Good evening fellow Democrats.

Madoff fallout spreads worldwide
By FT Reporters

The fallout from Bernard Madoff’s alleged $50bn fraud spread through the global financial system on Monday as more banks revealed exposures to his firm and the beleaguered hedge fund industry braced for withdrawals from worried clients.

The potential losses reported by large financial institutions that invested or lent to investors in Mr Madoff’s failed venture reached $10bn after HSBC confirmed the news, first reported in the Financial Times, that it could lose up to $1bn.

The nationalised Dutch arm of Belgian bank Fortis admitted losses could reach €1bn ($1.4bn), while Royal Bank of Scotland joined BNP Paribas and Banco Santander among the high-profile victims of the scandal, saying it might lose up to £400m ($612m); Japan’s Nomura has Y27.5bn ($300m) at risk.

The affair has called into question the business model of funds of hedge funds, which run about $685bn in assets – more than a third of the industry – after many of the biggest failed to spot warning signs. London-listed Man Group, Arki Busson’s EIM Group, and Tremont of the US have all admitted holdings in funds linked to Mr Madoff...

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/2b38a296-cadc-11dd-87d7-000077b07658.html

Screwed over by one of their own? Awwww, it breaks my heart... NOT!

Let this be a lesson to the moneychangers. If it looks too good to be true...

CHICAGO (AP) - President-elect Barack Obama said Monday a review by his own lawyer shows he had no direct contact with Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich about the appointment of a Senate replacement, and transition aides "did nothing inappropriate."
Obama said he is prepared to make the review public, but decided to hold off because prosecutors asked for a delay and "I don't want to interfere with an ongoing investigation."

Controversy has swirled around the president-elect and his incoming White House chief of staff, Rep. Rahm Emanuel, following Blagojevich's arrest last week on charges he schemed to trade Obama's Senate seat for personal gain.

Obama, fielding questions at a news conference, sidestepped when asked whether Emanuel had spoken with aides to the governor.

Emanuel was one of several aides who watched the news conference from the wings.

The president-elect pledged the results of the investigation by his incoming White House counsel, Gregory Craig, would be released "in due course."

He said the probe was complete and thorough, but did not say which of his aides Craig interviewed, whether any of them was under oath at the time, or any other details.

Copyright 2008 The Associated Press.

No Christmas present for the GOP this year on this scandal. IL Lawmakers, bring forth the articles of impeachment and get this over with.

CactusBarrack on December 15, 2008 at 06:54 PM

Nonsense Dan; if we don't have enough money we'll just print some more, blame Bush for the hyperinflation, and rule for the next twenty years.

Barack Obama is our version of Ronald Reagan. He is going to do for us what Reagan did for the GOP. It's going to be a long, cold stay for y'all in the political wilderness.

the rich should pay there fair share in taxes to help pay down the debt they caused and to help pay for government they hate so much

...Today, G.M., Ford and Chrysler get no respect. Maybe they don’t deserve much. Detroit has many sins to answer for, and it’s been doing plenty of answering. But — and I say this as someone who grew up in non-car-driving family in New York and who is the furthest thing from an auto aficionado — there is a kind of undeserved disdain, even casual contempt, that seems to characterize the attitude of the political and media elites toward the American auto industry.

As Warren Brown, who writes about cars for The Washington Post, recently put it, “There is a feeling in this country — apparent in the often condescending, dismissive way Detroit’s automobile companies have been treated on Capitol Hill — that people who work with their hands and the companies that employ them are inferior to those who work with their minds and plow profit from information. How else to explain the clearly disparate treatment given to companies such as Citigroup and General Motors?”

Now there are other ways to explain the disparate treatment of G.M. and Citigroup. Finance is different from manufacturing, and banks from auto companies. It may be that the case for a huge bank bailout was strong, and that the case for a more modest auto package is not. Still, it seems to me true that the financial big shots haven’t been treated nearly as roughly in Congress or in the media as the auto executives, who have done nothing remotely as irresponsible as their Wall Street counterparts.

What’s more, in their disdain for the American auto companies, the left and right wings of the establishment agree. Of course, the particular foci of criticism are different — the left berates the auto companies’ management, the right the United Automobile Workers. But even on the left, while Democratic politicians still try to look out for the interests of the U.A.W., there’s not really that much sympathy for the workers. The ascendant environmentalists disdain (to say the least) the internal combustion engine and everyone associated with it. Most of today’s limousine liberals are embarrassed by their political alliance with the workers who built those limousines.

