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With an auto bailout in limbo, the Big 3’s fortunes are going from bad to worse: Chrysler has announced plans to close down all 30 of its plants for at least a month at the end of the day on Friday. At the earliest, the plants will reopen January 19, Chrysler said in a statement. The most troubled of the Big 3 car companies saw sales plummet 47 percent in November and has pleaded for emergency bridge funding from the government to avoid a total collapse. Ford and GM are also piling on the bad news: Ford will shut down most of its North American assembly plants for the first week of January, and GM is delaying a new engine factory.
The New York Times is up with a must-read on the behind-the-scenes maneuvering to secure Caroline Kennedy a Senate seat. A top aide to New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, Kevin Sheekey—he of the “Bloomberg for President” leaks—has been calling state movers and shakers and telling them to “get on board now,” The Times reports. Sheekey’s arm-twisting apparently has the blessing of his boss, but it’s rankling some Democrats, who are seeing echoes of Bloomberg’s alpha-male bid to rid himself of the city’s term limits—another Sheekey project. “It appears to be another case of central casting by the city’s cognoscenti,” snipes a Democratic City Council member.
The Securities and Exchange Commission, which has taken a beating in the past week over the Madoff scandal, is getting its first female leader. Mary Schapiro, a veteran financial regulator, is currently head of the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority, known as Wall Street’s self-regulator—some might also question that agency’s effectiveness in the wake of the financial meltdown—and has attracted the support of both Democrats and Republicans. President Reagan appointed her commissioner at the SEC, and Clinton made her head of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission. Her appointment by Obama, expected to be announced at a press conference Thursday, will make it easier for the incoming administration to merge the SEC and CFTC—a move advocated by critics of the organizations’ lack of oversight in the runup to the financial crisis.
So what, exactly, was Bernard Madoff doing with all the money he allegedly filched from his investors? He was a regular patron at the Everglades Barber Shop in Palm Beach, where he owned a $21 million home. Among his services there were a $65 haircut, a $40 shave, a $50 pedicure, and a $22 manicure. When he dined at The Palm, a Palm Beach institution, he insisted on sitting at the front. He played golf at the Palm Beach Country Club—he was a 9.8 handicap—and also owned a 55-foot wooden fishing boat. In Manhattan he lived in an Upper East Side apartment he bought for $3.325 million in 1990. His wife, Ruth, in her free time, co-edited a cookbook in 1996 called The Great Chefs of America Cook Kosher that featured recipes from the likes of Daniel Boulud and Wolfgang Puck.
As if Rick Warren weren’t a big enough deal. Back in August, he was able to bring both Barack Obama and John McCain to his Saddleback Chuch to answer questions. Now Obama has chosen Warren to give the invocation at his inauguration on January 20. “Even though Warren and Obama disagree on the life issue, they do see eye to eye on many social justice issues,” writes the Christian Broadcasting Network’s David Brody. “This move is also classic Obama because it is a signal to religious conservatives that he’s willing to bring in both sides to the faith discussion in this country.” The Atlantic’s Marc Ambinder notes that an encounter with Warren and other pastors helped convince Obama that he could run for president.
Politico notes a troubling trend in the Democratic party: an uptick in nepotism. There have always been Kennedys, of course. But now Hillary Clinton is secretary of state; Jesse Jackson Jr. may replace Obama in the Senate; Beau Biden may replace his dad, Joe; Caroline Kennedy may replace Clinton; etc., etc. “The U.S. Senate could end up looking like an American version of the House of Lords,” the paper quips. Cue the Republican overreach: “Democrats seem to lack a common man who can just win a good, old-fashioned election,” says New York Rep. Tom Reynolds. Well, if you ignore Barack Obama, then maybe you’ve got a point.
