Posted on 03/15/2008 3:51:42 PM PDT by ricks_place
Eliot Spitzer’s downfall as governor last week may have roots in pursuit of wealthy bankers while state attorney-general
IN early 2004 Eliot Spitzer was at the height of his powers as the sheriff of Wall Street, the highflying New York prosecutor who had set his sights on the cosy corporate kleptocracy that was pocketing millions from insider deals while ordinary investors went bankrupt.
His latest victim was Richard Grasso, the chief executive of the New York Stock Exchange, who had made headlines around the world by negotiating himself a $140m (£69m) retirement package that Spitzer alleged was illegal.
Grasso claimed he had done nothing wrong and when it became clear he was prepared for a fight, Spitzer’s investigators went to work. What happened next helps to explain why much of Wall Street cheered – and the rest of America gasped – when Spitzer, who was later elected governor of New York state, became enmeshed in a call-girl scandal that cost him his political career last week.
Not since the Monica Lewinsky affair have Americans enjoyed so mesmerising a spectacle of a powerful politician laid low by seemingly inexplicable lust.
(Excerpt) Read more at timesonline.co.uk ...
Notice how with the left it is NEVER his fault.
I thought the Joos done it? You know, the same ones what polited the remote control airplanes into the WTC!
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1986337/posts
Lord knows, it cant possibly be because the guy is just a complete and utter scumbag.
Doncha just love the excuse mongering that always springs up when a favored child of the machine gets caught with his pants down?
Hahaha! I don't know anything about Paterson's politics (I assume they're quite liberal), but that's damn funny.
Hey! Where's the BARF alert????
Spitser just sputsered when the power overwhelmed
him...his previous antics, with the NYT encouraging
his BS...got to his head..both of them.....JK
What uber left wing moron wrote this steaming pile? The whole thing is complete junk (why no barf alert?), but this line really stood out: “What happened next helps to explain why much of Wall Street cheered - and the rest of America gasped...” Yeah, right, the rest of America gasped when this saint was forced by evil capitalist bankers (probably Jooooos to boot) to hire a $5,000 per hour whore and then outed by those same evil banker types. After all, he is a lib (can’t say Democrat, violates the style rules for when donks get busted for something), and all America just loves all libs. Well, except for those evil Joooo bankers and their dupes. /sarc (noted for the brain dead and lib lurkers - ooops, redundant there)
I don’t buy Dershowitz’s line that this was all some revenge operation started by the banks. Banks HAVE to report transactions that trigger the reporting thresholds. They get audited on this, and are in deep doo-doo if they are found to have been lax in reporting. It’s probably true that the feds initially suspected some kind of political bribery, but the reason they even got that far was because 1) the transactions hit the reporting thresholds, 2) upon routine investigation, the recipients of the transfers were found to be an affiliated group of sketchy shell companies, which were in turn transferring funds to other sketchy entities, including (directly or indirectly) offshore entities, and 3) the recipient entities were controlled by an Israeli national (who also has US citizenship now, but is Israeli born). That was plenty to trigger the next level of scrutiny, and God only what fascinating things that turned up. Certainly fund transfers from a long list of highly placed people in various countries.
Now as to why Spitzer’s got the honor of being first to have his name revealed? THAT part may be revenge-driven, but there are so MANY parties with a motive to push for that, that we’ll never be able to track down which, if any, played a direct role. Most likely what it boiled down to was that when the feds started notifying people inside the government that it was about to bring this investigation to light and arrest the people who operated the ring, NOBODY said “Can you try to find a way to keep Eliot’s name out of it?”, because EVERYBODY wanted to see him brought down. There are probably a number of people who had advance knowledge that this investigation was going public, who COULD have pulled strings to keep Spitzer’s name under wraps, but nobody cared to do so.
Dick Grasso is an honorable man who led the NYSE heroically after the 9/11 attacks. Spitzer is a vile prick who couldn’t shine his shoes. Grasso got a $140 million deal after 35 years of employment. Spitzer didn’t “investigate” Jason Giambi’s even larger contract with the Yankees in which he defrauded them with steroids.
Thank’s for posting. That is the best single article on this affair that I’ve seen yet.
A pro-abortion, pro-gay rights, anti-capitalist whose only “crime” involves the only freedom that the left actually embraces (sex)?
Of COURSE it’s not his fault.
Paleo,
You nailed it more than you know. When the Bush tax cuts expire, health care is nationalized, and the total government (federal, state, and local) share of GDP goes north of 40%, it will take about five keystrokes to move all that capital and all that economic activity offshore, never to be repatriated back to the U.S.
I am not necessarily a devotee of Ayn Rand and Atlas Shrugged but when the time comes, this economic activity will depart the U.S. with a speed and ferocity few can comprehend. Even today, if you look at the TCP/IP data of much of our financial transactions, "Wall Street" is an empty facade of nameplates. After 9/11, everyone discovered the need for warm backup sites, physically removed from New York. Most of the financial "backrooms" had already departed for lower cost locations with a cheaper workforce.
Those backroom and backup sites don't need to be in the U.S. They can and will be anywhere the tax, regulatory, labor climates allow for maximum profits. When the time is right, the front doors with the nameplates will quickly follow.
John Galt never dreamed of the advantages of fungibility enjoyed by today's capital and knowledge. Although the need for infrastructure development probably would prevent a country rising from Third World to First World status in less than a decade; it is indeed possible to collapse from First World to Third World status in a single quarter.
Can he really be a superdelegate if he’s not an officeholder, or a past President or VP? It seems to me that the last think the donks want is news footage of Spitzer walking into the Denver convention hall!
Sure he can, Spitzer belongs to the Emperors Club!
By the way, if you’re in the Western time zones, you still have a chance to catch the opening of Saturday Night Live, they did a great rip on Spitzer!
btt
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