Bad Deeds for 2/7/2010

 

Have You Been Bamboozled by Bamboo Fabrics? – In their haste to capitalize on the recent interest in environmentally-friendly clothing, seventy-eight companies allegedly sold clothing and other textile products that are labeled and advertised as “bamboo,” but actually are made of manufactured rayon fiber. The fake bamboo fabrics are actually made using toxic chemicals in a process that releases pollutants into the air. The companies, including Wal-mart, Target, Amazon.com, The Gap, and Zappos.com, received Federal Trade Commission letters warning that they may be breaking the law.

 

Bank of America Executives Hid Losses to Further Merger According to Lawsuit – On September 15, 2008 Bank of America announced its plan to by Merrill Lynch and scheduled a shareholder vote to approve the transaction for December 5, 2008. By the time the approval vote was to actually happen Merrill had incurred over $16 billion in actual losses–losses known to top management at Bank of America. Not only did Lewis and others at Bank of America know about these losses, they knew more were on the way.

As directors and officers of Bank of America, Lewis and Price had fiduciary obligations to disclose this information to Bank of America shareholders before they voted on whether or not to approve a merger with Merrill Lynch. But rather than disclose this information, as required by law, they hid the losses so that the shareholders would approve the merger. Which they did.

Once the shareholder vote was secure Lewis ran to the federal government to subsidize the losses. According the the suit, Lewis then misled federal regulators by telling them that Bank of America couldn’t complete the merger without an extraordinary taxpayer bailout to cover the Merrill losses. According to a lawsuit by the State of Nw York, the fraud was not confined just to Bank of America shareholders. Bank management also failed to tell their own lawyers about the full extent of Merrill’s losses before the shareholder vote. In fact, once former counsel Timothy Mayopoulos learned of the losses (after the shareholder vote) he tried to confront Price but was immediately fired.

It’s worth remembering that when then Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson and the Bush administration first responded to the near total collapse of the banking system, it was with a two-page bill that would grant nearly unlimited and unchecked power to Treasury to fund institutions as it saw fit. When Congress balked at the suggestion what was born was TARP, the universally derided bank bailout program and the perfect metaphor for the ethos gripping Wall Street that is just now going challenged in these lawsuits. By allowing institutions to reap the benefit of risky decisions while forcing taxpayers to subsidize the losses is it any wonder that Wall Street continues to think its okay to pay large bonuses and refuse to extend credit to small businesses?

 

General Mills Palm Oil Causes Rainforest Destruction – General Mills uses palm oil from plantations that destroy huge tracts of rainforests in Indonesia, Malaysia and Papua New Guinea. This has put Indigenous and forest-dependent people in jeopardy, as well as endangered species like orangutans, Sumatran tigers and elephants. Look at the photo below.

Send a letter to the CEO of General Mills telling him to commit to sourcing only socially and environmentally responsible palm oil.

 

Sarah Palin Uses Palm Prompter After Criticizing President for Using Teleprompter – During her speech at the Tea Party Convention Sarah Palin took a shot at President Obama for using a teleprompter to read his prepared speeches. The she had a question and answer session (prepared questions only) where she used notes written on the palm of her hand to answer the canned questions.

 

 

Climate-Change Deniers Funded by Exxon-Mobil – Free-market, anti-climate change think-tanks such as the Atlas Economic Research Foundation in the US and the International Policy Network in the UK have received grants totalling hundreds of thousands of pounds from the multinational energy company ExxonMobil. Both organisations have funded international seminars pulling together climate change deniers from across the globe.

A complicated web of relationships revolves around a number of right-wing think-tanks around the world that dispute the threats of climate change. ExxonMobil is a key player behind the scenes, having donated hundreds of thousands of dollars in the past few years to climate change sceptics. The Atlas Foundation, created by the late Sir Anthony Fisher (founder of the Institute of Economic Affairs), received more than $100,000 in 2008 from ExxonMobil, according to the oil company’s reports.

Atlas has supported more than 30 other foreign think-tanks that espouse climate change scepticism, and co-sponsored a meeting of the world’s leading climate sceptics in New York last March. Called “Global Warming: Was It Ever Really a Crisis?”, it was organised by the Heartland Institute – a group that described the event as “the world’s largest-ever gathering of global warming sceptics”. The organisation is another right-wing think-tank to have benefited from funding given by ExxonMobil in recent years.

Regards,

Jim