In the letter, the Senators noted that the man who received the payments, David Zilkha, “was a key figure and potential adverse witness” in the Securities and Exchange Commission investigation of Samberg, and a subsequent Senate investigation into why the S.E.C. had dropped the case. Records obtained in Zilkha’s divorce case show that Samberg paid Zilkha $1.4 million in two installments beginning in 2007, after the S.E.C. and Senate investigations had ended, and that he has promised $700,000 more in April 2009. Pequot had hired Zilkha, a former Microsoft employee, as a securities analyst in 2001. A Samberg spokesman has said the $2.1 million in payments were related to an “employment claim” Zilkha made to Pequot in 2007. Samberg and Mack have strongly denied that any inside information was leaked.
As if there’s not already enough reasons not to invest in the United States, Bernard Madoff’s Ponzi scheme provides a powerful disincentive. Many of the victims of what Madoff himself estimated to be a $50 billion scam were prominent foreign institutions and investors, and they are angry. As Megan Barnett notes, the Securities and Exchange Commission failed to investigate Madoff’s fund despite many red flags over the years. Kara Scannell of the Wall Street Journalsays that Madoff’s money-management business “appears to have fallen into a regulatory gray zone for years, and the ambiguity may have helped him evade oversight.”
Here’s what we know: The Securities and Exchange Commission was alerted to Bernard Madoff’s suspicious returns several times during the past decade. Do we really need any more evidence that the agency charged with protecting investors needs massive overhaul and more oversight of hedge funds? Madoff was reporting consistent returns from an investment strategy that involved trading stock and options of S&P 100 companies. Madoff claimed to be up 5.6 percent this year through November, according to the Wall Street Journal. In May 2001, Barron’sran a story that called Madoff’s returns into question. Some wondered if Madoff was using information from his market-making business, which trades stocks for financial institutions, to front-run trades in his funds. For Madoff’s investors, it’s a little late for the S.E.C.’s grandstanding. Where was the “poring over records” in 1999, when the agency was told about Madoff’s dubious returns?
The Journalarticle says that Google is talking to the major cable and phone companies about paying for a “fast lane” for Google’s content — including YouTube videos — and suggests that the Google is moving away from its long-standing support for network neutrality, the principle that all internet traffic should be treated equally.
Google responded quickly and did not mince words in denouncing the Journal‘s article.
In a company blog post late Sunday, Richard Whitt, Google’s chief telecom and media counsel, sought to refute the story.
The Journalarticle failed to mention that Google has been colocating servers in major telecom hotels, such as Google’s New York City headquarters, for years. Google’s strategy has long been to position servers close to telecom peering facilities in order to lower the company’s bandwidth costs and improve network performance. Google’s official address is 76 Ninth Avenue.
Whitt said that the Journalhas misunderstood Google’s efforts to colocate “caching servers” close to telco and cable nodes as an effort to seek a preferential treatment. “The Journalstory also quoted me as characterizing President-elect Obama’s net neutrality policies as ‘much less specific than they were before,’” Whitt wrote.
Shorter WSJ: Will the government use TARP funds to bail out the automakers? Will it ask Congress to release the second tranche of TARP funds? If it did, would there be ugly scenes in Congress? Will the government require the automakers to declare bankruptcy? With automakers, evidently, not so much. If Treasury’s going to ask for the second tranche of TARP funds, it’s going to have to lay out a plan which of necessity will mostly be implemented by the Obama administration. Treasury knows that Congressional Republicans will attack it no matter what; it doesn’t want Congressional Democrats attacking it too. So if the White House wants a big automaker rescue package, it has the ability to put one together in the face of Congressional opposition. The base-case scenario, then, is probably a mini-bailout, using whatever funds are left over in the first tranche of TARP money.
