Jon Stewart's guest last nite: Yet another reaon why we are in so much economic trouble

[truedelphi]

So last night, Wed Feb 8th 2012, Jon Stewart had a professor of law at the Yale University School of Law on as a guest.

This man, Jonathan R. Macey, addressed an example that Jon was holding up as to the malfeasance of Big Time Investment people like Mitt Romney.

While Mr Macey was in "The Green Room," Jon had been entertaining the audience with the tale of how Mitt Romney, while working for the Bain Corproation, helped to obtain the purchase of a vision/optical laboratory for some 50+ millions of dollars. Mitt and the Bain Corporation then went on to rake up over 300 millions of dollars worth of payments to themselves, and two years after those payments were made, the firm was put into bankrupcy. During the bankrupcy procedures, I imagine that whatever portion of the workers' pensions funds had not already been used up by the award of huge dividends to themselves, those remaining funds were then used to help the Bain Corproation lawyers proceede in handling the bankrupcy proceedings. (That is usually how it is done.)

I have to say, this is a pretty good gig if you can manage it, especially given that the Bain folks used other people's money to help them obtain the corporation.

Macey explained patiently to Jon Stewart that there is nothing wrong with what the Bain Corproation did. And the only way that anyone from Bain could be held responsible is if someone could somehow prove that the Bain folks had the intention of ruining the eye/vision corproation while they drained it of all its assets.

Now one of the things that I find the most remarkable about all this is that Macey is not just "an expert." No, he is not some economic expert. He is a LAW PROFESSOR. He is someone entrusted with teaching the up and coming generations as to how they go about conducting business in AMerica.

One can only imagine a young Mr Massey, age eight, swiping all the cookies out of the family cookie jar. He sits hidden in his bedroon closet, and when confronted with this offense, he wisely and ethically points out to his parents, that he did nothing wrong. And that only if they can somehow "prove" that he intended to deprive the rest of the family the luzury of having these cookies, is he willing to hear that he did something wrong.

Should anyone wish to watch last night's show, you go to Comedy central.com, then you go to Daily Show, then you go to watch entire episodes, then select the Feb 8th 2012 episode. (Most of this will be in the upper left hand section of your computer screens.)

Curriculum Vitae of One Professor Macey:
Sam Harris Professor of Corporate Law, Corporate Finance, and Securities Law
Jonathan R. Macey is the Sam Harris Professor of Corporate Law, Corporate Finance and Securities Law at Yale University, and Professor in the Yale School of Management. Professor Macey is the author of several books including the two-volume treatise, Macey on Corporation Laws, and co-author of two leading casebooks, Corporations: Including Partnerships and Limited Liability Companies and Banking Law and Regulation. In 1995, Professor Macey was awarded the Paul M. Bator prize for excellence in Teaching, Scholarship and Public Service by the Federalist Society for Law and Public Policy. In 2004, he was awarded a Teaching Award by the Yale Law Women in recognition of his “commitment to excellence in teaching, mentoring and inspiring.” Professor Macey earned his B.A., cum laude, from Harvard and his J.D. from Yale Law School. He received a Ph.D. honoris causa from the Stockholm School of Economics.
Education
J.D., Yale, 1982
A.B., Harvard, 1977

Courses Taught
Accounting, Finance, and Law
Banking Law and Regulation
Business Organizations
Corporate Governance: Seminar
Financial Institutions: Legal and Economic Perspective
Financial Institutions and Capital Markets
Law, Economics, and Organization
Legal Practicum

[MrCoffee]

1. A law professor who knows the law...I'm missing something.

Why are you shooting the messenger?

[truedelphi]

2. Jon's thesis at the beginning of his spiel on the Bain Corporation is that

What has happened in America is that starting in the eighties, our nation has collectively witnessed a group of people who had become multi-billionaires, and they then used their money and influence to purchase the right to entitle the elite to continue to rake in the profits. While excluding almost everyone else.

Stewart asked Mr Macey to explain to him how this was not so. Who better than a Law School Professor at Yale?

And Macey said he could do so, but in the end he only helped promote Stewart's contention that our economy is a rigged economy. Jon did not elaborate on this is how we are in the fix we are in - we no longer produce anything but transfers of corporations from one group of people to another. Right now, 47 to 48 cents of every dolalr made in America is made inside the Financial Sector. (Up from some 8 to 9 cents on the dollar in the early 1980's.)

