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Merryl Tisch Brings Myriad Connections to Nys Education Post
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Muck Tracker Madonna Sends Donation to Earthquake Ravaged Italy
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Sandy Weill pumps $170M into Weill Cornell Medical College
Sandy Weill isn’t finished yet.
By the time he is done with the latest chapter of his life, which has been devoted to philanthropy, the ‘House that Sandy Built’ may become shorthand for Cornell Medical College, rather than now-teetering Citigroup, the financial supermarket Weill created in 1998 by merging his company, Travelers, with Citicorp.
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MAP HINTS: Boxes with + signs can be expanded by doubleclicking. Solid lines are current relations. Dotted lines are former relations. For more options, right-click on a box or click on the map tools to the left. (Requires Flash)The New York Times reports that the 76-year-old billionaire has pledged $170 million to the Weill Cornell Medical College so that the university can proceed with plans to build a new medical research building by 2013.
The philanthropist, who serves as the chairman of the board, is widely credited with helping to turn the college into a world-class medical school since making his first donation in 1998. (The Cornell Daily Sun estimates that Weill, who graduated from Cornell in 1955, has given the university over $720 million, along with his wife, since 1998.)
Weill had arranged to give $250 million to the medical school upon his death. But Cornell’s president, David J. Skorton, apparently convinced him to produce the money now, even if the sum was smaller, when the university was navigating difficult times. The school’s $5.4 billion endowment has lost more than a third of its value since last June and donations are dramatically down.
“The statement we’re trying to make is that this is a really important time to give money, whatever it’s for,” Weill told the Times.
But as the paper also notes, Weill may be trying to burnish an uncertain legacy after the near-collapse of the company he had built into the largest financial institution in the world. The financial supermarket model that he championed has also been widely discredited.
Weill, who stepped down as Citigroup’s chairman nearly three years ago, said he has been disturbed by Citi’s declining fortunes (and his own, as a result), but was focusing his energies on philanthropy.
Besides their donations to Cornell, he and his wife, Joan, have also given large sums to Carnegie Hall, where he is chairman of the board, the Hebrew Home for the Aged and Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater Foundation. Slate Magazine named him the seventh largest charitable donor in America in 2007.
“Legacies are for other people to decide,” Weill told the Times. “But my activities in the not-for-profit center seem to have a lot more staying power than what I accomplished in the for-profit arena.”
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This post is tagged with: Citigroup, Cornell Medical College, Joan Weill, Philanthropy, Recent Stories, Sandy Weill, Weill Cornell Medical CollegeRead related stories: Philanthropy · Recent Stories
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Commerce Secy Gary Locke is longtime advocate of Boeing, MicrosoftApril 10, 2009 at 8:49am
From the outset of his political career, Commerce Secretary Gary Locke was bullish about business.
Alabama senators fire first salvo in battle over defense jobs
Even before Defense Secretary Robert Gates unveiled a sweeping reshaping of defense priorities Monday, the pushback from members of Congress had begun.
Late last week, Sens. Richard Shelby and Jeff Sessions, both Alabama Republicans, put a hold on the nomination of Harvard physicist Ashton Carter to become the Pentagon’s next acquisition chief in a spat with Gates over a $35 billion refueling tanker contract for the U.S. Air Force.
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MAP HINTS: Boxes with + signs can be expanded by doubleclicking. Solid lines are current relations. Dotted lines are former relations. For more options, right-click on a box or click on the map tools to the left. (Requires Flash)The senators demanded that Gates agree to make the decision on what tanker to buy on so-called best-value grounds – a criterion that would favor the larger, but more expensive aircraft offered by Airbus and Northrop Grumman, which have pledged to assemble the jetliners destined for tanker service at a plant in the senators’ home state of Alabama.
Ashton CarterBut Gates refused, saying the criteria for the new planes should be as simple and straightforward as possible so the Air Force acquires the best aircraft for the lowest cost, according to Defense News.
Any senator can place a hold on a confirmation, which then can freeze the entire process.
The holds came hours before the Senate was to have voted on Carter and two other defense department nominees, Jim Miller and Alexander “Sandy” Vershbow. While Carter was sidelined, Miller was confirmed as the Pentagon’s deputy policy chief, and Vershbow cleared to become the next assistant secretary of defense for international security affairs.
“I still have some unanswered questions about a commitment to a fair and open tanker competition,” Sessions said in a statement.
Gates will now have to wait at least until April 22 when Congress returns from recess for Carter’s nomination to be released.
