(Photo by Randy Brooke/WireImage) Kimora Lee Simmons ‘ husband Tim Leissner has plead guilty to criminal charges related to the disappearance of billions of dollars from a Malaysian sovereign wealth fund. WWD reports: Tim Leissner was chairman of Goldman Sachs’ Southeast Asia business, but he resigned in 2016 and was subsequently subpoenaed by the U.S. Justice Department as part of a probe into the disappearance of billions of dollars from a Malaysian sovereign wealth fund 1MDB that was designed to boost the country’s economy and for which he helped raise money. Leissner pleaded guilty to conspiracy to launder money and violate foreign anti-bribery laws, allegedly bribing officials in Malaysia and Abu Dhabi. He has been ordered to forfeit $43.7 million, according to court filings. Ng, a managing director at the investment bank until 2014, was arrested this week in Malaysia, while Low is on the run. Neither Kimora or Tim have spoken out about the charges.
Donald Trump and Ted Cruz are running to be the Republican nominee for President of the United States. And they are currently engaged in a fight over who has the hotter wife. It all started when an anti-Trump super PAC shared a scantily-clad meme of Melania Trump, an immature move that prompted Trump to respond with the following Tweet: Lyin’ Ted Cruz just used a picture of Melania from a G.Q. shoot in his ad. Be careful, Lyin’ Ted, or I will spill the beans on your wife! Trump quickly deleted this message, although it will live forever on the Internet and it will cause many to wonder: What beans?!? And it will apparently also influence Trump’s followers, one of whom created the meme above and posted it on Instagram, only to have Trump himself then share it with the world. The split-screen image features Heidi Cruz – a former economic policy adviser and Goldman Sachs investment manager – alongside a glamor shot of his own wife, a former model. And, for good measure, Trump added a quote from Twitter user @Don_Vito_08 that reads “A picture is worth a thousand words.” View Slideshow: 14 Times Donald Trump Has Insulted Women Following the Republican’s front-runner’s initial comments, Cruz called Trump a “coward” and told CNN that “Heidi is way out of his league” if Trump wants to get into a character battle. Then, shortly after the latest meme went live, Cruz responded again on Twitter as follows: “Donald, real men don’t attack women. Your wife is lovely, and Heidi is the love of my life.” Seriously, only Donald Trump could make Ted Cruz come across as the nice one in a fight. View Slideshow: 16 Celebrities Who Actually Support Donald Trump
What if kamikaze NYT op-edder Greg Smith were a chicken from the Henson Workshop? What else? “My proudest moments in life — laying a plastic egg in Johannesberg, my LGTB teen awareness work with Bert, becoming Gonzo’s 539th domestic partner — have all come through hard work, with no shortcuts. With its cheap efforts to turn Gen X parents misty with sentimentality, the Muppets just doesn’t feel right to me anymore. I’m no Chicken Little — if things don’t change soon, the sky will indeed be falling.” [ The Awl ]
Karma is indeed a beyotch. Some public breakups go better than others, but the resignation of one exec from Goldman Sachs has turned into a very costly kiss-off for the company. Goldman Sachs lost more than $2 billion after “low drama” exec Greg Smith thrust himself into the global spotlight Wednesday with a very public resignation letter that scathingly denounced his employer. In the trading hours after the op-ed began circulating, the firm’s shares dropped 3.4 percent, the third-biggest decline in the S&P, Bloomberg reports. Smith’s take-that-(high-paid)-job-and-shove-it missive – published as an Op-Ed piece in The New York Times – blasted what he termed Goldman’s “toxic and destructive culture.” The executive director said the storied investment bank is indifferent to the interests of clients, who high-level bosses referred to as “muppets.” He said he attended meetings where the topic of how to help clients never came up. “It’s purely about how we can make the most possible money off of them. If you were an alien from Mars and sat in on one of those meetings, you would believe that a client’s success or progress was not part of the thought process at all,” Smith, 33, wrote in his caustic goodbye note, titled “Why I Am Leaving Goldman Sachs.” He said that in the last year, “I have seen five different managing directors refer to their own clients as ‘muppets.’” He added: “Today, if you make enough money for the firm (and are not currently an ax murderer) you will be promoted into a position of influence.” Smith, who had worked at Goldman for nearly 12 years and said his clients had a trillion dollars in assets, wrote: “I knew it was time to leave when I realized I could no longer look