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  • J. Ezra Merkin to give up control over hedge funds

    Financier and philanthropist J. Ezra Merkin assented Tuesday to step down as manager of his hedge funds and to place them into receivership.

    The step was demanded by New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo, who brought civil charges against Merkin last month, accusing him of fraudulent concealment and misrepresentation for steering his clients’ money to Bernard Madoff without their knowledge or permission.

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    Merkin, the former chairman of GMAC and the scion of a prominent Jewish family, funneled $2.4 billion into Bernard Madoff Investment Securities, including millions from prominent institutions like Yeshiva University.

    Some of his investors, including New York University, New York Law School and Mort Zuckerman’s charitable trust, have brought suit against him, as has the trustee liquidating Madoff’s firm.

    The agreement, announced Tuesday in New York State Supreme Court, means that Merkin will no longer control his three hedge funds, Ascot, Gabriel and Ariel, from which he reportedly collected more than $470 million in fees over the last decade.

    “Mr. Merkin is working closely with the New York Attorney General,” his attorney, Andrew Levander, said in a statement, adding that Merkin had agreed in principle to appoint Guidepost Partners as receivers for the funds while he remains available to consult regarding the wind-down.

    Justice Richard Lowe gave Cuomo and Merkin until May 28 to finalize the agreement.

    Despite his legal and financial woes, the Jewish Week reported that Merkin is the frontrunner expected to be elected chairman Wednesday of the tony Fifth Avenue Synagogue, which his father helped found.

    Nobel Laureate Elie Wiesel, who lost most of the funds of his humanitarian foundation, as well as his personal savings, after investing with Madoff, will become one of two honorary chairmen.

    Despite consternation in some quarters, the Jewish Week said that Merkin has not been publicly opposed, perhaps because he has been one of the synagogue’s primary benefactors.

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    • Spitzer’s mood darkens during state testimony

      May 21, 2009 at 9:48am

      Two sides of former New York Gov. Eliot Spitzer’s personality are revealed in recently released transcripts of two interviews he gave on the same subject under oath last year.

    • NY Fed’s Stephen Friedman resigns over ties to Goldman

      His nickname at Goldman Sachs was “Mr. Inside,” and for decades, Stephen Friedman’s extensive contacts and expertise made him a go-to player on Wall Street.

      But it was precisely that web of connections that raised conflict-of-interest issues in his latest job as non-executive chairman of the powerful Federal Reserve Bank of New York.

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      Friedman, 71, resigned from the post Thursday amid questions about his continuing ties to Goldman Sachs, which were first raised in a Wall Street Journal story Monday.

      “Although I have been in compliance with the rules, my public service motivated continuation on the Reserve Bank Board is being mischaracterized as improper,” he wrote in a letter to New York Fed President William Dudley. “The Federal Reserve System has important work to do and does not need this distraction.”

      In its story, the Journal had disclosed that Friedman was allowed to lead the New York Fed and remain a Goldman director and shareholder, in violation of Fed policy because of Goldman’s new status as a bank holding company. The New York Fed sought a one-year waiver of that rule, which was granted by the Federal Reserve board in Washington in January.

      While the waiver was under consideration, in December, Friedman bought 37,300 more Goldman shares, the paper reported. He also bought more shares the day after the waiver came through. The purchases, which gave him a $3 million paper gain, were disclosed in Securities and Exchange Commission filings.

      Friedman originally told the Journal that his role at the New York Fed wasn’t a policy-making one and that he saw “no conflict whatsoever in owning shares” of Goldman.

      He noted that when he became an economic adviser to former President George W. Bush, he had had to sell nearly all his investments, in a process he described as “very costly and a difficult thing to manage.”

      A longtime star of the financial world, Friedman had worked as an investment banker, a private-equity executive and an economic adviser to the president.

      The bulk of his career, however, was spent at Goldman Sachs, where he held numerous executive roles. He was the company’s co-chief operating officer from 1987 to 1990, co-chairman, along with his longtime friend Robert E. Rubin, from 1990 to 1992, and the sole chairman from 1992 to 1994; he still serves as a director.

