Tell It To Al

What kind of yahoo did they hire at Yahoo?

A dissident shareholder caught Yahoo’s new CEO Scott Thompson in a misrepresentation on his resume, and in Yahoo’s regulatory filings.  Click here to read all about it.

Thompson had claimed a bachelor’s degree in computer science from Stonehill College, a small school in Easton, Mass.. When New York hedge fund manager Daniel Loeb, whose firm owns 5.8% of Yahoo, challenged that claim, the company admitted it was an exaggeration.

Thompson does have an accounting degree from the school, just not a computer science degree on top of it, as he claimed.

Yahoo confirmed the misrepresentation and issued a statement shamelessly backing Thompson: “This in no way alters that fact that Mr. Thompson is a highly qualified executive with a successful track record leading large consumer technology companies. … Under Mr. Thompson’s leadership, Yahoo is moving forward to grow the company and drive shareholder value.”

This sort of whitewash ignores the fact that the CEO of a publicly traded company misrepresented himself to shareholders and regulators. It doesn’t matter if it’s a small  exaggeration. If Thompson exaggerated his academic achievements, what else is he going to exaggerate?

Any time  someone is caught in a lie, they lose credibility. We are left to wonder if it was just this one little gaffe we  uncovered, or whether there is more to the story telling. We are also left to wonder how a person who spins a yarn in good times is going to react when things turn ugly.

Yahoo dare not fire any low-level employee for misrepresentations on their.resumes. It is setting a horrible example for itself, it’s employees and the rest of corporate America.

And what about those people who actually completed degrees in computer science at Stonehill, spending the necessary, time, energy and money? I’d hate to work so hard  for a degree only to realize that any windbag CEO can simply claim  one for free.

Australian billionaire Clive Palmer isn’t rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic, he’s arranging for a whole new Titanic.

I’m curious how many people would buy a ticket on a ship named after one of the greatest disasters in maritime history. On one hand, it would be a luxurious ride. On the other, the water in the North Atlantic is cold and deep.

Click here to read my column on MarketWatch about this plan to tempt fate and perhaps prove the maxim that history repeats itself.

Also, as I point out in my column, the name Titanic II has already been taken by a low-budget film. My favorite reader comment under this story so far (not to be partisan, just thought it was funny): “I thought Obama’s Presidency already trademarked Titanic II.”

Imagine abandoning a country that, more than any other, makes free enterprise and personal wealth possible throughout the world, just to save on taxes.

That’s what rich Americans planted all over the world are doing in increasing numbers. Click here to read my column on MarketWatch.

  Click here for more details from Bloomberg. And click here to watch me discuss the Buffett Rule with Matt Flener, anchor at Denver’s NBC affiliate, 9News.

Part of the problem is what’s viewed as an unfair tax code for people living abroad. But the other part is people who just don’t realize what they are giving up.

The world has been way too hard on “Octomom” Nadya Suleman. She deserves credit for getting this far through our so-called economic recovery without having to file bankruptcy until now.

Click here to read the details on her filing. She had octuplets on top of six other kids before that,  and yet she is only $1 million in debt.

One million dollars in debt with 14 kids. I’d like to see one Fortune 500 CEO try to live on $1 million for just one year, especially in Orange County, Calif., which has a whole host of financial problems and may be headed for its second bankrupty filing, itself.

There used to be a time when having 14 kids was considered noble. One of my great grandmothers, for example, had 12. They had to live on a farm in Germany, growing their own food.

This isn’t possible for most people today. Octomom has tried to raise money by allowing herself to become a public spectacle. She now says she’ll do porn to support her children, if she has to. So what?

Society has always had to struggle with dire situtations like these, hence the nursery rhyme:  “There was an old woman who lived in a shoe. She had so many children, she didn’t know what to do.”

It’s easy to say Octomom shouldn’t have had so many children. It’s also easy to say a company or a county shouldn’t have taken on so much risk and debt. The problem is, they did. And that’s what the bankruptcy courts are for. Give Octomom a break.

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.