Slouching Towards Oblivion

Showing posts with label kleptonomics. Show all posts
Showing posts with label kleptonomics. Show all posts

Friday, July 07, 2023

Have You Seen This Man?

No, I'm not going to do the milk carton thing. Not because I've suddenly decided I'm above doing something so trite and stale and sophomoric and whatever. I just couldn't get it to look right.

Gen Sergei Surovikin

Known as General Armageddon, and a Putin darling, that Surovikin guy has gone missing. He hasn't been seen in public since a couple of days after Prigozhin's mutiny fizzled, during which time, he missed his wife's birthday.

That doesn't mean he's been disappeared met with a tragic accident. There's a host of possibly legit reasons, none of which come readily to mind at the moment.

He needs not to count on being welcomed back into the slimy embrace of the Russian Kleptocracy though, because any given big shot (even in a fairly decent government or business) has a hundred guys looking to torpedo his ass so they can step in to replace him, taking all the goodies that go with that position.

So yeah - I think he's either totally fucked, or semi-fucked, but fucked all the same.

Monday, March 04, 2019

Friday, April 27, 2018

Primped And Ready

Michael Cohen says he took out an equity loan on his house to get the $130K for Stormy Daniels.

Michael Cohen (and his father-in-law) loaned $26M to a guy in Vegas, who wants to transition from the taxi business to the marijuana business.

The Hill:

President Trump's personal lawyer Michael Cohen and Cohen's father-in-law reportedly loaned at least $26 million in recent years to a taxi mogul who is shifting his business to selling legal marijuana, The Associated Press reports.

The AP obtained documents showing that Cohen and his father-in-law have loaned millions to Semyon “Sam” Shtayner, a longtime Nevada business associate of Cohen's father-in-law who is transitioning from the business of owning taxi medallions to a business built around selling marijuana edibles.


CNBC:

The Shtayners, like Cohen's father-in-law, are immigrants from Ukraine.

Cohen owns 32 taxicab medallions in New York.

His father-in-law, Shusterman, was charged with two other men in 1993with conspiring to defraud the IRS in connection with his own New York taxi business. He pleaded guilty to a related charge that same year, and was placed on probation for two years.
There may be a reasonable-sounding explanation - even for this one - but it just keeps getting harder to reconcile all the weird and sketchy shit that goes on in and around Cult45.

Tuesday, November 29, 2016

Kleptocratic Kakistocracy

Kalamitous?
Kataclysmic?
Katastrophic maybe?

We're only a 'K' away - but even that's just a way to distract us from the on-rushing shit storm.

Thursday, December 05, 2013

Nice Try

I appreciate the attempts, but at some point this shit just ain't funny anymore.

Thursday, November 28, 2013

OK - Maybe Just One

1. "How can it be that it is not a news item when an elderly homeless person dies of exposure, but it is news when the stock market loses two points? This is a case of exclusion."

2. "Today everything comes under the laws of competition and the survival of the fittest, where the powerful feed upon the powerless. As a consequence, masses of people find themselves excluded and marginalized: without work, without possibilities, without any means of escape."

3. "Human beings are themselves considered consumer goods to be used and then discarded. We have created a 'disposable' culture which is now spreading. It is no longer simply about exploitation and oppression, but something new."

4. "Some people continue to defend trickle-down theories which assume that economic growth, encouraged by a free market, will inevitably succeed in bringing about greater justice and inclusiveness in the world. This opinion, which has never been confirmed by the facts, expresses a crude and naïve trust in the goodness of those wielding economic power and in the sacralized workings of the prevailing economic system."
5. "Today in many places we hear a call for greater security. But until exclusion and inequality in society and between peoples is reversed, it will be impossible to eliminate violence."
--Pope Frank
I don't put any credence in it just because the guy happens to be the pope; I put some credence in it because the guy happens to be right.

(I said I was takin' a little break - not crawling off to die)

Friday, September 27, 2013

Today's Reading Assignment

(hat tip = Charlie Pierce)

Matt Taibbi at Rolling Stone:
This is the third act in an improbable triple-fucking of ordinary people that Wall Street is seeking to pull off as a shocker epilogue to the crisis era. Five years ago this fall, an epidemic of fraud and thievery in the financial-services industry triggered the collapse of our economy. The resultant loss of tax revenue plunged states everywhere into spiraling fiscal crises, and local governments suffered huge losses in their retirement portfolios – remember, these public pension funds were some of the most frequently targeted suckers upon whom Wall Street dumped its fraud-riddled mortgage-backed securities in the pre-crash years.
Today, the same Wall Street crowd that caused the crash is not merely rolling in money again but aggressively counterattacking on the public-relations front. The battle increasingly centers around public funds like state and municipal pensions. This war isn't just about money. Crucially, in ways invisible to most Americans, it's also about blame. In state after state, politicians are following the Rhode Island playbook, using scare tactics and lavishly funded PR campaigns to cast teachers, firefighters and cops – not bankers – as the budget-devouring boogeymen responsible for the mounting fiscal problems of America's states and cities.
And nobody makes it easier to understand than Victor Juhasz: