Tag Archives: kleptocrats

Hedge Fund Lobby Steps Up The Lobbying..

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The hedge fund lobby is stepping up the..er… whining and dining in DC, says, Crain’s:

“With all the political and media focus on healthcare reform over the past few months, the financial industry enjoyed a brief respite from attacks and, as would be expected, spent its time and money wisely.

The hedge fund lobby, called the Managed Funds Association, doubled its spending during the last three months of 2009, according to data recently released by the Federal Election Commission. The MFA strategically sprinkled more than $1 million around Washington in the fourth quarter, compared to just $520,000 spent during the same period in 2008.”

Apparently, the hedgies don’t mind registering. What they’re kicking at are some other things:

1. Treating compensation as regular income (with its higher tax rate) rather than capital gains (with its 15% tax rate)

2. The banning of proprietary trading by banks, until now a lucrative source of income, the so-called Volcker rule.

The part I found really interesting in the Crain’s piece is that industry CEO Richard Baker apparently thinks there is a “growing alignment between hedge funds and millions of Americans.”

Oh yeah.

That would be that trader-activist mystique thing where Loeb, Paulson, and Chanos are really doing it for the little guy…….the money is just a side dish.

Um. Yeah. I get that.

And talking about side dishes, I hear that Rachel Uchitel’s interests are just aligned with  Joe Six-pack’s too. She isn’t an extortionist and a gold-digger. Oh no. That’s just what it looks like. She’s a conjugal activist. She trying to get Tiger and all those other rovin’ eyes out there to be better husbands…..

Hanky-Panky At The Counting House

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I thought I’d repost a piece that I wrote in Dissident Voice, way back in 2006. It helps give some background to the JP Morgan manipulation story.

And it also adds some background to the ongoing re-valorization of the once discredited IMF. Along with that re-valorization, is the hyping of anyone supporting even further central regulation, although the financial crisis occurred in all sorts of places that have plenty of it.

All this centralization and global government is supposedly for the welfare of the world – but there is no “welfare of the world” that can be safely accepted as gospel from the mouths of the financial industry and its political and media allies.

Note the date of the piece below – back on June 6, 2006, when, dare I say it, most of the financial talking- heads and blogs now being treated as the only legitimate interpreters of reality were doing…well, they weren’t reading GATA or supporting its work, I’m pretty sure. To have done so then would have made them persona non grata in the very same liberal media that is now embracing this research and that GATA, in turn, seems to be endorsing….for its own reasons..

Check it out for yourself.

Here’s an excerpt from the piece: “Hanky-Panky at the Counting House” (June 6, 2006)

Also, at Dissident Voice, you can find “Was The IMF Involved in Gold Price Manipulation” (June 8, 2006) which was also posted at Daily Reckoning and on one of the gold sites.  I think it’s been taken off Daily Reckoning since.

“The unofficial theory is naturally a lot juicier, although described by even sworn enemies of paper currency as conspiratorial. Still, it’s managed to rear its head in the Wall Street Journal, so it can’t be all wet. Here is what widely respected libertarian Congressman Ron Paul had to say on Feb 14, 2002:

While the Treasury denies it is dealing in gold, the Gold Anti-Trust Action Committee (GATA) has uncovered evidence suggesting that the Federal Reserve and the Treasury, operating through the Exchange-Stabilization Fund and in cooperation with major banks and the International Monetary Fund, have been interfering in the gold market with the goal of lowering the price of gold. The purpose of this policy has been to disguise the true effects of the monetary bubble responsible for the artificial prosperity of the 1990s, and to protect the politically-powerful banks that are heavy invested in gold derivatives. GATA believes federal actions to drive down the price of gold help protect the profits of these banks at the expense of investors, consumers, and taxpayers around the world.

GATA has also produced evidence that American officials are involved in gold transactions. Alan Greenspan himself referred to the federal government’s power to manipulate the price of gold at hearings before the House Banking Committee and the Senate Agricultural Committee in July, 1998: Nor can private counterparts restrict supplies of gold, another commodity whose derivatives are often traded over-the-counter, where central banks stand ready to lease gold in increasing quantities should the price rise. [Emphasis added] (3)

More specifically:

Gold is borrowed by Morgan Chase from the Bank of England at 1 percent interest and then Morgan Chase sells the gold on the open market, then reinvests the proceeds into interest-bearing vehicles at maybe 6 percent.