For those who missed the new Muppet extravaganza tonight—A Muppets Christmas: Letters to Santa aired at 8 p.m. on NBC with guest stars Nathan Lane and Petra Nemcova—The Deadbolt offers something just as good: a sitdown with Miss Piggy. The ageless living legend spills enough tidbits (fondest Christmas memory: “sitting around a campfire with my Kermie and John Denver”; on Michael Bloomberg’s cameo: “we basically had to put him in the show because he was certain to ban us from New York…he takes no prisoners”) to make you want to stock your Netflix queue with Muppets specials.
News from the Bernie Madoff case: U.S. District Court Magistrate Gabriel Gorenstein ordered the defendant to submit to electronic monitoring—which typically means an ankle transmitter—and home detention. The arrangement will allow Madoff to avoid jail while he awaits trial. Gorenstein also ordered Madoff’s wife to give up her passport. Madoff’s was freed $10 million bond.
Looks like Barack Obama is planning to make better on his promise to include Republicans in his Cabinet. In addition to Defense Secretary Robert Gates, Barack Obama is in talks with Rep. Ray LaHood of Illinois to take a Cabinet post—most likely, reports The Hill, secretary of transportation. When reached for comment, LaHood would only say that Rahm Emanuel had contacted him last night. A GOP source said, however, that the position is transportation, and that the team would likely announce it on Friday.
German critics are saying “nein” to Tom Cruise’s turn as war hero Claus von Stauffenberg in Valkyrie. “The only thing that can definitely be said about this cinema adventure is that Tom Cruise, who has been damaged by his bizarre talk show behavior, may well continue storming the heights of the Scientology hierarchy as a Thetan, but his image as an actor has been finally ruined by Valkyrie,” wrote the film critic of Berlin paper Der Tagesspiegel. Upon hearing of the Cruise casting news, von Stauffenberg’s oldest son, Berthold Schenk Count, told Cruise to go back to America. Other reviews of Valkyrie, while not scathing, are unlikely to bolster the film’s Oscar hopes.
Get used to this sight for the next four years: Robert Gibbs standing at a podium, taking questions from a suddenly skeptical press corps. In a profile in The New York Times Magazine, Mark Leibovich writes that Gibbs, Obama’s new press secretary will enjoy an advantage over this Bush predecessors in that he actually knows the president. Obama is his “traveling buddy,” his fellow football fan, and Gibbs has “walk-in privileges” in the Oval Office. On the campaign trail, Gibbs could hold a grudge—a few reporters were punished by being dropped from the campaign plane. (“He can be pretty tough on folks at times,” Obama tells Leibovich.) Moreover, Gibbs and the rest of the Team Obama subscribe to the “Bush model” of information dispersal—meaning, don’t expect a new and richer relationship between president and press.
The National Enquirer is back at its favorite well: The (alleged) John Edwards love child. Apparently, Rielle Hunter, Edwards’ former mistress and mother of his (alleged) child, is broke after the death of her patron, Fred Baron, and is living with a friend in South Orange, New Jersey. Baron, who was Edwards’ national finance chairman, was paying her $15,000 a month to live in a $3 million home in Santa Barbara. He died on October 30 from cancer complications.
New York magazine’s excellent film critic David Edelstein has done a public service by reviewing the winter awards films in the same place. Thumbs up (with some reservations) to Revolutionary Road, Doubt, The Wrestler, and Benjamin Button. Not so much The Reader, Edelstein cousels, and the long march of Che. (“You start to look forward to Che getting riddled by bullets.”) A wildcard: John Leguizamo’s Where God Left His Shoes, parts of which is “almost too painful to endure.”
A State Department panel is recommending that Blackwater be dropped as the main security contractor for American diplomats in Iraq. The report, which was commissioned by Condoleezza Rice, recommends that Blackwater’s contract not be renewed when it expires next year. The company has been unpopular in Iraq ever since five of its contractors were accused of murdering 17 civilians in Baghdad last year. It’s unclear exactly how the U.S. would replace Blackwater. The report recommends increasing the presence of the Diplomatic Security Service in Iraq.