students in the eye and tell them what a great place this was to work. “I truly believe that this decline in the firm’s moral fiber represents the single most serious threat to its long-term survival.” The no-holds-barred missive was quickly trending on Twitter and triggered an uproar in financial circles. Goldman CEO Lloyd Blankfein and President Gary Cohn responded in a plainly worded internal memo. “We were disappointed to read the assertions made by this individual that do not reflect our values, our culture and how the vast majority of people at Goldman Sachs think about the firm and the work it does on behalf of our clients,” the memo read. The Op-Ed stunned those close to Smith, who described the ex-Goldman vice president as an unassuming political junkie. “Doing something as publicly as this is quite a surprise,” said a source who knows Smith. “He’s a low-drama type person.” Smith, a Ping-Pong whiz from South Africa, is single. He interned for Goldman at Stanford University, then scored a full-time position with the firm in 2001. As he climbed the ranks at the investment bank, Smith, whose dad worked as a pharmacist, lived a lifestyle true to his roots, a source said. He rented an apartment and never bought a car. In 2010, he moved to London to work as the head of the firm’s U.S. equity derivatives business in Europe. “He doesn’t fit the stereotype of a Wall Street type,” said a person close to Smith. “He was more concerned with having enough money for people in his life who were important to him than spending it on luxury items.” Experts estimated that Smith, a mid-level executive, probably was paid modestly by banking standards – less than $750,000 a year. Wow, this is legendary stuff. And to think, he said all that and he wasn’t even Goldman “sacked.” Source More On Bossip! Rumor Control: Drake’s Alleged New BANGER Girlfriend Stephanie Monique Speaks To Bossip Exclusively To Set The Record Straight About Her “Relationship”! [Pics] Another Day, Another Stroll With Blue Ivy Carter: Bey Bey Goes A Walkin’ With Her Baby Bjorn And Funky Flats Hi Hater: Reggie Bush Admits To Using Kim Kardashian And Goes In On Her Relationship With Yeezy… “Kim’s Disgusting For Hooking Up With Kanye!” Lace Matters: Super Hot Women Of Color That Have Been Victoria’s Secret Models
SMH: Hundreds of millions of dollars of customer’s money has gone missing from the brokerage firm run by former New Jersey governor Jon Corzine, sources told The New York Times. The New York-based company, MF Global, filed for bankruptcy Monday following bad bets on euro zone debt. The discovery of the missing millions stopped a last-minute deal to sell a major part of MF Global to another brokerage firm from going ahead, The New York Times reported. Corzine, 64, who once ran Goldman Sachs before becoming a U.S. senator and then governor of New Jersey, had been trying to turn the more than 200-year-old MF Global into a mini Goldman by taking on more risky trades. But once regulators forced it to fully disclose the bets on debt issued by countries including Italy, Portugal and Spain, it rapidly unraveled with no buyers willing to step in. MF Global’s meltdown in less than a week made it the biggest U.S. casualty of Europe’s debt crisis, and the seventh-largest bankruptcy by assets in U.S. history. MF Global files for bankruptcy protectionThe Times, citing “people briefed on the matter,” said it was initially thought some $950 million was missing, but this figure dropped to less than $700 million. The paper said that MF Global and Corzine had not been accused of doing anything wrong. Regulators are trying to establish if customer funds were misallocated. The company’s main exchange regulator, CME, said Tuesday that MF did not separate its customers’ accounts from the firm’s funds as required by law, Reuters reported. “CME has determined MF Global is not in compliance with Commodity Futures Trading Commission and CME customer segregation requirements,” CME Group Inc Chief Executive Craig Donohue said. Futures brokers must keep customer accounts separate from each other and from the firm’s own money. Hmmmm….something sounds fishy to us, but hey if no one’s accusing this guy of wrongdoing, then good for him. Source
“The IPO could pose downside risks to our IFAR earnings estimates through potential EPS dilution, as well as possible holding company discount once its main operating asset is listed separately,” said Goldman Sachs in a report. The brokerage estimates that Indfood Agri’s 2011 earnings per share could be diluted by 12%. Singapore palm oil firm Indofood Agri Resources (IFAR.SI) fell as much as 8.3% on Monday on concerns that its unit PT SIMP’s initial public offering could dilute its earnings
