Ooops. So much for ethics. :)

[BuyOnDips]

I bet a lot of guys on wallstreet are having a big laugh today, even if they are losing money.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/10/nyregion/10cnd-spitzer.html?ei=5087&em=&en=d0917c3b73427b6a&ex=1205294400&pagewanted=print

http://www.marketwatch.com/news/story/ny-governor-spitzer-involved-prostitution/story.aspx?guid=%7B55EFE57A%2D585A%2D4DEB%2DAA0B%2 D9AF497583336%7D

Maybe his story will be a "drop" on Fast Money tonight. :)

[freakscene]

5,500 an hour ?!

im in the wrong business

[aiki14]

Once again the uber zealot, the moralist, falls from grace. I am reminded of Proverbs 16:18.

I am a democrat who has trashed the recent scandals involving republicans, and in the interest of fairness, Mr. Spitzer is every bit as much of a scoundrel as those who came before him on the other side of the aisle.

His behavior in the Dick Grasso matter was reprehensible, and now he will likely get what's coming to him.

[aiki14]

Sort of topical, from the WSJ's "Deal Journal", as an observer the reaction on the floor of the NYSE was interesting:

Wall Street Sex Scandals: A Partial History
Posted by Heidi Moore
The gasp-inducing news that New York Gov. Eliot Spitzer may be linked to a prostitution ring that was busted last week has Deal Journal thinking back on famous Wall Street sex scandals. There isn’t evidence of many, as you might expect from a group that presumably has enough money to cover up any dalliances, peccadilloes and indiscretions.

And, yes, we know Spitzer isn’t a Wall Streeter–in fact, he is the antithesis. (CNBC reported today that the traders on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange whooped and hollered when they heard reports that Spitzer “was linked” to an escort service). Still, this all is a reminder that the financial district hasn’t always been gleaming skyscrapers and Starbucks. Consider this passage from City of Eros: New York City, Prostitution, and the Commercialization of Sex, 1790-1920: Adjacent to the Wall Street business district, prostitutes worked in saloons along Greenwich Street, taking men upstairs….In addition, immediately south of Wall Street was the Battery Tenderloin, on Whitehall Street…The Water Street area, however, remained the most significant and poorest waterfront zone of prostitution….Amid the rookeries, rat pits and dance halls, prostitutes ‘exposed in each window to the public view’ plied their trade.

Of course, in the new Bloombergian New York, those days seem distant indeed. Still, let us take a by no means comprehensive walk down memory lane, to when Wall Street, both by geography and by industry, has been a victim of akrasia .

Former Keefe Bruyette & Woods Chief Executive James McDermott was found guilty in 2000 on six of seven counts of insider trading for allegedly tipping off an exotic dancer, Kathryn Gannon–stage name, Marylin Star–to upcoming bank mergers. Gannon, who reaped $88,000 in profit from the information, also was found guilty.
BP Chief Executive John Browne left both his post at the oil company and his directorship at Goldman Sachs Group last year after it was revealed that Lord Browne had lied to a court about his young male lover, whom he had met through an escort-service Web site.
A group of six women sued Dresdner Kleinwort in 2006 for $1.4 billion on allegations that male executives entertained clients at strip clubs and even brought prostitutes back to the office. The case was settled out of court in 2007.
Canadian hedge fund manager Paul Eustace in 2007, by his own admission in a deposition filed in court, lied to investors and cheated on his wife with a stripper.
In 1987, Peter Detwiler, vice chairman of E.F. Hutton & Co., was, according to court testimony, instructed by his client, Tesoro Petroleum Corp. Chairman Robert V. West, to hire a blonde prostitute for the finance minister of Trinidad & Tobago, which had been supporting a tax issue that would have hurt Tesoro’s profits.
Back to Spitzer. We couldn’t help by notice that governor–client No. 9, in court documents–apparently requested an escort from the Emperors’ Club VIP to be sent from New York to Washington, where he was staying at the Mayflower Hotel in Room 871. The date: Feb. 13, the day before Valentine’s Day.

