If You Want To Know What's Really Going On In Greenwich You Have Got To Read The Out Of Town News Papers......
More On The Local Multi-Million Dollar Scam That The Greenwich Time Fails To Cover OnlineNew Madoff redux 26 institutional investors had a total of $667... Pensions & InvestmentsThe fraud allegedly perpetrated by Paul Greenwood and Stephen Walsh, co-operators of a commodities trading pool that was supposed to provide the alpha in an enhanced index equity strategy, was the first of the recent round of investment scandals to exclusively affect institutional investors.
In all, 26 institutional investors — 10 with separate accounts and 16 in commingled funds — had a total of $667 million invested in an enhanced index strategy marketed by
Westridge Capital Management Inc., Santa Barbara, Calif.
Those assets were supposed to be managed by Messrs. Greenwood and Walsh in an affiliated company, a commodities trading pool operator, WG Trading Co. LP, after it passed through a second affiliate, WG Trading Investors LP. Both WG Trading entities are based in Greenwich, Conn. Messrs. Greenwood and Walsh also are shareholders of Westridge Capital Management......
PLEASE ALSO SEE:
* SEC has been too lenient on swindlers
* Regulators missed opportunities* Economic travails create investment opportunities NEW YORK, March 6 - Former
U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission Chairman Richard Breeden said accused swindler Bernard Madoff belongs in prison, and that regulators were lax in their oversight of
financial markets and activities of alleged
white-collar criminals.
Breeden, who ran the SEC from 1989 to 1993 and is now a private
investor, in an
interview said regulatory shortcomings stem not primarily from deficient rules but from a simple failure to do the job.
Investigators have accused Madoff of running a $50 billion Ponzi scheme, and have themselves been faulted for not catching it sooner. Madoff has not been jailed and continues to live in his penthouse apartment on
Manhattan's Upper East Side.
"No one in
government or in the private sector should tolerate someone who thinks it's appropriate to steal $50 billion, and Bernie Madoff should be in the worst prison and not in his apartment," Breeden said. "It may reflect an era in which the SEC was too light in its treatment of the scum who think stealing other
people's
money is acceptable behavior."
Breeden added, though, that Madoff deserves his day in court.
Mary Schapiro, the current SEC chairman, on Thursday pledged to improve how the agency handles whistleblower complaints and enforcement tips.
U.S. regulators, including the
Federal Reserve, have been faulted for turning a blind eye for years to
financial excesses, such as the risky mortgage loans that fueled the now-burst bubble in housing and securitization activity.
The global
financial crisis is widely considered the worst since the Great Depression in the 1930s.
"There was a problem principally in
bank regulation, of regulators not doing their job," Breeden said. "The
Fed sat and watched the housing bubble build for years. There was no lack of information, there was a lack of action. You look at some institutions that have cratered, and both the managements and the boards, and regulators externally, missed
opportunities to walk away from the edge of the cliff."
Breeden is now a principal at Breeden Capital Management LLC, a Greenwich, Connecticut-based firm that typically invests with a five-year time horizon.
Greenwich Fire Marshall Anticipates More Car Fires Due To Arson?
Signs Suggestion An Increase In Auto Arson
Hartford Courant
...Although FBI statistics show that during the first half of 2008, the number of all arsons was down nationwide, officials are bracing for a rise as the economy continues trending downward.....
....New Haven Fire Marshal Joseph Cappucci said there's been a slight increase in car fires of suspicious origin during the past few months. So far, there have been no arrests."We usually find these cars on poorly lit streets with no witnesses. It's difficult many times to determine if a fire was intentionally set," he said. "I imagine we'll see an increase in suspicious car fires if the economy gets worse."
Joseph Benoit, the Greenwich fire marshal, echoed Cappucci's concerns.
"We haven't seen anything yet, but we anticipate we will," he said. "We saw a lot of suspicious car fires in our last big recessions. We'd find a car out in the middle of nowhere at 3 a.m. in flames. I remember one car brought here from New York state and burned. Turned out that the person hired by the owner to get rid of the car left his library card in it. So we were able to figure out what happened."
People on the move
Newsday
Stan Pearson has been named manager of the health care division of Triton Construction in Garden City. The Greenwich, Conn. resident has 30 years of construction industry experience, most recently as senior vice president and head of project development at Barney Skanska Construction, where he managed operations in New York City.
Greenwich Post
State Senator Scott Frantz, a Greenwich resident, will be among the speakers at the Rising Star breakfast Tuesday, March 10, at the Windsor Marriott. The role Bradley International Airport plays as a regional portal and invaluable asset to an estimated 4.7 million travelers will be the featured topic at MetroHartford Alliance’s breakfast.....
