If you have something to say...
Say it on the Huffington Post
If you have something to say...
Say it on the Huffington Post
The Fort Hood shootings no more reflect on the whole of Islam or South Asians than Timothy McVeigh or James Von Brunn reflect on white, Christian males.
Jeffry Picower's untimely death left in limbo, if not totally silenced, crucial questions about the role he played in what may be the greatest disappearance act in the annals of financial history.
The news reinforces my belief that there is something rotten at the core of the financial services industry. I am not discussing old news like Bernie Madoff. Here are some items that crossed my desk this week.
A few weeks back I was in a weekend workshop with some incredible people. Over lunch one of the men that was sitting at the table began to talk about ...
Nino Selimaj offered Madoff's victims free meals for an entire week at one of his seven city Nino's restaurants where the average dinner check, with wine, runs between $85 and $95 per person.
Wealthy investors can be enticed to buy "alternative investments" like hedge funds and private equity deals. How is that working for them? Not well.
Entertainment headlines dominate week, thanks to Letterman and Polanski. Will Letterman's philandering help or hurt ratings? Will Polanski be extradited to US? Inquiring minds want to know.
Pitting bureaucrats on government salaries against the most highly compensated people in the U.S. is a bit like sending cops with .38s onto the street against gangs armed with automatic weapons.
Can any of us afford the arrogance to operate as if our point of view is the truth?
Ensuring there's no more Madoff type shenanigans has less to do with the SEC having more money, more staff, and more rules than with having the political will to crack the whip on the Wall Street.
When this season finally ends, 2009 will go down as the worst year ever in New York Mets history.
Least surprising news item of the week: former Department of Homeland Security director Tom Ridge's admission that he was pressured to raise the terror alert at the end of the 2004 campaign to help Bush win re-election. In his new book, Ridge says he felt the politically motivated manipulation was worth resigning over. But, of course, he didn't, saying nothing and staying on until after Bush won. Ridge thus joins the long line of key Bush administration officials who only come clean when it's time to cash in on their "honesty." Elsewhere, Bernie Madoff's mistress warmed the hearts of Freudians everywhere with her revelation that the famous felon "had a very small penis. Not only was it on the short side, it was small in circumference." Is that why he needed to sport the biggest Ponzi in history?
There's no point asking for refunds from managers of feeder funds, who generally are quite immune to prosecution, though the tune the piper played was paid by them.
The "Tea Party" movement flies in the face of what the true patriots in Boston stood for. Corporate lobbying-run groups are creating the illusion of grass roots protests at the health care town hall meetings.
The recession has not, Larry Summers' recent comments notwithstanding, gone away or begun to turn around, but something has changed: The recession is not new anymore.
Given what we now know, thanks to the efforts of Andrew Cuomo, one might well ask: are all scams created equally, or are some scams more equal than others?
