417 replies to this topic

[TAP]

In case anyone here still believes in a benevolent god. Three wealth managers win $250m on lottery
http://www.bbc.co.uk...canada-15944179

[Mr. Roboto]

No, Gawd works in mysterious ways...we just can't understand them. Now if it was a poor family with a cancer stricken child it would read: Gawd saw his way to bless this family, praise him!

[TAP]

[Mr. Roboto]

A banker left a 1% tip in defiance of 'the 99%' at a Newport Beach restaurant the other week, according to his dining companion and underling who snapped a photo of the receipt and posted it to his blog, Future Ex Banker. (Update: the blog is now offline.)

In posting the photo, the employee gave some background on his boss and the receipt:

Mention the “99%” in my boss’ presence and feel his wrath. So proudly does he wear his 1% badge of honor that he tips exactly 1% every time he feels the server doesn’t sufficiently bow down to his Holiness. Oh, and he always makes sure to include a “tip” of his own.

The "tip" of his own in this case was to tell the server to "get a real job." Pleasant.

The whistleblower's Future Ex-Banker blog (now offline) included additional background on his boss, and some insight into why he would out his gross behavior, likely resulting in an employment status of current ex-banker:

I work in the corporate office of a major bank for a boss who represents everything wrong with the financial industry: blatant disregard and outright contempt for everyone and everything he deems beneath him. On top of that, he’s a complete and utter tool. At the same time, I’m still cashing paychecks, an admittedly willing—albeit reluctant—cog in the wheel of this increasingly ugly industry, so I’ve created this blog as a confessional of sorts. It won’t entirely clear my conscience, but hopefully it’ll help. I’m sure I’ll get fired eventually. Until then, enjoy.

UPDATE: In a conversation with the Huffington Post, Mike Wilcox, the vice president of operations for True Food Kitchen, gave some insight into how the company was treating the incident since the receipt began receiving attention online. Wilcox said that the restaurant was "absolutely" treating the receipt as real, but to confirm its authenticity for certain, they were in the process of tracking down both the physical receipt at the restaurant and the computer-generated copy in their credit card system.

"The first thing we're going to do is to make sure the server is taken care of," Wilcox said, "and make sure the server wasn't treated badly or insufficiently tipped." He explained that they would be asking Breanna, the server named on the receipt, if she recalled the table and how her service was. "If her service was up to the level" they assume their employees would deliver, Wilcox said, "they would do everything they can to make it up to her somehow." Referring to online comments posted about the receipt, Wilcox remarked, "people are asking us to ban the person from the restaurant -- if more information came through on who the person is I first would love to talk to him."

UPDATE II: As many have noted, a true 1% tip correctly rounded to the nearest penny would have been $1.34, leaving this tip just shy of that threshold, mathematically speaking.

[Mr. Roboto]

Looks like it was fake!

http://news.yahoo.co...-165556900.html

[PERM BANNED]

If you can't win with your ideas, just create fake and exaggerated stories to stir up the sheep. Seems to be the mantra of the OWS crowd. I still don't see how rioting in the streets and assaulting people helps their cause, but they continue to do so.

[freedom78]

If you can't win with your ideas, just create fake and exaggerated stories to stir up the sheep.

Like dressing up like a pimp to try to entrap idiots? Like making up stories about a person's parentage or religion? Like inventing fictitious death panels to distract people from an idea they generally favor? Indeed, the right is clearly not involved with "fake and exaggerated stories".

[PERM BANNED]

The only story you give that is comprable is ACORN, and ACORN did themselves in by breaking the law in numerous states. OWS completely makes shit up to make headlines.

What story was madeup about parentage or religion? You mean when those on the left said Sarah Palin's retard son wasn't her's? Death panels? You mean when Democrats scare old folks into thinking they're going to lose their medicare or SSI?

[freedom78]

The only story you give that is comprable is ACORN, and ACORN did themselves in by breaking the law in numerous states. OWS completely makes shit up to make headlines.

What story was madeup about parentage or religion? You mean when those on the left said Sarah Palin's retard son wasn't her's? Death panels? You mean when Democrats scare old folks into thinking they're going to lose their medicare or SSI?

If you don't recall stories about Obama's parentage, religion, citizenship, birth certificate, etc., then you are cursed with an incredibly short memory. And those got WAY more traction than any fictional receipt ever will.

I do recall the baby mixup. THis was exacerbated by the fact that people thought she might be covering for her daughter who was, in fact, knocked up. Again, not much traction, given that there were suddenly both the baby and a still pregnant daughter.

It's the right scaring people about SS. How many times have we heard some old person, mad because Obama wants to take their social security away, which the right has somehow deluded them into thinking is private and not a government program? I'm quite certain that both sides lie and manipulate, but the right has become prolific in the art. I've never seen so much shit just blatantly made up as we have since the 2008 primaries.

[Mr. Roboto]

The only story you give that is comprable is ACORN, and ACORN did themselves in by breaking the law in numerous states.

What did they do wrong?

[wedjat]

I still don't see how rioting in the streets and assaulting people helps their cause, but they continue to do so.

You mean like those students who were simply sitting down & the police pepper sprayed them? That kind of rioting & assaulting of people?

[wedjat]

If you don't recall stories about Obama's parentage, religion, citizenship, birth certificate, etc., then you are cursed with an incredibly short memory.

Uh, that would be "selective" memory, not short.

[freedom78]

Vietnam's Solution for Corrupt Bankers: Firing Squads

 

By Patrick Winn, GlobalPost Correspondent

 

BANGKOK — For the most part, American bankers whose rash pursuit of profit brought on the 2008 global financial collapse didn’t get indicted. They got bonuses.

 

Odds are that scandal would have played out differently in Vietnam, another nation struggling with misbehaving bankers.

 

The authoritarian Southeast Asian state doesn’t just send unscrupulous financiers to jail. Sometimes, it sends them to death row.

 

Amid a sweeping cleanup of its financial sector, Vietnam has sentenced three bankers to death in the past six months.

 

One duo now on death row embezzled roughly $25 million from the state-owned Vietnam Agribank. Their co-conspirators caught decade-plus prison sentences.

 

In March, a 57-year-old former regional boss from Vietnam Development Bank, another government-run bank, was sentenced to death over a $93-million swindling job.

 

According to Vietnam’s Tuoi Tre news outlet, several of his colluders were sentenced to life imprisonment after they confessed to securing bogus loans with a diamond ring and a BMW coupe. And last week, in an unrelated case, charges against senior employees from the same bank allege $47 million in losses from dubious loans."

 

None of this would impress Bernie Madoff, mastermind of America’s largest ever financial fraud scheme. The combined amount from all three Vietnamese cases adds up to less than 1 percent of his purported $18-billion haul.

 

But these death sentences nevertheless are high profile scandals in Vietnam.

 

That’s the point. Human rights watchdogs contend that splashy trials in Vietnam are acts of political theater with predetermined conclusions. The audience: a Vietnamese public weary of state corruption. But these sentences also sound loud alarm bells to dodgy bankers who are currently running scams.

 

“It’s a message to those in this game to be less greedy and that business as usual is getting out of hand,” said Adam McCarty, chief economist with the Hanoi-based consulting firm Mekong Economics.

 

Continued: http://www.nbcnews.c...g-squads-n70716