Newspaper Reader collection from various times and sourses.
Mar 25, 2026
Posted on March 18, 2019 by stephenkmacksd
Headline: Do not let company founders hide from accountability
Sub-headline: Lyft’s dual class structure will prevent shareholders from having reasonable input
Recall Mr. Singer as the purchaser of Argentina’s bad debt? and the fact that Macri paid the ransom for re-admittance into the Free Market Club? as I recall 1.3 billion was the price tag! And less that a year and a half, with the peso in free fall, Macri applied and got an IMF bailout for his failing Austerity Lite: de Kirchner is waiting in the wings: the definition of ‘success’?
That bit of inconvenient ‘Economic History’ puts Mr. Singer’s plea for ‘shareholder accountability’ garnished with self-congratulation where? Examples here:
My firm, Elliott Management, frequently encounters technology companies where founders or longtime managers created remarkable innovations but then struggled with the challenges of maturing products, expanding organisations or slowing growth.
They often respond by aggressively seeking new sources of growth, paying richly for acquisitions that do not fit with their business models or allocating capital towards peripheral activities that fail to generate returns. Worse, such efforts often damage the core businesses that brought success in the first place.
…
Many companies are able to pull off these transitions without active shareholder involvement. But even at the most successful tech groups, allegations of privacy violations and other abuses have been most acute at companies such as Facebook and Google where dual-class structures are in place.
…
Those with the insight and daring to found a business deserve our respect. But once they sell the vast majority of the company to the public, they should not be allowed to run it forever without any shareholder input. Public ownership must mean public accountability.
My selection of quotations is self-serving, but not anymore self-serving than Mr. Singer’s whole argument,that Capitalism, and its companies need investors like himself to keep them ‘honest’! Public Ownership and Public Accountability under the leadership of Vulture Capitalists like Singer is the sine qua non of Capitalist Virtue.
Almost Marx
https://www.ft.com/content/b41a9896-4572-11e9-b83b-0c525dad548f
Paul Singer’s Lament: the Bond Market is broken, 2 replies
Posted on August 20, 2016 by stephenkmacksd
1)
I have yet to read Robin Wigglesworth’s essay/news report, but I have read Mr. Edward. N. Littwak’s essay Hidden Costs at the Times Literary Supplement, August 19,2016 A review of The Panama Papers, that for it’s cast of characters, that includes Mr. Singer as a seeker after the his pound of flesh, President Macri of Argentina, and Cristina de Kirchner as clients of Mossack Fonseka. What was Argentina’s Neo-Liberal White Knight Mercri doing business where embezzler de Kirchner also did business? The Argentine Melodrama never ends, but there are more names of the politically respectable bourgeois politicians, and other civic actors…
Stayed tuned,
StephenKMackSD
2)
Poor Mr. Singer! The goose that laid the golden egg is kaput? Mr. Singer and his ilk produce nothing. He is not like the notorious Henry Ford, who at the least, paid his workers enough to buy the cars they produced on the assembly line! Ford produced a product that people bought, and provided jobs that enabled generations of Americans to purchase a home, to save for retirement, and put their children through school and even college. No matter Mr. Ford’s egregious beliefs, he did something that Mr. Singer and his investors cannot do, provide those jobs that built America and got us through two World Wars.
But times are now tough for the Vultures, as Capitalism, in it’s Neo-Liberal iteration, has collapsed, and what is on offer from the Elites, that the dread Populists are rebelling against, is the Utopianism of the TTP and the TTIP. Yet we as readers can see that this class of Capitalists relies on the ever shrinking detritus of a system mired in it’s own collapse. The Panama Papers demonstrates that both the Capitalists and their apologists in the Press, in Politics and Academia are wholly corrupt, or put bluntly, just on the take. So Mr. Singer’s dire warnings about an Economic ‘brokenness’ of the Bond Market: while we in America witness daily, the Sideshow of Clinton vs. Trump i.e. of two utterly loathsome self-seeking egoists vying to rule the ‘West’ garnished by the usual ‘the lesser of two evils’ bunk is just more bad news. Mr. Singer who makes Henry Ford look like a paragon of Capitalist Virtue, bemoans his lot: quelle dommage! In the vision of Ayn Rand the world is dived into producers and drones, so one might ask, what category does Mr. Singer fit into? Or to frame it in a way utterly antithetical to Rand, what tangible good does he produce? to frame it a language alien to the ‘Objectivism’ of Rand. The notion of ‘Objectivism’ being a stand in for greed. Perhaps we can turn to Hayek for the comforting news that the Market is the only really viable form of knowledge?
