| Book on monopoly (IBM) [message #389255] |
Thu, 12 December 2019 15:10  |
hancock4
Messages: 6746
Registered: December 2011
Karma: 0
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"Goliath : the 100-year war between monopoly power and democracy"
by Matt Stoller. [338.82 S]
It covers the concentration of business power and elimination
of regulation. I don't agree with all of it, for instance, I don't
like its essays on the Penn Central and IBM. But it does cover
the ongoing deregulation of various financial institutions and
the negative results.
In essence, ever since the big deregulation push by
Jimmy Carter and Reagan, a lot of business people have
exploited the weaknesses by initiating new schemes that
were borderline or outright fraudulent. A big area
was creating very risky investments (i.e. junk bonds and
derivatives) but managing to pawn them off as legitimate
deals.
The above book goes into a lot of detail on the machinations
that made it all happen.
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| Re: Book on monopoly (IBM) [message #389303 is a reply to message #389255] |
Sun, 15 December 2019 01:37  |
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Originally posted by: James A. Jaworski
On Thursday, 12 December 2019 14:10:43 UTC-6, hanc...@bbs.cpcn.com wrote:
> "Goliath : the 100-year war between monopoly power and democracy"
> by Matt Stoller. [338.82 S]
>
> It covers the concentration of business power and elimination
> of regulation. I don't agree with all of it, for instance, I don't
> like its essays on the Penn Central and IBM. But it does cover
> the ongoing deregulation of various financial institutions and
> the negative results.
>
> In essence, ever since the big deregulation push by
> Jimmy Carter and Reagan, a lot of business people have
> exploited the weaknesses by initiating new schemes that
> were borderline or outright fraudulent. A big area
> was creating very risky investments (i.e. junk bonds and
> derivatives) but managing to pawn them off as legitimate
> deals.
>
> The above book goes into a lot of detail on the machinations
> that made it all happen.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:BookSources?isbn=978-1 501183089
Stoller, Matt. Goliath. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2019.
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| Re: Book on monopoly (IBM) [message #389711 is a reply to message #389255] |
Thu, 26 December 2019 13:51 |
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Originally posted by: googlegroups jmfbahciv
On Thursday, December 12, 2019 at 3:10:43 PM UTC-5, hanc...@bbs.cpcn.com wrote:
> "Goliath : the 100-year war between monopoly power and democracy"
> by Matt Stoller. [338.82 S]
>
> It covers the concentration of business power and elimination
> of regulation. I don't agree with all of it, for instance, I don't
> like its essays on the Penn Central and IBM. But it does cover
> the ongoing deregulation of various financial institutions and
> the negative results.
>
> In essence, ever since the big deregulation push by
> Jimmy Carter and Reagan, a lot of business people have
> exploited the weaknesses by initiating new schemes that
> were borderline or outright fraudulent. A big area
> was creating very risky investments (i.e. junk bonds and
> derivatives) but managing to pawn them off as legitimate
> deals.
which was brought to us by Congress, not Presidents.
>
> The above book goes into a lot of detail on the machinations
> that made it all happen.
If it didn't talk alot about what Congress did (instead of Pres)
then your BS meter should have red-lined.
/BAH
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| Re: Book on monopoly (IBM) [message #389713 is a reply to message #389255] |
Thu, 26 December 2019 16:44 |
Anne & Lynn Wheel
Messages: 3156
Registered: January 2012
Karma: 0
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Senior Member |
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hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com writes:
> In essence, ever since the big deregulation push by
> Jimmy Carter and Reagan, a lot of business people have
> exploited the weaknesses by initiating new schemes that
> were borderline or outright fraudulent. A big area
> was creating very risky investments (i.e. junk bonds and
> derivatives) but managing to pawn them off as legitimate
> deals.
in the 80s, VP (and former CIA director) repeatedly denies knowing anything about
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iran%E2%80%93Contra_affair
because he was fulltime administration point person deregulating
financial industry ... creating S&L crisis
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Savings_and_loan_crisis
along with other members of his family
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Savings_and_loan_crisis#Silvera do_Savings_and_Loan
and another
http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9D0CE0D81E3BF 937A25753C1A966958260
then last decade, Bush2 is president and presides over perpetual wars,
federal debt explosion and the economic mess, 70 times larger than his
father's S&L crisis.