Simon Doonan astutely writes in The Observer today what you always knew to be true: office holiday parties “totally sucked.” He extols the virtues of the debauched soirees of yesteryear: “Drugs, venereal disease, fistfights, unwanted pregnancies—now those were holiday parties!” It’s not Christmas until the office loser, the one with the “pudgiest, whitest body,” inevitably inflicts his nakedness upon his colleagues. Doonan claims that in recent years sober people were to blame for the relatively tame events—the “death of fun,” if you will—and that the annual occasion was long dead before the economy (thankfully) axed most this year. But what about your coworkers destined to drink alone?
Four years of boozy Thursday nights and shock-inducing finals seem well worth the cost of college tuition. But in the midst of a recession, quantifying the long-term value of a college education just became a priority. SmartMoney has ranked the best colleges by comparing the cost of tuition with students’ median salaries three and five years post-graduation, the result of which is a school’s “payback” ratio. The University of Georgia is the top public school; Washington and Lee snatches the top Liberal Arts post; and all hail Princeton as the top Ivy with a payback of 132 percent.
News from Italy: Italian police, tipped off by phone taps, swept up 94 mobsters seeking to reestablish the organizational structure of the Sicilian Cosa Nostra and elect a “capo di capi,” a single all-powerful boss. The Independent reports that the meeting had been organized from behind bars by Bernardo Provenzano, a mobster arrested in 2006 and nicknamed “The Tractor” for his ability to mow people down. The Tractor had been wanted for 40 years, but eluded arrest because he refused to use telephone, snail mail, fax or computer, but relied on typed notes delivered by a network of couriers. His successors discarded Provenzano’s caution, which allowed police to amass an impressive amount of information by wiretap and led to yesterday’s arrests.
Maybe James Frey should go back to writing "memoirs": His latest novel, the author says, will be "the third book of the Bible, called The Final Testament of the Holy Bible. … My idea of what the Messiah would be like if he were walking the streets of New York today. What would he believe? What would he preach? How would he live? With who?" From the sound of it, subtlety can be nailed to a cross next to the protagonist: The novel, Frey says, will feature Jesus living with a prostitute and performing gay marriages.
No one in Britain or Ireland will have to order a half-liter, ask for 200 grams of cheese, or drive at 110 kilometers per hour, The Telegraph reports. The EU has voted to allow Britain to keep its distinctive, if mathematically unfriendly, system of weights and measures indefinitely, and allowed traders the option of displaying both metric and imperial measures side by side in shops. The acre, however, will go the way of the 8-track. This ruling upends the previous scheme, which required Britain and Ireland to come up with a timetable for scrapping imperial measures in 2009.
In 1376, the Pied Piper of Hamelin supposedly played the city’s rat infestation into a river where they drowned, then made off with the town’s children. Now, according to The Times of London, Hamelin, along with much of Germany, is again infested with rats due to strict rubbish disposal regulations that mean that food is often flushed down the toilet, creating a sewer smorgasbord for the rodents. Henner Schmidt, a senior member of the Berlin’s Free Democratic Party, even suggested offering a one euro bounty on rats. For Hamelin’s part, the city has hired an official exterminator who is using roughly 40 traps with poisoned bait. Cynics have suggested the town is coming clean about its Rattus norvegicus problem to increase tourism--next year is the 725th anniversary of the story.
Here's one Bush administration anecdote not uncovered by Bob Woodward. Back when he was CIA director, George Tenet had too much scotch to drink while hanging out in Prince Bandar's pool in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. "He drained half the bottle in a few minutes," Patrick Tyler writes in A World of Trouble. "They're setting me up. The bastards are setting me up. I am not going to take the hit," Tenet reportedly said, referring to the blame game over Iraq's WMD. There's more, courtesy of an excerpt by The Atlantic's Jeffrey Goldberg: "According to one witness, he mocked the neoconservatives in the Bush administration and their alignment with the right wing of Israel's political establishment, referring to them with exasperation as, 'the Jews.'" Tenet denied the remarks.
