When Bernie Madoff confessed to his $50 billion Ponzi scheme, he didn’t just ruin his own life– he took his wife Ruth’s down with him. Though she has never faced charges and will never go to jail for it, Ruth Madoff has paid dearly for her husband’s decision to run a pretty sizable scam and then go public with it. As his fake returns financed the couple’s Manhattan penthouse, Montauk home, yacht and every other spot Ruth might go to max and relax and forget about all this, those were seized by the government, as was more spending money than she would’ve cared to part with. I don’t want to go too much into it, as the wound is not yet healed, so I’ll just remind you this woman was only given something like $2.5 million to get by. But worse than straddling the poverty line has been the blow to Ruth Madoff’s reputation. The woman can’t buy cheese without people mentioning that, her colorist won’t speak to her let alone give her that buttery blonde that needs to be maintained every 6 weeks, and even Ivan Boesky’s ex, who knows from the taint associated with banging white collar criminals, has been told to stay away. Basically, the woman is a leper. But she’s hoping that perhaps after hearing what she’s been up to, you’ll change your tune on ole Ruth Madoff. Continue reading »
charity work
Goldman Sachs Would Like Your Thoughts On Potentially Making Its Employees Give Money To Charity
By Bess Levin
Which is why this story– Maybe Goldman Sachs Will Make It’s Employees Give Money To Charity, Maybe It Wont, It’s All Relative– was leaked to the media. Here’s the rub: as you may have noticed, Goldman’s had a tough go it lately, PR-wise. They’ve adopted kittens, they’ve let the first known instance of an apology pass their lips, they’ve touched actual garbage, all in the name of getting everyone to shut the hell up with the Goldman hate. And yet the bitching and the moaning and the “Hey mister, those Swarovski crystals you’re about to have applied to your balls were paid for by the American taxpayer” continue apace. And now it’s not just coming from the plebes, who can for the most part be written off as people who don’t know what they’re talking about, it’s coming from shareholders, too. Since it’s most likely only going to get worse when the bank backs up the bonus truck, here’s what GS is considering: what would you think of Lloyd and Co being forced, publicly of course, to give money to charity? They used to do something like this at Bear Stearns, and while Goldman tends to avoid adopting any idea devised by two guys hot-boxing an air shaft,* this one seems like it might have legs.
While the details of the latest charity initiative are still under discussion, the firm’s executives have been looking at expanding their current charitable requirements for months and trying to understand whether such gestures would damp public anger over pay, according to a person familiar with the matter who did not want to be identified because of the delicacy of the pay issue. The charity idea would be similar to a decades-long program at the failed investment bank Bear Stearns, which required more than 1,000 of its top workers to give 4 percent of their pay to charity each year and then checked their tax returns to ensure compliance.
A couple weeks after being laughed at by a room full of students at Peking University for his “Chinese assets are very safe” quip, Timmy did not take the bait this morning when he was asked the one question Barney Frank and Mad Max are dying to answer for him.
When asked if bankers care about anything other than compensation, Mr. Geithner said, “That is a very interesting question. I’m not going to answer that question. I think it is hard to judge motivation on these things.”
