Power Outage
Illinois' longest-serving House Speaker will start serving prison time for his ComEd bribery scheme
This Week In Blunders – Sept. 28-Oct. 4
“Corruption is paid for by the poor.” – Pope Francis
Some politicians get away with blatant corruption for so long that they can suspend our belief in karma.
In 2014, investigators began looking at the shady business dealings of former Illinois House Speaker Michael Madigan, once one of the state’s most powerful Democrats.
In 2020, ComEd agreed to pay $200 million in a deferred prosecution agreement for essentially bribing him. The utility company admitted it paid Madigan allies $1.3 million for little or no work to influence legislation.
In February, Madigan was finally convicted for this ghost-job scheme.
Madigan gaveled the Illinois House of Representatives for all but two years between 1983 and 2021.
Evidence from his trial showed he has been corrupt for years.
He was also convicted for yet another crooked deal where he induced the Illinois governor to appoint then-Chicago Alderman Danny Solis to a paid state board position in exchange for Solis steering business to his tax appeal law firm.
Madigan is now 83 years old and he’s still out of prison pending appeal. But not for long.
On Friday, a federal judge ordered Madigan to begin serving his 7½-year prison sentence on Oct. 13.
Madigan has long been nicknamed “The Velvet Hammer.” But now he’s headed for the concrete slammer.
This is where all corrupt politicians belong, but too many maintain enough power to stave off consequences for years. Madigan simply ran out of power and made the mistake of living long enough for karma to finally catch up to him.
The stock market doesn’t care
Government shutdown? The stock market doesn’t care
A canceled jobs report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics? The stock market doesn’t care.
Tariffs? Inflation risks? Softening employment growth? The stock market doesn’t care.
About the only thing the stock market cares about these days is artificial intelligence. And against a tide of worrying trends, the market closed just below all-time highs on Friday.
Goldman Sachs CEO David Solomon last week predicted this AI frenzy will end badly for many investors, as it did for the dot.com investors a couple of decades ago.
“I’m not going to use the word bubble, because I don’t know, I don’t know what the path will be, but I do know people are out on the risk curve because they’re excited. And when [investors are] excited, they tend to think about the good things that can go right, and they diminish the things you should be skeptical about that can go wrong ... There will be a reset, there will be a check at some point, there will be a drawdown.”
Solomon joins a growing chorus of high-profile market observers urging caution, including veteran investor Leon Cooperman and Amazon founder Jeff Bezos.
Karim Moussalem, chief investment officer of equities at London-based hedge fund, Selwood Asset Management, recently posted this on LinkedIn:
“BUBBLE ALERT - The AI trade is beginning to resemble one of the great speculative manias of market history. Leadership has narrowed to a tiny cluster of mega-cap stocks, with passive index flows amplifying their weight to levels that would have been unthinkable just a few years ago.”
AI mania may have a long way to go. That’s the problem with bubbles. They’re easy to spot, but not so easy to predict when they’re going to blow.
Musk loves cancel culture
Elon Musk calls himself as a “free speech absolutist,” but you can’t credibly condemn cancel culture while calling for cancelations yourself.
Here’s Musk in 2022:
Here’s Musk earlier this week:
Musk simply oozes with hypocrisy. He has a transgender child of his own, and she probably didn’t get that way by watching Netflix.
In 1999, another celebrated hypocrite, the fundamentalist Baptist preacher Jerry Falwell, called for a boycott of “Teletubbies” because he decided that Tinky Winky was just a little too gay.
Then in 2020, it appeared Falwell’s own son, Jerry Falwell Jr., turned about to be a little Tinky Winky himself.
This was not because Junior was watching “Teletubbies” because the British TV series wasn’t around when he was discovering his identity.
And so much for the Moral Majority.
Like other entertainment platforms, Netflix has always been loaded with inappropriate content for children. So has Musk’s social media platform, X.
Good parenting is about monitoring and moderating what your children consume. You don’t empty your liquor cabinet. You lock it.n
Like everything else he can get his hands on, Musk just wants the First Amendment all to himself.
All hat, no cattle
Ponzi schemers make news every week, and I grow weary of writing about them.
It’s aways the same, tired story of recruiting new investors to pay off old investors while running a failing, or non-existent business, and misappropriating investor funds along the way.
What’s often new are the forms they take. I’ve written about a crypto Ponzi, a Fox News Ponzi, a water Ponzi, and even a Harvard Business School Ponzi.
This week it’s a cattle Ponzi.
The Securities and Exchange Commission on Tuesday announced a final judgement against Texas cattlemen Jed Wood and Joshua Link for allegedly running a $191 million fraud.
Where’s the beef?
They were supposed to be using investor funds to buy cattle. Instead they were paying off old investors with funds from new investors, the SEC said in its civil complaint.
Ponzi schemes will continue until investors become more skeptical.
Like the cowboys say in Texas, “The quickest way to double your money is to fold it over and put it back in your pocket.”
Read More: 15 Tales Of Ponzi Riches
Don’t Miss These Blunders
Wickedness On Wall Street Renowned financier Howard Rubin and his assistant were arrested for alleged sex-trafficking in a sex dungeon
Bible Lessons From A Billionaire Silicon Valley investor Peter Thiel says we should worry about the Antichrist. He would know.
Get That Mouse Out Of The House Disney will pay a price for suspending Jimmy Kimmel, but how much?
Lap Dance Dollars Executives from world’s largest publicly traded strip club company allegedly bribed a public auditor to dodge $8 million in sales taxes
From Baby Shower To Prison Shower Ian Gregory Bell celebrated with 75 guests. Six days later, he got three years.
If You Build It, Chumps Will Come A father-and-son team fleeced municipal bond investors out of more than $280 million with an Arizona sports-park nightmare
Reefer Madness The CEO behind Jim Beam and Maker’s Mark resigns over CBD use
Buffett’s Big Blunder At least the world’s most-admired investor can admit he was horribly wrong about Kraft Heinz
The Chocolate Lover Nestlé CEO Laurent Freixe just joined a litany of top executives who’ve lost their jobs to love
The Apprentice Movie producer behind Trump biopic faces 300 years in prison for alleged scams of his own
The Biggest Business Blunders Of All Time And the costly lessons they left behind.
Timeshare Prison This week In Blunders – Aug. 17-23
Instant Ponzi – Just Add Water This Week In Blunders – Aug. 10-16
Doing That Shuffle A former JPMorgan Chase and Goldman Sachs executive raised $4.3 million to start a blockchain gambling app. Then he allegedly blew his seed money in another online casino.
Kwon Don’t Terraform Labs founder Do Kwon never planned on failure. Now he’s headed to prison after pleading guilty to a $40 billion crypto fraud.
Sub Moron This Week In Blunders – Aug. 3-9
Near Intelligence On Epstein Island This company tagged everyone who came and went to the infamous pedophile paradise. Now, its top executives are charged in an unrelated accounting fraud.
Worst thing about karma is, sometimes, you're not around to see it happen. As for bribe-accepting politicians, not surprised this Illinois Democrat got convicted, considering who is running the Justice Department these days. He's about the same age, as well, as...
Buffett was not totally wrong. Kraft Heinz is still profitable, just did not increase in value as much as expected. Still a good buy, pays a steady dividend, at least for now.