Purloined Trillions, etc.

(1) Thanks! It looks like we got a bunch of orders and donations after my last blog post (Shameless Plugs).  Thanks!  If you haven't made a donation as part of our summer dry season fundraiser, read more about it here, and scroll all the way down to make your donation. Donate $50 or more and receive a free copy of John Millerand Arthur MacEwan's new book, Economic Collapse, Economic Change.

(2) The Purloined Trillions: I know that capitalist exploitation is not about theft, but Jim Cypher's new article about how the bosses have "purloined" trillions--nearly $2 trillion a year, now--that in a previous era would have gone to workers seems appropriately illustrated with a picture of a pickpocket.  The article is now live and public; read it here.

(3) Hellooo!?! I haven't been following the whole News of the World/News Corp. scandal very closely, but I did find an amusing tidbit in today's New York Times.  According to a smallish article about Rebekah Brooks' role in the scandal, Cozy Ties Mark Newspaper's Dealings with Scotland Yard, back in 2003, the News of the World spied on a Scotland Yard detective named David Cook.  Rebekah Brooks, then called Rebekah Wade, was editor at the time, and was called to a meeting at Scotland Yard to face the accusation from Cook, "the lead investigator in a gruesome cold-case killing of a man found  with an ax in his head," that  "He and his family were being followed and photographed, he said, by  people hired by her newspaper." Scotland Yard was apparently satisfied with her explanation (though Cook wasn't):

Ms. Wade said that the paper was tailing Detective Cook because it suspected him of having an affair with Jackie Haines, host of the Crimewatch television program on which he had recently appeared. In fact, the two were married to each other, as had been mentioned prominently in an article about them in the popular gossip magazine “Hello!”

I'm thinking the magazine should change its name to Hellooo!?! As in, hellooo, Scotland Yard, you bought that?

In other NotW news, here's an article about the paper's final crossword puzzle.  The staff are apparently not too happy with Ms. Brooks.

(4) Sheila Bair book deal: Hat-tip to TM:  DealBook reveals book deal--by the outgoing FDIC chair Sheila Bair.  In her proposal, which Free Press picked up, she said: "I will share perspectives on the problems of regulatory capture and the  continuing reluctance of bank regulators to fully acknowledge current  problems in the financial sector, which are substantial." Let's hope it's juicy.

That's all for now.

--Chris Sturr