At some point, though, Morgan Chase must return the borrowed gold to the Bank of England, and if the price of gold were significantly to increase during any point in this process, it would make it prohibitive and potentially ruinous to repay the gold. (4)

In plain English, the strong dollar policy that put the sizzle in the stock market under Clinton was made possible only by manipulating the gold market to keep prices low. The low interest rates which kept the economy on the boil went hand in hand with low gold prices. Investment banks used the low rates to borrow gold from the central banks and sold them short (short selling being the technique of selling assets you don’t actually own in the hope of buying back at a cheaper price because you anticipate a fall in the price). This allowed the banks to make billions from a market rigged to take the risk out of their shorting. And it kept the dollar pumped up. And who was the architect of this strong dollar policy? Why, none other than Robert Rubin of Goldman Sachs — one of the bullion banks most implicated in the gold fixing scenarios.

So, the appearance of another Gold-man at this critical moment is all the proof the gold cartel theorists need that more manipulation is in store to keep the dollar up, gold down, and the bullion banks from losing their . . . er . . .  shorts. (5)

And if this seems conspiratorial, consider what Paul Mylchreest, investment analyst at Cheuvreux, top ranked for its research in Western Europe and part of Credit Agricole, the largest bank in France says today, “Central banks have 10-15,000 tonnes of gold less than their officially reported reserves of 31,000. This gold has been lent to bullion banks and their counterparties and has already been sold for jewellery, etc. Non-gold producers account for most and may be unable to cover shorts without causing a spike in the gold price…” (6)

Or what the Wall Street Journal itself wrote about what took place in the seventies:

Worried the falling dollar was undermining its anti-inflation efforts, the Carter administration announced a multi-part support package on Nov. 1, 1978: The Treasury would use gold sales and foreign borrowing and draw on its reserves with the International Monetary Fund to defend the dollar. At the same time the Federal Reserve raised its discount rate a full point. (7)

And that was in the ’70s, when there was no credible alternative to the dollar, India and China were sleeping giants, Russia was still the Soviet Union, and the United States was not threatening to nuke the Middle East.

How bad is the situation?

[A]s of June 2000, J.P. Morgan reported nearly $30 billion of gold derivatives and Chase Manhattan Corp., although merged with J.P. Morgan, still reported separately in 2000 that it had $35 billion in gold derivatives. Analysts agree that the derivatives have exploded at this bank and that both positions are enormous relative to the capital of the bank and the size of the gold market.

It gets worse. J.P. Morgan’s total derivatives position reportedly now stands at nearly $29 trillion, or three times the U.S. annual gross domestic product. Wall Street insiders speculate that if the gold market were to rise, Morgan Chase could be in serious financial difficulty because of its “short positions” in gold. In other words, if the price of gold were to increase substantially, Morgan Chase and other bullion banks that are highly leveraged in gold would have trouble covering their liabilities. (8)

That was 2000. This is 2006.

So long as gold remains a mere relic . . . a yellow reminder of what used to be money . . . no harm done. Unless something absurd happens, that is. Something absurd like, say, gold doubling to $573 an ounce inside 5 years. If that happened, then the “carry trade” of borrowing gold to invest in paper could become a very expensive way to bankrupt the entire global financial system. (9)

This spring gold hit over $700. And that’s why the hanky-panky is likely to begin in earnest now.

Lila Rajiva is a freelance writer in Baltimore, and the author of the must-read book The Language of Empire: Abu Ghraib and the US Media (Monthly Review Press, 2005) She can be reached at: lrajiva@hotmail.com. Copyright (c) 2006 by Lila Rajiva

NOTES

(1) “Good as Goldman: Bush drafts Hank to bat third,” Daniel Gross, Slate, Tuesday, May 30, 2006.

(2) “Please, Sir, I Want Some More. How Goldman Sachs is carving up its $11 billion money pie,” Duff Mcdonald, New York Metro, Dec 21, 2005.

(3) Speech of Congressman Ron Paul, U.S. House of Representatives, February 14, 2002, www.house.gov/paul

(4) “All That Glitters Is Not Gold,” Kelly Patricia O’Meara, Insight Magazine, March 4, 2000.

