Farm bill is sweet for Big Sugar

May 16, 2008

THOSE CHAMPAGNE corks heard on the Inner Harbor yesterday may well have been popping at Domino Sugar, where the high prices and corporate welfare are sweeter than anything that gets loaded on the trucks.

Recent columns

• Some deals are better avoided

  May 14, 2008

  Disingenuous and naive. That's the portrayal of Chicago's Bouchard brothers, the proto-Andrew Carnegies who almost bought the Sparrows Point steel mill, in a lawsuit stemming from the deal's collapse.

• Living will can lessen the pain

  May 9, 2008

  Sure, fill out a living will because it might let you and your loved ones avoid heartache and agony at the end of your life. But here's another reason: It'll potentially save your heirs and society tens of thousands of dollars.

• Actions more important than words at Legg

  May 7, 2008

  Legg Mason CEO Mark R. Fetting is "gratified to see some daylight on the horizon." There is "some performance improvement" in Legg's mutual funds, he told analysts on yesterday's conference call. "The fundamentals are encouraging."

• Airline mergers much nonsense

  May 2, 2008

  If the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result, book dates with a shrink for CEOs Richard Anderson and Doug Steenland.

• Boomers planting a debt bomb

  April 30, 2008

  The biggest U.S. financial crisis isn't the housing crunch. It's the government debt bomb being planted by baby boomers to explode in the faces of their children and grandchildren

• J. Bank plays it close to the vest

  April 25, 2008

  Jos. A. Bank Clothiers stock has fallen by nearly half since last spring. The menswear chain is defending itself against two shareholder lawsuits. Analysts worry it might get squeezed between a falling economy and rising costs. "Short sellers," who will profit if the shares fall further, are betting on it.

• Power: Same old thing best deal

  April 23, 2008

  Jennifer and Rob Brewington of Glenwood switched to an alternative electricity supplier two years ago, saved a few dollars and figured they would renew when the deal expired in June. That was before they checked the details.

• Bet on oil as the newest bubble

  April 18, 2008

  The Fed is printing money to clean up the housing bubble, which was fueled by the money it printed to clean up the Internet bubble. The only question is what kind of bubble the new money will inflate.

• Executive-pay disclosure rules are a failure

  April 16, 2008

  Last year, SEC Chairman Christopher Cox pleaded with corporations to use "plain English" in reporting executive pay and avoid "the legalese and the jargon" that make proxy statements more like insurance policies than helpful guides for shareholders.

• Ferris missed a chance to act

  April 11, 2008

  David A. Dadante was making questionable stock trades almost immediately after Ferris Baker Watts took him on as a client in early 2003.

• Openness needed in electricity market

  April 9, 2008

  When bids from power providers to provide electricity to BGE households flunked a test to ensure fair prices two years ago, Maryland regulators changed the rules and approved high offers anyway, a new report shows.

• Rebates likely to get us bill of goods

  April 4, 2008

  Yikes, we almost had an adverse economic event there. But we'll soon be wading in dough, thanks to the grown-ups in Washington and Annapolis.

• This is no time for BGE to fail Fuel Fund

  April 2, 2008

  Electric bills are higher than ever. The economy is slowing. What a great time for Baltimore Gas and Electric not to renew a big cash grant for the Fuel Fund of Maryland, which helps low-income families pay energy bills and whose reserves have fallen by 80 percent.

• BGE settlement settles little

  March 28, 2008

  As the governor who promised to stop the BGE rate increase and got hammered for failing, Martin O'Malley surely must be happy to get something back for customers.

• Point's future is up to Annapolis

  March 26, 2008

  The global economy has done its part: Russia's OAO Severstal has agreed to buy the Sparrows Point steel mill and invest in badly needed upgrades.

• Credit-mess tab is coming due: Guess who pays?

  March 19, 2008

  You may not know it yet, but you're about to join Ben S. Bernanke and Henry M. Paulson Jr. in the effort to clean up toxic mortgages.

• Bear Stearns fiasco is regulatory failure

  March 18, 2008

  There are uncountable culprits and dupes in the extraordinary chain of events that finished Bear Stearns, Wall Street's fifth-largest investment bank.

• Md. shaken but base is rock steady

  March 14, 2008

  Economic soothsayer Stephen Fuller recently suggested that recessions are for places such as Florida and Michigan - not Washington-Baltimore.

• Spitzer stood up to Wall St. piggery

  March 12, 2008

  Whatever Eliot Spitzer may have done in Room 871 at the Mayflower Hotel in Washington on Valentine's Day, he was the right person at the right time on Wall Street in the early 2000s. Of course Wall Street does not acknowledge this.

• Clawbacks are gaining favor

  March 7, 2008

  CEOs are different from you and me. They get paid for failure. They get overpaid for success.