[aiki14]

Here's the actual complaint against the agency, client 9 alleged to be Spitzer appears in the redacted section in part 75 on page 26.
it is clear he was a repeat customer, was described by previous girls as difficult, and may have asked them to do things that were "unsafe". This is going to be very interesting when the girl "Kristen" a "very pretty american girl petite 5'5" 105lbs" gets an offer from a book company or Larry Flynt.

Turns out the PDF is too big at 2.1mb, here's where I got it, but it may be a subscriber only page:
http://blogs.wsj.com/law/2008/03/10/an-alleged-evening-with-client-nine-a-look-at-the-mann-act/?mod=homeblogmod_lawblog

[zyzzyva57]

I just hope Cramer's "house" is clean

With his CEO bashing and other bashing (all well deserved), he has some powerful, powerful and mean forces probing him

[aiki14]

Mr. Spitzer is toast, even a republican couldn't stay in office with these revelations.
From the NY Times tuesday:

The rendezvous that established Gov. Eliot Spitzer’s involvement with high-priced prostitutes occurred last month in one of Washington’s grandest hotels, but the criminal investigation that discovered the tryst began last year in a nondescript office building opposite a Dunkin’ Donuts on Long Island, according to law enforcement officials.

There, in the Hauppauge offices of the Internal Revenue Service, investigators conducting a routine examination of suspicious financial transactions reported to them by banks found several unusual movements of cash involving the governor of New York, several officials said.

The investigators working out of the three-story office building, which faces Veterans Highway, typically review such reports, the officials said. But this was not typical: transactions by a governor who appeared to be trying to conceal the source, destination or purpose of the movement of thousands of dollars in cash, said the officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity.

The money ended up in the bank accounts of what appeared to be shell companies, corporations that essentially had no real business.

The transactions, officials said, suggested possible financial crimes — maybe bribery, political corruption, or something inappropriate involving campaign finance. Prostitution, they said, was the furthest thing from the minds of the investigators.

Soon, the I.R.S. agents, from the agency’s Criminal Investigation Division, were working with F.B.I. agents and federal prosecutors from Manhattan who specialize in political corruption.

The inquiry, like many such investigations, was a delicate one. Because the focus was a high-ranking government official, prosecutors were required to seek the approval of the United States attorney general to proceed. Once they secured that permission, the investigation moved forward.

At the outset, one official said, it seemed like a bread-and-butter inquiry into political corruption, the kind of case the F.B.I. squad, known internally by the designation C14, frequently pursues.

But before long, the investigators learned that the money was being moved to pay for sex and that the transactions were being manipulated to conceal Mr. Spitzer’s connection to payments for meetings with prostitutes, the official said.

Then, with the assistance of a confidential informant, a young woman who had worked previously as a prostitute for the Emperor’s Club V.I.P., the escort service that Mr. Spitzer was believed to be using, the investigators were able to get a judge to approve wiretaps on the cellphones of some of those suspected of involvement in the escort service.

The wiretaps, along with the records of bank accounts held in the names of the shell companies, revealed a world of prostitutes catering to wealthy men. At the center was the Emperor’s Club, which arranged “dates” with more than 50 beautiful young women in New York, Paris, London, Miami and Washington.

But its finances moved through the shell companies — the QAT Consulting Group, QAT International and Protech Consulting — which held bank accounts into which clients wired their payments, according to court papers in the case.

One of the booking agents, a woman named Temeka Rachelle Lewis, 32, told a client that wiring his payments to QAT Consulting was safe because it would show up “like as a business transaction,” according to an affidavit filed in federal court the case.

But the transactions proved to be anything but safe for Mr. Spitzer, who, aides said on Monday, was weighing possible resignation.

Last week, Ms. Lewis was one of four people charged by federal prosecutors in Manhattan with operating the prostitution ring. Also arrested were Mark Brener, 62, who is accused of heading the operation; Cecil Suwal, 23, who is said to have managed it day to day; and Tanya Hollander, 36, who worked part time as a booker.