But some fear that now that the defense secretary has laid out a budget that eliminates pet programs at almost every major U.S. defense contractor, other lamakers will join the fray to hold Carter’s nomination hostage in what could devolve into a series of petty battles to preserve their district’s programs.
Carter, like his prospective boss, has written extensively about the need to discipline the defense acquisitions process. A physicist as well as a defense policy expert, he was expected to bring fresh eyes, as well as a scientist’s insights, to the acquisition process.
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This post is tagged with: , Ashton Carter, Jeff Sessions, Northrup Grumman, Politics, Richard Shelby, Robert GatesRead related stories: Politics · Recent Stories1 Comments
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You referred to the Northrop Grumman/EADS offering as “larger but more expensive”. But surprisingly, the larger more capable plane offered by Northrop Grumman/EADS and selected by the Air Force was actually less expensive than the Boeing plane.
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Commerce Secy Gary Locke is longtime advocate of Boeing, MicrosoftApril 10, 2009 at 8:49am
From the outset of his political career, Commerce Secretary Gary Locke was bullish about business.
Alabama Senators Hold Ashton Carter Nomination Hostage
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Sandy Weill Pumps 170m Into Weill Cornell Medical College
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2008 bust is boom for H. Rodgin Cohen
As the financial crisis spread wider and wider in 2008, H. Rodgin Cohen got more and more work.
For all of this, The American Lawyer magazine has named Cohen, the chairman of the law firm Sullivan & Cromwell, the No. 1 dealmaker of 2008.
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MAP HINTS: Boxes with + signs can be expanded by doubleclicking. Solid lines are current relations. Dotted lines are former relations. For more options, right-click on a box or click on the map tools to the left. (Requires Flash)By the magazine’s count, Cohen took part in at least 17 “global credit crisis-related mergers, bailouts and cash infusions” during the year.
Cohen was a key player in the sale of Bear Stearns to JPMorgan Chase, and he represented Fannie Mae in its takeover talks with the U.S. government.
He advised Lehman Brothers Holdings during its bankruptcy, just as he counseled Barclays Bank when it acquired some of Lehman Brothers.
Cohen was there for Wachovia Corporation when it was sold to Wells Fargo, and he helped Goldman Sachs become a bank holding company.
Why did Cohen get all this work?
“He probably has the most impressive reputation in terms of banking and work with Treasury and the Fed of any lawyer out there,” Stephen Ashley, former chairman of the Fannie Mae board of directors, told The American Lawyer.
“It’s like going to see a surgeon,” said Robert Steel, the former chief executive of Wachovia. “You want a surgeon who has seen a lot of these operations.”
Cohen suggested to the magazine that he’ll have plenty of work as 2009 goes on, as well.
He didn’t think the Troubled Asset Relief Program was well packaged, though he did express faith in President Obama and Timothy Geithner, the treasury secretary.
A native of West Virginia and a graduate of Harvard Law School, Cohen, 64, has worked with troubled banks for more than 30 years. In 1980, he was also involved in the resolution of the Iran hostage crisis.
In March, Cohen reportedly withdrew his name from consideration to be deputy treasury secretary.
The American Lawyer’s No. 2 dealmaker for 2008 was Edward Herlihy, a lawyer with Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz, outside counsel for Bank of America. Herlihy advised the bank in its merger with Merrill Lynch & Co.
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Commerce Secy Gary Locke is longtime advocate of Boeing, MicrosoftApril 10, 2009 at 8:49am
From the outset of his political career, Commerce Secretary Gary Locke was bullish about business.
J. Ezra Merkin sued for civil fraud in Madoff probe
J. Ezra Merkin, who steered more than $2 billion of investors’ money into Bernard Madoff Investment Securities – including millions from prominent institutions like Yeshiva University and New York University – was sued Monday for civil fraud.
In a 54-page complaint, New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo charged the financier, philanthropist and former GMAC chairman with fraudulent concealment and misrepresentation, saying that Merkin steered money to Madoff without his clients’ knowledge or permission.
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MAP HINTS: Boxes with + signs can be expanded by doubleclicking. Solid lines are current relations. Dotted lines are former relations. For more options, right-click on a box or click on the map tools to the left. (Requires Flash)The complaint charges that Merkin was not the “investing guru” he claimed to be, but instead a “master marketer,” pocketing hundreds of millions in fees from his investors and failing to disclose his own conflicts of interest. The complaint said he earned an estimated $470 million in fees from his clients for essentially diverting all their funds to Madoff.
“Merkin profited enormously from Madoff’s scheme, reaping huge commissions while investors lost all their money,” Cuomo said.
