Wall Street Folly

• Goldman Holders Miffed at Bonuses
• SEC told to improve ways it chooses probe targets
• Pequot Worker Told Therapist That Samberg Sought Tips
• House Attacks Fed, Treasury
• Commodities to Get Record $60 Billion, Barclays Says
• Giuliani Said to Consider Run for U.S. Senate Over Governorship
• Problem mortgages hit new high at 14 percent
• GM Says Auto Sales Rate May Be 10.8 Million in Sign of Recovery
• Zucker Says He Regrets Focus on Margins in Leno Shift
• Winfrey’s long goodbye Read the rest of this entry »

Tags: Art Samberg, Bonuses, Commodities, Compensation, GM, Goldman Sachs, Oprah, Pequot, Politics, Rudy Giuliani, SEC, Tim Geithner, U.S. Treasury

Andrew Giuliani, son of Former mayor / former presidential candidate Rudy
Giuliani, was kicked off the Duke University golf team last February for reasons
that aren’t really clear, and he’s suing the school and the coach. 
Giuliani, a senior and an aspiring pro golfer, was illegally kicked off the team
in February without warning according to the law suit.  The
report was reported in the Duke newspaper, The Chronicle.  According to
the suit, Giuliani could be reinstated to the team only with written letters of
support from each team member, and the coach was said to be threatening to cut
anyone who provided that support.  The younger Giuliani hasn’t asked his
dad for support.   He told Newsday: "I love my father very much," …"I just decided not to ask him to get involved in the situation." 
According to the NY Post’s account:

Read the rest of this entry »

Tags: Golf, Legal, Rudy Giuliani

All dressed up, and now no place to go:  Rudy Giuliani placed all of his eggs in one basket in Florida and finished only a dismal third.  Having mostly run out of money, it sounds like he’ll be throwing his support to the Florida winner, John McCain.

Tags: Politics, Rudy Giuliani

"’This is clearly a dirty trick’ ": The Giuliani team is trying to do some damage control, after the New York Daily News’ cover story yesterday revealed presidential blueprint details from a 140 page document that was "left behind" in a city that Giuliani was visiting on the November 2006 campaign trail.  The Giuliani team claims that the documents were stolen, copied, then returned.  They also tried (not particularly successfully by the sound of it) to downplay the importance of the file saying the it was "simply someone’s ideas which were committed to paper over three months ago." According to today’s Daily News:

"This is clearly a dirty trick," said Giuliani spokeswoman Sunny Mindel. "The voters are sick and tired of this kind of thing."

Mindel said that while working on the 2006 campaign trail, a Giuliani aide lost a piece of luggage containing the paper.

"During one leg of his campaign travel, all luggage was removed from a private plane and later put back on," she said in a statement. "However, one staffer’s bag was not returned.

"After repeated requests over the course of a few days, the bag was finally returned with the document inside. Because our staffer had custody of this document at all times except for this one occasion, it is clear that the document was removed from the luggage and photocopied."

‘This is clearly a dirty trick’ – NY Daily News

Tags: Rudy Giuliani

Rudy Giuliani’s bid for president might be in trouble before it really even gets off the ground.  A detailed 140 page document outlining his roadmap to the White House was ‘left behind" [*cough*] in one of the cities where Rudy was campaigning for Republican candidates before the November elections.  Included were text, handwriting and spreadsheets, much of it detailing his financing plans which included raising $100 million (with $25 million of that within the next three months alone), as well as issues of concern that could cause him to pull out of the campaign. 

Central to his fund-raising efforts was said to be hedge fund manager Paul Singer of Elliott Associates, one of the biggest Republican fundraisers, and a well known Giuliani supporter.  Other big financial names were mentioned as well: Giuliani was urged to court KKR’s Henry Kravis for his support, but he’s now allied with John McCain as are others whose support was sought.  Other supposedly politically uncommitted names whose support is being courted include Goldman Sachs’ CEO Lloyd Blankfein and News Corp CEO Rupert Murdoch.

The document was obtained by the Daily News from a source sympathetic to one of Giuliani’s rivals for the White House. The source said it was left behind in one of the cities Giuliani visited as he campaigned for dozens of Republican candidates in the weeks leading up to the November 2006 elections.

Giuliani spokeswoman Sunny Mindel suggested there were political dirty tricks behind the loss of the documents and called the timing suspicious.

"I wonder why such suspicious activity is occurring and can only guess it is because of Rudy’s poll numbers in New Hampshire and Iowa," Mindel said.

Read the rest of this entry »

Tags: Elliott Associates, Henry Kravis, Lloyd Blankfein, Rudy Giuliani, Rupert Murdoch