Meanwhile, on the right, free-market analysts have explained that our regulatory scheme of fuel-efficiency standards is counterproductive. But despite the fact that the government is partly responsible for the Big Three’s problems, the right hasn’t really been stirred to enthusiastically promote a deregulatory agenda to help the auto companies. What excites it is mobilizing to oppose bailouts for unionized workers...

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/15/opinion/15kristol.html?_r=1&ref=opinion

God help me, but I find myself agreeing with Bill Kristol. I think I'm going to go lie down for a while...

Screwed over by one of their own? Awwww, it breaks my heart... NOT!
BobVADemocratHawk

Screwed over? Really Bob? This from a "compassionate" progressive liberal? Pensions funds (most notably $42 million of the assets of Fairfield, Connecticut's 58,000 person public employee's pension fund) for aged investors, global banking firms whose funds will cost hundreds, thousands of older retirees their livelihood? This you find humor in Bobby Boy?

Screwed over by one of their own? Hardly Bobby you ignorant boob. This scumbag is one of yours, a MAJOR democrat supporter, a wheeler-dealer who knows all of the top politicians in YOUR party quite intimately as he's underwritten many many of their campaigns.

You amaze me BoobVADemocratHawk, you really do. You are slipping down down down into the bowels of the lowest of the lowest... and while you are down there Booby, among the muck and scum of your ill-begotten ilk be sure to say hello to another "compassionate" progressive liberal, one how hales from Connecticut who probably knows or is related to some of those who lost their retirements in this LIBERAL SCAM. No doubt she herself is doing another one of her wobble fat-assed victory dances at the news.

She always did like it when the Jews get their comeuppance.

Bernard Madoff Arrest Stirs Worry Among Nonprofits

By Philip Boroff

Dec. 15 (Bloomberg) -- From a Massachusetts charity that sends teenagers to Israel to the Manhattan theater that introduced “Hair” in 1967, nonprofits around the nation are bracing following the arrest of New York money manager Bernard Madoff.

The 70-year-old Madoff, whom the Securities and Exchange Commission accused of operating a Ponzi scheme, managed money for the foundations of such titans as Steven Spielberg, New York Mets owner Fred Wilpon and clothier Carl Shapiro, according to tax returns.

New York’s JEHT Foundation, dedicated to electoral reform and improving criminal justice and one of the largest foundations of its kind, said it’s closing in January 2009. It gave away $26.4 million in 2006, according to its last publicly available tax return.

Recipients include the Innocence Project, co-founded by Barry Scheck, and Human Rights Watch. Jeht’s funds were managed by Madoff.

“Everyone is shocked and saddened, no one more than me,” President Robert Crane said in an interview.

The Robert I. Lappin Charitable Foundation in Salem, Massachusetts discontinued operations on Friday because it invested with Madoff. This year the nonprofit sent 124 local teens to Israel.

Elie Wiesel’s Foundation

Madoff appeared to handle all the investments of the Elie Wiesel Foundation for Humanity, the foundation of the 80-year-old Nobel Prize winner and Auschwitz survivor, according its 2006 tax return. The foundation sponsors an annual ethics contest and after-school programs for Ethiopian Jews in Israel, among other programs. Treasurer Elisha Wiesel, Wiesel’s son, didn’t return a call.

The Madoff fiasco will pummel Jewish causes and education. Yet all nonprofit sectors may feel the strain. Last year, the $19 million Madoff Family Foundation donated $50,000 to New York’s Public Theater, where Madoff’s 44-year-old son, Mark, is a trustee. The year before, it gave $30,000 to the Robin Hood Foundation, a charity popular on Wall Street, according to the Madoff’s foundation tax return.

A Public Theater spokesman didn’t return an e-mail from Bloomberg News. Mark Madoff didn’t return a call or respond to an e-mail. Robin Hood Executive Director David Saltzman declined to comment.

Less to Give

“Will it affect my philanthropy?” said Joyce Z. Greenberg, a retired financial adviser in Houston who had money with Madoff for two decades. “It will.”

Greenberg is a donor to the Jewish Heritage Program of the World Monuments Fund, which has supported conservation in 20 countries. Greenberg and others are waiting for an accounting of how much, if any, of their investments they’ll salvage.

SAR Academy, an orthodox Jewish school in Riverdale, New York, which extends from kindergarten through high school, had over a third of its $3.7 million endowment with Madoff, according to an e-mail circulated by the school.

