Vikram’s sale on chotchkies continues apace.
seriously?
Have you ever wondered what Ira Sorkin, Bernie Madoff’s lawyer, was doing when he got the call that his client’s business wasn’t entirely legit, per se? Wonder no longer:
“I’m sitting in [my granddaughter's pre-schoo] class and these children, two-and-a-half-year-olds, are standing around, pretending that they’re on a farm,” Sorkin said. “And the teacher is asking, ‘what sounds do you hear on a farm?’ Like a cow, moo-moo, and a duck, quack-quack. “And I’m hearing all these animal sounds, and all the kids laughing and applauding, and my cell phone rings. And it’s Bernie Madoff. And he tells me that he’s been arrested by the FBI. He’s handcuffed to a chair. He needs my help. And in the background, I’m hearing, ‘moo-moo, quack-quack, oink-oink,’ and I ran out of the class.”
Also, if he had to defend the Ponz Master all over again, would he? You betcha, Sorkin told Scott Cohn. And while we’re on the subject, the attorney is tickled by how long his clients scam was able to go on for.
Isn’t this rich? Bill Gates, the richest man in the whole country, thinks Wall Streeters are paid too much.
The compensation problem is a very interesting problem. I do think compensation is often too high, but it’s a very tough problem to solve.
Gates blamed a 1993 federal law capping executive salaries at $1 million–”a bad milestone”–which he said wound up backfiring, encouraging huge bonuses and stock option awards. He doesn’t like that, he said during a discussion on philanthropy in New York yesterday, but he’s wary of doing anything about it, worrying that, like the ’93 law, it will just make things worse.
- Use the Bloomberg command
NH BLG_DEALBREAKER <GO>
to access Dealbreaker
