Legal Commentary

Does Your Average American Know He or She is Being Stolen Blind by the Upper Echelons ?

Posted on March 25, 2009
The Great Debate, a blog by Bernd Debusmann at Reuters, has some interesting statistics on the ever-widening gap between salaries at the American business top as compared to those of normal American workers. Debusmann writes in In American Crisis, Anger and Guns:"There?s less wealth to spread around now as trillions of dollars has evaporated with increasing speed in the deepening crisis...

Major Causes of the Financial Credit Crisis : Stanford Magazine Tells the TRUE Story of Brooksley Born : The Rejected Attempt to Regulate Derivatives

Posted on March 25, 2009
Paul Krugman, who in 2008 was the sole winner of the Nobel Prize for Economic Science, in his book, The Great Unraveling: Losing our Way in the New Century, chronicles the optimistic 1990s which dissipated into gloom in the 2000s because of "incredibly bad leadership, in the private sector and in the corridors of power...

AIG Financial Products Corp. : Financial Crisis CBS Video re AIG : 2008 Employee Retention Plan posted at Scribd

Posted on March 25, 2009
The monies paid out by A.I.G. to members of its financial products group - who are most answerable for the financial collapse of AIG prior to the bailout - were clearly the result of irregularities even prior to the current bailout. The members of this group plundered AIG by gigantic amounts for a small circle of recipients...

Europeana Relaunched Again : The European Union Digital Cultural Resource Project Appears in Improved From with over 4 Million Digital Items

Posted on March 24, 2009
We were informed by email today that Europeana, the digital cultural resource project of the European Union, currently presenting access to over 4 million digital items at museums and libraries throughout the EU, has relaunched again after a problematic start in November...

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4th European Forum for In-House Counsel : 23-24 April 2009 Brussels : Academy of European Law : European Company Lawyers Association (ECLA/AEJE)

Posted on March 24, 2009
The 4th EUROPEAN FORUM FOR IN-HOUSE COUNSEL, sponsored by the Academy of European Law (ERA, Europäische Rechtsakademie, Académie de Droit Européen, Accademia di Diritto Europeo) and by the European Company Lawyers Association (ECLA/AEJE) will take place in Brussels, Belgium on Thursday and Friday, 23-24 April 2009...

Cinderalla is Alive in March Madness NCAA Basketball 2009 : Cleveland State and Roburt Sallie of Memphis Trumph : Big 12 Administrators Look Bad

Posted on March 21, 2009
We predicted previously at LawPundit that the tenacious Cleveland State Vikings were the most likely Cinderella team in this year's NCAA men's basketball championships, and they came through with a convincing 84-69 victory over a Wake Forest team that started the season with 16 straight wins, including a win over North Carolina, and was ranked No...

Master of Laws (LL.M.) at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University : Only Non-Law School in the USA to Offer This Program

Posted on March 20, 2009
The Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University in Medford, Massachusetts offers a Master of Laws (LL.M.) for legal professionals tracking for or expanding their credentials to Public International Law, International Business Law or International Economic Law...

Langenscheidt Dictionary of Business, Commerce and Finance English-German German-English published by licence agreement with Routledge Ltd, London

Posted on March 20, 2009
The definitive two-way Langenscheidt Dictionary of Business, Commerce and Finance (German-English English-German), now in its 3rd edition and published by license agreement with Routledge Ltd, London ("licence" in the UK) , and of which I am one of four co-authors, has a new link in English here, and I have changed the corresponding links on the LawPundit website which previously led only to the German-language page at Langenscheidt...

Conference May 21, 2009 at Stanford University : Advancing Socially and Environmentally Responsible Supply Chains: Innovation, Integration, Incentives

Posted on March 19, 2009
The Global Supply Chain Management Forum and the Center for Social Innovation at the Stanford Graduate School of Business are presenting a conference, Thursday, May 21, 2009 on Advancing Socially and Environmentally Responsible Supply Chains: Innovation, Integration, Incentives...

Maureen Dowd at the New York Times Gives a Modern Twist to the Gaelic Saying : Never Bolt the Door with a Boiled Carrot : AIG Forces Obama "Change"

Posted on March 18, 2009
When a Presidential candidate runs on the slogan of "change", the first person who is going to have to prove that "change" has arrived is that same candidate when he gets elected.The A.I.G. bonus scandal is proving to be the first precedent-setting playing field for determining whether Obama and his team mean serious business in diverting the country from the ruinous economic path taken by the Bush administration and the financial mercenaries it supported...

