Venture Capitalist Forced To Defend Only Making 31,200% Return

The Wall St. culture has not changed one bit. And once again that greed will bring down the financial markets, thus the economy. But the next time there will be no "recovery" for a long time:

I saw something recently that blew my mind and I need to share with you. A venture capitalist having to defend making a 31,200% return — in two years.

Seriously, read this post from Ben Horowitz , Netscape founder Marc Andreeseen’s investing partner.  They were seed investors in Instagram, recently sold for $1 billion to Facebook FB 0.00% .

I’ll let @bhorowitz explain why he’s feels the need to defend hitting a grand-slam (emphasis mine)...

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20 Arrested Protesting Wells Fargo Meeting in San Francisco

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Hundreds of protestors tried to shut down a Wells Fargo's shareholders meeting in San Francisco's Financial District Tuesday. Even though they weren't successful, parts of California and Sacramento Streets were closed to traffic throughout the day. A coalition of union workers and Occupy organizers led the march up California to the Merchant Bank building. Their stated goal was to disrupt the Wells Fargo shareholders meeting. "Let us in! Let us in! Let us in," they chanted. At the same time, share holders stood outside waving their stock certificates and demanding to be let into the meeting.

Revenue from Corporate Taxes have Dropped 33% to Under 10% Over Last 50 Years

Thanks to 'The Young Turks' for exposing the big lie about corporations paying too much taxes. Since the 1950s revenue from corporate taxes dropped a high of 30+% to under 10%. During than same period, to make up for the difference in lost revenue, payroll taxes (what 'little' people pay) have gone up 4 times. Individual income taxes have remained the same, as a percent of total Federal revenue.

Still doubt if the corporations run this country and we don't?

The Dysfunction of America (1): The Rule of Greed

A Canadian perspective on greed in America:

The U.S. economy remains the most powerful, creative and dynamic in the world, but it faces major difficulties. No longer is it a true capitalist free-market system. It has become a gigantic welfare state whose prime beneficiaries are the rich and major corporations.

Think of the legions of millionaire lobbyists in Washington; the shuttle-bus-type ferrying of people back and forth between senior Washington positions and executive suites in the business world; the enormous subsidies paid to myriad industries, including agriculture; the complex loopholes that render the tax code incomprehensible to all but the beneficiaries; the deregulation of the financial system that led to the crisis of 2007 and 2008, followed by the trillion-dollar bailouts; and that’s to say nothing of the dramatically increasing inequality of income distribution.

Greed may be good, as Gordon Gekko famously declared in Wall Street, but it is good only for the rich.

Full article from MontrealGazette

Bank CEOs Make Big Money 2011

Shouldn't there be a relationship between stock performance and CEO pay? Not in today's corporate environment. The DOW went up .3 percent in 2011. And the wages of American workers didn't do any better. So how is it that those responsible see their personal gain skyrocketing:

Here’s a tough pill to swallow for big bank investors: Your stock was slammed in 2011 but the CEO running the company is making out just fine.

According to data from bank analyst Dick Bove bank CEOs are out-earning their employees and shareholders even as shares of their respective companies dropped this year.

Bove found that while earnings per share increased about 13% at the 23 financial institutions he follows stock prices dropped more than 30%, and CEO salary was more than 65 times than the average employee salary.

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Bank Fees Predicted To Rise In 2012, As Banks Try To Boost Revenue

Because bank profits are not high enough:

Squeezed by regulations under the Dodd-Frank financial reform law, banks are looking to find new ways to wring fees from customers. In 2012, expect to see higher minimum balance requirements and an ongoing push to increase customers' credit card spending, according to a "2012 U.S. Banking Sector Outlook" report from Trepp, an analytics company that provides information to the banking industry.

Other industry analysts predict that some banks could raise overdraft fees from $35 to a new high of $40 and that more institutions will increase monthly maintenance fees on basic checking accounts to between $12 and $15.

Over the past three years, various new regulations under the Dodd-Frank Act and the Credit Card Act have reined in certain aggressive fee practices. More regulations in 2012 are expected to further hamper banks' ability to make big profits off the basic banking activities of consumers.

Yet banks' losses from Dodd-Frank and other regulations haven't been as dramatic as portrayed. In 2007, the percentage of revenue that came from fees was more than 40 percent, according to Trepp. In 2011, that percentage dropped just 4 points to 36 percent.

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It was an off year for the banks. You might even see some CEOs being laid-off:

So is Dodd-Frank “killing” the industry? In fact, “bank profits rose substantially” in the first quarter of the year, with banks showing the biggest profits since before the recession. Things were sunny in the second quarter as well:

    – Profits at JPMorgan Chase, the nation’s second largest bank, were up 13 percent.

    – Third-largest Citigroup’s profits soared 23 percent.

    – Fourth-largest Wells Fargo’s profits shot up 29 percent.

    – Fifth-largest Goldman Sachs, meanwhile, “disappointed investors” when it merely “more than doubled its profits.”

    –Sixth-largest Morgan Stanley’s profits were up an impressive 17 percent.

The only top-tier bank to have a rough second quarter was the nation’s largest, Bank of America, which has been dragged down in part by its acquisition of investment house Merril Lynch — a move that, ironically, would not have been allowed under the Glass–Steagall Act, the repeal of which Gingrich spearheaded as House Speaker in the 90s.

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