No doubt you’ve read about that sinking ship, the hedge fund formerly sailing under the banner Galleon and now taking on water. The New York Times reported that Galleon lost $30 million on one trade using insider information. Here’s the quote from today’s article, ” In a Fraud Case, a Deal that Lost Millions

A Huffington Post analysis of recent mortgage-modification data shows that even those relatively few homeowners fortunate enough to renegotiate their loans are almost never getting lenders to forgive any of the principal. Instead, monthly payments are being cut either by lowering inflated interest rates, extending the duration of the loan repayment, or simply postponing the day of reckoning by setting up large balloon payments decades down the line. Furthermore, President Obama’s much heralded $75 billion plan to prevent foreclosures is essentially limited to people who still hold a job — leaving many of the approximately 10 percent of Americans who are unemployed with no more options than they had before

I have always been intrigued by the idea of firing customers. During turbulent times, the pressure has been on managers to make decisions that allow the organization to build up substantial cash reserves. And so the challenge has been on understanding the profitability of customers and the cash flow implications of doing business with them.

Critics of the White House’s effort to keep lobbyists from serving on federal-level advisory boards say the ban could ultimately hurt the United States in trade negotiations. Former U.S. Trade Representative Susan Schwab, who served from 2006 to 2009, called lobbyists “invaluable” for the information they provide to public officials.

In New York, the oldest and snobbiest financial and advising ventures are called “white shoe” firms. This, they say, arose from the days when their hoity-toity employees wore white bucks to work. These days, white shoe firms bear names notorious outside New York, like Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley

The financial section of the newspaper is starting to read like the script for a far-fetched crime movie. A group of villains hatch a plot to steal trillions of dollars from unsuspecting Americans. They drive the country into economic chaos, funnel money from families and small businesses into their own pockets, then leave all of us to clean up their mess.

Now that we all know the power of the insurance and banking industries when it comes to lobbying your government, add car dealers and their lobbyists to that list. The House Financial Services Committee approved a key amendment Thursday, 47-21, to keep automobile dealers under the federal and state laws which govern vehicle financing, but to exempt them from a new government consumer protection agency heavily lobbied for by the White House. This means car dealers, which sell very expensive and usually heavily-financed products, won’t have to follow the consumer protection edicts of HR 3126, the Consumer Financial Protection Agency (CFPA)