Dmitry Medvedev : President of Russia : Video Blog at the Kremlin

Posted on March 18, 2009
We found it educational that the current President of Russia, Dmitry Medvedev, has a video blog, with English subtitles. For someone who grew up during the "Cold War" era, the idea there there is now a domain Kremlin.ru is really quite remarkable, and shows how very far forward Russia and much of Eastern Europe have developed...

The Intellectual Property Colloquium on Patents Copyrights and Technology : Free CLE Podcast on IP : Professor Doug Lichtman : UCLA Law School

Posted on March 18, 2009
We are very impressed by the digital legal innovation that is apparent at UCLA Law School. They seem to have a law faculty at the cutting edge.One of their new online innovations is by Professor Doug Lichtman, who has "started a free CLE podcast on intellectual property topics"...

Grigory Sokolov : Prokofiev Piano Sonata No. 7 : Medici.tv

Posted on March 18, 2009
This is Grigory Sokolov playing Prokofiev Piano Sonata No. 7 from Medici.tv. Sokolov plays the piano so that you hear every note clearly, no matter how fast he is playing, and he is playing very fast. Watch his hands. Incredible art.Hat tip to CaryGEE...

Toward the Rule of Law in Russia and Eastern Europe : Dietrich André Loeber : Augusts Lebers : Latvian Supreme Court : Mentzendorff House : Riga

Posted on March 18, 2009
This posting follows thematically in the footsteps of the previous LawPundit posting.In the year 1974, I left my position as an associate with Paul, Weiss in the United States to come to Europe, heeding the call to work together with the late Professor Dietrich André Loeber at the University of Kiel Law School in Germany, where Loeber, later Dean of the Law School, was the Director of what was then called the "Institut für Recht, Politik und Gesellschaft der sozialistischen Staaten" (Institute for the Study of Law, Politics and Society of the Socialist States) , in short, "Institut für Ostrecht" (literally, Institute for "East Law"), which is now the "Institut für Osteuropäisches Recht (Institute of East European Law)...

CBS & ESPN Sports Widgets Added to LawPundit

Posted on March 17, 2009
March Madness in American college basketball is here and the golf season is under way so we have put up CBS & ESPN Sports Widgets in the right column. All law and no sports, naw.

LawPundit Posting on RSS and Atom Feed Formats Cited in MIT Masters Thesis by Anand Rajagopal: A Knowledge Services Roadmap for Online Learning

Posted on March 16, 2009
In his MIT Masters Thesis, A Knowledge Services Roadmap for Online Learning, SM, 2005 (Feb 2005), Anand Rajagopal cites to the LawPundit posting ATOM vs. RSS - Advantages of ATOM - The Monopolists Lose.The Thesis was certified by John R. Williams and accepted by Dava J...

Mickelson wins WGC as a rusty Tiger Woods putter is not up to Birdie : CNN Reports Classic Comment by Nick Watney

Posted on March 16, 2009
As reported at CNN, Phil Mickelson beat Nick Watney by one stroke to take to the WGC-CA Championship on the Blue Monster Course at Doral, where this author once played nearly 40 years ago. (I recall shooting a 74, but golf "memory" gets better as we move along in age...

Quantcast Audience Profile for LawPundit

Posted on March 16, 2009
We recently installed Quantcast on LawPundit pages and here are the currently running results:Gender: 59% of LawPundit readers are male, 41% are female. This is to be expected in the legal field.Age Groups: 30% of our readers are over 50 years of age, 45% are between 35 and 49 years of age, 22% are between 18 and 34 and 3% are between 12 and 17...

LawPundit RSS & Atom Feeds Working Again

Posted on March 15, 2009
We yelled LOUD at Google Feedburner and Blogger and the RSS & Atom feeds were up and running again in a few hours, but we have no idea whether our yelling had anything to do with it.

A.I.G. to get $165 Million of Government Bailout Money for Executive Bonuses Earned While Running the Company and the Economy Into the Ground

Posted on March 15, 2009
The A.I.G. is to get $165 million of U.S. government bailout money for executive bonuses earned while running the company and the economy into the ground. (This adds to our previous posting at LawPundit).Just how much is $165 million in REAL terms?WHO is paying their bonuses?YOU are, stupid...