      Admired for his intelligence and low-key style, Friedman has a welter of relationships in the philanthropic world as well. He is chairman emeritus of the board of Columbia University, where he attended law school, chairman emeritus of the executive committee of the Brookings Institution, and a member of the Council on Foreign Relations.

      Out of work, he is said to be an avid chess player and wrestler. A wrestling center at his alma mater, Cornell University, bears his name. His son David Benioff, wrote the screenplay for The Kite Runner and X-Men Origins: Wolverine and is married to actress Amanda Peet. His brother, Richard, is a constitutional law scholar at the University of Michigan.

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      • Dave Bing, political neophyte, will be Detroit’s oldest mayor

        May 10, 2009 at 12:42pm

        When pro basketball hall-of-famer Dave Bing was elected May 5 as Detroit’s third mayor in less than a year, a voter turnout of just 14 percent showed they’d prefer a duke to an emperor, and age to outrage.

      • Court-appointed trustee goes after Madoff family’s wealth

        It looks like court-appointed Madoff trustee Irving Picard is going after the whole shebang: Not just Bernard Madoff’s Manhattan penthouse and home in the Hamptons, but also a good chunk of the wealth accumulated by his wife, brother and sons.

        In his latest filing in U.S. Bankruptcy Court in New York, Picard argues that the convicted swindler used his firm, Bernard L. Madoff Investment Securities (BLMIS), “as his personal piggy bank” to support “a lavish lifestyle” for himself and his wife, as well as for his brother and other members of his family.

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        “Madoff used BLMIS to siphon funds which were, in reality, other people’s money, for his personal use and the benefit of his inner circle,” Picard says in the filing submitted Tuesday evening. “Plain and simple, he stole it.”

        Picard, who is charged with returning as much money as possible to burned investors, contends that Madoff used money stolen from investors, for instance, to buy country club memberships for himself, his wife and one of his sons.

        He also loaned $9 million to his brother, the firm’s chief compliance officer, in 2007, from one of the firm’s accounts, according to the papers. Picard said there is no evidence the loan was ever repaid. Peter Madoff’s wife, Marion, was also listed on the firm’s payroll with a salary of $163,500 in 2008, although there is no indication she did any work.

        The firm also gave money to ventures begun by Madoff family members, including $1.7 million to Madoff Energy Holdings LLC, owned by Madoff’s sons Andrew and Mark, and his niece, Shana Madoff, the filing said.

        The firm paid out $4.5 million to support Ruth Madoff’s real-estate-related investments through various entities under the name “Sterling,” with no benefit to Madoff’s firm or his customers, according to the papers.

        Madoff placed his boat captain, his maid and his house-sitter in Florida on the firm’s payroll, and used the firm to provided corporate credit cards to his son’s wife and brother’s wife, even though they didn’t work for him, according to the filing.

        More than $11.5 million was used to buy two yachts for the Madoff family, the filing said. Another $4.4 million appears to have been used by Andrew Madoff last October to purchase an Upper East Side apartment, while $6.5 million was loaned to Mark Madoff and his wife, Stephanie, last spring to purchase property on Nantucket, again with no evidence that any money was repaid.

        Bernard Madoff, 71, was arrested Dec. 11 and pleaded guilty March 12 to running a $65-billion Ponzi scheme in which early investors were paid with the money of new clients. He is in jail, awaiting sentencing, and faces as much as 150 years in prison for various counts of securities fraud and other crimes.

        Picard made the allegations in connection with his attempt to consolidate the bankruptcy proceedings of Madoff’s companies with those filed against Madoff by a group of investors.

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        • Judge rejects hardship plea from ex-Detroit mayor

          May 8, 2009 at 6:36pm

          Convicted felon and former Detroit mayor Kwame M. Kilpatrick today lost a hardship bid to reduce $6,000 in monthly restitution payments to the city for his crimes.

        • Citigroup, Goldman Sachs recruit lawmakers’ ex-aides

          Lavishing lawmakers with six-figure campaign donations is not the only way banks and investment houses influence the legislative process.