Madoff was among the money managers of Spielberg’s Wunderkinder Foundation, which disbursed about $5.2 million in 2006. The largest donations were $3.3 million to Los Angeles’s Cedars-Sinai Medical Center and $500,000 for the Ross School in East Hampton, New York.

Sterling Equities

Wilpon’s family foundation donated $50,000 to New York’s City Center and $10,000 to New York’s Jewish Museum in 2006, according to its most recent tax return posted on guidestar.org.

The foundation operates out of Sterling Equities Inc., the investment firm led by Wilpon. A call yesterday wasn’t returned, but Sterling said last week it has accounts at Bernard L. Madoff Securities and is “shocked” by its founder’s alleged confession to fraud.

The Boston Globe reported Madoff managed about 45 percent of the $324 million Carl and Ruth Shapiro Foundation, citing a spokeswoman. The foundation has been a major donor to Brandeis University and Boston’s Museum of Fine Arts. A call to the foundation wasn’t returned yesterday. Shapiro sold his Kay Windsor Inc. women’s clothing business to VF Corp., then Vanity Fair Corp., in 1971.

In 2006, Bernard Madoff’s foundation gave $77,500 to Lincoln Center Theater, where Mark Madoff was on the board. He has since resigned. A spokeswoman for Lincoln Center Theater declined to comment.

Sole Contributor

Bernard Madoff is listed as the sole contributor of the family foundation, and both he and his wife, Ruth, are named as managers.

Other beneficiaries of the foundation in 2006 were the anti- hunger program City Harvest ($15,000) and Prep for Prep ($25,000), which aids minority students in New York City independent schools.

The same year, the foundation gave $1 million to the Gift of Life Bone Marrow Foundation, a Boca Raton-based nonprofit that maintains a computerized public record of potential donors for bone marrow transplants.

Madoff’s nephew, Roger Madoff, a former Bloomberg News reporter, was diagnosed with leukemia in 2002 and died in 2006, at 32. A bone marrow transplant can cure many types of leukemia.

The gift made up more than one-third of the organization’s public support that year, according to its tax return.

The Madoffs’ support, which includes other gifts, “has certainly been very important,” said Jay Feinberg, the organization’s executive director. “The contributions resulted in 50,000 bone marrow donors joining us and 200 transplants.”

New York’s Yeshiva University said in a statement that it was “shocked at this revelation” about Madoff’s arrest. The school, North America’s oldest Jewish educational institution, said Madoff resigned from all involvement with the university. He was chairman of its Sy Syms School of Business.

Yeshiva said its lawyers “are investigating all aspects of his relationship to Yeshiva University.”

Merry Christmas Booby. I bet you're just a ball around cancer patient too. Rifling their pockets for spare change while they are in the chemo treatment room.

i bet republican know MADOFF, BERNARD to what the point cactus ass

swirlyeyebut head your sick troll

CactusBarrack on December 15, 2008 at 07:05 PM

It may be, Dan, however, some charities are going to get some contributions out of this, I imagine. That's $81.3K in contributions you've listed. I'm sure the Salvation Army, UNICEF, or some other charitable organization can put that money to good use.

Well, Danny. Some Pug doing business in NY donates money to Dems.

On the other hand, your list pales in comparison to this composite of DEAD AMERICAN SOLDIERS who were sent to their DEATH because of Pug ideology.

And this is an OLD picture.

"Bring 'Em On!".

ASSHOLE X 2.

(Be sure to click on each little square.)

I am not union, never have been and never will be. The wages and benefits I have are what I established at my interviews over the years and are established by similar positions in similar fields. The union had nothing whatsoever to do with my pay.

25LincolnParkLiberal on December 15, 2008 at 01:26 PM

not true! if unions had not organized and fought for workers rights, then non-union employers would not have had to stay competitive and raised pay and benefits to match these other companies. I am a union wife, worked in a non-union business as HR director. I KNOW what we benchmarked our benefits and pay off of.
You are wrong !

and republican are worse they had pay to play and were bribed for legislation

SwirlyEyedObamabot on December 15, 2008 at 07:15 PM

Oooo, nice try. If you think I'm going to shed one tear for some fatcat screwing over other fatcats, you're dead wrong. I've got to give it to you money worshippers, y'all sure can make a big deal out of a few charitable organizations going under when it suits your political advantage.

All of these organizations had some MBA type controlling their investments. They are the ones responsible for their failure to properly vet Mr. Madoff and his investment company. The proverbial handwriting was on the wall for years about this guy.

...Their investments came despite the fact that some hedge fund experts and Wall Street traders had repeatedly raised concerns over the internal controls, business model and suspiciously consistent good performance of Mr Madoff’s business.

