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Biography
Destor23 (Michael Maiello) is a New York based columnist, performer, fiction author and playwright. He worked for ten years at Forbes Media, writing and editing for both Forbes Magazine and Forbes.com. He is also the author of the 2004 book Buy The Rumor, Sell The Fact: 85 Wall Street Maxims and What They Really Mean. He has performed stand up comedy at The Laugh, The Comic Strip and the Philadelphia Fringe Festival and now reads regularly with Mama D's Arts Bordello in New York. He has had three plays published (Night of Faith and Waiting For Death by Playscripts.com and Principia by The New York Theatre Experience). He currently writes a weekly column for The Daily, a News Corp. publication designed for tablet computers (his column appears Wednesdays and is generally the focus of a related post here at dagblog).

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Derisive Religion Mocking

by destor23 2/22/2012 - 1:20 pm   |

Pssst.  I'd like to be president of the United States but before you vote for me, there's something you need to know.  I believe, literally, that Star Wars is a true story.  I believe in both the Old Testament story of Luke and Vader (parts IV-VI) and the New Testament origin of Vader (Parts 1-3 and The Clone Wars cartoon series).

Does this make me an unfit leader? [Read more]

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U.S. Treasury Bites Labor at GM

by destor23 2/15/2012 - 4:41 pm   |

According to GM's last proxy, the U.S. government still owns 32% of the company.  So it's pretty sad to see that one the eve of reporting it largest ever annual profit ($8 billion) the company is freezing pay, cutting bonuses and ending pension benefits for salaried workers. Meanwhile, CEO Daniel Akerson's has been targeted to receive cash and stock worth $9 million a year. [Read more]

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The U.S. Government Does Not Believe That Homeowners Deserve Help

by destor23 2/9/2012 - 10:28 am   |

Two big stories in the foreclosure mess today, both of them depressing.  The first, via Atrios, was broken by Bloomberg and reveals that Fannie Mae, which owns billions worth of underwater mortgages, canceled a program where the agency, as the holder of the debt, would write down the principal due on underwater mortgages to bring them more in line with present home values because executives were, "philosophically opposed to writing down principal balances." [Read more]

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Freedom of Religion or Freedom From Laws?

by destor23 2/7/2012 - 12:09 pm   |

Your religion, should you choose to have one or choose to hang onto the one you were born with, is your own.  I will never take it away from you and would prefer that you not try to force it on me.  Our society, however, is not entirely your own or mine.  It is ours and we sometimes have to make rules for it. [Read more]

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America's People Can't Have Jobs Because They're People

by destor23 1/25/2012 - 6:20 pm   |

Today, in my purely masochistic Thomas Friedman reading ritual, I followed a link to a long (and well written) article called "Apple, America and a Squeezed Middle Class," that I recommend to you because of the truth that it quietly reveals: [Read more]

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Fascism!

by destor23 1/18/2012 - 11:25 am   |

Recently, a new blogger here by the name of Iron Bolt Bruce has posted a couple of provocative pieces about the rise of fascism in America.  He's twice traced a timeline, of sorts, describing the evolution of various security legislation, ending at a proposal to strip suspected domestic terrorists of their rights of citizenship. [Read more]

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Idiocy and Ratings Agencies

by destor23 1/13/2012 - 9:21 pm   |

In August, Standard & Poor's downgraded U.S. Treasury debt, judging our political system broken enough to create some miniscule risk of default, whereas their previous rating judged our political system a smidgen competent enough to likely avoid a miniscule risk of default.

Bondholders knew that S&P was all wet and bid up the prices of Treasuries so long as stocks looked risky.  That's what happens when you're a sovereign that controls your own currency and controls a currency that the world uses as it's reserve. [Read more]

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Romney and Bain

by destor23 1/13/2012 - 11:16 am   |

The Daily asked me to debate an able writer from the American Enterprise Institute about whether or not Mitt Romney's years at Bain Capital are worthy of our praise of criticism.  I think I was pretty even-handed here, as I really don't have it out for the private equity industry, or the finance industry in general.  I think we should have a healthy, vibrant way to help allocate resources towards people's business ventures. [Read more]

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Obama's Big Chance

by destor23 1/11/2012 - 9:02 am   |

This week in The Daily, I wrote about the Federal Reserve's white paper urging Congress to act to make it easier to convert foreclosed homes into rental properties, in order to support the real estate markets.  I was happy to see the Fed come to this conclusion, four years too late. [Read more]

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Anthropomorphic Corp. and Mitt

by destor23 1/4/2012 - 10:21 pm   |

I see from Talking Points Memo that Mitt Romney has now rehearsed and mastered a response to questions about why he referred to corporations as "people."  Talking about some mega corporation, or even a small one, the way we talk about the neighbor next door might sound like a faux pas to us but I think that a lot of people are going to find Romney's explanation rather compelling and even convincing. [Read more]

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