StephenKMackSD
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/a21fec8a-6574-11e6-a08a-c7ac04ef00aa.html#ft-article-comments
Posted on January 26, 2011 by stephenkmacksd
Alito, Thomas Headlined Political Fundraisers Chaired By Leading Right-Wing Donor Paul Singer
A few months ago, ThinkProgress launched a series of investigations into relationship of the right flank of the Supreme Court — Justices Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, and Antonin Scalia — with corporate donors and Republican operatives. In October, we revealed, through a document obtained from Koch Industries, that Scalia and Thomas had attended secret right-wing fundraisers organized by Charles Koch to coordinate political strategy. ThinkProgress has now discovered more events attended by conservative Supreme Court justices.
The Manhattan Institute, funded by major corporations like CIGNA, Koch Industries and ExxonMobil, is a conservative think tank in New York that produces right-wing policy papers as well as sponsoring speeches for judges and Republican politicians. In 2008, Justice Thomas headlined the Manhattan Institute’s Wriston Lecture; last October, Justice Alito was the headline speaker for the same event. According to the Manhattan Institute’s website, an individual must contribute between $5,000 to $25,000 to attend the Wriston Lecture. “To be invited to the Wriston Lecture,” Debbie Ezzard, a development official at the Manhattan Institute told ThinkProgress, “you have to give $5,000.”
During the question and answer period of the Wriston Lecture, Roger Hertog, a major neoconservative donor, asked Alito if he would attend the 2011 State of the Union. Ironically, Alito — while speaking at a political fundraiser filled with powerful conservative donors — said he would avoid the event because it has “become very political”:
HERTOG: My question has nothing to do with judicial philosophy. It’s a more mundane question. It’s a calendar question. Will you attend the State of the Union this year?
ALITO: I said in my talk that judges learn primarily from experience, and I’ve found the example of those with greater experience. For many years, the more senior members of the Supreme Court — Justice Stevens before he retired, Justice Scalia — stopped the practice of attending State of the Union addresses because they have become very political events and they’re very awkward for the justices. We have to sit there like the proverbial plotted plant most of the time and we’re not allowed to applaud or those of us who are more disciplined refrain from manifesting any emotion or opinion whatsoever.
Watch it:
Scalia, Thomas, and Alito ultimately refused to attend the SOTU last night. At the end of his question and answer period during the Wriston Lecture, Thomas pledged to the room of donors to meet with them on a more informal basis whenever they visit Washington, DC.
Notably, both Thomas and Alito were introduced at the Manhattan Institute by its chairman, Paul Singer. Singer is the manager of one of the nation’s largest hedge funds, Elliott Management, and has been one of the largest contributors to the Republican Party and conservative causes in recent years. An opponent of financial regulations, Singer’s hedge fund contributed 96% of Rep. Scott Garrett’s (R-NJ) campaign committee. Garrett is the new subcommittee chairman overseeing hedge funds, including regulations passed by Democrats last year which will affect Singer’s firm.
Singer is also a “seven figure” contributor to Crossroads GPS, a front group managed by Karl Rove that has taken advantage of the new campaign finance landscape post-Citizens United. As ThinkProgress has reported, it’s not the first time Alito or Thomas has headlined a political fundraiser with corporate donors:
– In November, shortly after his Manhattan Institute fundraising appearance, ThinkProgress interviewed Justice Alito as he entered the annual fundraising gala for the American Spectator, attended by then-RNC Chairman Michael Steele and top Republican donors. Alito told us that his attendance to the fundraiser was “not important.” However, as we noted, Alito was the main draw for donors when he headlined the same event in 2008. The American Spectator is nominally a magazine; in the 90s, it served as a slush fund for wealthy donors to pay opponents of President Clinton, and recently, it organized a lobby group called the “Conservative Action Project” to orchestrate opposition to President Obama.
– In 2009, while the Supreme Court heard arguments regarding the Citizens United case, Justice Thomas was featured at the annual fundraiser for the Heritage Foundation — and sat at a table for donors with investment banker Thomas Saunders and Sen. Jim DeMint (R-SC). After the Citizens United decision, Heritage created a new nonprofit called “Heritage Action” to run attack ads against Democrats.
– In 2009, while the Supreme Court heard arguments regarding the Citizens United case, Justice Alito headlined a fundraiser for the Intercollegiate Studies Institute (ISI) — the same corporate front that funded the rise of Republican dirty trickster James O’Keefe and anti-masturbation activist Christine O’Donnell. According to the sponsorship levels for the event, Alito helped ISI raise $70,000 or more from law firms like Young Conaway Stargatt & Taylor, LLP. ISI is run partially by lobbyist James Burnley, who also is on the board of FreedomWorks.
