- Billionaire’s Ex-Wife Hires New Lawyer in Civil Suit
- Goldman Sachs teams could quit the City over taxes and regulations
- Bonus tax provokes new action
- Harvard’s Feldstein: Risk Economy Will Run Out Of Steam In ‘10
- Bernanke calls for stronger financial regulation
- Fed Chief Edges Closer to Using Rates to Pop Bubbles
- ‘Avatar’ Is Top Film, Nears $1 Billion Sales Mark
Billionaire’s Ex-Wife Hires New Lawyer in Civil Suit – NY Times
….Gaytri Kachroo has taken over the case from Paul Batista, a New York lawyer. In various federal inquiries and hearings, Ms. Kachroo represented Harry Markopolos, the whistle-blower who spent a decade trying to warn authorities, including the Securities and Exchange Commission, that Bernard L. Madoff was running an extensive Ponzi scheme.
Ms. Cohen approached Ms. Kachroo soon after her case was filed in mid-December in United States District Court for the Southern District of New York. “She felt her case wasn’t getting the attention it required,” said Ms. Kachroo, who is not a litigator but is a corporate lawyer with her own practice…..
Goldman Sachs teams could quit the City over taxes and regulations – Daily Telegraph
The bank is understood to be considering its options in the wake of the UK’s windfall tax on bankers’ bonuses, a new 50pc top income tax rate, and increased banking regulations.
The world’s most powerful investment bank has asked an internal team to examine various strategies, including whole divisions being uprooted and taken offshore……
Observers suggest that among the operations which will be reviewed is Goldman’s proprietary trading arm, which is estimated to make up to 90pc of the bank’s profits. Sources say Geneva would be a likely destination for the “prop desk”, where tax on performance fees can be negotiated with the Swiss government…..
Bonus tax provokes new action – Financial Times
Uncertainty about the UK’s bonus supertax is driving an increasing number of asset management houses to encourage portfolio managers to invest their bonuses in the funds they run…..
Harvard’s Feldstein: Risk Economy Will Run Out Of Steam In ‘10 – Wall Street Journal
Veteran economist Martin Feldstein, of Harvard University, is not sure the U.S. economy will escape a second trip back into recession in the new year.
Feldstein, who is also the emeritus president of the business cycle dating organization the National Bureau of Economic Research, tied this risk of a renewed downturn after the worst recession in decades to a poorly conceived government stimulus effort.
“I supported the idea we needed to have a fiscal stimulus, somewhat to the dismay of my conservative friends,” Feldstein said Sunday at a meeting of the American Economic Association in Atlanta. But the design of the stimulus was put in the hands of congress and it was poorly done, which meant it “delivered much less” in actual stimulus than its nearly $800 billion price tag suggested it should…..
Bernanke calls for stronger financial regulation – Financial Times
Ben Bernankehas called for reform of financial regulation, arguing yesterday that it was lapses in regulatory oversight rather than loose monetary policy that stoked the US housing bubble…..
“All efforts should be made to strengthen our regulatory system to prevent a recurrence of the crisis, and to cushion the effects if another crisis occurs,” he said. If reforms were not “adequate”, the Fed might be forced to tackle the next asset bubble using the “blunt tool” of monetary policy, he said…..
Fed Chief Edges Closer to Using Rates to Pop Bubbles – Wall Street Journal
Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke cracked the door open a bit more to the idea of raising interest rates if a new financial bubble emerges.
He also mounted a vigorous defense against critics who say it was the Fed’s low-interest-rate policies over the past decade that caused the last housing bubble. Instead, he said, the problem was lax regulation, which permitted banks to issue a slew of exotic mortgages that households later had trouble paying…..
‘Avatar’ Is Top Film, Nears $1 Billion Sales Mark – Bloomberg
“Avatar,” the futuristic 3-D adventure, was the top film in the U.S. and Canada for the third straight weekend with $68.3 million in sales, and will cross the $1 billion mark in domestic and international receipts today.
The James Cameron film will have taken in an estimated $1.02 billion overall for News Corp.’s Twentieth Century Fox since its Dec. 18 release, according to Hollywood.com Box- Office. Time Warner Inc.’s “Sherlock Holmes” was second this weekend with $38.4 million, and Fox’s “Alvin and the Chipmunks: The Squeakquel” was third with $36.6 million…..
Tags: Ben Bernanke, Bonuses, Economy, Fed, Goldman Sachs, lawsuits, SAC Capital, Steven A. Cohen