(5) According to GATA, the cartel includes J.P. Morgan Chase, Deutsche Bank, Citigroup, Goldman Sachs, Bank for International Settlements (BIS), the U.S. Treasury, and the Federal Reserve

(6) “How Central Banks Have Kept Gold Down,” Adrian Ash, Money Week, February 9, 2006.


(7) “As Dollar Weakens, Hidden Strengths May Stave off Crisis,” Wall Street Journal, January 17 2005.


(8) See Note 4.

(9) See Note 6.

JP Morgan Gets $3.4 Billion For Buying Wa-Mu; Shareholders Get Zip

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At Seeking Alpha, Troy Racki writes about the second rape of Washington Mutual stock-holders and US tax-payers by JP Morgan:

“In the settlement offer WaMu will relinquish all claims against JP Morgan and the FDIC. In return WaMu will be allowed to keep a $3.9 billion dollar deposit it held in its own bank. Most of the $3.9 billion deposit was generated from the sale of preferred securities in 2006 and 2007. Additionally WaMu will be allowed to keep $1.8 to $2.0 billion of its own tax return created from huge losses in 2008. The rest of the projected $5.6 billion return will be split between the FDIC and JP Morgan.

According to the settlement terms JP Morgan will receive $5 billion in HELOC backed securities valued on the open market at 60% of par, $193 million in Visa class B securities, $2.1 billion in cash, and a $20 million wind farm, all from WaMu. Given the initial purchase price of WaMu for $1.9 billion in 2008, these additional assets received means that JP Morgan will pay a negative $3.4 billion for their purchase of the bank.

The loss of these assets will heavily impact WaMu’s balance sheet which now stands to make only the bondholders whole, according to the settlement’s disclosure statement. Currently senior WaMu holding company debt trades at 106 cents on the dollar.

Under the terms of the settlement WaMu shareholders will receive nothing.

In the disclosure statement WaMu’s attorneys stated that the proposed settlement will net the most for all creditors and that further legal dispute would only financially harm the estate. This comes in stark contrast to prior statements by WaMu’s equity counsel that a protracted legal battle with JP Morgan and the FDIC may have returned up to $20 billion to the estate.

Currently the settlement is awaiting the approval of the FDIC, Washington Mutual bank bondholders, WaMu unsecured creditors, WaMu preferred shareholders, and the bankruptcy judge. An incomplete plan of reorganization was also filed on Friday along with the disclosure statement. The incomplete POR lacks a balance sheet meaning that WaMu’s unsecured creditors are left only to guess at what they may eventually recover, if anything.

Despite the negative purchase price, Jamie Dimon, CEO of JP Morgan has indicated that the purchase of WaMu could have been closed for less, much less. In July 2009 he stated that JP Morgan “could have bought WaMu for a dollar” because of the projected losses that would have been taken on the deal.

The losses never materialized. In May 2009, JP Morgan wrote up its WaMu loan portfolio by $25 billion.

Had the $1 purchase price gone through JP Morgan would have eventually been paid $5.1 billion by WaMu and the FDIC to assume the bank.

While the deal may be good for JP Morgan, former WaMu customers are not so fortunate. Nationally many WaMu Providian credit card customers have since experienced dramatic rate increases. In Oregon, WaMu checking clients report that deposits are being held for fourteen days prior to being accredited to accounts. This abnormally long waiting period means that many checking customers are now being hit by multiple $35-a-peice overdraft charges for having insufficient funds. In northern California, out-the-door waiting lines for teller service at one branch sparked verbal outrage and multiple client threats to move deposits to a community bank branch. The branch responded after twenty minutes by temporarily adding a teller.

Meanwhile FDIC chairwoman Sheila Bair is continuing to push for additional powers that would allow the FDIC to not only shutter banks but their holding companies. This authority would allow for the FDIC to avoid future conflicts when it closes a bank but is unable to force a holding company to capitulate, as is in the case with WaMu. It has come under scrutiny after internal JP Morgan e-mails and PowerPoint presentations revealed that as early as March 2008 regulators were in negotiations with JP Morgan on the closure of Washington Mutual, termed “Project West”, six months prior to the bank’s seizure.”

More later…

Celente: Report Shows JPMorgan, Citi Helped Push Lehman Under

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Gerald Celente: JP Morgan and Citi acted like mobs bosses in torpedoing Lehman.

