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A New York judge warned former US President Donald Trump to refrain from rhetoric on social media that could inflame or cause civil unrest, Associated Press reported. The judge Juan Merchan said he was not imposing a gag order, at this point, but he asked both sides to refrain from comments that could lead to civil unrest. The gag order would have restrict Trump and his legal team as well as others involved in the proceedings from speaking publicly about the case.

REUTERS A lawsuit charges hedge-funder Ezra Merkin "knew or should have known" that Madoff was a fraud, and seeks $500M from Merkin's funds. Merkin's Gabriel Capital Corp. received $tens of millions in fees from deals with Madoff. Stanley Chais of California was charged last Friday. Microsoft's wholly owned affiliate, Microsoft Licensing GP, one of the pioneers in the field of computerized stock trading, joined the Bankruptcy Court case against Madoff, but declined to discuss its claims against the swindler.

Um...I'm sorta...wondering... WHY???!!!! "Fashion," or what passes for it, is mysteriously beyond my understanding. I guess I'm just from the 1950s and like my women, ahem, groomed. Even the fake appearance of that much body hair on a woman makes me shudder.

* FEDS PROBE WIFE AS SCAM HITS $65B; * 'MANY OTHER KIN TO BE INDICTED' ........new information suggests Madoff's "inner circle transferred assets to their wives......then laundered through an English bank." Bernard employed his wife, two sons, brother, and niece. Ruth Madoff is believed to have received at least $70M......Bernard has allegedly been hampering probers' efforts. "He's jerking everyone around," the source told The Beast web site ... "Every day he changes his tune...".....probers are looking at some 20 people including "feeder funds" that invested with him, and British lawyers and accountants who may have helped transfer funds to an...

Why do we -- men and women, gay and straight -- find Rachel Maddow sexy? Daphne Merkin's "Butch Fatale" about the newly minted MSNBC icon, hidden among the overpriced handbag porn and fluffy profiles of last weekend's New York Times T style magazine, is more complicated than it appears. As Merkin writes, it isn't often that mainstream culture celebrates the attractiveness of butch lesbians. Sure, we admire femmes like Portia de Rossi and Lindsay Lohan. But for the most part, lesbians who wear suits, cut their hair short or otherwise don't conform to traditional standards of beauty -- the Ellen...

Ezra Merkin may have jumped from the frying pan right into the fire.....the hedge-fund billionaire who lost as much as $3 billion in investor funds with Bernie Madoff has the NYAG looking over various pieces of evidence ahead of a possible full-fledged probe........Merkin was feeding hedge funds into Madoff's operation while serving as GMAC Chair (an auto-and home-financing company).......many felt Merkin should not be trusted with $6B federal rescue money GMAC received. Merkin resigned as GMAC chair Friday.....he pocketed hundreds of millions of dollars in investment fees over the years. Merkin lives in a posh duplex at 740 Park Ave,...

...... US investigators want to know whether hedge fund operator J. Ezra Merkin misled tax-exempt schools and charities about how he invested their money....... authorities have subpoenaed records from three investment funds run by Merkin, who recently chaired GMAC Financial Services LLC, the auto/housing financing arm of General Motors..... 15 tax-exempt nonprofits tied to Merkin are asked to turn over records and other information. Merkin's key fund, Ascot Partners LP, had invested almost all of its $1.5B assets with Madoff. Merkin's funds Gabriel, Ascot, and Ariel Management Corp, already face a string of lawsuits from investors who say they were...

Two high-profile culprits in a pair of colossal economic scandals bit the dust yesterday.... * Robert Rubin, Clinton's onetime Treasury secretary, resigned as senior counselor at Citigroup. * Madoffian J. Ezra Merkin resigned as GMAC Financial Services Chairman, effective immediately. Rubin architected risky debt strategy that brought once-great Citi to its knees, costing it $20 billion in losses the past year alone. ....shares fell to 10% of as Rubin was collecting $115 million in salary - plus stock options. Now America's taxpayers are forced to bail out Citigroup to the tune of $45 billion in cash and $306 billion in...