Merkin began the Ascot fund in 1992 exclusively as “feeder” fund for Madoff, according to the complaint. Ascot grew to hold $1.7 billion from 300 investors by the end of December, 2008 – earning Merkin about $25.5 million a year in fees, the complaint said.
Over 10 percent of the funds came from non-profits, including New York Law School, Bard College, and charitable trusts set up by Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel and New York Daily News owner Mort Zuckerman. Several of those investors have separately brought suit against Merkin.
Cuomo alleges that in conversations with investors, and in his quarterly reports, Merkin concealed the role Madoff played. In one presentation to a nonprofit investor, for instance, Merkin said that only 15 percent of Ascot was invested with Madoff, the complaint said. In reality, the entire fund was invested with thim.
“Merkin duped individual investors, non-profits, and charities into believing he was responsibly managing their investments, when in actuality he was dumping them into history’s largest Ponzi scheme.” Cuomo said.
Merkin sat on several prominent boards, including those of Carnegie Hall, the UJA-Federation, Yeshiva University and the Fifth Avenue Synagogue. Besides being a chairman of GMAC, the auto lender, he was a director of Cerberus, the private equity company.
The complaint contends that Merkin was aware of red-flags related to Madoff going back at least a decade, but persisted in investing with him nonetheless.
In the early 1990s, Victor Teicher, a money manager who had worked for Merkin, told him not to invest with Madoff because his steady returns were impossible, according to the complaint.
Merkin also allegedly knew of the tiny suburban New York accounting firm, Friehling & Horowitz, with one active accountant, that Madoff used – a red flag to many investors.
In his files, Merkin kept two 2001 news articles questioning Madoff’s returns – one published in Barron’s and one by a hedge fund newsletter called MARHedge, according to the complaint.
Merkin’s lawyer, Andrew Levander, released a prepared statement late yesterday, saying he was disappointed that Cuomo had filed what he called a “hasty and ill-conceived civil lawsuit, against which we intend to defend vigorously.”
Cuomo’s complaint is the second to charge a so-called Madoff feeder fund with fraud. Massachusetts regulators last week charged Fairfield Greenwich Group.
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This post is tagged with: Andrew Cuomo, Ascot Fund, Bernard L. Madoff Investment Securities, Bernard Madoff, Ezra Merkin, Madoff, Mort Zuckerman, New York University, Recent Stories, Yeshiva UniversityRead related stories: Madoff · Recent Stories0 Comments
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Murtha seeks earmarks for PMA clients; Visclosky steers clearApril 8, 2009 at 1:41pm
Consider it a tale of two congressmen in the crosshairs.
Muckety Movers Lobbying for Girls
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J Ezra Merkin Charged With Fraud for Steering Investors Money to Madoff
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2008 Bust is Boom for H Rodgin Cohen
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We are all Keynesians now – but especially Paul Krugman
Economist John Maynard Keynes, often described as the man who saved capitalism during the Great Depression, may have been the right man at the right time.
Economist Paul Krugman, who describes Keynes as his “economic idol,” may also be the right man at the right time. But supporters of Barack Obama certainly hope not.
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MAP HINTS: Boxes with + signs can be expanded by doubleclicking. Solid lines are current relations. Dotted lines are former relations. For more options, right-click on a box or click on the map tools to the left. (Requires Flash)Krugman – Nobel laureate, Princeton professor and New York Times columnist, is following in his hero’s footsteps by becoming the most prominent critic of government recovery strategies during a severe economic crisis.
Paul KrugmanDemocrats who reveled in Krugman’s constant criticism of the Bush White House are now squirming under his attack on Obama’s economic policies. While Krugman agrees with Obama’s injecting massive amounts of capital into the system to help jumpstart the economy, he believes the administration is being timid and spending too little.
The biggest fear among Obama backers is that history could be repeating itself. Here’s a passage from Liaquat Ahamed’s new book, Lords of Finance:
“During every act of the drama so painfully being played out, he refused to keep quiet, insisting on at least one monologue even if it was from offstage. … He was not a decision maker. In those years, he was simply an independent observer, a commentator. But at every twist and turn of the plot, there he was holding forth from the wings, with his irreverent and playful wit, his luminous and constantly questioning intellect, and above his remarkable ability to be right.”
Ahamed is describing Keynes’ role during the 1930s. Krugman has taken on similar prominence in the current crisis.
This week’s edition of Newsweek features him on its cover, with the headline, “Obama is wrong.”
The magazine describes Krugman as the president’s “loyal opposition,” cementing his rank as Obama’s most influential naysayer. Yet administration officials recognize that Krugman is too big to criticize.