The 26th annual March Into Spring Women Against MS Luncheon of Fairfield County will take place Thursday, April 23, at the Greenwich Country Club. The luncheon will feature 25 area vendors and New York Times best-selling author Jacquelyn Mitchard as the keynote speaker....
Greenwich Time
Town could save jobs by avoiding needless expense
To the editor
As a follow-up to the correct arguments made by Gerald A. Pollack and printed on March 5 ( "Town budget situation needs proper handling," Greenwich Time, Letters from Readers): Before dismissing town employees in this time of distress, spending millions in people's money on very questionable projects should be considered. The following are just a few.
The roundabout at South Water Street and Mead Avenue -- Total cost is close to $1 million, including consulting design and construction expenses. People are still questioning the reasons.
Sound Beach Avenue and Lockwood Avenue -- More than a half-million dollars. For people who are still questioning the project, the reason was to slow down traffic. Wow! The same dubious result could have been achieved by painting or printing the crossing. The installation of islands and brick pavers over a concrete base was very expensive, considering that Sound Beach Avenue concrete had to be removed first.
Sound Beach Avenue at Shore Road project -- It has the same questionable elements as the previously mentioned project.
Birth: Blosser LivingstonDailyTodd and Michele Blosser of Greenwich, Conn., announce the birth of their twin boys, Grant Michael Blosser and Hudson Nye Blosser
Greenwich Post
Whitby School continues its annual tradition of staging Shakespeare plays by its seventh and eighth grade middle school students with this year’s production of As You Like It. This Shakespeare play continues to be an audience favorite featuring its heroine Rosalind as she flees persecution in her uncle's court to find safety and eventually
Greenwich Time Editorial
Police and fire protection is about as basic as it gets for municipal government. Yet an acknowledged need for a new firehouse in the King Street area has gone unfilled for years. Worse, it now is very possible that the painful progress toward building that facility will come to a grinding halt. Town finance officials should ask themselves whether it would be responsible to let that happen.
Tommy Hilfiger chats about his lifestyle at home San Jose Mercury News...
But it's also because he splits his time between two homes, one in New York City and one in Greenwich, Conn. And it's mostly because he's the restless type. "I grew up with eight brothers and sisters, so there was always a lot of ...
GreenwichPost
Brunswick School and Greenwich Academy performed Les Misérables, Brunswick’s first major musical production in the new Baker Theater at the Upper School on Maher Avenue.
Analysts say Greenwich Hedge Fund Honcho's annual piece is short on details to turn around retailer......
Greenwich Time Wire Services
By Sandra M. Jones
Chicago Tribune
Most annual letters to shareholders are dry and perfunctory. A few, like those from investment oracle Warren Buffett, are revered for their wisdom. And then there are the writings of Greenwich's Edward Lampert, the one-of-kind chairman of Sears Holdings Corp.
Sears' business has been in trouble for years, and investors are eager to know how Lampert plans to fix it. In his 15-page letter released Thursday, he has plenty to say but sheds little light on Sears' strategy.
The hedge fund manager with the Goldman Sachs pedigree expounds for 8,500 words (about the length of a New Yorker story) on topics as far-flung as the government's missteps trying to contain the financial meltdown, short-selling rules, civil liberties, the writings of free-market Austrian economist Friedrich Hayek and the notion, repeated in past letters, that the credit rating agencies are unfairly rating Sears' debt junk
Man due in court for illegal possession of ape Connecticut Post... left his pet siamang, a type of gibbon and the largest of the lesser apes,
at the Lionshare Zoological Center in Greenwich and Stamford while he tried to sell his house, according the affidavit. The Connecticut Department of Environmental Protection ...
The Latest Comments From The Message Boards About This Story:
Been There Says:
I've been in the house and seen all of these animals. Fairfield Animal Control was well aware of what was going on.
This is just one more instance of animals being treated as commodities. And the animals always lose.
Ape Man Adds:
Rich people who own exotic animals are usually mentally unbalanced.
STATISTICS Dartmouth Big Green
... who fed it back to her and she fired a low shot past Irish keeper Erin Goodman. Plumb and
Shannie MacKenzie (Greenwich, Conn.) turned Notre Dame over on the next possession and rookie Sarah Parks (Ellicott City, Md.) found her classmate, Plumb, for ...
Greenwich Post
The Greenwich Hibernian Association will raise the Irish flag at Town Hall on St. Patrick’s Day, Tuesday, March 17, at 8:45 a.m. The ceremony will take place at the flag poles in front of Town Hall.
GreenwichTime
With major losses in assets, coupled with a decline in patient volume, Greenwich Hospital has been hit hard by the recession, according to Frank Corvino, the hospital's chief executive.
