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Pardon Me? Chris Dodd International Man of Mystery

Submitted by Ironman on Sun, 02/22/2009 - 23:10
in

Ironman didn't blog last week. He and the family spent a week at a $90/night motel along I-4 in suburban Orlando.

Actually, it was like the Obama Administration. I spent the week in an expensive fantasy designed to entertain children.

Well, as I've pointed out before, my senator, Chris Dodd, spends his vacations  in much more fashionable locales  (Hey, why should he have spent August 2008 near Wall Street; nothing much was going on there about then, was there?) 

This drew the attention of the Hartford Courant's Kevin Rennie. All I can say is OUCH!

Where to begin?  A "close friend" who paid $11 million to the SEC to settle insider trading charges is the business partner of  Dodd's former co-owner of his vacation spread in Ireland. 

And Dodd appears to have bought out this co-owner at a price well below fair market value for Irish vacation property. Purchased with a mortgage taken out at 3.85%/year.

And Dodd lobbied former President Clinton to get one of the "midnight pardons"  for his apparent sugar daddy, insider trader Edward Downe. Dodd's argument  in favor of this extraordinary leniency:   "he speaks to Downe nearly every day." 

Hmm. isn;t Dodd Chairman of the Senate Banking Committee?  

You can't make this stuff up. Seriously. You just can't

 

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Time Magazine on Dodd's confidante

Submitted by Ironman on Mon, 02/23/2009 - 00:56.

Real man of the people, isn't he

Business Ethics of the Rich and Famous?

MOVE OVER, MICHAEL MILKEN AND IVAN BOESKY. Federal investigators have cracked open another huge insider-trading scandal, and this time they have implicated some of the most prominent names in America's social register. The Securities and Exchange Commission accuses seven corporate leaders of raking in at least $13 million in illegal profits from stock trading based on inside information.

Among the luminaries charged were Martin Revson, co-founder of the Revlon cosmetics empire, and Edward Downe Jr., a former director of the investment bank Bear Stearns and husband of auto heiress Charlotte Ford. The SEC claims Downe used his position at the Wall Street firm to cull confidential information on companies and then used it to earn profits of $3.3 million in stock trades. Revson allegedly netted $1.7 million from improper tips he received from Downe. Others charged by the SEC are Steven Greenberg, a former public relations executive, who allegedly pocketed $550,000 in illicit profits; Thomas Warde, a real estate developer ($1 million); David Salamone, a business partner of Downe's ($4 million); and Milton Weinger, a stockbroker at Oppenheimer & Co. ($2.3 million). Fred Sullivan was charged only with passing sensitive information to outsiders while on the board of Tyler, an industrial- products manufacturer.

The investors gathered at parties in Southampton, N.Y., and on Downe's yacht in the Caribbean, where they allegedly exchanged inside information. While most of the defendants have denied any wrongdoing, two have come forward to settle some of the charges. Sullivan has agreed to pay a penalty of $58,000 without denying or admitting his guilt. Downe has pleaded guilty to two criminal counts and could face 10 years in prison. "It's terrible," he said, "just awful to be in this situation."

FYI: This all happened in 1992!

Hey, whatever happened to Bear Stearns, anyway????