India's small corps of 4,000 psychiatrists are at a loss in the aftermath of the Mumbai terror attacks, which killed 170 people and traumatized a country of 1.1 billion people. The line to see mental health professionals can stretch to 300 people, and patients typically get counseled for a maximum of five minutes. Patients range from CEOs who pay $50 per visit to illiterate villagers who pay a subsidized fee of five cents. Many victims are also turning to traditional healers and shamans, who are often viewed as a less embarrassing alternative. "You know very well they're going to go from your clinic to a witch doctor who will do black magic," one psychiatrist says.
It’s certainly not change we can believe in—try a curious flashback to 1990s. Betty Currie, Bill Clinton’s personal secretary, has taken a job at Obama transition headquarters in Washington, answering phones for John Podesta. “Of course I asked her because in the 30 years we have worked together, I have never known anyone with more grace, dedication and public spirit than Betty,” Podesta told The New York Times. “And she has one mean Rolodex.” Currie became a household name when she testified five times before a grand jury about Clinton’s contact with Monica Lewinsky. Currie, who will not work in the Obama White House, serves on various charitable boards and serves as the guardian of the Clintons’ cat, Socks.
New York Gov. David Paterson has proposed what the New York Post calls “the biggest tax hike in state history.” Among the items that will carry new or increased taxes: music downloads, taxi rides, movies, beer, “nondiet” soft drinks, sports tickets, haircuts, and manicures. Paterson said, We are going to have to change our culture as we know it." One Republican lawmaker told the paper, “The pain in this budget seems to be strictly for the middle class.”
Which person owns the unfortunate distinction of being Bernie Madoff’s biggest victim? Try Walter M. Noel, manager of the Fairfield Greenwich Group. Noel lost $7.5 billion, more than half of his firm's holdings. In Greenwich, according to The New York Times, the Noels were famous for sending out Christmas cards with their five beautiful daughters—the family even posed for a spread in Vanity Fair in 2002. The Fairfield Greenwich Group charged clients a fee of one percent of assets annually and 20 percent of annual investment gains, and regularly returned 10 to 12 percent. Noel's largest fund invested exclusively in Madoff. One daughter said through a spokesman that "a very substantial part of each family member's personal assets was invested with Bernard Madoff alongside those of our investors."
CNN has a fascinating new report on the turbulent history between Jesse Jackson Jr. and Rod Blagojevich. Jackson Jr.’s aides said Tuesday that while the congressman has talked to the U.S. attorney’s office about Blago, Jackson was not an “informant” and his discussions had nothing to do with the current case of selling Obama’s Senate seat. Well, CNN has the details: It turns out that in 2002, during his first gubernatorial campaign, Blagojevich asked Jackson for a $25,000 donation. Jackson refused, and his wife, Sandi, lost out on a job as director of the Illinois Lottery Commission. According to CNN’s account, Blago later told Jackson something like, “You see what $25,000 would have done?” Jackson went to the feds.
After the flop of Australia, is Nicole Kidman done with acting? "I have to say I'm not that interested in making films any more," the actress said in an interview with The Telegraph. "I know I'm not meant to say that, but that's where it is for me now." She goes on to say, "I'm 41 years old and very happy being in Tennessee with my baby and with my husband. I obviously have creative blood in me and it needs to come out in some way but I just don't have that burning desire any more. … I'm not saying I'm never going to work again, but I'm at peace with whatever happens, which is a nice place to be at this stage of my life."
Zimbabwe's air force chief was reportedly shot and wounded yesterday, exacerbating the country's political crisis. President Robert Mugabe, who is clinging to power by violently suppressing his opposition, is planning to declare a state of emergency following what the government is describing as an assassination attempt. Take that characterization with a grain of salt--the shooting hasn't been verified, and given Mugabe's claims a day earlier that foreigners are planning a coup, he may be setting up for another round of crackdowns.
