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Sorry about NM being stuck with him again.. but living in CA myself, I'm sort of feeling better about not having to take ALL of the corruption/ridicule jokes anymore. ;)

But hey, quick googling of CDR Financial Products (formerly Chambers, Dunhill, Rubin) uncovers intriguing information.

Bloomberg article on David Rubin from November, 2006

CDR specializes in helping municipalities invest the proceeds of municipal bond sales and arranging derivatives, often complex transactions whose value varies with the price of underlying securities or indexes.

CDR, which has advised local governments on more than $17 billion of derivatives since 2003, is being investigated by the IRS for possibly profiting from deals at the expense of U.S. taxpayers. According to IRS letters obtained from the cities of Atlanta and Fargo, North Dakota, and an internal memo from the state of Wisconsin, CDR may have colluded with Bank of America Corp., Bear Stearns Cos. and other companies to make improper fees by selling municipalities unneeded contracts or mispricing investment deals.

New Mexico is another place that's been lucrative for CDR. In October 2003, Rubin gave $25,000 to Moving America Forward Inc., a PAC formed by Governor Bill Richardson. Seven months later, CDR gave $75,000 to ¡Si Se Puede! Boston 2004 Inc., Spanish for Yes, We Can, another Richardson PAC. That PAC was formed to help pay expenses for his campaign staff at the 2004 Democratic National Convention in Boston.

Between the timing of those contributions, CDR made $951,566 advising the New Mexico Finance Authority on $420 million of interest rate swaps. Jon Goldstein, a spokesman for Richardson, says the governor had no role in CDR's selection.

The fees New Mexico paid CDR were more than double the $400,000 that New York City paid to its derivatives adviser, Investment Management Advisory Group Inc., in 2004. That year, New York City executed $900 million of the contracts.

Very interesting, lainie. More about CDR, Broken Promises , November 2006

"Wall Street created $7 billion in bonds for housing and schools. The tax-exempt deals were a ruse; banks and advisers collected millions in fees and investment gains. The public got nothing. "...........

........."During the past decade, local governments across the U.S. have issued more than 70 of these phantom bonds -- at least $7 billion of them." ......Proceeds from the tax-exempt bond sales are supposed to be used to improve homes for the poor or upgrade health care for the elderly or supply computers to inner-city schools. "....

......"Taxpayers never get most of those benefits; the winners are the banks, insurance companies and financial advisers that get paid millions of dollars for crafting these transactions and then profit by using bond proceeds for their own investment gains...."

....."Black Box Deals --The arrangements -- often called black box deals, because they're complicated and mysterious -- sometimes contain secret agreements that promise to pay the financial middlemen higher fees if none of the money from the bond offerings is used to help the public. The agencies that issue the bonds buy them back from investors. The money goes untapped, and the advisers keep their fees. "...

....."The Fees --- In the Florida deal, a little-known government body called the Capital Trust Agency turned the work over to its advisers: Anchor National Life Insurance Co., a subsidiary of AIG; CDR Financial Products Inc., a Beverly Hills, California-based financial advisory firm; and underwriter JPMorgan. These companies and other middlemen extracted $12 million in fees from the bond issue; the rest of the money went unused.

The AIG unit and CDR had an agreement the agency says it didn't know about that allowed CDR to increase its fees as long as the money wasn't spent for its intended purpose, according to a Nov. 18, 1999, letter from CDR President David Rubin to AIG's Anchor National Vice President J. Franklin Grey.

The less money that was used to acquire and renovate apartments, the more money CDR stood to make, and the less risk AIG's affiliate faced as an insurer since all of the money stayed in a safe account. ".............

No wonder they were doing the pay to play stuff. Quite lucrative!