This is a horrific sum of money. Half the money in our economy is now simply going back and forth from one rich group of people to another. And this doesn't even begin to get into the story of how when all these investors make bad bets, we in the lower 99.5 % of the economy are forced to bail them out!

[Blue_Tires]

9. Yeah, this is nothing new

and there are plenty more perfectly legal brazen examples like Carl Icahn's "management" of TWA

[truedelphi]

21. Right you are. And the mention of Carl

Icahn does make me wish I wasn't eating lunch while viewing your remark.

[lonestarnot]

13. K & R

Down with the rig, just like dismantling a crane and then haul it off to newtiemoonland.

[progressoid]

4. It's the message he's giving.

http://www.thedailyshow.com/watch/tue-january-31-2012/exclusive---jonathan-macey-extended-interview-pt--1



http://www.thedailyshow.com/watch/tue-january-31-2012/exclusive---jonathan-macey-extended-interview-pt--2

[truedelphi]

5. Thank you for taking the time and providing the links.

My computer crashes out when I go there, even though I have recently gotten rid of an infected file.

[immoderate]

3. It's an example of "testing the limits."

If as a corporation, their mission is to maximize returns for their investors, and they didn't break any laws, they did the "right" thing. Legal definition of right = not illegal. (Not my rule.)

--imm

[Capitalocracy]

14. But when you think about it, it warrants investigation.

You have to prove they had the intention of sucking the company dry for their own benefit. The company was sucked dry, they benefited. Sounds like enough to warrant an investigation to see if maybe there's proof that they did it on purpose if you ask me.

And if that wasn't enough, the people Romney worked with have literally referred to themselves in public as "vultures". I think that warrants an investigation, and I think an investigation would very likely yield strong evidence of their intent.

[immoderate]

19. Is that illegal?

Even if you can demonstrate somehow that their thoughts were impure, can you show they broke the law? It's thought crime.


--imm

[rudycantfail]

28. And what everybody in the field of gekko finance knows is

that this practice is booming at the same time that the resources to investigate this behavior have been drastically cut. The old regulatory agencies like the SEC are captured. It pays huge and there is little risk, so the cycle continues. The lawyers love it because they're making a killing and all the players involved put a portion of their profits back into bribing the politicians, which is the best investment they could possibly make. It should be highly organized crime but they've made it legal. Capone controlled his fiefdom in Chicago but he didn't own the feds. Wall Street has bribed the highest authority there is. There's no one to appeal to but the people. But that's a tall task when even on this this forum, it seems like a majority must wait for the president to sound the alarm to take action before they're concerned. And we keep waiting.

[tledford]

6. "Legal" has nothing to do with "moral" or "ethical." eom

[truedelphi]

7. I fully understand that. But it is high time

That we get it together and see to it that Corproations are No Longer People, and that "Honest" and "Moral" and "Legal" all end up meaning the same.

We need the Constitutional Amendment depriving Corps of "peoplehood" as well as we need to have Glass Steagall returned to our laws.

[Lionessa]

8. I'm guessing last night was a repeat, Jon's off this week. You won't find a Feb 8th at ComCen eithe

But here's a link to the actual show on which originally aired Jan 31.

http://www.thedailyshow.com/full-episodes/tue-january-31-2012-jonathan-macey

[Guy Whitey Corngood]

10. Yep, I saw that. Good stuff. nt

[truedelphi]

12. Thank you Lionessa. My cable TV provider did

say it was "New" but they sometimes get it wrong. And usually if Jon is a repeat, so is Colbert. And Colbert was a repeat last night, most definiitely.

[HipChick]

15. When the Daily Show comes on, if they skip the date at the opening of the show, it usually means

It is a repeat

[truedelphi]

30. Very good to know. Sometimes it is obvious -

If I catch the beginning moments of the show, and Jon refers to something that was very current ten months ago. But if I miss the opening moments, it is harder to know the show's timeline status.

[HipChick]

31. I DVR everything...

I noticed it, when I skim through

[LongTomH]

11. Kick

[Initech]

16. Bain Capital = legalized theft.

The fact that a Yale law professor could not explain it as such just totally blew my mind.

[truedelphi]

22. Same here, Initech.

It may be "legal" but it is morally appalling.