New York City dating author J.C. Davies says that Latino men are macho and possessive, Asian men are bad in bed, black men hate it when you talk about Al Sharpton, and Indian men smell like curry — but, she says, she’s not racist. “No one has the balls to write about sex and culture in a real way,” said Davies, author of the new book “I Got the Fever: Love, What’s Race Gotta Do With It?” “You have to make it super-p.c. and be the professor of blah-de-blah and have charts and graphs. The expectation is that [black men] are great in the sack and have huge equipment — don’t people really wanna know? Is the equipment super-sized? Let’s just go ask some people!” (Answer: some, not all — just as with most everything in life.) Davies, 42, describes her own ethnicity as “poor white trash” (she’s actually part Croatian, Welsh and German). She worked as a stock-options analyst for Goldman Sachs until she was laid off in October. Devastated and facing foreclosure on her Midtown condo, she was inspired to write her (self-published) book — complete with cover photo of her surrounded by a multicultural array of shirtless male models — when a friend suggested she “write about dating black guys.” “My first black boyfriend, he was a Republican, and I guess most people, because he was so corporate and wore a suit, would say he was an Oreo.” Davies doesn’t seem to realize that this is both an offensive and decidedly outdated term, but that’s the way she speaks — kind of like Jerry Seinfeld’s casually racist girlfriend on the infamous “Anti-Dentite” episode of “Seinfeld.” It also doesn’t seem to register that fetishizing other races is a form of racism. Moving on: Davies maintained that her book is researched and reported, based on hundreds of interviews (with people who are not fully named), and her own interracial dating experiences. She may have gone too far, Davies admitted, in writing, “Beware of the JAPs” (JAP is an acronym for the derogatory term “Jewish American Princess”). “I kind of went a little crazy there,” she said. “I have my own personal issues with the JAPs. My boyfriend’s three best friends are JAPs.” Speaking of: Is her boyfriend — an Iranian Jew — offended that, in the book, she describes his expression in bed as “terrorist face”? “He doesn’t mind that,” Davies said — only when she calls him “a Jewish hoarder.” What a slore. Only an “oreo” would date this broad. SMH. This crazy beyotch calls her own boyfriend “terrorist face,” imagine what kind of nicknames she might give their future kids!!! Oh and get this, these are the section titles in the book: Salsa Fever, Yellow Fever, Jungle Fever, Curry Fever and Shiksa Fever! What is wrong with this ho!?!?!? Source
An Oscar is a funny thing. Winning one means you’re a respected thespian, but as 1966’s Best Supporting Actress Sandy Dennis once noted, it also means you can’t be new again. Some Oscar-winners find themselves taking less-than-stellar roles after their big night at the Kodak, and we’re commemorating eight whose next trip to the silver screen was a marked downgrade.
The Obama administration condemns WikiLeaks in the most extreme terms, with White House spokesman Robert Gibbs referring to the people involved in the leaking and distribution of diplomatic cables as “criminals,” and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton describing the latest WikiLeaks revelations as an ” attack on America's foreign policy interests.” Attorney General Eric Holder talks of using the Espionage Act and other tools to go after WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange. Democrats in Congress echo the criticisms — with Senate Foreign Relations Committee chair John Kerry ripping Assange for having done “real damage” to U.S. interests — or simply remain silent. Some are openly working with neoconservative Republicans to come up with new laws to restrict the flow of information about U.S. foreign policy, Is anyone in official Washington standing up for transparency? Is anyone saying that we should be more concerned about the revelations of wrongdoing than killing the messenger? Yes, if you count Texas Congressman Ron Paul as a resident of official Washington. The Texas Republican who has long been the sternest critic in Congress of the imperial ambitions of presidents of both parties, rejects the notion that WikiLeaks is the problem. “Rather than worry about the disclosure of embarrassing secrets we should focus on our delusional foreign policy,” argues Paul, who has run for the presidency as both the Libetarian nominee and a Republican primary candidate. “We are kidding ourselves when we believe spying, intrigue and outright military intervention can maintain our international status as a superpower while our domestic economy crumbles in an orgy of debt and monetary debasement.” Continued at: http://www.npr.org/2010/12/13/132021734/the-nation-ron-paul-s-stand-for-transpar… added by: Dagum
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