring retirees and foreign workers.
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