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In a shocking representation of just how bad things are in Europe, the FT reports that major European industrial concern Siemens, pulled €500 million form a large French bank, which is not BNP and leaves just [SocGen|Credit Agricole] and deposited the money straight to the ECB. The implications of this are quite stunning, as it means that even European companies now refuse to work directly with their own banks, and somehow the ECB has become a direct lender/cash holder of only resort to private non-financial institutions!

Sarah Palin proposed eliminating all corporate taxes in her speech to the Iowa Tea Party today. This is HUGE. The ripple effect of putting this in place would affect a vast swath of corporate America, in addition to eliminating crony-capitalism. Consider for a moment all those that would be affected by such a policy. Corporate tax attorneys, CPA firms and countless tax department employees would lurch to a halt in their jobs. The focus of countless corporate controllers would shift from tax avoidance to net income maximization. Countless corporate lobbyists would be out of a job overnight. Their corporate benefactors...

A new survey of 368 midsize to large companies found that 29% of them are considering terminating their active employee health care plans when Obamacare is full implemented in 2014. Only 71% of employers surveyed said they did not expect to drop their health coverage, while 20% said they did not know and 9% said they were planning to exit.The latest survey, conducted by Towers Watson, echoes an ealier survey by McKinsey & Co. finding that 30% of private-sector employers were planning to drop their employee health insurance coverage by 2014. When the Congressional Budget Office crunched Obamacare's spending numbers,...

INDIANAPOLIS (AP) - Nearly one of every 10 midsized or big employers expects to stop offering health coverage to workers once federal insurance exchanges start in 2014, according to a new survey from a large benefits consultant. Towers Watson also found in a survey completed last month that an additional 20 percent of the companies are unsure about what they will do. Another big benefits consultant, Mercer, found in a June survey of large and smaller employers that 8 percent are either "likely" or "very likely" to end health benefits once the exchanges start. Employer-sponsored health insurance has long been...

Media cross-ownership ban restoredJuly 08, 2011 By Associated Press WASHINGTON - A federal Appeals Court has restored a long-standing ban that prevents media companies from owning both a newspaper and a television station in the same market. The 3d US Circuit Court of Appeals in Philadelphia said yesterday that the Federal Communications Commission didn’t give the public adequate opportunity to comment on new rules that lifted the ban in the 20 largest media markets. The Appeals Court sent the rules back to the FCC to be rewritten. The so-called cross-ownership ban dates back to 1975 - a time when newspapers...

In doing further research on my constitutional inquiry into whether or not unions & corporations should have the same inalienable rights that I do as an individual, I have found a resolution introduced by a state senator in Washington that calls for a constitutional amendment clarifying that corporations – and in turn unions – are not persons according to U.S. law. A statewide grassroots group in Washington wants to know what you think. I think that a constitutional amendment of any kind should be considered carefully. I hold the U.S. Constitution in a place of great esteem… and in my...

Several people have become interested in a quite controversial topic called "AGENDA 21." They have requested being on a ping list for this topic. While I do not have time to do a thorough treatment of this subject, nor am I in any way an expert, I am willing at least for a time,to ping people as I run across articles which might pertain to this concern. It might be good to start with an examination of just what it is or might be. To kick this discussion and exploration off,I did a Google search (just for fun) on "Agenda...

The reach of Citizens United v FEC just got longer, if only temporarily. Relying on the controversial ruling, a federal judge in Virginia threw out part of an indictment against two men accused of secretly reimbursing donors to Hillary Clinton with corporate cash. Judge James Cacheris ruled that Citizens United established that corporations have a right to donate to political campaigns, as well as to spend their own money: A judge has ruled that the campaign finance law banning corporations from making contributions to federal candidates is unconstitutional. …Cacheris says that under last year’s Citizens United Supreme Court case, corporations...

Although the below image has been circulating the internet as a satirical warning for some time now, Dutch telco KPN recently announced that it's actually going to implement something like this due to declining revenue. The company stated that starting this summer it will be blocking chat-messaging applications such as WhatsApp (competes with SMS), VoIP services (competes with calls) and heavy streaming services. All these services will get their own price tag, just like is currently the case with calling and text messaging. The problem with that logic of course is that calling and SMS are actually different services that...

Many of America’s most powerful companies do not report how much they spend to influence elections and legislation. These companies contribute millions of dollars to powerful trade associations and to other politically active groups that are not required to report the sources of their funding. Those groups, in turn, spend the money on lobbying and other political activity. The Los Angeles Times reviewed how the 75 largest publicly traded companies in the energy, healthcare and financial services sectors disclose their political giving on their corporate websites.

