Continuing our thoughts from yesterday. Today, we want to discuss two other big trials that are going to happen in 2023. One is the State of New York's civil action against the Trump business empire; the other is Dominion's defamation suit against Fox News. Both are politically momentous. I happen to believe that the US Justice Department will likely indict Donald Trump himself this year, but the trial on that one will have to be a 2024 spectacular. In the meantime, it has a surrogate: a civil lawsuit that New York's attorney general, Letitia James, is pressing. So, to resume our count ... FOURTH: the New York civil case. This lawsuit seeks $250 million in damages from former President Trump, other members of his family, and/or the Trump Organization for having fraudulently misvalued assets in order to cheat banks and insurance companies. The trial is set to begin this October. It isn't a crime, nor is it a tort, for a man to overstate the extent of his wealth o...
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I generally ask myself at this time of year what were the biggest stories of the past twelve months in business/financial news. Of course, I choose the ones I do largely because they illustrate an important theme, and in the list below I'll spell out and boldface the theme. Yet the theme itself isn't the story. In terms of regional mix, with this line-up I've one whole-Pacific-basin story (March). One story is Australian (December), two European (January and June), one Chinese (May) and one Middle Eastern (July), The remaining six are US based (February, April, August, September, October, November). A nice thematic point: I both begin and end with issues over different currencies both traditional and innovative. January: Currency wars I: Switzerland abandons a peg of the franc to the euro (at 1:1.20) that has lasted for more than three years. The suddenness of the abandonment takes many market participants by surprise. February: Economics of crude oil ...
I know that a lot of news has passed under the current-events bridge of late, but: does everyone remember the Batman murders in Aurora, Colorado? Summer of 2012? I recall it because the trial date in approaching (October '14) and because it has already spurred some ancillary appellate litigation in which regular readers of this blog may well have opinions. The US Supreme Court decided on May 27, 2014 that it would not hear an appeal from a decision of the highest state court in New York. That court had employed the state's "shield" law to quash a subpoena issued in Colorado. so you have issues of interstate comity, state/federal relations etc. The gist of it is that somebody involved in this case violated a trial court gag order issued by the Colorado court and talked to a reporter in New York. [A reporter for Fox News, which of course doesn't matter as a matter of legal principle at all but may matter to some readers for all I know. Further,...
I suspect that the state of Michigan, perhaps with a sharp push from a federal bankruptcy court, will eventually expand the borders of the city of Detroit. They can't expand them southward -- that's an international border after all. But I can see Detroit, with the authorization of the federal bankruptcy court, and its state capital, grabbing some of those ["white suburbs"] to the north and west. Rochester Hills, Eastpointe, Voila! wider tax base, solvency (at least for awhile), and public service ads about how "we're back!" Just to be clear I'M NOT ADVOCATING THAT! This is a reflection about what will be, not what ought to be. I remember New York scraping along at something akin to insolvency, without the help of the bankruptcy courts, in the mid 1970s. There was a good deal of talk about extending the definition of the city into Westchester and Long Island. Nothing came of it. The people in those places would have raised a stink had such a b...