person:bill black

On #Equifax …

Professor Bill Black … , … the white-collar criminologist ...

„… This is like a bad novel that someone wrote who hated corporations…“

►https://youtu.be/xfQWvf2k2lw

#data_breach #identity_theft #insider_trading #fraud

The video script, you may find here:►http://therealnews.com/t2/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=31&Itemid=74&jumival=19960

[...]

BILL BLACK: First, this is the third major breach in about two years, so they had plenty of warning that their #security, #cybersecurity, was incompetent, and they obviously didn’t fix it. Second, they now say that the breach began in May and that they didn’t detect it ’til July, while they were, as you said, stealing at least 142 million people’s worth of data, probably multiple times. Along the way, by the way, they said proudly, “Ah, but there was no breach of our core system.” Before you ever get to the core, 142 million customers are thrown under the bus. God only knows what the core is. Presumably their own personal data is what they consider the core.

Once they did discover, finally, the breach, the very first thing that happened, you mentioned part of it, which is three senior executives sold roughly $2 million-ish in shares, including the chief financial officer, who they’re now claiming wasn’t told of the breach. Now, this would be the number-two person, typically, or number-three person in the entire corporation. If they didn’t tell the senior ranks about the breach, when they discovered one of the largest and most destructive breaches in history, you know, well, you can choose to believe that. No one else does.

On top of that, there was also an immediate ... in the same time period that these senior executives were selling their stock, there was a massive increase in sales of stock options compared to the normal for Equifax, and that almost certainly was again because people had been tipped about what had happened in the breach.

[...]

– posté ici: ►https://diasp.eu/posts/6026718, via
►http://02mydafsoup-01.soup.io/post/631914392/On-Equifax-Professor-Black-the-white-collar

#white_collar_criminality

Bill Black: The #BBC Dismisses a Real Greek Economist as a Sexy “#Ideologue”
▻http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2015/02/bill-black-bbc-dismisses-real-greek-economist-sexy-ideologue.html

In its web version, the BBC “News” has you click on a tease titled “Yanis Varoufakis, charismatic ideologue” to access a story dated February 13, 2015 entitled “Profile: Yanis #Varoufakis, Greek bailout foe.” ▻http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-31452402
Neither the tease nor the title make any sense. Varoufakis is the Greek finance minister. Except, of course, we’re reading this in the BBC, so the description actually reads “Greece’s left-wing Finance Minister Yanis Varoufakis.” Funny, the BBC never describes the head of the ECB as “the ultra-right-wing” economist Mario Draghi or Jeroen Dijsselloem, the Dutch Finance Minister and troika hit man as the “ultra-ultra-right-wing” non-economist.

The BBC “profile” is not unremittingly hostile to Varoufakis – it simply refuses to take him seriously. Varoufakis is a highly competent academic economist. His policy views have proven correct, as even the BBC (back-handedly) concedes by calling him Greece’s “Cassandra.” So why does the BBC treat Varoufakis as a sexy leftist and Dijsselboem as the respected spokesperson for the troika even though Dijsselboem is a fanatic ideologue who has caused massive human misery because of the intersection of his inflexible ideology and economic incompetence?

Varoufakis’ views on the self-destructive nature of austerity as a response to the Great Recession are mainstream economic views. He certainly is a leftist, but his policy views arise from different ideological traditions most people would find antagonistic. That makes him a non-ideologue as the term is defined. The troika, by contrast, is led entirely by ideologues. The primary difference is that they are exceptionally bad economists and exceptionally indifferent to the human misery they inflict on the workers of the periphery that they despise and ridicule. The BBC, the New York Times, and the Wall Street Journal will never write a “profile” of the troika’s leadership that makes any of these points. The BBC profile is another example of what I call “revealed biases.” “Journalists” and media organs routinely reveal and betray their biases – biases that they hotly deny but rarely escape.