Jan1999 I ws asked to help try and stop the coming economic mess (we
failed). I was told that some walked away "clean" from the S&L crises,
were then running Internet IPO mills (invest a few million, hype, IPO
for a few billion, needed to fail leaving the field clear for the next
round of IPOs) and were predicted to get into securitized mortgages
next. Part of S&L crises were fraudulent securitized mortgages, I was to
improve the supporting documents as a countermeasure. They then found
that they could pay the credit rating agencies for triple-A (when the
rating agencies knew they weren't worth triple-A, from Oct2008
congressional hearing testimonies). Triple-A trumps supporting documents
and they can start doing no-documentation, liar loans, securitize, pay
for triple-A and sell off immediately into the bond market (no longer
needed to care about borrowers' qualifications or loan quality),
triple-A rating contributed significantly to doing over $27T 2001-2008
They then find that they can design securitized loans/mortgages to fail,
pay for triple-A, sell off into bond market, and take out CDS gambling
bets that they would fail (creating enormous demand for dodgy loans,
now they cared about borrowers' qualifications but not in the normal
way).
SECTREAS convinced congress about TARP, supposedly for "too big to fail"
bailout, buying off-book toxic assets. However just the four largest
TBTF had $5.2T off-book ye2008 ... which the TARP $700B wasn't even
close to covering. The SECTREAS used TARP for other things, and it was
left to the FEDRES to bailout the TBTF. The largest holder of the
CDS gambling bets was AIG and was negotiating to pay off at 50cents on
the dollar when the SECTREAS steps in, has them sign that they can't sue
those making the CDS bets and to take TARP funds to pay off at face
value. The largest recipient of TARP funds was AIG and the largest
recipient of face-value payoffs was the firm formally headed by
SECTREAS.
trivia: junk bonds and the industry got such a bad reputation during the
S&L crises that the name was changed to "high-yield" bonds and the
industry become "private equity".
other trivia: AMEX was in competition with KKR for PE LBO take-over of
RJR
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barbarians_at_the_Gate:_The_Fa ll_of_RJR_Nabisco
and KKR wins. KKR then runs into trouble and hires away the president of
AMEX to help. Then IBM has gone into the red and was being reorganized
into the 13 baby blues in prepartion for breaking up the company;
28Dec1992 "How IBM Was Left Behind", gone behind paywall, but mostly
lives free at wayback machine
http://web.archive.org/web/20101120231857/http://www.time.co m/time/magazine/article/0,9171,977353,00.html
The IBM board then hires away the former president of AMEX as CEO, who
reverses the breakup and uses some of the same techniques used at RJR
(gone 404, but lives free at wayback machine)
https://web.archive.org/web/20181019074906/http://www.ibmemp loyee.com/RetirementHeist.shtml
Around the turn of the century, he leaves IBM to head up another PE
firm. PE firms were buying up government contractors and beltway bandits
and hiring prominent politicians to lobby congress to outsource
government to their companies ... including the company that will employ
Snowden. Companies in the PE-mill are under intense pressure to cut
corners as part of pushing as much money as possible up to their
PE-owners.
http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2007/10/barbarians-capit ol-private-equity-public-enemy/
"Lou Gerstner, former ceo of ibm, now heads the Carlyle Group, a
Washington-based global private equity firm whose 2006 revenues of $87
billion were just a few billion below ibm's. Carlyle has boasted George
H.W. Bush, George W. Bush, and former Secretary of State James Baker III
on its employee roster."
.... snip ...
just "intelligence", half the employees and 70% of the budget
http://www.investingdaily.com/17693/spies-like-us
the push for profits was rapidly accelerating the speading "success of
failure" culture (more money from a series of failures, including 9/11)
http://www.govexec.com/excellence/management-matters/2007/04 /the-success-of-failure/24107/
PE will borrow 100% for LPO-takeover and then put the loan on the
victim's books. Half corporate defaults are companies in or previously
in PE-mill because of heavy debt load. A PE can sell the victim company
for less than it paid and still walk away with boat loads of money
(since the loan to buy the company goes with the sold company ... and
*NOT* paid off, similar to house flipping, but w/o paying off the
existing mortgage).
