Business

Submitted by Mark St. Cyr

Why Silicon Valley’s “It’s Different This Time” Is Now A Broken Record

Like a broken record whenever a profit measure was asked of “Silicon Valley” (i.e., everything social or tech) as to when something would either be profitable or, begin returning investor cash with either net profits or dividends. The response was always the same “It’s different this time.” Meaning: there aren’t any now, but just you wait! Some are still waiting, and waiting, and waiting, and….

In the aftermath of Bloomberg's surprising Friday report, according to which Saudi Arabia flipflopped on its previous promise that it would freeze its oil output while allowing Iran to grow supply until it hit its pre-embargo peak, instead saying that it would only join the freeze curbe Iran - and all other OPEC member nations - also joined, crude tanked.

What do Lloyd Blankfein, Jamie Dimon, James Gorman, John Thain, Jimmy Cayne, and any of the revolving door of AIG CEO’s have in common? Three things come to mind rather quickly: 1) All were financial executives during the 2008 global financial crisis. 2) All of their firms received massive public bailouts. 3) None of them went to jail for their firm’s involvement in said crisis. As a matter of fact, most are still plugged in somewhere on Wall Street, presumably helping to facilitate the next great financial crisis.

From Nicholas Colas at Convergex

An unprecedented leak of more than 11 million documents, called the "Panama Project", has revealed the hidden financial dealings of some of the world's wealthiest people, as well as 12 current and former world leaders and 128 more politicians and public officials around the world.