Business enlightenment in 30 min or less: Marketplace

My day typically begins with reading the news, then going for a run. When I run, I listen to APM Marketplaceat 2x speed on my iPhone (or iPod) and get smarter faster. This morning- I listened to a few shows- including the one from June 30- which was like a great album- every story was great.

If you’ve never listened- this would be a great one to start- it included this amazing story about how Congress wrote in a few lines of law that made sure their friends in banking could still afford a bigger boat:

AIG waived right to sue big banks?

Kai Ryssdal talks to the New York Times’s Louise Story about the piece she wrote with Gretchen Morgenson on AIG and how the company waived its right to sue the banks that underwrote the mortgage securities it was insuring.

via Marketplace for June 30, 2010 | Marketplace From American Public Media.

If you don’t get the “bigger boat” joke- it’s from something else I heard on Marketplace, “Ask a hedge fund manager” by the Upright Citizens Brigade theater.

And if you are still wondering about Afghanistan- they had a story on the 28th:

Afghani officials smuggling U.S. money?
According to the Wall Street Journal, billions of dollars — allegedly taxpayers’ money — are being air lifted out of Afghanistan, in the latest of a string of corruption reports from the country. Nancy Marshall Genzer reports.

No guarantees if the WSJ will leave this story up in the open- but it certainly is eye-opening:

More than $3 billion in cash has been openly flown out of Kabul International Airport in the past three years, a sum so large that U.S. investigators believe top Afghan officials and their associates are sending billions of diverted U.S. aid and logistics dollars and drug money to financial safe havens abroad.

via Afghan Hawalas Transfer Billions Out of Country – WSJ.com.

The parts about Hamid Karzai’s wealth are unbelievable. I’m sure the Special Forces Team who saved his butt while getting hit with our own bombs isn’t sitting on millions. (I read the book: The Only Thing Worth Dying For: How Eleven Green Berets Forged a New Afghanistan).

All these ideas and conversation starters- just by taking a morning run.

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