“This was the train wreck that happened in broad daylight,” said Jim Hedges, a hedge fund adviser who did not place any investors’ money with Bernard Madoff Investment Securities...

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/2b38a296-cadc-11dd-87d7-000077b07658.html

Furthermore, the single biggest contributor to this debacle is GOP deregulation. Had proper checks and balances been in place, he could not have gotten away with this for so long. So when it comes to "[rifling patient's pockets]", as you put it, look no farther than your own party, schmuck.

Let the college boys figure it out. They got themselves into this and it's up to them to get themselves out of it. Meanwhile, I'll keep earning my paycheck and laughing my arse off at all of these big money types, irrelevant to party affiliation, fretting their way through Christmas trying to figure out how they're going to have to live like a normal American instead of the fatcat existence they're so used to.

And if Madoff, or some other money worshipper didn't clean them out, our IRS will. Elections have consequences. Merry Christmas from the Democratic Party, fatcats. The free ride is over! Bwwwaaahahahahahaha!

Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays fellow Democrats. Keep the Faith and keep the faith. Yes we can, yes we will, and yes we did!

Oooo, nice try. If you think I'm going to shed one tear for some fatcat screwing over other fatcats, you're dead wrong. I've got to give it to you money worshippers, y'all sure can make a big deal out of a few charitable organizations going under when it suits your political advantage

Hey Bob, doncha just get such a kick out of these Nutcase Righties here, bemoaning loss of Pension money, etc, YET not a word about this recession/depression Bush has driven all of into. The Houses that were lost because of his lack of regulation. The loss of jobs and people not losing homes and no christmas. People's retirement monies down the drain ((including dizzy Thomass own, ), money meant to be used for college funds gone. the stock market used to be up to almost 14,000, now struggling to stay at 8500 !

But the hypocrit never says a single solitary word about current events---because to do so is to admit he made the biggest mistake of his life voting for this POS TWICE !!!!!

a repost less it get overlooked !!!

to MN Thomass:

Never for one minute have I EVER NOT been proud to call myself an American. Never, ever. It is too bad for you that you are so miserable and have suffered so much misfortune from short-sighted retirement planning and other bad decisions that you no find yourself S.O.L. Again, too bad for you.

Oh, Thomass, first let me say my Financial Planner has placed me in as good a position as one can be in, in this economy, and I will come out of this just fine. what age will YOU be when you can retire now?

And the fact that you felt no embarassment over the last 8 years of this country's leader and the fact you voted for him TWICE, shows I have been right about you. You have no self-pride. You have no love for this country , instead are anti-American, unpatriotic. You are uninformed on what even our allies think of this leader of your's. Yet you still defend him? It says a LOT about the kind of man you are. (or aren't). Did you ever hear the expression, "the measure of a man". You come up very very short, Thomass.

I have traveled far and wide Dear Pamela and of all the many places I have gone I always felt welcomed as an American. There are places in this world I have no desire to go to, places where human life has no value, where murder and rape and the killing of old and young, elders and babies is accepted a normal in their twisted lives.

We are not talking about 35 years ago, when you were in the Army, Thomass. And Canada does not count. You are appalled at countries where killing of old and children and women yet you stand back and nod approval at over 1,000,000 Iraqi women and children and elderly have been butchered by your President for LIES? For Oil? For a foot in the door in the Middle East? Do you even know what PNAC is? Do you not understand that certain neo cons like Cheney have drooled over this for years, and damn to the collateral damage? NO, Thomass, you are a very stupid person.

And Sandy is right----you trolls do not like George Bush. You come in here and defend him, you lie to pollsters that 'Yes" you approve of George Bush, but that is only because you love to spew hatred of the Majority of Americans, who just voted in a Liberal Democrat you now have to live with, like it or not! you are SOL !!!!!

YOU LOST. SUCK IT UP !

hey Dems. Time to log out of here. Blog ya tomorrow..........

But the hypocrit never says a single solitary word about current events
PamB

See my brilliant post at 07:15 PM this evening. I believe that event is pretty current.

You know, you're really an oddball.

good evening, everyone. it was quite the experience to be in the audience today at the State house in the Senate Chamber while the electors cast all 20 electoral votes for Barack Obama to be the 44th President of the United States of America.

life is good, very, very good.

http://www.ohio.com/news/break_news/36185329.html

Ohio electors cast ballots for Obama, Biden

Hi, essie.

A witness to history, were you? Bet you never in your life thought that this was going to be your destiny. Life can be so grand sometimes.

