Author Archives: William Black

Response to a Distressed Libertarian Reader about Discrimination

Posted on April 9, 2015 | 14 comments

By William K. Black
Quito: April 8, 2015

Well, the key to getting strong responses from readers is now clear. All I need to do is violate the standard rule on the three subjects to avoid to increase the chances of polite conversation – sex, religion, and politics. My series of three articles on Indiana’s original Act authorizing discrimination discusses each of those subjects. I thank Andrew for commenting on my third installment, which addressed the op ed in the Wall Street Journal urging “libertarians” to come forward to lead the charge to repeal all laws banning discrimination in private contracts. Merchants, landlords, and employers should all be allowed to discriminate against any group without the necessity of creating a religious pretext for that discrimination. I urged libertarians who were not nostalgic for the return of Jim Crow and the Klan’s embrace of discrimination to write and express their support for laws banning discrimination against groups in the marketplace. None has taken up my invitation, but I thank “Andrew” for writing to express his support for the repeal of laws banning discrimination against disfavored groups in the marketplace.

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14 Comments

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Tagged discrimination, libertarian

Responding to Two Commenters on my Series on Indiana’s Effort to Embrace Discrimination

Posted on April 8, 2015 | 6 comments

By William K. Black
Quito: April 8, 2015

At this juncture, I have written three columns about the effort to enact laws allowing discrimination by merchants. I have received two thoughtful critiques by readers that I would like to respond to. I thank them for their responses. The first comment was in response to my first article.

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The Libertarian Plea to Bring Back Jim Crow: An Oxymoron by a Regular Moron

Posted on April 8, 2015 | 4 comments

By William K. Black
Quito: April 7, 2015

My April 4, 2015 column discussed the Wall Street Journal’s express endorsement of a right of merchants to discriminate against groups they detest. I explained that the WSJ was adopting the position of Richard Epstein and quoted Epstein about the policy question he found to be a “very hard question.” That question was “voluntary” hereditary slavery – he’s in favor of it as a “right” essential to “liberty.” But he admits that he finds it “very hard” to justify the impact of the “voluntary” contract of slavery on the “externalities” – and yes, he is talking about children as commodities. I quoted the passage from Epstein’s famous defense of discrimination in his book Forbidden Grounds to show how zany the policy views are that emerge like mold spores as soon as one endorses discrimination by merchants against groups they despise as a means of increasing “liberty.”

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Posted in William K. Black

Tagged bigotry, discrimination, Jim Crow laws, libertarian, Richard Epstein, WSJ

Whining about Indiana’s Retreat from Bigotry

Posted on April 6, 2015 | Comments Off

By William K. Black
Quito: April 4, 2015

I’m dealing with the temporary expiration of our subscription to the Wall Street Journal and my resultant inability to read columns behind its paywall. This caused me to search whether others had made the full text of the WSJ editorial “Liberal Intolerance, Round II” available on line. I put the first sentence of the editorial in my search engine.

“The political delirium over Indiana’s law protecting minority religious beliefs doesn’t seem to be abating, and the irony is that it may be illustrating why such statutes are necessary.”

It spit out the exact same sentence – but in what appears to be (the world’s worst) web site of U.S. News and World Report in a (maybe) news article attributed to “us,” but starting with an AP credit. The only change is that the first sentence in the WSJ has become the second sentence in the USNWR. As the third sentence in the quotation below shows, it is in some ways a personal take on a straight news story sourced to AP, but the USNWR’s web site refers to as being authored by “us.” I trust you are as confused as I am. The two pieces differ, but seem clearly to have been written by the same person about the same subject.

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Posted in William K. Black

Tagged bigotry, discrimination, Indiana

The Wall Street Journal Applauds Homophobia

Posted on April 2, 2015 | Comments Off

By William K. Black
Quito: April Fools’ Day 2015

April Fools’ Day continues to bring it delights, including a trifecta of homophobia I found on the website of the Wall Street Journal and other papers today. The WSJ news staff first reported on Indiana’s “Religious Freedom Restoration” Act in a March 27, 2015 story in which CFOs reported their fear that the Act was “Hampering Hiring Ability.” The WSJ news sections recently cited the strong majority of Americans supporting marriage equality and the fact that support is growing quickly among conservatives.

The WSJ’s infamous editorial team was cranking up to send the opposite message. They support the oxymoronic “Defense of Marriage Act” (defending marriage from marriage) and oppose any constitutional rights protecting gay Americans from discrimination. The business community overwhelmingly opposes the new state hate acts adopted by the Indiana and Arkansas legislatures. The CEOs of America’s leading business thought leaders oppose the new state hate acts. The WSJ, on issues of hate, does not serve the interests of the business community. The title of the opinion piece is “The New Intolerance: Indiana isn’t targeting gays. Liberals are targeting religion.” The opinion piece doesn’t even try to support the claim that “liberals are targeting religion.” But the use of the word “liberals” shows how out of step the editorial zanies have become with American businesspeople on the issue of discrimination against gays. A majority of conservatives oppose discrimination against gays. Young conservatives are even more strongly opposed to discrimination against gays.

