Ireland’s long, hard struggle to avoid becoming Greece without the beaches or sunshine has at last borne fruit. Read more »
pigs
April 3, 2012: Report details ease with which alleged madam and so-called animal lover Anna Gristina sells majority of pet pigs in order to pay legal fees. April 9, 2012: Gristina is denied bailed reduction for a 4th time, must figure out a way to come up with the remaining scratch. Though family claims it won’t come to it, must be noted that AG still has two prized pigs to her name to speak of… June 12, 2012: Gristina’s bail is lowered from $2 million to $250,000 bond or $125,000 cash, which hopefully she can come up with without resorting to drastic measures. [DNAI]
April 3, 2012: Report details ease with which alleged madam and so-called animal lover Anna Gristina sells majority of pet pigs in order to pay legal fees. April 9, 2012: Gristina is denied bailed reduction for a 4th time, must figure out a way to come up with the remaining scratch. Still has two prized pigs to her name to speak of…
Manhattan DA Pumps The Brakes On Mom/Madam’s Brothel Just As It Was About To Really Take Off With The Help Of Her Contacts In The Business World
By Bess LevinAs the entrepreneurial among us know, successful, brand name business don’t just happen overnight. They take blood, sweat, tears and in some cases, other bodily fluids, that the public never sees. Anna Gristina was nearly there. The mother of four (who went by the name “Anna Scotland” professionally) had been providing hookers for to “wealthy, powerful men” (“politicians, top-law enforcement, influential lawyers, bankers, entertainment execs and Fortune 500 businessmen”) out of an Upper East Side whorehouse for a decade and a half, had developed a thriving client list willing to pay between $1000 (for a “Dream Girl”) to $2000+ (for an “Ultimate Elite Model”) per appointment, and made millions in the process. She was ready for the big time. Just the other day, in fact, Gristina/Scotland was sitting down at the office of her friend and business associate, a Morgan Stanley employee, to hear his plan for “expanding her operation through the Internet.” And then this happened. Read more »
“This year, my personal challenge is around being thankful for the food I have to eat. I think many people forget that a living being has to die for you to eat meat, so my goal revolves around not letting myself forget that and being thankful for what I have. This year I’ve basically become a vegetarian since the only meat I’m eating is from animals I’ve killed myself…[my] first kill was a lobster, which I boiled alive. The most interesting thing was how special it felt to eat it after having not eaten any seafood or meat in a while…on May 4…I killed a pig and a goat [by] cutting the throat of the goat with a knife, which is the most kind way to do it.”
Was it: Read more »
“A friend of mine is actually the largest owner of agricultural land in Uruguay,” said the hedge fund manager. “He’s a year older than I am. [My fund] is somewhere [around] the 15th-largest farmers in America right now.”…When asked if this is an end-of-the-world situation, the hedge fund manager replied: “It really is. I tell my fiancée this from time to time, and I’ve stopped telling her this, because it’s not the most pleasant thought.” He pauses for a moment. “We just can’t keep living the way we’re living. It’ll end within our lifetime. We’re just going to run out of certain things. We’ll just have to learn how to adjust.” [NYO]
Oliver Stone Has Come To Accept That You Can’t Get Mad At Hedge Funds For Ruining Children’s Birthday Parties, Other Stuff; That’s Just What ‘Pigs’ Do
By Bess Levin
For the first anniversary of Wall Street 2: Money Never Sleeps, Bloomberg rang up Oliver Stone to see what’s been a’ poppin’ with the director of late and pick his brain about how things have been going in the finance world since the premiere. The interview touched on the fact that the original script had Josh Brolin playing an evil hedge fund manager, before Stone realized that it was the banks that did most of the heavy lifting with regard to bringing the global financial system to its knees (“[Hedge funds] are just the tail,” the filmmaker says. “The dog is wagging them. The big dog is these seven banks”). “You can’t condemn the hedge funders for doing what they’re doing,” was Stone’s response to the question of whether or not the hedge fund industry is deserving of blame for the crisis, indicating rational, lucid thought, and not those of someone who’s been drinking. But he wasn’t finished. Read more »
Pay a visit to that mansion, however, and it quickly becomes clear that life chez Falcone is more like a sitcom than a Cinderella remake. On a snowy day in February, Lisa Maria, whose olive green cargo pants and cardigan are neatly color coordinated with a hefty heart-shaped emerald ring, is nuzzling her pet pig, Wilbur, while a cat purrs in the corner and a veritable flock of tiny dogs yaps away behind a baby gate. “I just love animals, I can’t help it!” she shouts over the delighted squeals of the pig, who is being fed a carrot by the cook. Wilbur, Falcone says, can play the piano and will perform spins if prompted with a Cheerio. “I used to walk him to the park until one day I had somebody taking a picture of me and the pig,” she says. “I thought, Oh, my God! I can see it now. My husband will lose his whole business, and it will be me, the pig, five dogs, a cat and my daughters out on the street, no place to live!”

[A participant in yesterday's festivities, waiting downtown to give Lloyd a mustache ride. ]
Yesterday’s Wall Street Protest: A Good Time Was Had by All [Daily Intel]
So….Harbinger head Phil Falcone and his wife Lisaare being sued by their former house manager, William Gamble, for a bunch of stuff. Said stuff includes allegations of:
* Homophobic slurs from Phil (William is gay, and claims he was asked about his sexual orientation during his interview)
* Being forced to work out of an office that the family’s pet pig used to live in
* Being told by Lisa that that he wasn’t gay enough for her tastes, but, at the same time, having his nuts grabbed, without permission.
Lisa Maria, meanwhile, told him his “demeanor did not live up to her idea of what a stereotypical gay man should be, as [he] was not ‘effeminate’ enough.”
That March, he went with the family on a trip to the Falcones’ compound in St. Bart’s, where Lisa Maria “chided him for not bringing a more revealing bathing suit.”
On March 27, “a visibly inebriated Falcone confronted and assaulted” Gamble, “forcibly pushing her hand down his pants to grab his genitals,” the suit says. “When rebuffed, Falcone struck [Gamble] three times with her hand forcefully enough to leave deep bruises on his abdomen.”
She then told Gamble “all he required was ‘a good f–k’ in order to change him into a heterosexual,” Gamble said he was “highly disturbed and physically ill as a result of this incident.”
When they got back to New York, his “work environment became increasingly hostile,” with Falcone telling him, “If you weren’t so beautiful, you wouldn’t be here.”