Reporting from Washington— Despite mounting calls for greater transparency, only a few of the country's 75 leading energy, healthcare and financial services corporations fully disclose political spending, according to a review of company records and state and federal campaign finance reports. While complying with legal requirements to report direct donations to candidates, the vast majority of these companies — many of which are seeking legislative favors from the new Congress — do not reveal information even to their shareholders about support for politically active trade associations like the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. Groups such as the chamber, some of which...

Jon Stewart is right. While demonizing unions Conservatives all too often over look the total destruction that Corporations have waged on the American economy and the American Middle Class (see 4:49min video) I am not newcomer to the argument that Corporations are ungrateful, unpatriotic out of control entities that have abused America and the American people to maximize their profits. (see previous posts below) Everything that is wrong in America today can be blamed on an out-of-control corporate environment that will do anything and everything for the sake of the bottom line. Profit!—Alaphiah (source) *** America is bleeding. For decades,...

Global Economy? 23 Facts Which Prove That Globalism Is Pushing The Standard Of Living Of The Middle Class Down To Third World Levels From now on, whenever you hear the term "the global economy" you should immediately equate it with the destruction of the U.S. middle class. Over the past several decades, the American economy has been slowly but surely merged into the emerging one world economic system. Unfortunately for the middle class, much of the rest of the world does not have the same minimum wage laws and worker protections that we do. Therefore, the massive global corporations that...

WASHINGTON -- The Supreme Court ruled Tuesday that corporations have no right of personal privacy to prevent the disclosure of documents under the federal Freedom of Information Act. Chief Justice John Roberts wrote the 8-0 opinion Tuesday that reversed an appeals court ruling in favor of AT&T. The outcome was notable for its unanimity, especially in view of recent criticism from liberal interest groups that the court tilts too far in favor of business. "The protection in FOIA against disclosure of law enforcement information on the ground that it would constitute an unwarranted invasion of personal privacy does not extend...

The American people are becoming increasingly angry about the extraordinary amount of power and influence that corporations have in the United States today. A new Gallup poll found that 67 percent of Americans are dissatisfied with the size and influence of major corporations in the United States today. Not only that, the most recent Chicago Booth/Kellogg School Financial Trust Index found that only 26 percent of Americans trust our financial system at this point. The mainstream media is acting as if this is a new phenomenon, but the truth is that a dislike of giant corporations goes all the way...

Corporate profits are up. Stock prices are up. So why isn't anyone hiring? Actually, many American companies are — just maybe not in your town. They're hiring overseas, where sales are surging and the pipeline of orders is fat. More than half of the 15,000 people that Caterpillar Inc. has hired this year were outside the U.S. UPS is also hiring at a faster clip overseas. For both companies, sales in international markets are growing at least twice as fast as domestically. The trend helps explain why unemployment remains high in the United States, edging up to 9.8 percent last...

Last week President Obama decided to repair his strained relationship with business -- not by advocating permanent reductions in taxes and less regulation, but by interviewing a Clinton-era former Treasury official for a position as economic advisor. Obama's presidency has been torpedoed by his endemic hostility toward capitalism, and he imagines that the problem is one of perception that can be papered over with the appointment of a Wall Street insider. Just how out of touch is this guy? Week after week, Obama has used his bully pulpit to attack American corporations. Companies big and small are accused of everything...

In August, the state of Kentucky announced Mountain Valley Recycling was opening a 215,000-square-foot facility that would generate 360 jobs within two years. That state’s economic development arm was giving a $1 million performance-based tax incentive over a 5-year period through corporate income tax credits and wage assessments. Two months later, that same company brokered a deal with Michigan for a 280,000-square-foot facility that would generate 396 jobs. But Michigan offered a tax-incentive five times that of Kentucky's, paying $5.1 million over seven years. The question of whether the Michigan Economic Development Corporation’s incentives are overly generous has been raised...

  The electorate’s repudiation of Barack Obama and his Congressional allies was not only a rejection of Big Government, but also of business elites who were buffeted from the downturn by political dealing at the expense of ordinary people.Unless Corporate America heeds the election results, it too will risk the wrath of an informed and energized public. Here are CEOs who must pay attention to what happened yesterday:Pfizer CEO Jeffrey Kindler- Not only did Kindler (above) lead the charge of Big Pharma CEOs for ObamaCare, he actually got a multi-million dollar bonus from Pfizer for doing so. This is...

David Rosenberg Explains Why Corporations Are Rolling In Dough, And You're Not Joe Weisenthal Nov. 2, 2010, 9:59 AM David Rosenberg of Gluskin-Sheff explains why corporations are sitting pretty right now, and you're not. WHERE’S THE INCOME? Well, it is concentrated at the corporate level. Here is the story. Companies have no reason to hire or pay their workers more because they are sitting on so much idle capacity. So, cost-cutting and productivity gains manage to propel corporate bottom-line performance, hence acting as a critical antidote to lagging revenue growth. Remember, even at the business level, this has been a...