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Councilman Dan Garodnick on Tishman-Speyer's strategic foreclosure of Stuyvesant-Town & Peter Cooper
It is good to elect, in this case, a councilman that has a completely different outlook on the same problem.
To this blogdiva and Eyore stan, the strategic foreclosure of Stuyvesant-Town & Peter Cooper is a sign of the coming affordable housing apocalypse. Yesterday on a quick conversation with Garodnick and his staff, I got a completely different outlook.
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Washington Times mucks up the message
An analysis conducted by the Center for Responsive Politics found that Madoff and his wife, Ruth, gave the bulk of their campaign contributions to Democrats. The couple donated $238,200 to federal candidates, parties and committees since 1991, and Democrats received 88 percent of those donations.
Madoff gave $11,400 to nine Republicans in the same time period. None of them is in office now. Former Rep. Jack Fields of Texas received the most - $5,000. Other recipients included former Sen. Alfonse D´Amato of New York, former Rep. Vito Fossella of New York and former Rep. Michael Oxley of Ohio.
And people wonder why one of the truisms of a progressive blogger is that mainstream media has always tilted to the right if not to the hard-right. read more »
Speaking of suicide bombers in blue suits
Y'all know that the crap we're seeing with AIG is intrinsically related to Bernie Maddoff's ponzi scheme, right? If you're still not sure, check out Lucinda Frank's amazing scoop over at The Daily Beast : Maddoff Employee Breaks Silence:
The employee says he only saw the 17th floor, where the fraudulent Investment Advisory operation was located, about two times. He noticed the out-of-date computers and the old-fashioned dot-matrix printers that printed out paper with green and white stripes. The computers he saw were about 15 years old, including one system that “is not even around anymore—miles away from modern Windows technology. And the statements I've seen from victims don’t look like my statements from Fidelity. They had primitive typefaces, as though they had been typed on a typewriter. Nobody sends statement like that, so maybe it was done to create the illusion of old-fashioned transparency.”
He learned that those who staffed the 17th floor were less than knowledgeable, often uneducated, often appeared incompetent. “There was this one guy, who had worked there his whole life who generated the statements but he would often not get them out on time.”
Looking back, he speculates that the faked statements were essentially done manually. He thinks two people did research as to what a blue-chip stock historically traded for and a similar price was chosen and the fake trades entered into a computer, the statements printed out and sent to unsuspecting clients. “I wonder whether everyone’s statements were basically the same, just varied a bit, because if they weren’t that would be a lot of work for the employees down there.”
Dot matrixes? Are you kidding me?!?!?!
BTW, talk about 6 degrees of Kevin Bacon : He's one of Maddoff's victims!
Also of note: read more »
There are suicide bombers in blue suits down in Pearl Street
“We had to step in, it was the right thing to do, even though it is infuriating,” Obama said, explaining why the government needed to bail out the troubled banks.
“The same is true with AIG,” he said. “It was the right thing to do to step in. Here’s the problem. It’s almost like they’ve got — they’ve got a bomb strapped to them and they’ve got their hand on the trigger. You don’t want them to blow up. But you’ve got to kind of talk them, ease that finger off the trigger.”
I miss Elliot Spitzer
There, I said it.
I am fully aware that as a feminist I should be wagging my finger at Spitzer for the rest of his life for his stupidity and hypocrisy. You know what, though? I don't give a shit these days given how Wall Street is taking down the whole country with them.
To be honest, I miss Elliot Spitzer the Attorney General more so than the Governor. No offense to Cuomo who is doing a somewhat decent job. I just sigh whenever I read a column like this one:
But wait a moment, aren't we in the midst of reopening contracts all over the place to share the burden of this crisis? From raising taxes --income taxes to sales taxes-- to properly reopening labor contracts, we are all being asked to pitch in and carry our share of the burden. Workers around the country are being asked to take pay cuts and accept shorter work weeks so that colleagues won't be laid off. Why can't Wall Street royalty shoulder some of the burden? Why did Goldman have to get back 100 cents on the dollar? Didn't we already give Goldman a $25 billion capital infusion, and aren't they sitting on more than $100 billion in cash? Haven't we been told recently that they are beginning to come back to fiscal stability? If that is so, couldn't they have accepted a discount, and couldn't they have agreed to certain conditions before the AIG dollars --that is, our dollars-- flowed?
The appearance that this was all an inside job is overwhelming. AIG was nothing more than a conduit for huge capital flows to the same old suspects, with no reason or explanation. read more »
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