Free Republic

One of the most startling things about the post-crisis landscape is how tone-deaf the wealthiest Americans remain to outrage over their Croesus-like pay packages. The award for complete obliviousness would have to go to Blackstone cofounder Stephen Schwarzman, who earlier this summer compared government attempts to raise taxes on financiers such as himself to Hitler’s invasion of Poland. Silver medals should certainly be handed out to the many executives and corporate lawyers who were grousing last week about the new Dodd-Frank bill, which includes a rule requiring companies to disclose the difference in pay between their chief executive and their...

TOKYO (AFP) - Japan's Toshiba Corp. said Thursday it is in talks with US firms on securing nuclear power plant contracts, as a report said it was set to clinch the 13.7-billion-dollar deals. "It is true that our subsidiary Westinghouse is holding negotiations with the aim to get final contracts but no decision has been made at the moment," Toshiba said in a statement. The comment followed a report by the Nikkei economic daily that the group was set to win deals worth a combined 1.4 trillion yen (13.7 billion dollars) to build four nuclear power plants in the United...

SACRAMENTO - Despite state laws that require government officials to seek competitive bids on large purchases, internal documents reveal that state officials held a series of private meetings with General Motors during which they agreed to buy "flex-fuel" vehicles from the automaker - a month before a bid for such vehicles was ever issued. --snip-- Soon after, the state solicited bids to buy an entire fleet of flex-fuel vehicles designed to run on high-grade ethanol. General Motors dealerships won all of the contracts for ... 1,300 cars and trucks and $17 million in sales, because they were the only automaker...