Free Republic

Is this George Soros and Carl Icahn-backed firm running a "pyramid scheme"? 13 March 2014 | By Sophie Hobson George Soros and Carl Icahn both hold stakes in it, but controversial US firm Herbalife has come under consistent fire from rival investor William Ackman over its allegedly dubious operations. Now it’s being investigated by the US Federal Trade Commission (FTC) over claims it might be running a “pyramid scheme”. The key accusation against Herbalife, which makes weight loss and nutritional supplements and is listed on the New York Stock Exchange, is that it makes most of its money from signing...

A Congressional report quietly released last month suggests that bitcoin could be a threat to US monetary policy, and makes the case for continued central banking control. The report, Bitcoin: Questions, Answers, and Analysis of Legal Issues, was published by the Congressional Research Service, which produces research reports for US policy makers. It argues for the benefits of a single, incumbent currency (the US dollar), for stability. “If greater use of bitcoin (and other cryptocurrencies) leads to multiple monetary units, these benefits could be threatened, particularly if these new currencies continue to exhibit a high degree of price volatility,” the...

The Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs, chaired by Sen. Tom Carper (D-Del.), is holding the first congressional hearing on the future of Bitcoin. The first panel features senior figures from the Obama administration. And their comments about Bitcoin have been remarkably positive.

President Obama told supporters Monday night that he needed their help battling against “a lot of misinformation” spread by political opponents about his signature healthcare legislation. Speaking on a virtual conference call hosted by Organizing for Action — the political group born from his reelection campaign — the president admitted that problems with the ObamaCare website had put a damper on early enrollment efforts. “The good news is it’s getting better every single week,” Obama said. “I am confident that by the end of this month it is going to be functioning for the vast majority of folks.” The president...

In his retirement, former L.A. Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa has decided to enter the exciting world of multi-level marketing, taking on a new role as adviser to Herbalife, the Amway of nutritional supplements. The move comes as Herbalife hires lobbyists and gears up for a battle on Capitol Hill over its business model. Congresswoman Linda Sanchez has asked the Federal Trade Commission to investigate whether the company is actually operating as a pyramid scheme. villaraigosaherbalife2.jpg Wikipedia Another silly photoshop image Herbalife looks to be signing up Democrats who might have some sway with the Obama administration. Today, the New York Post...

*SNIP* The following is the global financial pyramid scheme by the numbers... -$9,283,000,000,000 - The total amount of all bank deposits in the United States. The FDIC has just 25 billion dollars in the deposit insurance fund that is supposed to "guarantee" those deposits. In other words, the ratio of total bank deposits to insurance fund money is more than 371 to 1. -$10,012,800,000,000 - The total amount of mortgage debt in the United States. As you can see, you could take every penny out of every bank account in America and it still would not cover it. -$10,409,500,000,000 -...

[Via Michael Snyder of The Economic Collapse blog} Why is the global economy in so much trouble? How can so many people be so absolutely certain that the world financial system is going to crash? Well, the truth is that when you take a look at the cold, hard numbers it is not difficult to see why the global financial pyramid scheme is destined to fail. In the United States today, there is approximately 56 trillion dollars of total debt in our financial system, but there is only about 9 trillion dollars in our bank accounts. So you could take...

Poway Unified to Pay Nearly 10 Times What it Borrowed: Report District will begin financing the 40-year loan beginning in 2050 New school, new library, new technology – just a few examples of the renovations and repairs made to Poway Unified School District’s 24 aging schools starting in 2001 under Proposition U. To finish the job, Poway taxpayers passed Proposition C in 2008. Last year, as part of that bond, the district borrowed $105 million. It won’t begin paying it back until 20 years from now. With interest, that $105 million loan will end up costing taxpayers almost $1 billion...

The only Wall Street titan to emerge from the financial crisis without a black eye headed into the weekend with a concussion. JPMorgan Chase, fresh off the surprise news that it lost more than $2 billion in recent weeks to a complex trade in credit derivatives, saw its stock value plummet Friday more than 9 percent. The massive loss also reportedly led regulators to open up inquiries about the trading strategy and caused a downgrade of its credit by the rating agency Fitch, which in turn sent its stock lower in after-hours trading. To top it off, the reported loss...

Testing a re-election theme, President Barack Obama is telling donors during a fundraising rich tour of three western states that the country is suffering from an economic crisis and from a political crisis. "People are crying out for action," he says. Pointing to elements of his $447 billion jobs plan rejected by Republican lawmakers, Obama said they would likely linger as campaign issues in 2012. "This is the fight that we're going to have right now, and I suspect this is the fight that we're going to have to have over the next year," Obama told about 240 donors at...

Up to 70 percent of British men and half of all Western European men are related to the Egyptian Pharaoh Tutankhamun, geneticists in Switzerland said. Scientists at Zurich-based DNA genealogy centre, iGENEA, reconstructed the DNA profile of the boy Pharaoh, who ascended the throne at the age of nine, his father Akhenaten and grandfather Amenhotep III, based on a film that was made for the Discovery Channel. The results showed that King Tut belonged to a genetic profile group, known as haplogroup R1b1a2, to which more than 50 percent of all men in Western Europe belong, indicating that they share...