Last week on TheCuttingEdgeNews.com and TheAutoChannel.com, investigative journalist Edwin Black broke the story that Bernie Madoff's cohort Ezra Merkin is, of all things, the Chairman of GMAC. Edwin's report chronicled Merkin's own highly questionable history and financial/legal problems. Late this afternoon, GMAC Financial Services LLC announced that Chairman J. Ezra Merkin is stepping down effective immediately, as GMAC prepares to name a new board of directors. At the time that the original report was published on December 30th, CNN News had missed this story completely, even though GMAC had just received $5 billion of Federal Bailout funds. As of the...

The move is gearing up to oust GMAC Chair J. Ezra Merkin in the wake of GMAC scoring a $6B injection from the federal government and securing approval to convert into a bank holding company. GMAC's approval was contingent on retooling its 12-member board......observers believe that's not soon enough after Merkin lost some $1.8B that he funneled to arch-swindler Madoff. Under Merkin, GMAC spiraled into nearly $8B in losses. Merkin was one of the original backers of private-equity shop Cerberus Capital's move to own a 51% stake in GMAC....the shop was required to relinquish its majority stake after GMAC converted...

Pressure continues to mount on Erza Merkin to step down as chairman of GMAC....the auto- and mortgage-lender which received a $6B (taxpayer-financed) government rescue package...... Neither GMAC or the Treasury Dept. is talking about how Merkin was allowed to stay atop the privately-held GMAC operation despite his cloudy recent history - which has been marked by several lawsuits charging the 53-year-old investor with fraud. Merkin, a partner in private-equity powerhouse Cerberus Capital Management, became chairman of GMAC in November 2006 when Cerberus bought a 51% stake in the company. Merkin maintains he is a victim of Madoff.......Treasury Secy Paulson was...

GMAC, the auto financing arm of General Motors that's half owned by Cerberus Capital, is spooling up its own bid for a federal bailout. GMAC wants to mimic American Express, Goldman Sachs and others that converted to bank holding companies and then tapped the TARP. Meanwhile, GMAC's chairman, Jacob Ezra Merkin, runs Ascot Partners, an investment firm that lost most of its $1.8 billion in assets in the Madoff scandal, according to the New York Times. So, sure, let's give billions in federal funds to a guy who blows almost $2 billion of his and his clients' money on a...

<p>December 25, 2008 -- New York University slapped tarnished financier J. Ezra Merkin with a lawsuit yesterday stemming from his ties with alleged con artist Bernard Madoff.</p> <p>NYU, one of the largest private universities in the US, says it may have lost more than $24 million due to Merkin's investments with Madoff "in the face of an extraordinary number of 'red flags.' "</p>

New York University slapped tarnished financier J. Ezra Merkin with a lawsuit yesterday stemming from his ties with alleged con artist Bernard Madoff. NYU, one of the largest private universities in the US, says it may have lost more than $24 million due to Merkin's investments with Madoff "in the face of an extraordinary number of 'red flags.' "

<p>GMAC, the auto financing arm of General Motors that's half owned by Cerberus Capital, is spooling up its own bid for a federal bailout. GMAC wants to mimic American Express, Goldman Sachs and others that converted to bank holding companies and then tapped the TARP.</p>

Former Rep. Gary Condit must answer questions about his sexual history in his slander case against a magazine writer who suggested Condit knew more than he let on about the death of intern Chandra Levy, a judge ruled Wednesday. The ruling does not mean the information elicited by lawyers for Dominick Dunne, a special correspondent to Vanity Fair, will be made public. Judge Peter K. Leisure said he may order that the testimony be kept confidential. But Condit cannot "use the court system as both a sword and a shield" by filing the $11 million lawsuit in December 2002, and...