• Fed helps fuel high gas prices

  March 5, 2008

  Under the forces of supply and demand, gasoline prices should be falling, giving a break to households and placing a cushion under the falling U.S. economy.

• Another shaky line in the sand

  February 29, 2008

  Pay no attention to multimillion-dollar paper losses in our investments, says Provident Bankshares. The market doesn't value them correctly, and the losses are just temporary.

• Why BWI flights to Paris lack wings

  February 27, 2008

  There are so many opportunities for BWI airport to start offering a half-decent menu of international routes - and so many reasons that little may come of them.

• The latest spin on huge paydays

  February 22, 2008

  The requirement for public companies to include stock options in reported costs is two years old. The art of pretending stock-option expense doesn't matter is still reaching new heights.

• Legalizing same-sex marriage is sensible

  February 20, 2008

  Societies that are tolerant, free and diverse tend to be richer and happier than societies that aren't. Maryland has shown this for decades.

• Primary voters have real choices

  February 8, 2008

  Critics of American politics - generally from the left - often say there's no difference between Democrats and Republicans.

• Soul-searching at Ferris

  September 12, 2007

  So Stifel Financial and a few other companies are interested in buying Ferris Baker Watts. No big news there. Ferris has been getting buyout feelers for years.

• It's still possible to get a deal on BGE power

  June 10, 2007

  Worried about the 50 percent price increase for BGE electricity that took effect June 1? Here's where to buy juice for less - and save maybe $200 a year or more.

• Fixing Md.'s deregulation will be harder than its start

  May 27, 2007

  You thought Steve Larsen could mutter an incantation, lift his eyes to heaven and make BGE's electricity-price increase vanish?

• Being free of Mittal is a good thing for the Point

  February 21, 2007

  Getting sold by Mittal Steel might be the best thing to happen to Sparrows Point in a long, long time.

• Ground rent law violates the principles of due process, fair play

  December 13, 2006

  Because Deloris McNeil missed paying a $96-a-year ground rent bill, she lost the Fayette Street house she had bought for $44,500 and lived in for years. The tiny, delinquent bill morphed into creditor-seizure powers that trumped fair play, common sense and fundamental rights.

• However it's spun, Baltimore is losing a headquarters

  December 20, 2005

  As sales of key corporate citizens to out-of-town landlords go, the merger of Constellation Energy with FPL Group isn't that bad. So why are they trying to spin us like a dynamo in a heat wave?

• U.S. probes grant to city nonprofit

  October 2, 2005

  The U.S. Education Department's inspector general is investigating whether a senior official of the agency improperly helped the National Federation of the Blind win a key federal grant around the time she was discussing taking a job at the Baltimore-based nonprofit.

• Big rise in Md. tax revenue is partly credited to home sales

  July 31, 2005

  WHAT'S BEHIND the surprising spurt in Maryland tax collections and what Gov. Robert L. Ehrlich Jr. calculates is a billion-dollar budget surplus?

• Reform goes back to start on nonprofit boondoggle

  July 20, 2005

  FAITHFUL READERS know about a $2 billion federal boondoggle called the Javits-Wagner- O'Day program, which pays peanuts to disabled people working on no-bid government contracts, enriches nonprofit executives and operates with little oversight or control.

• A warning to charitable donors and a case for tougher disclosure laws on nonprofits

  June 19, 2005

  RIIIING. IT'S the National Federation of the Blind of Oregon, calling across that state. They want money "to help the blind of the area," according to a fund-raising script from 2003.

• Nonprofits seem in no big hurry to fix their problems

  March 2, 2005

  The nonprofit-industrial complex knows it has a problem.

• Chimes, other charities are object of badly needed reform

  December 5, 2004

  FEDERAL authorities have launched a tax probe of Baltimore-based Chimes Inc. and have proposed sweeping governance standards, including executive salary limits, for Chimes and other nonprofit groups that get $2 billion annually from taxpayers to employ the disabled.

• The lights start to flash at end of the blackout

  August 20, 2003

  IN ECONOMICS there's a heads for every tails, a pull for every push, and the happy reciprocal of the Blackout of 2003 will be the purchase of billions of dollars' worth of electrical transmission hardware.

• Citigroup gets a black eye in Rusnak caper

  May 28, 2003

  JUST WHEN you thought it was safe to walk down Wall Street again without two Dobermans to repel the white-collar muggers, Allied Irish Banks brings new allegations of misdeeds against Bank of America and Citigroup.

• Bailout pays airlines for years of bad management

  September 30, 2001

  AS HE pursued his doomed merger with United Airlines earlier this year, US Airways chief executive Rakesh Gangwal said "there is no Plan B" if regulators were to block the deal.