Caught in the sluggish recovery from the last recession, Social Security and Medicare face an increasingly dismal fiscal future, the federal government reported Friday in its annual review of the two mammoth entitlement programs. Medicare, which now provides health insurance to some 47 million elderly and disabled Americans, could begin running a deficit in 2024, five years earlier than projected last year. And Social Security, which last year began paying out more in benefits than it collected in taxes, now faces insolvency in 2036, compared to 2037 in last year’s projections. Over the years, the Social Security and Medicare trustees...

I am less sympathetic than most, and less coy as well. I place the blame squarely where it belongs: on Bernie Madoff's clients, on Tom Petters's clients, on Allen Stanford's clients, and on every other dope who was duped into believing he was getting something for nothing. As for the notorious triumvirate, don't kid yourself. Its victims were willing participants: Madoff's clients coveted the illusionary 10% guaranteed annual return, Petters's clients dreamed of earning impossible double-digit returns funding retail inventory, and Stanford's clients fawned over 8%-interest-rate, Antigua-insured Certificates of Deposit. It's nothing new, really: versions of Charles Ponzi's eponymous fraud...

Former U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission chairmen and directors were generally unaware that staff were probing Bernard Madoff until the former financier was arrested in December 2008 for running a $65 billion Ponzi scheme, a federal watchdog said in a report released on Friday. The report underscores the disconnection between senior officials and their employees, who often lacked the experience necessary to follow up on leads and understand the magnitude of their investigation. Former Chairmen Christopher Cox, William Donaldson and Arthur Levitt, former director of enforcement Linda Thomsen and former director of examinations and compliance, Lori Richards, did not play...

Al Gore’s campaign against global warming is shifting into high gear. Reporters and commentators follow his every move and bombard the public with notice of his activities and opinions. But while the mainstream media promote his ideas about the state of planet Earth, they are mostly silent about the dramatic impact his economic proposals would have on America. And journalists routinely ignore evidence that he may personally benefit from his programs. Would the romance fizzle if Gore’s followers realized how much their man stands to gain? Earlier this year Gore experienced a notable public relations debacle. The Tennessee Center for...

Love him or hate him, this time Jim Cramer makes a good point. While some in the media have expressed fury over allegations that Bernard Madoff ran a Ponzi scheme that may have cost investors up to $50 billion, CNBC’s “Mad Money” host Jim Cramer made another point. “To everybody in the press, who’s calling Bernie Madoff’s alleged $50 billion scam the ‘largest Ponzi scheme ever,’ I say give me a break,” Cramer said on his Dec. 17 show. According to Cramer, the largest Ponzi scheme in history is run by the federal government – Social Security. “We know the...

Clients in Region Invested Millions Through Banco Santander, Fairfield Wealthy Latin Americans appear to be among the big losers in the $50 billion Ponzi scheme orchestrated by financier Bernard Madoff, although many in the region are reluctant to step forward due to the private nature of Latin American fortunes, worries about security, and concerns about tipping off local tax authorities.Some were brought into the Madoff investment fund, which the New York-based financier confessed earlier this month was a Ponzi scheme, through Banco Santander, the Spanish bank, which has major operations through the region. Other investors appear to have been introduced...

EARLY in 2001 I became managing editor of Marhedge, a New York-based hedge-fund publication that owned about the only serious database on the then fledgling industry. I had been a financial reporter around Wall Street for 14 years and was happy to get involved in what I thought was going to be the most dynamic part of the asset-management business. Soon after I joined, I was stunned to receive a tip from a highly regarded and knowledgeable source, who told me Bernie Madoff, founder and principal of Bernard L Madoff Investment Securities, was, in essence, a fraud. The basis for...

nvestigators are unearthing more irregularities in the financial affairs of Bernard Madoff, the man who stunned America's wealthy elite when he allegedly admitted running the biggest investment scam in history. Initially, it was thought he was running a simple pyramid scheme. But Steve Harbeck, head of the Securities Investor Protection Corporation and the receiver of Madoff's broker-dealer business, said the investigation had uncovered a trove of records stretching back at least 20 years. "We do not seem to be dealing with a traditional Ponzi scheme alone," said Harbeck. "Ponzi" frauds occur when the money from new investors is used to...

About nine years ago, Frank Casey went to New York to check out the competition and came away unimpressed with Bernard Madoff. Casey was vice president of marketing for Rampart Investment Management in Boston, one of the country's top firms specializing in investing in options. Madoff, at the time, was earning a reputation on Wall Street as a can't-miss money manager who used options strategies to produce double-digit returns without blemish. But from what Casey saw in 1999, Madoff's system did not make sense. "Either he wasn't doing what he said he was doing, or maybe he was using the...