The shocking thing about Kenneth Starr’s alleged Ponzi scheme wasn’t the amount—$59 million, pocket change by Madoff standards—but his client list. How did an accountant from the Bronx pull in the likes of Bunny Mellon, Barbara Walters, Al Pacino, Caroline Kennedy, and Matt Lauer? And was it his obsession with his pole-dancing fourth wife, Diane, that drove him? The author follows Starr’s trail, to such spots as Harry Cipriani’s, the Four Seasons, and Herbert Allen’s Sun Valley retreat.
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As summer begins, what better way to measure Wall Street’s health than a real-estate tour of the Hamptons? For every mansion on the sales or rental market, there’s a story—sometimes involving Bernie Madoff—and brokers are shell-shocked. The author surveys the deals, no-deals, lawsuits, divorces, and teardowns that characterize this strange, dark season.
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After getting $125 billion in taxpayer bailouts, the top officers at Citigroup, Merrill Lynch, Goldman Sachs, and three other banks agreed to forgo their 2008 bonuses. Now they’re awarding billions to their troops. Can government “claw back” that money?
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With Wall Street hemorrhaging jobs and assets, even many of the wealthiest players are retrenching. Others, like the Lehman Brothers bankers who borrowed against their millions in stock, have lost everything. Hedge-fund managers try to sell their luxury homes, while trophy wives are hocking their jewelry. The pain is being felt on St. Barth’s and at Sotheby’s, on benefit-gala committees and at the East Hampton Airport, as the world of the Big Rich collapses, its culture in shock and its values in question.
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