--
virtualization experience starting Jan1968, online at home since Mar1970
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| Re: Book on monopoly (IBM) [message #389719 is a reply to message #389713] |
Thu, 26 December 2019 19:50 |
Anne & Lynn Wheel
Messages: 3156
Registered: January 2012
Karma: 0
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Senior Member |
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Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com> writes:
> other trivia: AMEX was in competition with KKR for PE LBO take-over of
> RJR
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barbarians_at_the_Gate:_The_Fa ll_of_RJR_Nabisco
> and KKR wins. KKR then runs into trouble and hires away the president of
> AMEX to help. Then IBM has gone into the red and was being reorganized
> into the 13 baby blues in prepartion for breaking up the company;
> 28Dec1992 "How IBM Was Left Behind", gone behind paywall, but mostly
> lives free at wayback machine
> http://web.archive.org/web/20101120231857/http://www.time.co m/time/magazine/article/0,9171,977353,00.html
> The IBM board then hires away the former president of AMEX as CEO, who
> reverses the breakup and uses some of the same techniques used at RJR
> (gone 404, but lives free at wayback machine)
> https://web.archive.org/web/20181019074906/http://www.ibmemp loyee.com/RetirementHeist.shtml
as IBM is going into the red in 1992, AMEX spins off a bunch of its
(mainframe) dataprocessing and financial services outsourcing (including
doing "soup to nuts" credit card processing for many of the US financial
institutions) as First Data Corp (executives previously reported to AMEX
president) in the largest IPO up until that time.
FDC was in competition with First Financiial for Western Union ... and
FDC drops out (because of WU poor financials). Then before the end of
the century FDC merges with First Financial (and has to divest MoneyGram
as part of the deal). After the start of the century, there is explosion
in both (big corporations bringing in) illegal workers from south of the
border and WU revenue (illegal workers sending their paychecks home). By
2005, WU revenue had exploded until it was as much as all the rest of
FDC revenue combined (in 5yrs from almost nothing to half of FDC total
revenue) ... and FDC spins off WU (part of the motivation may have been
the President of Mexico inviting FDC executives to Mexico to be thrown
in jail for the egregious amounts WU was making off Mexican workers).
This gets into part of the story after the turn of the century, large
corporations bringing in the huge number of illegal workers, using
national Chamber of Commerce to lobby the new administration and new
congress to look the other way (also claims that local chambers of
commerce were severing ties with the national body over the illegal
worker issue)
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00NDTUDHA/
Alyssa Katz on the Influence Machine -- The Chamber of Commerce and the
Corporate Capture of American Life
https://www.corporatecrimereporter.com/news/200/alyssa-katz- on-the-influence-machine-the-chamber-of-commerce-and-the-cor porate-capture-of-american-life/
Then private equity KKR does take-over of FDC in the largest LBO
(reverse-IPO) up until that time (recently FDC has been acquired by
FISERV).