And in many ways, it is not legal. Massey's point is that "intent" has to be proven. But 'Sixty Minutes' and their recent expose on the SEC showed that even when internal documents were used by ardently moral whistle blowers - and that both the whistle blower and the documents could prove intent to defraud, the SEC still looked the other way.

'Sixty Minutes' went on to state emphatically that indictments for white collar offenses are at the lowest rate in twenty years. We have all this malfeasance; we have all these whieslte blowers. And yet everyone who is anyone has only had to say "Ollie Ollie Ocean-Free" and they are handed their get-out-of-litigation-free card.

I mean, how hard is it to prove that the activities invovling the purchase of a company worth less than 60 million, that nets the Bain Corproation some 350+ millions, and that hits the workers' pension funds so they are suddenly worthless - how is that possible? Unless, as Stewart's opening premise - wealth buys great "legal privileges" is not absolutely the case.

And since that is the case, then every one who wants to be able to hold a decent job and to retire someday should supporting Occupy!

[KT2000]

17. Jon had they guy at every turn

He proved Jon right through the whole interview and we got a good look at the lack of ethics behind our economy.
He even had to admit they get a hand slap when they do break the law.
Another way these equity firms make money is to fire American workers and move manufacturing overseas.

These firms create nothing, they are parasites.

[Selatius]

18. I like to call Bain Capital and other private equity firms "Corporation Flippers."

Instead of flipping homes for profit, they flip entire corporations. They buy it, they make it borrow money, they make it declare a chunk of that money as for shareholders, they destroy the corporation's rudder so it can't steer back toward financial health, then they ditch it before the corporation runs into the iceberg and goes to the bottom.

[truedelphi]

20. Interesting term. I like it.

And it should be pointed out that several years ago (early 2010?) the Business Pages of most newspapers were mentioning how the new big bubble was readily available for any one of us who had the grit and determination to flip banks!

Of course, in an effort to present this democratically, the business news articles always neglected mentioning that a person needed some clout or some large sums of moeny to achieve the banks to be flipped.

However Wells Fargo apparently did follow their advice - they went out and bought Wachovia. By arranging the Wachovian accounting books to represent the proper amount of losses, by applying for various TARP funds avaialble, and also through using a few other accounting efforts, WF managed to not pay an actual single penny of its own money for the acquisition. (Perhaps they had to pay some money up front, but it was all rebated back to them.)

Nifty line of work, if you can get it.

PS Several people I knew - including me - had our student loans managed by Wachovia. And early on, we were referring to that bank as Watch Over Ya."

[taterguy]

23. Stewart's on vacation this week

Dumbass

[truedelphi]

24. It's a nice life, ain't it?

There were so many days, back when I worked in an office, when I wished I could just run a repeat of the prior week's efforts. As a kid, I admired Ed Sullivan, because he appeared to only have to work on Sundays between 7 and 8Pm.

[Quantess]

32. I saw the episode on the facebook page last week.

[Zax2me]

25. It's a COMEDY show...not a news outlet.

Take EVERYTHING said and of course JOKED about on it as it is intended.
A BIG FAT joke.

[underpants]

26. Actually Daily Show and Colbert viewers are vastly more informed than Fox News/MSM viewers

A new study by the Pew Research Study shows that viewers of the Daily Show and the Colbert Report have the highest knowledge of national and international affairs, while Fox News viewers rank nearly dead last:

http://thinkprogress.org/default/2007/04/16/11946/daily-show-fox-knowledge/


Fox News viewers less informed than those who don’t watch news at all: study

A poll released by Fairleigh Dickinson University on Monday found that people who get their news from Fox News know significantly less about news both in the U.S. and the world than people who watch no news at all.


In a survey of 612 New Jersey natives, Fox News fans flunked questions about Egypt and Syria when compared with people who don't watch the news. Fox viewers were 18-points less likely to know that Egyptians toppled their government and 6 points less likely to be aware that Syrians have not yet overthrown theirs.

http://articles.nydailynews.com/2011-11-22/news/30431182_1_fox-news-results-show-viewers

[truedelphi]

29. Thanks for posting this study from the Pew Research People

Really nice to have such a demonstration of how smart people watch Stewart and Colbert - and how watching Stewart and Colbert helps keep you informed.

I admire the people at Pew greatly. Hope they don't end up co-opted.

[Joey Liberal]

27. I watched that one

Jon Stewart is great!