Since October, the hospital has lost $25 million in its financial investment portfolio, seen a 6.9 percent decline in patient volume and a 13.8 percent decline in inpatient surgeries from 785 to 720, he said. These are just some examples of how the hospital, which for years has shown record growth, has been affected by the collapsing economy, Corvino said.
"Nobody anticipated the meltdown in the financial markets," he said. "This is going to be a tough year."....
Lawmakers pledge to ban private ownership of exotic animals Friends of Animals... Roy and Meyer made the announcement during a news conference with
Attorney General Richard Blumenthal of Greenwich; Gina McCarthy, commissioner of the state Department of Environmental Protection; and a representative of the Humane Society. ...
Greenwich Citizen
The squeeze is on to reduce the Board of Education's (BOE) already slim budget for the 2009-2010 school year.
GreenwichTime
Greenwich residents Brownie Roe and Louise Puschel intertwined artichoke, asparagus and leucadendra and placed them atop a miniature iron bicycle for their environmentally friendly floral arrangement that symbolized someone biking to the store to get fresh vegetables.
Students honored for academic work The Leaf Chronicle
... is really your oyster now,"
said keynote speaker John Sites, a partner in Wexford Capital LLC, a hedge fund in Greenwich, Conn. Sites is a 1970 Clarksville High School graduate who formerly served on the board of directors of Bear Sterns & Co. Inc. ...
Greenwich Citizen
"We're here to learn," First Selectman Peter Tesei - ever the peace-maker - calmly said after an "artificial turf" war consumed 90 minutes of a Board of Selectmen meeting in Town Hall last Thursday
Fay theft spurs legislation to give laypersons control of purse strings - Bishops Go Nuts !!!!
After a priest stole $1.4 million from a church in Darien, state legislators have proposed a law that would regulate how parishes are controlled and operated.
The state's Catholic bishops rallied opposition from the pulpits at weekend Masses.
The law essentially would strip the dioceses of all financial control of parishes and leave bishops and priests to oversee "matters pertaining exclusively to religious tenets and practices." A board of elected laypersons would handle parish finances.
The bill, introduced Thursday by the Legislature's Judiciary Committee, chaired by Sen. Andrew McDonald, D-Stamford, and Rep. Michael Lawlor, D-East Haven, caught many Catholics by surprise. They heard about it during Masses.
McDonald introduced the bill at the request of members of St. John Church on the Post Road in Darien, where the former pastor, the Rev. Michael Jude Fay, was convicted of stealing from parishioners over several years......
The human singularity is near
Harvard CrimsonThe future is most palpable looking out at Mumbai or Shanghai from a high floor. Here is not the septic progress of Silicon Valley
or the paper profits of Greenwich’s risk arbitrageurs. Here is the stuff that would be instantly recognizable to the industrialists who built America: the hustle of men advancing fast and the delight of knowing for sure that the world is getting better, quicker. As the savings-investment cycles reach their fever pitch in South and East Asia, these societies will undoubtedly spend their trillions of reserves on infrastructure, unlocking once and for all the mass of human capital.
Proponents of the so-called technological singularity ...
Worried about finding work? Listen to this axed worker's inspirational tale New York City's Hometown Newspaper - NY Daily News... at the A&E television network.
"It was drawn out, shocking and painful," DeMakes, 44, a father of two girls from Greenwich, Conn. , said. "It was one of the lowest points in my life." DeMakes decided he would do everything he could to avoid staying ...
Greenwich Time
Adrienne Hedvat, 9, eyed the shaving-cream covered balloon cautiously, considering the best method for removing the cream with a knife without popping it.
Her strategy? Using the back side of the knife.
"It was pretty easy," she said.
Adrienne was just one of more than 250 people who came out to play games during Temple Sholom's annual Purim Carnival celebration held yesterday at the temple on East Putnam Avenue.
Purim is a Jewish holiday, lesser known than Hanukkah or Rosh Hashanah, but just as celebratory, said Rabbi Allison Berlinger, Temple Sholom Director of Education. It commemorates a story told in the Book of Esther when the Jews were saved by Queen Esther from persecution in Persia, after she persuaded the King not to have them destroyed
Malloy says he's still running for governor Connecticut Post... was later arrested on drug charges and for falsely reporting the incident as a home invasion.
In November 2007, Greenwich police accused Benjamin Malloy of being a drug dealer and searched the mayor's Shippan home. He later entered a drug ...
