Before Pope Benedict XVI resigned and before Pope Francis I became the first Jesuit pope in the history of the Catholic Church, I published a fiction thriller, Archangels: Rise of the Jesuits. The Jesuits reject the church's financial and sexual corruption, blackmail the pope with secret documents, and...

The Wall Street Journal's Matina Stevis has a breaking story about a "strictly confidential" internal IMF (International Monetary Fund) document that reveals how thoroughly the IMF deceived the public (and investors) when it said Greece's debt levels were "sustainable." The document will be released on Thursday.

I wasn't...

On May 16, Eric Schmidt and Jared Cohen addressed the Chicago Council on Global Affairs about the ideas and opinions in their new book: The New Digital Age: Reshaping the Future of People, Nations and Business.

I was sitting in the second row, and I was in...

I've been a critic of Facebook's performance since its IPO last year. Its recent earnings report didn't fail to disappoint compared to the hype.

Mobile represents around 30 percent of Facebook's revenues and grew by just under 43 percent year-over-year (from first quarter 2012 to first quarter 2013). That...

My recently published thriller, Archangels: Rise of the Jesuits, is a tale of intrigue about Jesuits who blackmail the pope with secret documents, and force him to cede power to them to clean up financial and sexual corruption in the Catholic Church.

A couple of readers expressed...

I've posted many commentaries about widespread fraud in the financial system, ineffective regulation, moral hazard, and why, without reform, we are doomed to repeat this pattern. I'm not the only person who feels that way. This time let's hear from someone else who shares his views with eloquence.

The following...

Randall L. Stephenson, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of AT&T, has inspired me with his talent for cultivating great comedians. He must be very proud of his customer service. It's hilarious.

I've been an AT&T business customer for over 10 years, since starting up an independent consulting firm. You are...

The Wall Street Journal has a new feature section called WSJ Money, and it just launched its debut issue. WSJ Money explains it wants to give readers the sense of "sitting by a crackling campfire."

As I read, "Wealth Over the Edge," an article about...

In the months leading up to the election of the Catholic Church's new pope, I published my debut fiction thriller, Archangels: Rise of the Jesuits. Among other things, it's about the Jesuits having their fill of financial and sexual corruption in the Catholic Church, blackmailing the pope with...

If you want to know why relying on information supplied on the internet by anonymous strangers is a bad idea, look no further than Wikipedia's articles on finance. When I first put up my website in 2003, I included a (hard to find) page of a few reference...

The Vatican is the smallest independent city-state in the world, an oligarchy surrounded by Rome and ruled by the Pope. The authority of the Pope provides a law unto itself for the global Roman Catholic Church.

In recent decades, the lack of self-regulation and accountability among key members of...

I'm a reader, a consumer of books. I also write non-fiction and recently tried my first foray into fiction with a novel, Archangels: Rise of the Jesuits, a thriller about a Jesuit takeover of the Vatican's finances. To promote the novel, I put up a passive author's profile...

Winston Leonard Spencer Churchill, the man who straightened his spine and defied the Nazis with a rousing speech--before Britain's war machine was ready to take them on--was one of the great war-time leaders of the 20th Century.

His career had ups and downs, and one of the downs was...

Yesterday, Facebook announced a new search engine internal to the ring-fenced world of Facebook. For example, you could search to see if your friends "like" a movie. Too bad users can't rely on the search results to be true, and advertisers can't rely on them, either.

Fabricated Likes Make...

I tend to like nice guys. Don't we all? One of my favorite investors is John Templeton. Years after his death, he's still acknowledged as an exemplary person and great investor. But you don't have to be adorable to be a good investor. Dan Loeb, a sometimes off-color...

Bill Ackman, founder of hedge fund Pershing Square Capital Management, often claims his public analyses of companies in which his fund has investment positions are "for the good of the country." For example, he rightly criticized the management of (then AAA-rated and now junk-rated) MBIA for writing credit...

Facebook's reported user numbers appear to me to be off by a country mile. Multiple user accounts seem to be chronic. Moreover, besides run-of-the-mill fakes and duplicates, Facebook's identity-theft-enabling business model is, in my opinion, a disgrace for any U.S. public company. Yet Facebook's prospectus and 10Qs for the periods...

Facebook isn't the worst example of financial shenanigans that need investigation by the SEC, but I've chosen to give it attention recently because the general public can easily understand the mechanics of a stock pump and dump.

Facebook's underwriters currently face allegations that at its May 2012 initial...

Before I get to the fast growing fraud -- defined as a user who is not what the user pretends to be, which may or may not have legal ramifications -- let me recap some things about Facebook. A tech blogger wrote me: "I didn't realize that FB's last quarter...

Catholics are aware that some priests have affairs with adult women. Even Popes have had mistresses. The popular television series, The Borgias, is historical fiction about the intrigues and love affairs of Pope Alexander VI. Catholics are also painfully aware of cases of sexual exploitation of children by priests. Lawsuits...