I've mentioned before doing some performance work on FDC's 450K Cobol
statement credit card processing application around the turn of the
century. It was running on 40+ max configured IBM mainframe systems
(@30M/system, none older than 18months, constant cycle of upgrades)
.... number needed to finish settlement in the overnight batch window
(and getting 14% throughput improvement)
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006u.html#50 Where can you get a Minor in Mainframe?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007l.html#20 John W. Backus, 82, Fortran developer, dies
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007u.html#21 Distributed Computing
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008c.html#24 Job ad for z/OS systems programmer trainee
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008d.html#73 Price of CPU seconds
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008l.html#81 Intel: an expensive many-core future is ahead of us
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009d.html#5 Why do IBMers think disks are 'Direct Access'?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009e.html#76 Architectural Diversity
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009f.html#55 Cobol hits 50 and keeps counting
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009g.html#20 IBM forecasts 'new world order' for financial services
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011c.html#35 If IBM Hadn't Bet the Company
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011f.html#32 At least two decades back, some gurus predicted that mainframes would disappear
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012i.html#25 Can anybody give me a clear idea about Cloud Computing in MAINFRAME ?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013b.html#45 Article for the boss: COBOL will outlive us all
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2014b.html#83 CPU time
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2014f.html#69 Is end of mainframe near ?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2014f.html#78 Over in the Mainframe Experts Network LinkedIn group
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2015c.html#65 A New Performance Model ?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2015h.html#112 Is there a source for detailed, instruction-level performance info?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017d.html#43 The Pentagon still uses computer software from 1958 to manage its contracts
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017k.html#57 When did the home computer die?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2018d.html#2 Has Microsoft commuted suicide
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2018d.html#43 How IBM Was Left Behind
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2018f.html#13 IBM today
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2019b.html#62 Cobol
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2019c.html#11 mainframe hacking "success stories"?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2019c.html#80 IBM: Buying While Apathetaic
--
virtualization experience starting Jan1968, online at home since Mar1970
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| Re: Book on monopoly (IBM) [message #389729 is a reply to message #389719] |
Fri, 27 December 2019 12:19 |
Anne & Lynn Wheel
Messages: 3156
Registered: January 2012
Karma: 0
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Senior Member |
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re:
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2019e.html#154 Book on monopoly (IBM)
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2019e.html#155 Book on monopoly (IBM)
at the time (turn of century), that FDC datacenter (40+ max configured
IBM mainframes) was doing the (outsourced) processing for 500M credit
card accounts (creating&mailing plastics, transactions, monthly
statements, call-centers, aka soup to nuts). Another FDC datacenter was
handling the majority of the point-of-sale terminals in the US
(acquiring/merchant side as opposed to issuing/consumer side) and
another FDC datacenter was handling the dataprocessing for all major
cable TV operations in the US (all cable TV terminals at offices,
configuration management and downloading to nearly all settop boxes in
the US, billing/statementing, call centers, etc). The cable TV
dataprocessing had a banner in the datacenter about running 130
different/concurrent instances of CICS (on single system)
Earlier in the 80s, there was somebody competing to be the next AMEX CEO
.... and looses to the AMEX president (who, before getting the promotion,
is hired away by KKR to help with the turn around of RJR, then becomes
CEO of IBM, then leaves to head up another PE company). The looser
leaves AMEX, taking their protegee to Baltimore where they acquire
something that has been described as a loan sharking business. They make
some number of other acquisitions, eventually acquiring CITIBANK in
violation of Glass-Steagall. Fed Chairman Greenspan gives them an
exemption while they lobby DC for repeal of Glass-Steagall, including
enlisting the SECTREAS (who had formally been head of the same firm that
the following administration SECTREAS this century, had also headed,
there was DC joke that US Treasury had become the local DC branch office
for the firm). With the ball rolling on repeal, the SECTREAS resigns to
become what was described at the time as co-CEO of CITIBANK. The
protegee then departs CITIBANK and becomes CEO of one of the other four
largest "Too-Big-To-Fail".
CITIBANK is one of largest TBTF players in securitized mortgages and had
the largest part of the $5.2T in offbook toxic assets (that the four
largest TBTF still carried YE2008).
--
virtualization experience starting Jan1968, online at home since Mar1970
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| Re: Book on monopoly (IBM) [message #389754 is a reply to message #389255] |
Mon, 30 December 2019 17:20 |
Niklas Karlsson
Messages: 265
Registered: January 2012
Karma: 0
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Senior Member |
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On 2019-12-26, Huge <Huge@nowhere.much.invalid> wrote:
>
>>> was creating very risky investments (i.e. junk bonds and
>>> derivatives) but managing to pawn them off as legitimate
>>> deals.
>
> You have no idea what you're talking about.
So can you educate us on how things really were/are?
Niklas
--
You know what the chain of command is? It's the chain I go get and beat
you with 'til you understand who's in ruttin' command here!
-- Jayne Cobb, _Firefly_
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