          They also hire the top aides of those lawmakers, who can trade on relationships with their old bosses to pick up the phone and, say, arrange an impromptu session with Harry Reid, the Senate majority leader, or Chris Dodd, chairman of the Senate Banking Committee.

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          In the past year, top bailout recipients, including Goldman Sachs Group and Citigroup, have dispatched dozens of former congressional staffers and ex-government officials to lobby their former bosses on the financial rescue package, Mother Jones reports.

          Besides one-time aides to Democratic and Republican leaders, the magazine found that many of the lobbyists hired by financial institutions are ex-employees of congressional committees on banking, finance, and commerce, former Treasury officials and in one case, a top aide to Rahm Emanuel, now the White House chief of staff.

          Goldman Sachs, which has more than 30 ex-government officials working as registered lobbyists on staff, also tapped one-time House Majority Leader Richard Gephardt (D-Mo.) to represent its interests on issues related to the Treasury Department’s Troubled Assets Relief Program.

          Other insiders lobbying for Goldman Sachs include Faryar Shirzad, a former top economic aide to President George W. Bush and also Republican counsel to the Senate Finance Committee; as well as former SEC commissioner Richard Y. Roberts, now a principal at lobby firm RR&G LLC.

          Citigroup, which spent nearly $8 million on lobbying in 2008, is particularly adept at recruiting government insiders.

          Leading its huge in-house staff is Nicholas E. Calio, senior vice president of global government affairs, who worked for both George H.W. Bush and George W. Bush as assistant to the president for legislative affairs assistant.

          James “Jimmy” Ryan, former senior counsel to Majority Leader Reid, is another heavy hitter on the Democratic side. Ryan accompanied CEO Vikram Pandit to a recent meeting with Reid – although the senator’s spokesman Jim Manley discounted the notion that Pandit received any special treatment.

          Another star on the Democratic side is Robert Getzoff, a vice president for federal government affairs who until 2007 served as senior counsel to then-Rep. Rahm Emanuel.

          “To the best of our knowledge there has not been direct contact between Getzoff and Rahm in several months,” an Emanuel aide told Mother Jones.

          Other in-house lobbyists include Robert Schellhas, a chief of staff to former Rep. Rob Portman, a Republican from Ohio, and Michael P. Andrews, formerly of the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission

          Besides its own staff, the banking giant has also hired more than a half-dozen lobbying firms, who themselves depend on hiring veterans of the legislative and executive branches.

          Robert Cogorno, a Citigroup lobbyist who works for Elmendorf Strategies, is a former Gephardt aide and one-time floor director for Steny Hoyer (D-Md.), the No. 2 House Democrat.

          (Cogorno also lobbies for Goldman Sachs, as does his boss, Steven Elmendorf, Gephardt’s former chief of staff.) A Hoyer spokeswoman told Mother Jones that Cogorno has not lobbied the House majority leader on banking matters.

          Also on Citigroup’s lobbying team is DC attorney Robert Barnett, a former chairman of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC).

          Another new addition to Citigroup’s forces is DC Navigators, which registered in January to lobby for the bank on TARP issues. Handling the account is Cesar Conda, former Vice President Dick Cheney’s domestic policy chief.

          Under current lobbying rules, lobbyists are only required to disclose if they lobby the House, the Senate, or the executive branch, and, in general terms, which bills or issue areas they lobbied on. They don’t have to identify the legislators or aides they contacted, or what they discussed with lawmakers.

          The Honest Leadership and Open Government Act of 2007 strengthens some limitations on aides-turned-lobbyists, but former congressional staffers still need only wait a year before returning to the Hill to lobby their former bosses and colleagues.

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          • #1.   Pat 04.17.2009

            America must curb its obvious threat that allows politicians and now their staffs to rope off the areas that permit them to be first at the till of taxpayers taken hostages.

            Like the preferred beneficiaries of the United States Taxpayer Trust fund rather than elected representatives, it is what caused the first American revolution, and there is no reason to suspect that humanity is not capable of creating the conditions that necessitate another.

            Term limits and lobbying limits may be the only cure for this egotistical affliction.

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