Tell It To Al

Wal-Mart Stores insists it did not lobby U.S. lawmakers to alter laws against bribing foreign officials while it was allegedly bribing officials throughout Mexico.

It’s just that some lobbying organizations where the company just happens to have a membership did.

Click here to read my column in The Sunday Wall Street Journal. And click here to watch me talk about it with Matt Flener, anchor at Denver’s NBC affiliate, 9News.

In today’s column, I had some fun with a press release touting a start-up company’s plans to begin mining operations on asteroids, and I received some reader responses arguing that I shouldn’t make fun of visionaries.

I’s not the vision I’m laughing at. It’s the hyperbole.

How many times have we been to the moon since 1969? And these guys from  Planetary Resources Inc. say mining an asteroid will be as easy as going to the moon? Click here to read their press release.

Maybe some day. Meantime, it may be more likely that an asteroid will mine the Earth.  Or perhaps we’lll kill ourselves with our own technology before it can ever happen. In any case, a tiny dose of reality is in order here, people.

Anybody can put out a press release these day. I just put one out touting my plans to turn myself invisible.

Click here to read it on Marketwatch.com.

Big U.S. companies are creating plenty of jobs – it’s just that most of them are overseas.

Click here to read this great analysis by Wall Street Journal reporter Scott Thurm. It quotes experts saying this trend isn’t necessarily at the expense of jobs in the U.S.  These companies are doing the hiring abroad because they’re expanding into global markets and need people there instead of here.

Maybe some of those other countries can start giving these big  businesses some more corporate welfare.

The idea that the people should support large corporations because large corporations create jobs is slowly being turned on its head as the globalization game plays itself out.

When E.F. Hutton admitted to kiting hundreds of millions of dollars worth of check in the 1980s, not one person went to jail.

When a New Jersey car dealer named Denis Kelliher did it on a smaller scale, he went to prison.

It pays when you are too big to jail. And now some former E.F. Hutton executives even want to revive the E.F. Hutton name, made famous by its TV commercials where entire rooms fell silent at the drop of the company’s name: “When E.F. Hutton speaks, people listen.” 

Click here to read my column on MarketWatch.

Wanna get rich? We have a stock-picking robot that will double your money.

It’s amazing the Securities and Exchange Commission would have to waste its time shutting down such an obviously  fraudulent pitch like this.

You would hope people would be smart enough not to be taken, and laugh it off. But 75,000 U.S. investors fell for this ridiculous pump-and-dump started by two 16-year-old British twins.

Click here to read more from the SEC. And click here to read the SEC’s complaint.

“While touting their supposed breakthrough investment technology on two websites, the [twins] were racking up fees as stock promoters through a third,” said Thomas A. Sporkin, Chief of the SEC’s Office of Market Intelligence.

It’s hard to believe investors this stupid would have any money left to invest in a stock-picking robot.

What if I told you I had a stock-picking fairy?  Would you buy that, too?

When you get right down to it, church is a business, and what business can succeed by constantly telling people “blessed are the poor”?

The churches attracting the biggest crowds are the ones that are telling people what they want to hear. Instead of take up your cross, they’re saying take out your checkbook. They’re saying those who are faithful to God – which includes dropping big bucks in their offering plate – will be amply rewarded.

Many ministries promise a hundred-fold  blessing.

This is “The Prosperity Gospel,” and it’s been preached for decades. It hardly jibes with what the Bible says, i.e.  love of money is the root of all evil. It has led to one pulpit scandal after the next. And it has made church a fertile field for Ponzi schemers.

Click here to read my column in The Sunday Wall Street Journal. And click here to read about Ephren W. Taylor II, the son of a preacherman who allegedly targeted church congregations with a Ponzi scheme.

A colleague of mine shot this photo of a graffitied mail drop in New York City.

Murder the rich?

Has class warfare taken a more violent turn? Or is this just one idiot with a marker?

You’d think with the Internet and social networking, scrawling violent anarchist suggestions on public property would be obsolete by now.

Do rich people walk by this box and shudder?

Do rich people in Manhattan even know they are rich?

I mean, what income level qualifies one as rich enough to be murdered? $100,000 a year? A million a year? Somewhere in between?

I could imagine a fairly well-paid executive passing by and thinking, “Yeah! Kill the rich!” thinking, his boss.

We’ve heard warnings for years that the gap between the rich and poor was widening, and that violence has always been the result of this sort of thing, historically.

But most Americans do not want to kill the rich. They want to be the rich.

What is Scott Lazerson, a guy from Orem, Utah, doing hanging out with the Duchess  of York?

And how does he have so many celebrities’ phone numbers and email addresses  in his Rolodex?

I started getting to know Lazerson after he called me out of the blue last year, asking if I’d introduce him to a CEO I’d written about. I  explore some of the secrets of this celebrity “connector” in today’s column.

Lazerson started meeting famous people while running Larry King’s Cardiac Foundation, and has turned his extensive contact list of famous and important people into a business.

He really does know these people. Celebrities who called me to put in a good word for Lazerson said they love him for his unbounded optimism.

“He really is like a ray of light,” said Dina Lohan. “I’ve never seen him depressed.”

Connect with Lazerson on Twitter: @scottlazerson

Click here to read my column on Lazerson on MarketWatch.

Before the Securities and Exchange Commission accused him of running a Ponzi scheme, Ephren W. Taylor II was some preacher.

This YouTube video offers a lively sample of his “Prosperity Gospel” preaching. He promised investors big returns investing in socially responsible investments. An attorney who represents his many victims, estimates he allegedly swindled more than 500 people out of $30 million to $50 million.

Click here to read my column on MarketWatch.

Do you often find yourself ordering the largest order of fries? Do you drive an SUV? Do you live in a McMansion?

Maybe it’s because you are feeling powerless.

A study in the Journal of Consumer Research concludes people tend to purchase plus-sized everything when they are feeling powerless. Click here to read more from Yahoo Finance.

There is so much in modern culture to feel powerless about: the nation’s runaway debt, a fragile and volatile economy, gridlock in Washington, and so much of the power in the hands of giant corporations.

If the growing influence of global, international companies has you feeling powerless, chances are you’ll go out and buy some more stuff. And chances are you’ll say, supersize it. They’ve got consumers coming and going.