“The Obama White House is careful not to provoke the wrath of Krugman any more than necessary,” writes Newsweek’s Evan Thomas. “Treasury officials go out of their way to praise him by name (while also decrying the bank-rescue prescriptions of him and his ilk as “deeply impractical”).”
White House bulldog Rahm Emanuel did take a sidelong swipe last month, saying that critics such as Krugman had never dealt with the legislative process. “How many bills has he passed?” Emanuel asked.
Yet Krugman has been disturbingly prescient. His book, The Return of Depression Economics, which focused primarily on the crisis in Asia, was published in 2000. It has been reissued, with updates pointing up the similarities to the current crisis.
“I believe not only that we’re living in a new era of depression economics,” he writes, “but also that John Maynard Keynes – the economist who made sense of the Great Depression – is now more relevant than ever.”
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This post is tagged with: Barack Obama, Economy, Great Depression, John Maynard Keynes, Paul KrugmanRead related stories: Economy2 Comments
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The United States of America does not have the great democracy it thinks it has. What the US actually has is a plutocracy, which is corrupt and circumvents the very values it purports to believe in.
Although I agreed with the premise of your article, it is yet another example of how party politics and jingoism in the US consumes the corporate media, and the vast majority of the population. When the right questions are asked, the commercial media and the two largest political parties ensure these questions never become part of the public discourse. Just consider how the public debates of candidates are co-opted in the US by the Republican and Democratic parties and the absolute complicity of the media. What a sham! Even Michael Moore shares in this blame when he publically begged an independent to withdraw from the presidential race while never acknowledging that not only was that independent blocked by both parties from participating in the debates, he was threatened with being charged with trespassing when he tried to attend the debates as a US citizen. Americans are so mired in this process and group think that as a nation few ask the right questions. George W. Bush is a war criminal and one of the worst in US history, but so are several other past presidents war criminals; both Republican and Democrat. As for the Obama administration, the world is hoping ( me included) the US will start living up to the values it claims to believe in. However, Obama has many of the wrong people in his cabinet. This is not a good sign for the future.
Here are a couple of questions that should be on everyone’s mind.
Why was the Bush administration’s approval ratings so high, and why was that administration elected to a second term? Yeah, we all know he lied, but why are so many so gullible when the rest of the world saw right through the propaganda?
Why has Obama appointed so many to his administration that have directly contributed to this historical global socioeconomic crisis? -
What makes you think we’re part of “the corporate media”?
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We are all Keynesians now – but especially Paul KrugmanApril 3, 2009 at 11:20am
Economist Paul Krugman, who describes John Maynard Keynes as his “economic idol,” may be the right man at the right time. But supporters of Barack Obama certainly hope not.
Muck tracker – Blackwater replaced for Iraq security jobs
The State Department has signed the private U.S. security firm, Triple Canopy, to take over the protection of U.S. diplomats in Iraq from Blackwater Worldwide, now known as Xe, reports Government Executive.
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H. Ross Perot Jr. and family will reap a fortune in Dell dealSeptember 23, 2009 at 11:49am
The last year hasn’t been easy on H. Ross Perot Jr., son of the former presidential candidate.
We Are All Keynesians Now but Especially Paul Krugman
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Muck Tracker Blackwater Replaced for Iraq Security Jobs
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G-20 triples IMF coffers
Members of the G-20 today announced a $1.1 trillion economic stimulus plan, including $500 billion for the International Monetary Fund.
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MAP HINTS: Boxes with + signs can be expanded by doubleclicking. Solid lines are current relations. Dotted lines are former relations. For more options, right-click on a box or click on the map tools to the left. (Requires Flash)The infusion will triple IMF’s resources, to $750 billion, enabling it to provide more funding to countries hardest hit by the financial crisis.
The New York Times reports that the leaders at the G20 summit in London also called for heightened regulation of hedge funds, a crackdown on tax havens and caps on executive bonuses for bankers.
“This was the day the world came together to fight back against global recession,” British prime minister Gordon Brown said.
The Wall Street Journal notes that most of the plans announced today will require substantial follow-up efforts at the domestic and international levels.
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We are all Keynesians now – but especially Paul KrugmanApril 3, 2009 at 11:20am
Economist Paul Krugman, who describes John Maynard Keynes as his “economic idol,” may be the right man at the right time. But supporters of Barack Obama certainly hope not.
G 20 Expected to Triple Imf Coffers
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Ny Art Dealer Charged With Defrauding Art Owners Investors of 88m
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