March Madness NCAA Basketball Playoffs : We Favor Memphis Mizzou Gonzaga Louisville UConn UCLA & Cleveland State Vikings as likely Cinderella Team

Posted on March 15, 2009
Our pick this year in March Madness is Memphis because of their convincing win over Gonzaga in the regular season and their current 25-game winning streak, combined with the nation's number one team for defensive efficiency.If there is a potential Cinderalla team it might be the defensively tenacious Cleveland State Vikings, who under Coach Gary Waters went from 21 losses in 2006-07 to 21 wins in 2007-08 and this year stand 25-10, including a win over Syracuse and an NCAA tournament ticket win over Butler...

Economic Recovery & Executive Earnings Salaries Bonuses and Compensation: Establishing Sensible Legal Guidlelines for the Distribution of Remuneration

Posted on March 15, 2009
One of the false arguments raised for paying the outrageous A.I.G. (American International Group) bailout executives millions in bonuses is the absurd claim that such payments are necessary to retain top executive talent. How much talent does it take to lose $100 billion over the space of the last five quarterly reports? which is the claim to fame of A...

$165 Million in Bonuses to Go To A.I.G. Executives in Government Bailout : Theft by the Haves of Taxpayer Monies paid by the Have Nots

Posted on March 14, 2009
One of the major reasons for the present world economic disorder is the flawed and economically idiotic policy that the Bush administration followed from its very first days in cutting taxes for the rich and redistributing the nation's money from the middle classes and the poor to the wealthy...

Notice to LawPundit RSS and E-Mail Subscribers regarding LawPundit RSS & Atom Feeds

Posted on March 14, 2009
At the moment, the normal RSS & Atom feeds for LawPundit are not working because Google's Blogger is writing 0 bytes to our server for the atom.xml and rss.xml files. We think that the cause may be glitches in the porting of Feedburner feeds to Google, which were supposed to be concluded by the end of February, but difficulties were reported by Google about this during the week...

The Financial Crisis in the World Economy : Origins Causes Players and Solutions : Soros Outlook for 2009

Posted on March 11, 2009
To predict the outcome of a game, you should know the players. A handicapper who fixes the odds on flats or trotters in horse racing has to know the race track, the conditions, the horses, the jockeys, the length of the race and their post positions in order to have an informed idea of how the race will end...

Subscription Newsletters for Professionals at PinHawk : Corporate Financial Economic Political Federal Law Firms NYC Real Estate Blawgs Media Courts

Posted on March 06, 2009

Beth A. Wilkinson becomes a Member of Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison LLP in the Litigation Department of the Washington D.C. Office

Posted on March 06, 2009
We just received an alumni announcement in the mail that Beth A. Wilkinson has "join[ed] Paul, Weiss as a partner in the firm's Litigation Department in the Washington, D.C. office. She will practice general litigation."Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton and Garrison, known in the trade as Paul | Weiss, is in our mind the best litigation firm in the United States - it certainly was when I was an associate at that firm in the 1970's and, indeed, it was recently selected, nearly 40 years later, as the Litigation Department of the Year by the American Lawyer...

JustAnswer.com Legal Questions Answered Online : A Portent of Law Practice in the Future at the Simplest Level? or is it the Illegal Practice of Law?

Posted on March 06, 2009
We have learned never to sneeze at new developments until we have examined them carefully. It is so easy to make judgments based on preconceptions, which often turn out to be wrong.One area about which have been very skeptical is the use of the Internet as an online service for user questions to be answered by "experts", who are paid for their efforts by the questioner...

TALF is Launched with Revised Terms as part of the U.S. Financial Stability Plan for Economic Recovery : Paul Weiss Financial Crisis Resource Alert

Posted on March 06, 2009
Washington?s Financial Stability Plan (FSP), according to James Cooper at Business Week:"[R]ecognizes that a sustainable recovery depends on three things: removing the fear of bank insolvency, rejuvinating the securitization process in the credit markets, and stabilizing housing activity and home prices...

The History of Ancient Egypt : Revision Forthcoming : More Fragments of the Turin Canon of Kings (Kinglist, Papyrus) are Discovered in Italy

Posted on March 06, 2009
Evidence, evidence, evidence.THIS IS SENSATIONAL NEWS for everyone who has an interest in the history of civilization, Ancient Egypt and the chronology of the Ancient Near East, which is based to a large degree on Egyptian chronology, and that in turn is based on a papyrus known as the Turin Canon of Kings...

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