Note: the bankruptcy examiner’s report shows Lehman cooking its books to look less levered than it was, but the Federal Reserve Bank of New York (FRBNY) (Mr. Geithner, that would be you) abetted it. So did the SEC, and JP Morgan and Citi acted like cannibals (or street gangs…or mob bosses), as they tried to wipe out their rival.

Well, we said so at the time, in a post called“Statistics Don’t Back Panic Mongers” (October 2008).

And even before that.

Except for the fact that the Wall Street gang uses money, ratings, and other “adult” world paraphernalia, they’re not much more than hooligans who didn’t get toilet-trained right.

Let’s see:

Finger-pointing: He did, teacher, I didn’t (Politicians to voters, voters to politicians)

Avoiding responsibility: But you told us we could (Wall Street to Main Street, home-owners to lenders, managers to accountants, lawyers)

Succumbing to peer pressure: Everyone does it ( Book-cooking managers, lazy reporters, colluding speculators)

Blaming the victim: He deserved it (Corporate raiders, naked short-sellers, media shills)

Mexican President Nominated For Citi Director

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Robert Wenzel at Economic Policy Journal:

“Citi’s Board of Directors has nominated Ernesto Zedillo as a new non-management director candidate to stand for election at Citi’s annual shareholder meeting on April 20, 2010. He was the President of Mexico from 1994 to 2000 and is now Director of the Yale Center for the Study of Globalization and Professor in the Field of International Economics and Politics at Yale University.

Zedillo (58) worked at Mexico’s Central Bank (Banco de Mexico), serving in various positions, including those of deputy Head of Economic Research and deputy Director. Zedillo is on the boards of Alcoa Inc. and Procter & Gamble Company.

Obviously, despite the fact that it almost blew itself up because of schemes far from traditional banking, Citi continues to take the New World Order approach to banking.

There is nothing wrong with Citi attempting to penetrate into Latin America for business but, putting a former Mexican president on the board smacks of penetration via back door crony government deals versus attempting to serve the serve the consumer in the Latin American countries.

Sure, you have to deal with the crooked governments in these countries, but that’s what you have connected law firms for. They get things done in a very low key efficient manner. Putting Zedillo on the board sends a different signal, that Citi will not only deal with Latino politicians, but that it is part of the crooked club.”

Financiers Used 9-11 Diversion of FBI to Loot American Middle-Class

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Great interview at Forbes, between Steve Forbes and Senator Ted Kaufman on the capital markets, naked short selling, the uptick rule, sponsored access, HFT (high frequency trading) and digitalization, dark pools, and fraud…

“Forbes: Finally, Fraud Enforcement Recovery Act.
Kaufman: Yeah, yeah.
Forbes: You’re proud of it.

Kaufman: Yeah, I am.

Forbes: What it does, and what will it do?

Kaufman: OK, here’s what it did. After 9/11, we moved a lot of FBI agents over to cover terrorism, which we should have done. But we left only like 250 FBI agents in the country to cover financial fraud. We did more financial fraud cases in 2001 than we did in 2007, can you believe that? So, what we did with this financial and regulatory forum, with Pat Leahy, who is chairman of judiciary committee and Chuck Grassley, an Iowa Republican. It’s a bipartisan bill and we got a bill passed to give us more FBI agents, give us more prosecutors and to go after these folks. And so that’s basic what we passed, and we’re getting organized. Had a really good hearing of the judiciary committee. Rob Khuzami at the Securities Exchange Commission, Lanny Breuer’s head of the criminal division, Kevin [Perkins] from the FBI financial thing.

And we’re really, we’re going after this thing. And I know you agree with me. You know, if you, the folks that committed crimes while this thing was going on, we can all argue about what caused it or not, anybody who took advantage of this situation and lined their own pocket for it should go jail.”

Did Bethany McLean Even Break The Enron Story?

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n “Enronathon,” Seth Mnookin of The Wall Street Journal suggests Bethany McLean wasn’t quite the first person to break the story of Enron…and that she had a good bit of unacknowledged help:

“If journalism were in the Olympics, the Enron story might well be pairs figure skating. Bethany McLean, the young Fortune writer who first wrote about Enron’s shady finances a year ago, has, of course, already been awarded the gold.

And with that have come the requisite endorsements: In the past two months, she was hired as a consultant by NBC News and shared in a $1.4 million deal to co-author a book on the scandal. But another team is also vying for top honors — amid complaints about shoddy judging.