The affidavit, which was unsealed on Thursday when the four were arrested, details the secretly recorded conversations that officials said captured Mr. Spitzer’s efforts to arrange a Washington meeting with a prostitute on Feb. 13. It also describes the young woman’s report to the booking agent on her encounter with the governor, shortly after it was concluded.
The affidavit does not name the governor, nor does it name any of the other 10 men described as having purchased sex through the operation. Instead, it refers to them by number, with Mr. Spitzer, according to two law enforcement officials, listed as Client 9.

Mr. Spitzer’s cited rendezvous with the prostitute on Feb. 13 occupies five pages of the 47-page affidavit. The document recounts parts of a half-dozen conversations Client 9 had with Ms. Lewis, the booking agent, in the roughly 24 hours leading up to his meeting with the prostitute at the Mayflower Hotel.

They discussed whether his deposit would cover the young woman’s travel expenses, whether his payment had arrived — apparently by mail or overnight courier — and how she would be admitted to the hotel room he had reserved in Washington. At one point, when the booker tells him it will be a woman who went by the name Kristen, Client 9 said, “Great, O.K., wonderful,” according to the affidavit.

During the last conversation, he asked Ms. Lewis to remind him what Kristen looked like.

The conversations, according to the affidavit, were among more than 5,000 telephone calls and text messages that the federal authorities intercepted during the course of the investigation into the prostitution ring, which began last October. Investigators also seized more than 6,000 e-mail messages, bank records, and travel and hotel records, and conducted physical surveillance.

Almost lost in the tumult of the governor’s statement and the possibility of his resignation were the original allegations against the defendants said to have operated the ring.

Two of them, Mr. Brener and Ms. Suwal, are still held at the Metropolitan Correctional Center in Lower Manhattan, and on Monday their lawyers were still focused on their clients’ problems, not Mr. Spitzer’s.

Mr. Brener’s lawyer, Jennifer L. Brown, said her client “is anxious to have his day in court for a full airing of these charges and he’s looking forward to defending himself.”

Daniel S. Parker, a lawyer for Ms. Suwal, recalled that his client had, as all the defendants, entered a plea of not guilty at her arraignment on Thursday. He said Monday that she was entitled to the presumption of innocence.

“What the governor chooses to state or admit to is the governor’s business,” he said

[freakscene]

spitzer resigns, effective monday

http://www.wnbc.com/politics/15572743/detail.html?dl=mainclick

[BuyOnDips]

http://www.ibdeditorials.com/CartoonPopUp.aspx?id=290033773668165

[wallstreetsedge]

5,500 an hour ?!

im in the wrong business


i know right, shoulda just checked craigslist lol

[bigzip]

The best part to me of this whole affair is that the software this guy implemented to watch unusual financial transactions ultimately flagged him as a suspect. Talk about poetic justice.

Add this to the long list of reasons we should shoot politicians and just start over.

[cramerica1972]

The best part to me of this whole affair is that the software this guy implemented to watch unusual financial transactions ultimately flagged him as a suspect. Talk about poetic justice.

Add this to the long list of reasons we should shoot politicians and just start over.so all of you here are gloating b/c another person fell?ummm not a good thing to do,you fall will be HARDER and longer than his.atleast he didnt steal millions from a company like ken"now dead"lay.

[piggybank]

Sex scandal huh? The more present puritan morals in the USA makes such a case always more severe than it would be in Europe, where in Europe moral value's involving private relations are somewhat more liberal. Sarko's affair with carla Bruni for ex. went fairly smoothly trough the throats of Frenchy's.

Personally IMHO "private matters" should be regardes as such in politics, private and not a public concern. I am not however criticizing overal american mindset about this, morals are a very relative matter. However atleast i would put more priority, or concern, in the fighting of corruption than private debauchery. Atleast if a politician would have done a lot of positive thing's asside of maybe a shady private life, personally i might forgive him on that matter if the alternative would be to have a lesser trustworthy person on the level of financials for ex. Afcourse this is always a very circumstancial matter and needs to be regarded case by case.

