TRUMP'S LATEST SCAM GETS A REPRIEVE

Merger for Trump’s Truth Social avoids collapse as proposed investment partner, facing liquidation, wins reprieve from shareholders

Shareholders in Digital World Acquisition, the would-be investment partner of former president Donald Trump’s media start-up, voted to approve an extension of the company’s merger deadline and give it more time to complete the deal, Digital World said Tuesday. The extension, granted three days before Digital World would have been required to liquidate, will give the special purpose acquisition company, or SPAC, another year to finalize its merger with Trump Media & Technology Group.  -- WAPO

Care to guess who the major stockholders are?

MORE FOR THE 1%, LESS FOR YOU-KNOW-WHO

[...] conservative economics professor Peter Navarro, whom Trump has tapped to head his National Trade Council [...] recommend(s) the government allocate $137 billion in tax credits for private investors who underwrite infrastructure projects.

[...] the administration's preference for addressing the problem with private dollars is clear. [...]

[...] Infrastructure projects like roads and bridges are attractive to investors only if they have tolls or some other way of generating revenue. [...] but economists and transportation experts warn 

the government could end up rewarding investors in projects that would have been built even without credits.

ANOTHER WINDFALL FOR THE 1% Oh, yes, there would be construction jobs  ALONG WITH more permanent taxes for the middle class in the form of TOLLS.

Thanks, Joe.

NPR > What do a Saudi Prince, Fox News & the New York mosque have in common?

The proposed construction of an Islamic center and mosque close to ground zero in New York City has inspired intense scrutiny from news outlets this month — and few have outstripped the Fox News Channel in their interest.

That's especially true on Fox's opinion-driven shows in the morning and evening hours. Familiar figures including Sean Hannity and Laura Ingraham have repeatedly asked where the money for the center will come from. Yet the parent company of Fox News shares a financial backer with the imam who is at the center of the firestorm. The second-largest holder of voting stock in News Corp. is Saudi Prince Al-Waleed bin Talal, a nephew of the Saudi king. And through his philanthropies, Waleed has given generously to initiatives pursued by the imam, Feisal Abdul Rauf. But that connection has not been spelled out by Fox to viewers. 

[...] according to the latest filings with the SEC, Waleed now holds 7 percent of the voting stock in News Corp., more than any other person not named Rupert Murdoch .....

Read the rest of the story here.

The 10 highest paid CEOs who laid off the most workers

From Huffington Post

A grim fact of the recession is that it pays to lay people off.

The CEOs who laid off the most employees during the recession are also the CEOs who took home the biggest pay checks, according to a study released last week. 

Student loan debt now exceeds all credit card debt. > What's wrong with this picture?

Attention winos > The fine wine market has recovered

From Financial Times: Bouyed by an increasingly feverish Bordeaux en primeur campaign, there is now no doubt that the fine wine market has [...] recovered from the doldrums at the end of 2008 when it plunged by 25%.  After small but steady incremental growth last year, the Liv-ex 100 Index has begun to accelerate. Since, January it is up by nearly 24 per cent and in April it sailed past its previous peak of June 2008.  Read the rest here.

The road to serfdom > A blog entry by an ex-Goldman Sachser

Image via Wikipedia

[...] If Wall Street investment bankers were dogs, they would flaunt their expensive collars and leashes as marks of status, [...] we were basically the trader’s little bitches, and any quant who’s honest with himself realizes that. In time, we quants developed knee callouses from genuflecting to service the traders, on whose profits our livelihoods depended. 

[...] The sad truth is: quants were the eunuchs at the orgy. We were the ever-present British guy in every Hollywood WWII film: there to add a touch of class and exotic sophistication, but not really matter much to the plot.

[...] Your entire worth as a human is defined by one number: the compensation number your  boss tells you at the end of the year. See, pay on Wall Street works as follows: your base salary is actually quite modest, but your ‘bonus’ is where the real money is. That bonus is completely discretionary, and can vary anywhere from zero to a manifold multiple of your base salary.

So, come mid-December, everyone on the desk lines up outside the partner’s office, like the communion line at Christmas Mass, and awaits their little crumb off the big Wall Street table. An entire year’s worth of blood, sweat, and tears comes down to that one moment. And the entire New York economy marches to the beat of that bonus drum. [...]  Read the rest of this interesting blog @ Adgrok

Huffington Post > Warren Buffett's Successor?

Image via Wikipedia

Serving up some historic irony: "Warren Buffett is in the hunt for a successor. How do you secure yourself a spot atop his list of choices to take over as CEO of Berkshire Hathaway? Make him a cool $1.2 billion within three years. That's what Li Lu, who participated in the historic Tiananmen Square protest as a student, did."

NY Observer > the guido effect

Image via Wikipedia

Written by Max Abelson. [...] the cast of MTV's The Jersey Shore rang the New York Stock Exchange's opening bell. [and] the appearance of Snooki, The Situation and all their pals inspired those gloriously astute market masterminds at the Village Voice to craft a phenomenon named The Guido Effect.

Picking one stock each from the categories of Gym, Tan, and Laundry, the Voice saw a post-bell boost for the stocks of Nautilus Fitness, Energizer (which owns Playtex, which makes Banana Boat and Hawaiian Tropic) and Proctor & Gamble (the makers of Tide and Gain soap, plus, of course, Venus shaving products).

Related articles by Zemanta

• "Jersey Shore" Cast Rings Opening Bell At New York Stock Exchange (PHOTOS) (huffingtonpost.com)