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Tagged homophobia, WSJ

HSBC Violates its Sweetheart Deal and Lynch Praises It

Posted on April 2, 2015 | Comments Off

By William K. Black
Quito: April Fools’ Day 2015

HSBC got a sweetheart deal from the Obama administration. It laundered vast amounts of money for Mexico’s murderous Sinaloa cartel, helped bust sanctions for terrorists and mass murderers, and did not cooperate with the investigation. The U.S. Attorney in charge of the case, Loretta Lynch, refused to prosecute any of the HSBC bankers or even sue them individually. Instead, there was a pathetic non-prosecution agreement limited to HSBC. Lynch is accused of not contacting either of the primary whistleblowers in the case. The failure to contact one of the whistleblowers has already blown up in Lynch’s face as it became public a few months ago that the governments of the U.S. and Europe were provided many years ago with data on HSBC’s Swiss affiliate that show it was helping terrorists, genocidal leaders, the most violent drug gangs, and tens of thousands of wealthy people evade taxes. Lynch failed to bring that case or use any of the invaluable data provided by the whistleblower who copied the files from the Swiss bank.

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Posted in William K. Black

Tagged accounting control fraud, banksters, dealbook, DOJ, HSBC, nyt

We Send Teachers to Prison for Rigging the Numbers, Why Not Bankers?

Posted on April 2, 2015 | Comments Off

By William K. Black
Quito: April Fools’ Day 2015

The New York Times ran the story on April Fools’ Day of a jury convicting educators of gaming the test numbers and lying about their actions to investigators.

“ATLANTA — In a dramatic conclusion to what has been described as the largest cheating scandal in the nation’s history, a jury here on Wednesday convicted 11 educators for their roles in a standardized test cheating scandal that tarnished a major school district’s reputation and raised broader questions about the role of high-stakes testing in American schools.

On their eighth day of deliberations, the jurors convicted 11 of the 12 defendants of racketeering, a felony that carries up to 20 years in prison. Many of the defendants — a mixture of Atlanta public school teachers, testing coordinators and administrators — were also convicted of other charges, such as making false statements, that could add years to their sentences.”

This was complicated trial that took six months to present and required eight days of jury deliberations. It was a major commitment of investigative and prosecutorial resources. But it was not investigated and prosecuted by the FBI and AUSAs, but by state and local officials. In addition to the trial success, the prosecutors secured 21 guilty pleas.

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Tagged accounting control fraud, Atlanta, bankers, banksters

DealBook’s Willful Blindness Exemplified in the Whistleblowing Article’s First Sentence

Posted on April 1, 2015 | 1 comment

By William K. Black
Quito: April Fools’ Day 2015

The odious New York Times “brand” (DealBook) managed in its lead sentence to show that how complete its pro-CEO banker bias is and how that bias prevents it from getting even the most basic aspects of our recurrent crises correct. The April Fools’ Day article is entitled “S.E.C. Fires Warning Shot About Confidentiality Agreements.”

“A sound that delights regulators and strikes fear in corporations — employees’ blowing the whistle on wrongdoing — is poised to become louder.”

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Tagged accounting control fraud, dealbook, nyt, whitsleblowing

The Homophobic Law and the Indiana Governor Who Dares Not Speak Its Purpose

Posted on March 31, 2015 | Comments Off

By William K. Black
Bloomington: March 29, 2015

Sodomy, of course, was once referred to as the crime that dare not speak its name because the combination of fear and hate of straight males for gays was so intense that it was barbaric and even murderous. It is a measure of how much things have changed that the haters now know that they dare not speak their hate. They also know that they are losing. The vast majority of gay Americans live in States with marriage equality and conservatives expect to that the Supreme Court will soon strike down as unconstitutional bans on marriage equality in the Supreme Court. Some equality advocates are warning that the desperate measures like Indiana’s new law designed to authorize merchants to discriminate against gays are similar to the relatively successful strategy to attack abortion rights. They are right to warn about the need keep working, but the LBGT rights are not analogous to reproductive rights. I will discuss only one reason – business. The paradox is that a law purportedly vital to protect the right of merchants to discriminate against gays is the last thing that merchants want. Gays make very good customers. They have income and they buy goods and services. Merchants want to sell goods.

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Posted in William K. Black

Tagged discrimination, Indiana, LGBT

Meet Citi’s Ethical Underwriters That Tried to Save It and America: Sherry Hunt

Posted on March 27, 2015 | Comments Off

By William K. Black
Quito: March 26, 2015

This is the fourth and final column in my series that began by focusing on Richard M. Bowen, III. Bowen blew the whistle on Citi’s sale of scores of billions of dollars in toxic mortgages, primarily to Fannie and Freddie, through fraudulent reps and warranties. After Bowen protested and blew the whistle within Citi to its senior management (including Robert Rubin) – Citi’s senior officers’ classic accounting control fraud strategy expanded both in terms of the volume of sales and the incidence of fraudulent reps and warranties – which rose to 80 percent.

I have explained how Bowen and his boss’ banking careers were destroyed by the retaliation of Citi’s senior managers and how the SEC, the Department of Justice (DOJ), and the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission (FCIC) have followed the disgraceful policy of trying to keep Bowen’s detailed disclosures from becoming public and being used to bring Citi’s criminal controlling officers to justice.

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