The only time I met Eliot Spitzer in person was in a Midtown hotel. I know what you’re thinking, but he’s not my type.
Spitzer was giving a speech to some lunch group, and I had been invited because he wanted to chat. He was state attorney general at the time, and I was lobbying in my column for an investigation of Dick Grasso, then the head of the New York Stock Exchange.
I’m not a lawyer, but I thought it would be fun if it was a RICO investigation — the statute that the federal government uses to prosecute mobsters. A number of traders I knew were telling me that cheating on the NYSE trading floor was rampant and that Grasso knew of it.
In my mind, the NYSE might have been deemed a criminal enterprise deserving of attention under the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organization Act, or RICO.
Spitzer didn’t like my idea. He had a dumber one of his own. He alleged in a lawsuit that Grasso was being excessively compensated for running the exchange — which, Spitzer argued, fell under the state’s salary rules on not-for-profit organizations. After four years of litigation, Spitzer lost his case on appeal.
Why wasn’t a RICO claim pursued? Spitzer told me in that hotel’s elevator that it was “too hard” to prosecute. Too hard!
Spitzer, as you know, is trying to make a comeback as city comptroller. After being caught with hooker Ashley Dupré, Spitzer gave up his job as governor. And he’s been living blissfully — for the rest of us — out of the headlines.
But while he was away, there’s been what I think is a disturbing trend in our society : the “too-something” excuse.
You’ve heard it with banks and Wall Street financial institutions. They were “too big to fail,” so taxpayers came to their rescue. Nobody ever explained why Lehman Brothers wasn’t too big to fail, but I’m sure the selection process was all above board.
And more recently, US Attorney General Eric Holder added that some institutions were “too big to prosecute.” Too big, or too difficult? Holder never said which ones, but I’d assume it was those whose contributions to political campaigns were “too generous.”
The too-something excuse isn’t just for the big shots and national issues. A lawyer in Columbus, Ohio, last year argued that his client was too fat to be executed. It would be, the lawyer said, too difficult for the guy with the deadly needle to find veins in Mr. Chubby’s arms and legs.
Some people are just too powerful (think former NJ governor and MF Global head Jon Corzine), or too rich (think hedge-fund manager Steve Cohen) or too pretty (think of anyone in Hollywood) to end up where real criminals end up.
That’s why Lindsay Lohan is so important to our society. If she didn’t go to jail on a regular basis, there would be no one to restore our faith in the system.
That gets me back to Spitzer and Anthony Weiner, another sex-deviant publicity-seeker, who wants to be mayor. In a way, I’m glad Spitzer and Weiner are running for office, because people will now have a chance to say that they’ve had too much of this sort of nonsense.
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Not to beat a dead horse (or even a live one), but the Labor Department put out another survey this week that was considerably less optimistic than last Friday’s employment report.
The monthly jobs report said 195,000 jobs were created in June, which was better than anticipated. I warned you to expect a healthy report because the statistics are biased upward in the spring months. And I also told you that the strong June gains are nonsense and are nothing more than statistical aberrations.
This week the Labor Department quietly put out its JOLTS report (Job Opening and Labor Turnover Survey), which had none of the optimism of last Friday’s report. According to JOLT, there were 3.8 million job openings in this country on the last business day of May, which was “little changed” from April.
The May figure was also virtually the same as it has been all year.
So if the Labor Department thinks 195,000 jobs were created in June, why haven’t these jobs been reflected in the JOLT figures?
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The big mystery from the Federal Reserve’s June Open Market Committee meeting has been solved.
Everyone was wondering why Chairman Ben Bernanke, at a press conference last month, suddenly started talking about how his quantitative easing program, or QE, would be ended.
Details like this about the very dangerous money-printing operation usually come in the official communiqué that follows the committee meeting and not during a press conference.
Well, according to the minutes of that meeting, it turns out that Fed board members instructed Bernanke to come clean about QE. And Bernanke did — to an extent — by saying that QE might start tapering off by the end of this year and officially end in the middle of 2014.
But just in case you are starting to think you have Bernanke figured out, yesterday at another press conference he changed course again.
The economy, Bernanke said this time, really isn’t doing as well as some think. So a a “highly accommodative” Fed policy might have to continue.
I have an idea that might help. At the next press gathering on July 31, Bernanke should stand at his podium and ask: “Do any of you have ideas? Quite frankly, we’re stumped.”