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New Jersey has filed lawsuits against eight businesses for allegedly gouging customers with exorbitant prices in the days after Superstorm Sandy roared ashore, the state's attorney general said Friday.
New Yorkers railed against a utility company that has lagged behind others in restoring power two weeks after superstorm Sandy socked the region, criticizing its slow pace as well as a dearth of information. About 120,000 customers in New York and New Jersey remained without power on Sunday, including tens of thousands of homes and businesses that were too damaged to reconnect even if power was running in their neighborhood. More than 8 million lost power during the storm and some during a later noreaster storm. Separately, US Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano visited with disaster-relief workers on Sunday in the borough of Staten Islands Midland Beach neighborhood, which is still devastated two weeks after Sandy hit.
The lack of power restoration for a relative few in the densely populated region at the heart of the storm reinforced Sandys fractured effect on the area: tragic and vicious to some, merely a nuisance to others. Perhaps none of the utility companies have drawn criticism as widespread, nor as harsh, as the Long Island Power Authority (LIPA). Nearly 50,000 of the homes and businesses it serves were still without power on Sunday evening; 55,000 more could not safely connect even though their local grids were back online because their wiring and other equipment had been flooded and would need to be repaired or inspected before those homes could regain power, LIPA said. We certainly understand the frustration thats out there, LIPAs chief operating officer, Michael Hervey, said in a conference call late on Sunday.
However, he said that the storm had been worse than expected, no utility had as many workers in place beforehand as it would have liked and that power was coming back rapidly compared to the damage thats been incurred. Customers told of calling LIPA multiple times a day for updates and getting no answer, or contradictory advice. I was so disgusted the other night, said Carrie Baram of Baldwin Harbor, on Long Island, who said she calls the company three times a day. I was up till midnight, but nobody bothered to answer the telephone, she said.
Baram, 56, said she and her husband Bob go to the mall to charge their cellphones as Bob, a sales manager, goes there to work. They trek to her parents house to shower. At night, they huddle under a pile of blankets and listen to the sound of fire engines, which Baram assumes are being called out because people have been accidentally starting blazes with their generators. Its dark, an exasperated Baram said, its frightening, and its freezing.
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Capitalist pigs at their finest. So much for the private sector giving a shit about the down and out citizens.
N.J. charges 8 merchants with gouging after Sandy* - Business on NBCNews.com
New Jersey has filed lawsuits against eight businesses for allegedly gouging customers with exorbitant prices in the days after Superstorm Sandy roared ashore, the state's attorney general said Friday.
Sure, take them down. Eliminate any incentive for companies to bring energy and goods to the people who need them. Their need isn't that important so let's slow it down.
lol!The hotel, a Howard Johnson Express in Parsippany, N.J., allegedly raised its room rates to $119 after the storm, up 32 percent from the top rate of $90 just prior to the storm.
Its the biggest mystery on Wall Street. Hurricane Sandy floodwaters inundated a 10,000-square-foot underground vault downtown, soaking 1.3 million bond and stock certificates including bearer bonds that function like cash and putting them in danger of turning to mush. A contractor working for the vault owner, the Depository Trust and Clearing Corp., is feverishly working to restore the paper. But the value of the threatened notes under 55 Water St. remains unknown to all but the innermost circle of Wall Street bankers. One source said $70 billion in bearer bonds were in jeopardy.
DTCC a depository controlled by the biggest financial firms on Wall Street wont say exactly what was in its vaults, how much the notes are worth, and who owns what. Most of its member firms, including Deutsche Bank, JP Morgan Chase, Bank of America, UBS and Citi did not return calls. The exception was Goldman Sachs, whose spokesman Michael DuVally confirmed Friday to The Post that his firm stored bearer bonds in the DTCC vaults. He acknowledged they would be nearly impossible to redeem if destroyed. Yesterday morning, DuVally elaborated, and said the value of the Goldman bonds was less than $1 million. An hour later, he called back to say, The market value of bearer bonds potentially impacted is less than $10,000.
DTCC spokeswoman Judy Inosanto would say only that a variety of equities and bonds were damaged. I cant go into details. We do not provide values for security reasons. Even a contractor who bid on the cleanup and recovery job the notes were drenched in diesel- and sewage-tinged water that filled 55 Water Streets three sub-basements clammed up when asked about the damage. Its nobodys business, he said. The public doesnt need to know whats in that vault. Its between them and their customers. What is known is that for decades the vault housed millions of bearer bonds worth many times that amount in dollars. In 1990, two-thirds of the 32 million notes in the vault were bearer bonds, DTCC records showed. Even as bearer bonds matured and the notes were removed, the vault continued to hold 5.4 million bearer bonds at late as 2003.
Experts say the only hope for saving the stacks of bonds would be to freeze-dry them in a cold vacuum chamber. As the air pressure in the chamber is reduced, and heat is increased, moisture in the documents would evaporate. Security would have to oversee a tight chain of custody during the procedure, and the entire process could cost upward of $2 million. Belfor, a Texas-based recovery firm rumored to have won the job, had a trailer parked outside 55 Water St. yesterday. When asked about a contract with Goldman to recover $70 billion in bearer bonds, Belfor spokeswoman Alex Gort said, We have very strict confidentiality. Belfor workers at the site yesterday described a complete restoration job under very high security, but claimed to know nothing about the bonds.
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Capitalist pigs at their finest. So much for the private sector giving a shit about the down and out citizens.
N.J. charges 8 merchants with gouging after Sandy* - Business on NBCNews.com
New Jersey has filed lawsuits against eight businesses for allegedly gouging customers with exorbitant prices in the days after Superstorm Sandy roared ashore, the state's attorney general said Friday.
Sure, take them down. Eliminate any incentive for companies to bring energy and goods to the people who need them. Their need isn't that important so let's slow it down.
Cue the libertariards' defending of price gougers.
lol!The hotel, a Howard Johnson Express in Parsippany, N.J., allegedly raised its room rates to $119 after the storm, up 32 percent from the top rate of $90 just prior to the storm.
Sorry but I wasn't aware that hotels could ship in extra rooms. How many more people who needed housing got it because HoJO decided to gouge some people?
BTW - companies don't hand out goods based on the NEED of the consumer as you erroneously suggest in your stupid post. That's the dumbest statement of the day.
and the state owned power company left the poor schmucks out in da cold to freeze to death and bamie didn't give a hairy rats ass about dey plight.
Sure, take them down. Eliminate any incentive for companies to bring energy and goods to the people who need them. Their need isn't that important so let's slow it down.
Capitalist pigs at their finest. So much for the private sector giving a shit about the down and out citizens.
N.J. charges 8 merchants with gouging after Sandy* - Business on NBCNews.com
New Jersey has filed lawsuits against eight businesses for allegedly gouging customers with exorbitant prices in the days after Superstorm Sandy roared ashore, the state's attorney general said Friday.
Sure, take them down. Eliminate anyincentive for companies to bring energy and goods to the people who need them. Their need isn't that important so let's slow it down.
Price gougers will be prosecuted. Happens down here in Florida all the time after a hurricane.
Its human nature and that human nature sometimes sucks.
Now this is something that I was certain would bring universal condemnation.
It's nice to know I'm not so jaded that some people actually surprise me.
Now this is something that I was certain would bring universal condemnation.
It's nice to know I'm not so jaded that some people actually surprise me.
Now this is something that I was certain would bring universal condemnation.
It's nice to know I'm not so jaded that some people actually surprise me.
Why should people be condemned for doing the rational thing and helping everyone else out? Are you happy seeing people fight over 10 gals of gas?