The Latest Comments From The Message Boards About This Story:
Hot Soup Says:
Children come first to a responsible and loving father, politics are second,but power can be an addiction like any other so both, father and son need REHAB
The Bpt Kid Adds:
This kid, Ben is a rotten apple.Despite being born to a rich,priveliged family-he continues to dabble in drugs and crime.Daddy pulled strings last time and got him off easy-a pat on the hand.But sonny has now violated his probation and will go to jail.But although Danny-Boy can't be responsible for a bad kid-he IS responsible for allowing illegal aliens to congregate in "hassle free" zones in Stamford.He has in fact-circumvented all our immigration laws.For this reason I will not support him-although I WILL vote for ANYONE BUT RELL
Vineyard Vines talks success Connecticut Post... on Madison Avenue, shared their story Thursday evening at the Darien Sport Shop.
The brothers, who grew up in Greenwich, said they learned about the good life from traveling around the world with their parents, both of whom were travel writers, and ...
The Latest Comment From The Message Boards About This Story:
Not Success Says:
Awesome success - please if dady hadnt of giving them everything they would be nothing - I would've been more impressed if they started with nothing a built it into a something - i'm sure daddy's connections and money helped them get in to the stores and make connections - how many stories dont we hear about were peope have a great product but cant get on the store shelf because they didnt go to the same private school as these punks.
Huh Reponds:
Jealous much? ok so they were fortunate enough to have parents who had the means to invest in their business, but it takes brains and talent to SUCCEED in business. If they didnt work hard and have good ideas this wouldnt have ever taken off. People buy these products because they like them and Im sure 99% of the people who buy them have no clue who these guys are. nor do they care.
Hundreds Of Squash Players Compete At Meadow Mill WJZ Baltimore... youngsters are having a ball. "
It's a great sport and it's a lot of exercise, too," said Will Holey, player from Greenwich, Conn. About 275 junior squash players are at Meadow Mill for the tournament and they come from all over the country. ".....
Greenwich Time
With the approval of a fifth and final cash infusion expected tonight, the Hamilton Avenue School project is expected to top out at more than $31.
At its regular meeting at 8 p.m. at Central Middle School, the Representative Town Meeting is scheduled to vote on a request by the school's building committee to inject an additional $200,000 into the almost-finished school rehabilitation project.
Building committee members say the interim appropriation, approved by the town finance board last Monday, will be the absolute last boost in funds they'll need to ensure the school complies with all of the requirements laid out by safety inspectors and planning officials.....
Closed: Baang in Woodbury Newsday.com... am I going to get by without that great Asian chicken salad?" a friend wonders.
Guess she'll have to trek up to Greenwich, Connecticut, where the original Baang remains open and running. ...
Greenwich Time
STAMFORD -- Nearly a year after cousins Leonard and Carlos Trujillo were arrested and charged in connection with the slaying of Greenwich real estate developer Andrew Kissel, the battle over who should be tried first continues.
Locals believe Gov. Rell's proposed tax is fishy Norwalk Citizen News... other product that is taxed between one-third and one-half of its value."
Ed Stilwagen, of Atlantic Clam Farms of Greenwich, harvests from about 2,500 acres in Greenwich waters. Stilwagen, like Duff, explained the tax would be inappropriate because ...
GreenwichTime
After oil companies and gasoline suppliers opposed ending zone pricing for gasoline, the legislature's General Law Committee approved a law backed by a Stamford legislator that would ban fuel distributors from charging different amounts for fuel to gas stations in the state.
Pen pal program bridges gap between generations Darien News-Review... Yet the art of letter-writing is being resurrected between the second grade students at
Brunswick School in Greenwich and the residents of an assisted-living home, Atria Darien. "The program offers a great outlet for both sides because they're ...
Kids learn how Revolutionary War soldiers livedGreenwichTimeStanding outside a tent that could have been plucked directly from a Revolutionary War camp, 9-year-old Andrew Nisco taught visitors how six soldiers would live in the cramped tent, hang their muskets above their heads and wear their uniforms to bed.
Brant Foundation Art Study Center to open in May Artforum Intl.
This May,
Peter Brant, the newsprint magnate, and his wife, Stephanie Seymour Brant, the model, will open the Brant Foundation Art Study Center in Greenwich, Connecticut, ...
Greenwich Time
Skatepark opens for season today The Greenwich Skatepark, at Roger Sherman Baldwin Park next to the Arch Street Teen Center, is scheduled to open for the season today.
More than 3,700 job-seekers search for work at N.Y. fair WisInfo... store's hiring goals.
One popular table, that of AQR Capital Management LLC, an investment management firm in Greenwich, Conn., said it had one position open, for an accountant. Recruiter Meghan Baruno said she had collected hundreds of resumes. ...
================================================================
Please send your comments, news tips and press releases to
GreenwichRoundup@gmail.com or click on the comments link at the end of this post.
It's Getting Ugly Out There