I don't know however if any of you over the pond are aware of the volume of "contextual nudity" we see on or tv screens. Maybe people would be shocked. Out here however the large majority hasn't got a problem with it at all. I find it to be a facinating matter that 2 such very different mindset's exist between continents that are in other value's (democracy, freedom etc.) so similar. Religion is still very strong in the USA and serves as a base of many moral value's, while in Europe the churches are empty and moral value's are more society oriented. I the past i would have thought that this change of mindset in Europe about morals stemming from religion had more to do with social economic evolution.

How do you people regard for ex. the fact that for ex. in Belgium abortion, marihuana use, euthanasia and gay marriage are all alowed?

[netwrangler]

Back in the day, it was accurate to observe that Europe regarded the act of creating of life as suitable for viewing in a film, and the act of taking a life as unsuitable for viewing. In the United States, people took the exact opposite stance.

TV and the internet have given the US more sex and Europe more violence, but I believe the observation is still basically valid.

I'm just reporting what I observe, here. I'm not trying to make sense of it.

[freakscene]

It has nothing to do with religion or puritan morals. Spitzer violated Federal laws period.

European "values", if I can use the term loosely, also allow for humans to have sex with animals in some places, including Belgium.

No thanks.

[piggybank]

European "values", if I can use the term loosely, also allow for humans to have sex with animals in some places, including Belgium.

No thanks.

Beastiality has recently forbidden in Belgium.

Afaik there are still US states where it's not forbidden yet, just like a lot of other country's.

This has nothing to do with any of these states/country's moraly justifying beastiality, rather with the fact that it's a very uncomman practice and that the issue was never really put forward to the judicial system.

Spitzer violated Federal laws period.

Did Spitzer do anything illegal, and was not just involved with a sex scandal?

[freakscene]

Did Spitzer do anything illegal, and was not just involved with a sex scandal?

thats what the investigation is about now isnt it? but he clearly knows or he would not have stepped down, and his lawyers would not be trying to plea down to misdemeanors in order to save his law license.

its quite possible one of the felonies will be related to federal banking laws, and they are also looking at whether or not tax payer monies were involved in any of the "business" trips.

[piggybank]

thats what the investigation is about now isnt it? but he clearly knows or he would not have stepped down, and his lawyers would not be trying to plea down to misdemeanors in order to save his law license.

its quite possible one of the felonies will be related to federal banking laws, and they are also looking at whether or not tax payer monies were involved in any of the "business" trips.

If he's guilty of corruption then he should be punished indeed. I have few compasion with white colar criminality.

Belgium has some fair corruption problems to. Not in the least some of our princes (constitutional monarchy) and they are somewhat harder to punish. :frown:

[bigzip]

so all of you here are gloating b/c another person fell?ummm not a good thing to do,you fall will be HARDER and longer than his.atleast he didnt steal millions from a company like ken"now dead"lay.

I have equal distaste for Republicans and Democrats if that's what you're getting at. At least he had the grace to step down unlike our pimp mayor in Detroit.

[cramerica1972]

Beastiality has recently forbidden in Belgium.

Afaik there are still US states where it's not forbidden yet, just like a lot of other country's.

This has nothing to do with any of these states/country's moraly justifying beastiality, rather with the fact that it's a very uncomman practice and that the issue was never really put forward to the judicial system.



Did Spitzer do anything illegal, and was not just involved with a sex scandal?ummmmm.....sex with an animal?how desperate can humans be?LOL:sheep:

[cramerica1972]

:biggrin:I have equal distaste for Republicans and Democrats if that's what you're getting at. At least he had the grace to step down unlike our pimp mayor in Detroit.bigzip,hey playa remember:pimpin aint eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeasy playa!!!!

[BuyOnDips]

Looks like the hooker will be rolling in big bucks. She's probably going to be a millionaire.

http://www.nypost.com/seven/03152008/news/regionalnews/songs_have_a_catchy_hook_102009.htm

And Spitzer will always be known as Client Number 9.

[freakscene]

you just cant make this stuff up

hours of getting sworn in, new governor admits to affair

http://www.nydailynews.com/news/2008/03/17/2008-03-17_gov_paterson_admits_to_sex_with_other_wo.html