First pirates, and now role-playing gamers—director Gore Verbinski has a knack for highlighting quirky characters. The Pirates of the Caribbean helmer has recently acquired the rights to a Wall Street Journal article about a 53-year-old married man who lives an alternate life as a gym rat entrepreneur in an online fantasy world, reports Variety. Spending 20 hours a day online does not, surprisingly, have positive effects. Universal Pictures will produce the as-yet-unwritten script by Steven Knight (of the Viggo Mortensen drama Eastern Promises). But will players pry themselves away from their desktops to watch?
Might this be the most expensive mea culpa in history? SEC Chairman Christopher Cox has admitted “apparent multiple failures” in his agency’s oversight of Bernard Madoff’s alleged $50 billion Ponzi scheme. According to The Wall Street Journal, the SEC was “aware of numerous red flags raised about Bernard L. Madoff Investment Securities LLC, but failed to take them seriously enough.” Cox said that “credible and specific allegations” were made against Madoff as far back as 1999, but they “were never recommended to the Commission for action.” In 2000, Harry Markopolos, a rival of Madoff’s, wrote the SEC a letter saying “Madoff Securities is the world’s largest Ponzi scheme.” The investigation will include a probe into the marriage between Madoff’s niece and a former official at the agency who supervised oversight of trading at stock exchanges and electronic-trading platforms.
Is Chancellor Angela Merkel Europe's Herbert Hoover? Her refusal to spend significant amounts of money during the recession has earned her in the French media the sobriquet "Madame Non" and been criticized even by her own council of economic advisers. Berlin's conservatism belies, writes The New York Times, "grudges against its European neighbors, often tinged with a measure of contempt for what it sees as their failings." Germany is Europe's largest economy and the world's largest exporter, and some its leaders see other countries' clamoring as their comeuppance for refusing "to make the hard choices in recent years that reinvigorated the German economy." But the contraction of the German economy could spell trouble for the entire European Union, especially its weaker economies.
The thinkable has happened: President-elect Obama is Time magazine’s Person of the Year. The decision was so obvious that Managing Editor Rick Stengel’s essay, “Why We Chose Obama,” does not, at least at first glance, explain why the magazine chose Obama. Runners-up included Hank Paulsen, Sarah Palin, and Zhang Yimou, who directed the opening ceremonies of the Beijing Olympics. There was one small surprise: The magazine used Shepard Fairey, who created the iconic poster of Obama during the primaries, to illustrate its cover.
When Martha Raddatz pointed out to President Bush on Sunday that Al Qaeda did not exist in Iraq before he invaded the country, he replied, “Yeah, that’s right. So what?” Months earlier, when she drew Vice President Cheney’s attention to the fact that two-thirds of the American people opposed the war, he said, “So?” ABC News’ blog, The World Newser, asks a pertinent question. “[I]s it appropriate for the President and Vice President to answer questions about war with a ‘So?’ or ‘So what?’”
Among the A-list stars who signed a letter on Monday opposing an actors' strike, Tom Hanks' signature may be most troublesome for the Screen Actors Guild. "His nice-guy reputation in and out of the industry makes it difficult for his opponents to say they are on the side of the angels," David Carr and Brooks Barnes write in today's New York Times. While actors like Mel Gibson and Martin Sheen have lined up behind a strike, the resistance of stars like Hanks, George Clooney, Matt Damon, and Charlize Theron may spell the end of SAG as we know it. "Many of the smartest people in Hollywood say a strike will split the union in half, with the tiny sliver of the guild that works splintering off from the big chunk that would seem to have nothing better to do than strike."
Hillary Clinton is telling her supporters not to hamper Caroline Kennedy’s efforts to lock down her vacated Senate seat. "The supporters who said anything critical were rebuked," a source tells the Daily News. According to another source, Clinton is so focused on the State Department that she won’t “engage friends like teachers union President Randi Weingarten who are Kennedy's rivals for the seat.” Clinton supporters had been irked that Kennedy could wind up replacing the woman she helped to defeat in this year’s Democratic primaries. Today, Kennedy begins her own version of the “listening tour” upstate to secure support with local officials.
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