4 ms·
At first glance, this list is a bit of a joke. Just on the first page you see Acco Brands (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ACCO_Brands http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki
by Elepsis 14y ago
At first glance, this list is a bit of a joke. Just on the first page you see Acco Brands (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ACCO_Brands http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ACCO_Brands) and Agere Systems (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agere_Systems http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agere_Systems), which shows that not even the most rudimentary fact checking went into this effort.
Unfortunate, because I think they're trying to add transparency in an area where it's badly needed. But using such a blatantly inaccurate methodology undermines pretty much everything they're trying to do.
- mherdeg 14y agoTom Ewing's paper ( http://stlr.stanford.edu/pdf/feldman-giants-among-us.pdf http://stlr.stanford.edu/pdf/feldman-giants-among-us.pdf , datestamped Jan. 2012) says they've identified 1,276 shell companies, which is quite a bit lower than the 2,201 items listed by PlainSite. (In his interview with Ira Glass, broadcast in July 2011, Ewing said there's "very close to 1,300" shell companies, http://www.thisamericanlife.org/sites/default/files/TAL441_transcript.pdf http://www.thisamericanlife.org/sites/default/files/TAL441_t... , so I guess he's been working on this for a while.)