Did you know who any of the electors were? Were any of them women or minorities? I know voters are actually voting for these people not the president, but I've never understood who they were and how they got the privilege of casting the votes.

Hi sandy. I was stoked by being there.

Yes, I know about 4 (from the 18 congressional districts) who were electors, and of course I know the Governor and the Chair of the ODP who serve as 19th & 20th electors. Half were women and 4 were minorities. Our state AG & Treasurer as well as State Senators were in attendance too.

life is short, I prefer not to read about some loon who frets about saving the world from believing in global warming.

take care of the earth. don't litter, recycle, reuse.

it's really very simple.

Isaiah is a great book to read this holiday season.

Isaiah 9:2 The people that walked in darkness have seen a great light: they that dwell in the land of the shadow of death, upon them hath the light shined.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
When we say Santa is coming to town, Bella says, "Ho, Ho, Ho". We are going to see Santa this coming Saturday.

Enjoy the evening, everyone.

Are you saying Dodd and the rest of us liberals have been closet conservatives all along and came out only to destroy the nation's economy? We worship at the feet of Phil Gram and his wife?

Do you have any idea how idiotic you sound? You make Bush and Palin sound like Einstein.

Good night, all.

o if a liberal asshat steals, its the republicans fault?
but cactus the repu have been power for 8 years al the problems are there alone dont blame democrats for this mess

but the crap was caused by republican in the 8 YEARS OF bush presidency

Lincoln, I will thank you to not analyzye my motives ! You seem to be here strictly for Contrariness to everyone's posts! That, in my estimation, is pretty shallow!!! You wonder why you are thought of as a 'rightie" or a troll??? Guess no more !

My disrespect is soley for George Bush and his administration and his 8 years of destruction. Even I was ready to follow, when 9/11 occured, until I watched what they used that tragedy for.
It is my love of this country that drove me to politics in the first place, after watching what an Evil President can do!!!

I am not the only person in the USA or the world who found the shoe throwing funny! The media are finding it hard to keep a straight face when they are showing it over and over! This man was hated throughtout the entire world! this shoe thrower was from Egypt! He showed the scorn others merely dreamed of doing! George Bush may be YOUR President, he is not mine, never has been. I have merely tolerated his presence.

And I would bet from watching Election Night TV all around the world, that there will be MUCH more respect and delight in an Obama Presidency, than there was in a Bush one!
Now knock this attempt to tear everyone's posts to pieces, and either add something here or find a place to blog that suits you more !

There are lots of stories like that one for those, who like Pammy, think that Iraq was better off before Bush intervened.

38Sally-* on December 15, 2008 at 11:11 PM

gee Stevie, you must have missed the part that we did not invade Iraq to free the Iraqi people from tyranny. Bush convinced congress that Hussein had WMDs that were capable of reaching the USA mainland! (Colin powell did not mention a word about Saddam mistrating the people) Then it was because they were connected somehow to 9/11, and AlQaeda was training there, and then! You must have missed the part where it all turned out to be lies, and so they then had to change it to"well we want to bring democracy to Iraqis, whether they want it or not"!

Funny how every Iraqi when asked, want the infidedel Americans out of their land. I have seen polls where they say their country was better off under Hussein. They had electricity, running water, and were not driven out of their homes. I forget how many Iraqis are still displaced! Millions !

Funny how Bush never decided to liberate the people in Darfur and other countries where Genocide runs rampant !

So try and keep up if you are going to post nonsense here, ok???

new thread

gee, somebody should tell these people that Global Warming is all in their heads, and merely a Liberal attempt to hurt Corporations!!

NOW | Climate Change Crisis: An Entire Nation Being Washed Away

Just this week, a top UN official predicted that by the middle of this century, the world should expect six million people a year to be displaced by increasingly severe storms and floods caused by climate change. But for many island nations in the South Pacific, climate change is already more than just a theory - it is a pressing, menacing reality. These small, low-lying islands are frighteningly vulnerable to rising temperatures and sea levels that could cause flooding and contaminate their fresh water wells. Within 50 years, some of them could be under water.

NOW travels to the nation of Kiribati to see up close how these changes affect residents' daily lives and how they are dealing with the reality that both their land and culture could disappear from the Earth. We also travel to New Zealand to visit an I-Kiribati community that has already left its home, and to the Pacific Island Forum in Niue to see how the rest of the region is coping with the here-and-now crisis of climate change.

http://www.truthout.org/121508U

As always, a real mystery.