LITTLE ROCK — QUOTE OF THE DAY “Congress is doing this in broad strokes.
Where the rubber meets the road is the regulatory process.”
Scott Talbott,
a lobbyist for the Financial Services Roundtable, on the financial-overhaul bill expected to come up for final vote this week Article, 1A
Goldman Sachs is held liable in scam
NEW YORK - Goldman Sachs Group Inc. has been ordered to pay $20.6 million to scammed investors who say the investment bank should have known about the Ponzi scheme pulled off by the collapsed Bayou Hedge Funds.
A three-person arbitration panel of the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority held the bank’s Goldman Sachs Execution & Clearing unit, formerly known as Spear Leeds & Kellogg, liable in the case.
Stamford, Conn.-based Bayou collapsed in 2005, after the firm’s then-CEO Samuel Israel III and Chief Financial Officer Daniel Marino admitted they lied about the company’s profits and set up a fake accounting firm to falsify audits.
The $20.6 million award represents the money Bayou deposited into its accounts at Goldman, said attorney Ross Intelisano of Rich & Intelisano LLP, a New York firm that represents investors in securities cases.
Goldman handled all of the hedge fund’s trading between 1999 and 2004, when it stopped trading altogether, he said.
2 census workers faked count, fired
NEW YORK - Two U.S.
Census Bureau managers in Brooklyn have been fired over allegations that they forged questionnaires.
According to reports in The New York Times and the New York Daily News on Saturday, officials said about 10,000 household interviews would have to be redone to ensure that the count is accurate.
The Census Bureau’s New York regional director, Tony Farthing, told the Daily News that the fakery took place over the weekend of June 12 when the Northeast Brooklyn office was under pressure to meet a deadline.
Farthing said instead of surveying people in their homes, the managers cheated by copying information from phone books and Internet directories. They were turned in by whistle-blowers.
The two managers were fired on June 18 but do not face criminal charges, Farthing said.
Census officials did not immediately respond Saturday to calls and e-mails seeking confirmation of the reports.
NYC asks to scrap street-box phones
NEW YORK - New York City officials have asked a federal court for permission to abandon an old-fashioned alarm system that predates the days when people dialed 911 from their cell phones to summon help.
The city now spends $9 million a year maintaining a network of 15,000 emergency street boxes. They allow people to alert emergency dispatchers by pushing a button or pulling a lever.
Use of the boxes has dropped by 90 percent in the past 15 years, and false alarms outnumber true emergencies 9-to-1.
But a court blocked the city from getting rid of the boxes in 1996 because of the potential impact on deaf residents.
Advocates say that for people who are hearing-impaired, the alarm boxes are still valuable.
The city’s request isn’t expected to be decided for several months.
Front Section, Pages 4 on 06/27/2010