New Orleans Part of the citizen pain that comes from subcontracting the handling of public services to private companies is the certainty that someone is making money with no accountability to anyone and absolutely no regard for the economic hardship involved for citizens. A perfect example that I am witnessing close at [...]
New Orleans Less than three years ago in 2007 we were all fighting tooth-and-nail to try to stop the big beef of private equity KKR with Henry Kravis, Texas Pacific with David Bonderman, and Goldman Sachs with most of the western world from doing a crazy $50 billion purchase of TXU, the giant public [...]
Quepos It was an extra present under the palm tree to read in the pre-dawn that Santa Barbara Bank & Trust was being pulled out of the business of factoring RALs, predatory refund anticipation loan for Jackson & Hewitt and other companies in the viciously competitive tax services market for lower income and working families. [...]
New Orleans On the front page of the papers today there is more drumbeating about the President having yet another meeting with the nation’s top bankers to jawbone them to finally start making loans to small businesses and homeowners. At this point it is hard to even call this jawboning. It’s more like gumming [...]