Reporters and editors at the Wall Street Journal believe their work has been unjustly ignored, with some wondering whether Pulitzer rivals like the Washington Post and the New York Times have gone out of their way to praise McLean.

Enron did not collapse under its own weight,” says Jonathan Friedland, the Journal editor who’s been in charge of much of the paper’s Enron coverage. “Without our reporting, I don’t think any of this would have happened.”

In response, McLean’s former editor at Fortune and current Time Inc. editorial director John Huey says, “Bethany was the first journalist in a widely respected national publication to suggest that the emperor at Enron had no clothes.” (Not that her own publication took much note: Fortune had to airbrush out Kenneth Lay from a November SMARTEST PEOPLE WE KNOW cover photo.) Let’s recap: In September 2000, Jonathan Weil wrote a long story for the now-defunct Texas edition of the Journal about odd accounting at various Texas-based energy traders; it included four paragraphs on Enron.

James Chanos, a well-known short-seller who was one of the first to start unloading Enron stock, says he got interested in the company after reading Weil’s piece.

Almost six months later, in March 2001, the then 30-year-old McLean (who Times columnist Maureen Dowd has suggested will be played by Alicia Silverstone in the inevitable movie) wrote her little-noticed 2,400-word story, “Is Enron Overpriced?”

Then, in October, the Journal ran a three-day series by Rebecca Smith and John Emshwiller detailing Enron’s unorthodox partnerships. Their articles are seen by many on Wall Street as ultimately sinking the company. Weil’s partisans think he should get credit for crossing the finish line first (an item, “Credit Due,” ran in “Page Six” recently).

But even Chanos says that “Bethany’s piece was the first one to raise really specific questions.”

Most of the Journal‘s brain trust, though, are plugging Smith and Emshwiller, who, of course, wrote their stories in 2001 and are thus eligible for this year’s Pulitzers. “The Fortune story basically said this is a company that nobody understands,” says Journal deputy managing editor Daniel Hertzberg. “It didn’t show what was wrong with the company. It took Becky and John to do that.” That’s the competition.

Now for the judging. In January, Howard Kurtz, the Washington Post‘s media writer, highlighted McLean as the first journalist to ask questions about Enron. Ten days later, the Times‘ Felicity Barringer wrote her profile of “the financial reporter everyone loves to lionize.” While McLean was being anointed as a journalistic sex symbol in a story hitherto dominated by a balding Kenneth Lay, folks at the Journal felt they were being robbed:

“People are trying to queer the Pulitzer pitch for the Journal,” says one editor there. That’s sour grapes, counters Kurtz: “In this case, a 31-year-old reporter beat them and the rest of the world by a considerable margin.”

In a bit of circular logic endemic to media reporters, Kurtz adds, “I must have been onto something, since after my piece appeared, she was profiled in the Times, given a contract by NBC, and offered a book deal.” As for McLean, she seems slightly embarrassed by all the attention. “I’ve told people I’ve gotten too much credit,” she says. “I did raise alarm bells, but I didn’t know the half of it.” “Read more: Enronathon http://nymag.com/nymetro/news/media/features/5756/#ixzz0dvvQZvUI

My Comment:

Please note also that the book was co-authored with Peter Elkind, who isn’t attributed in many of the stories.

Not that I’m all that sympathetic to the Wall Street Journal on the Enron story, since they don’t give credit to the alternative press either, and what goes around comes around. (My own experiences of plagiarism from articles and books can be found at the tab, ABOUT –  half-way down the page).

If liberal columnists steal without attribution even from liberal bloggers, can you imagine the cone of silence that descends when the victim isn’t liberal? Libertarians and conservatives get stripped clean by the vultures of the “free” (of all ethics) press.

With them, it’s never about public welfare or the good of the nation, even though that’s the standard that they like to foist on other people. Even with the global economy melting down under their noses, they’re jealous of sharing the information that activists, bloggers, and ordinary citizens give out generously for the common good.

(Again, there are honorable exceptions).

In short, they make up credit – just like the Federal Reserve.

Or they steal it – like their banker friends.

Or they collude with each other to “take-down” anyone not part of their game – just like their hedge-fund allies.

And no matter what, they always cover for each other.

Notice how other people’s personal lives are fair game for stalking, extortion, and exposes, but never theirs, as this piece on Maria Bartiromo suggests.