– Last year, Justice Thomas helped headline a fundraiser for the National Association of Broadcasters, a lobby group representing News Corp, Cox Media Group, and other media companies. The event raised hundreds of thousands for NAB’s charity from a host of corporate sponsors, including the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, PhRMA, and CBS Corp.
Pursuant to our reporting, the good government group Common Cause found that Thomas had also failed to report more than $686,000 in income from his wife on his ethics disclosure forms. Monday evening, Thomas filed letters with the Supreme Court amending the gap in disclosure.
Paul Singer: The Vulture Chewing Argentina’s Living Corpse
- by Greg Palast
- June 21, 2023
Yesterday ProPublica reported that Paul “The Vulture” Singer flew Justice Samuel Alito on a private jet to Alaska for a luxury fishing vacation in early 2008 (which Alito failed to disclose). Singer subsequently had multiple cases before the Supreme Court — including a 15-year long dispute with Argentina.
I’ve been hunting Singer The Vulture for BBC TV since 2007, when he pocketed the money meant to aid those affected by the cholera epidemic in the Republic of Congo. And my 2012 cover story for The Nation, “Mitt Romney’s Bailout Bonanza”, revealed how Singer secretly set up Romney to make $100 million off Obama’s auto bailout.
Singer was the number one donor for the Republican Party in New York. He even helped Alberto Fujimori escape murder charges in Perú. The story of Paul Singer is featured in my film, The Best Democracy Money Can Buy, which I’m making available as a FREE download.
Here’s the real story of Singer’s vulture attack on Argentina, which resulted in a $4.65 billion cash settlement forcing the nation into default, from my book Billionaires & Ballot Bandits.
A call came in from New York to my bosses at BBC Television Centre, London. It was from one of the knuckle-draggers on the payroll of billionaire Paul Singer, Number One funder for the Republican Party in New York, million-dollar donor to the Mitt Romney super-PAC, and top money-giver to the GOP Senate campaign fund. But better known to us as Singer The Vulture.
“We have a file on Greg Palast.”
Well, of course they do.
And I have a file on them.
I had just returned from traveling up the Congo River for BBC and the Guardian. Singer’s enforcer indicated that Mr. Singer would prefer BBC not run a story about him — especially not with film of his suffering prey: children, cholera victims.
A call came in from New York to my bosses at BBC Television Centre, London. It was from one of the knuckle-draggers on the payroll of billionaire Paul Singer, Number One funder for the Republican Party in New York, million-dollar donor to the Mitt Romney super-PAC, and top money-giver to the GOP Senate campaign fund. But better known to us as Singer The Vulture.
“We have a file on Greg Palast.”
Well, of course they do.
And I have a file on them.
I had just returned from traveling up the Congo River for BBC and the Guardian. Singer’s enforcer indicated that Mr. Singer would prefer BBC not run a story about him — especially not with film of his suffering prey: children, cholera victims.
…
Newspaper Reader.
Editor: Added March 25, 2026
Paul Singer—market master or litigious vulture?
23 June 2016 by Hedge Clippers
The mythos of the hedge fund manager is defined by a perceived mastery over market forces. Commentators often ascribe supernatural powers that hedge fund managers supposedly have over the market. Titles like “Hedge Fund Market Wizards” and “Money Mavericks” are typical. Paul Singer is decidedly not a master of the markets. Paul Singer is just an opportunistic lawyer who has found a niche doing something that most people couldn’t stomach—suing some of the poorest nations in the world. Singer is the pioneer of a strategy called debt vulturism, which does not require a savvy understanding of the markets. Indeed, Singer’s fund has been swindled by a fraudster selling fictitious securities. [1]
A hedge fund billionaire who calls income inequality “a wedge issue”
Paul Singer is a hedge fund billionaire and prominent New York-based philanthropist. Singer’s net worth is worth $1.92 billion, according to Forbes—easily making him one of the wealthiest New Yorkers. [2] Singer is the founder and CEO of hedge fund Elliott Management Corporation, controlling over $23 billion in assets. A leading Republican donor, Singer has contributed heavily to GOP candidates including to former presidential candidate Mitt Romney. [3] Singer’s fund, Elliott Management, was the top ranked contributor to the 2012 Republican vice presidential candidate Paul Ryan’s campaign committee and PAC in the 2012 cycle, contributing $40,000. [4]
…
https://www.cadtm.org/Paul-Singer-market-master-or
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