(Ms. McLean figures in that piece too. In fact, a brief google tells us that McLean´s had plagiarism problems and conflicts of interest more than a couple of times).

Item One. Here’s an earlier complaint about Fortune magazine plagiarism. A Fortune writer apparently used material from interviews and articles by an outfit called Annex Research, without attributing or acknowledging it. An email to Fortune got no response, either. The Fortune writer? Bethany McLean…

Item Two:  McLean at it again, swiping material from the Orange County Register Weekly

Item Three: Libertarian economist, Bill Anderson, in a piece called “The Most Dishonest ´Journalists´ In the Room,” describes how McLean was having a romantic relationship with the lead prosecutor in the Enron trial, Sean Berkowitz, before the sentencing, while she was covering the trial and getting out the government´s side of the story. Omitted in that story as well  was the disturbing fact that the prosecutor had suborned perjury in order to get a full conviction of Jeffrey Skilling.

And that´s besides Item Four….

That fetching stock-manipulation thing she had going with hedge buddies Marc Cohodes and Jim Chanos.

No wonder none of them can get the story right.

And no wonder they still won’t get it straight, not until after activists, or bloggers, or less-known writers at their own outfits or elsewhere do the hard work. Then they’ll slide in to take the credit.

Nice work.

Just as cushy and exploitative as anything on Wall Street, in its way.

Business men and real capitalists do the hard work of producing. Then the faux capitalist money-men and their shills in government rush in to cream the money off and cover themselves with glory via their mouthpieces in the shill media.

No wonder the media doesn’t understand capitalism. No wonder they love the crony capitalist bordello they call home. It’s the only one they know, the poor things.

[Again, they really ARE a minority of journalists, just a powerful minority. There are hundreds of honorable hard-working journalists who write their own stories rather than steal them off the net, whose names never get into headlines, and who wouldn’t be caught dead behaving like this].

And don’t miss the other telling details:

Enron’s Ken Lay was a Republican.

Goldman Sachs is a Democrat cash-cow, for the most part.

Jim Chanos, hedge-fund master mind, used to work at Deutsch Bank.

And Bethany McLean was once a Goldman Sachs banker….. (Maybe that explains her kid-glove treatment of Hank at Vanity Fair).….

….And her equally interesting white-washing of Spyro Contogouris, who colluded with hedge funds to attack Prem Watsa’s Fairfax Financial.

Honestly.  Rielle Hunter has nothing on any of these gold-diggers.

Sith-Lord Sweep: AG’s Pending Indictments Cover Major Hedgies, Journalists, and Regulators

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Corporate finance generalist, investment banker and expert in derivatives, Austin Burrell, sums up last week’s announcement by Attorney-General Eric Holder that there are 5000 pending indictments [sic] arising out of the investigation of fraud in the capital markets:

[Note: the DOJ is involved in some 5000 odd cases of fraud related to the financial industry… Continue reading →

Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission Chair Berates Lloyd Blankfein

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“It sounds like selling a car with faulty brakes and then buying an insurance policy” on the driver,”

—   Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission Chairman Phil Angelides (D) to Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein.

Well, well, well,

Doesn’t sound too different from what we said in September 2008, does it? Continue reading →

Hedge Funds: Top Ten Earners in 2007/2008

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New York Magazine had a piece in 2007 that sorted the hedge-fund elites into categories like “brainiacs” (like James Simon and Jim Chanos) and “bad boys” (like Daniel Loeb).

The category “Top dogs” (that is, the very best hedgies) includes SAC Capital Advisers/Steven Cohen ($12 b); Cerberus Capital/Stephen Feinberg ($19.5 b); Appaloosa Mgt/David Tepper ($5.3 b); ESL/Eddie Lampert ($18 b); Citadel Investment Group/Kenneth Griffin ($13.5 b); Manhattan/Michael Novogratz ($4.6b).

[Note: the figures were as of 2007].

This is the short list of the managers whom the industry thinks are top dogs, and of these six, one (Feinberg) is directly connected to Drexel Burnham Lambert, convicted junk bond financier Michael Milken’s bank; another (Cohen) is connected indirectly to Milken through Gruntal & Co.; and three are alumni of Goldman Sachs(Tepper, Lampert, Novogratz).

Five out of six and that’s just a cursory examination. I didn’t do anything more than google to get that.

And the financial press thinks there are no Sith Lords?

A more conventional ranking is found below: Continue reading →