Agency name	U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission
Nativename	SEC
Seal	US-SecuritiesAndExchangeCommission-Seal.svg
Seal width	140px
Formed	June 6, 1934
Jurisdiction	Federal government of the United States
Headquarters	Washington, D.C.
Employees	3,798 (2007)
Chief1 name	Mary Schapiro
Chief1 position	Chairman
Website	www.sec.gov

The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (frequently abbreviated SEC) is a federal agency which holds primary responsibility for enforcing the federal securities laws and regulating the securities industry, the nation's stock and options exchanges, and other electronic securities markets in the United States. In addition to the 1934 Act that created it, the SEC enforces the Securities Act of 1933, the Trust Indenture Act of 1939, the Investment Company Act of 1940, the Investment Advisers Act of 1940, the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002 and other statutes. The SEC was created by section 4 of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934 (now codified as and commonly referred to as the 1934 Act).

Commission members

The Securities and Exchange Commission has five Commissioners who are appointed by the President of the United States with the advice and consent of the Senate. No more than three can be from a single political party. Each commissioner serves a five-year term, which are staggered so that one commissioner's term ends on June 5 of each year. Currently the SEC commissioners are chairman Mary L. Schapiro (D), Kathleen L. Casey (R), Elisse B. Walter (D), Luis A. Aguilar (D) and Troy A. Paredes (R).

Overview

The SEC was established by the United States Congress in 1934 as an independent, quasi-judicial regulatory agency during the Great Depression that followed the Crash of 1929. The main reason for the creation of the SEC was to regulate the stock market and prevent corporate abuses relating to the offering and sale of securities and corporate reporting. The SEC was given the power to license and regulate stock exchanges, the companies whose securities traded on them, and the brokers and dealers who conducted the trading.

Currently, the SEC is responsible for administering seven major laws that govern the securities industry. They are: the Securities Act of 1933, the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, the Trust Indenture Act of 1939, the Investment Company Act of 1940, the Investment Advisers Act of 1940, the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002 and most recently, the Credit Rating Agency Reform Act of 2006.

The enforcement authority given by Congress allows the SEC to bring civil enforcement actions against individuals or companies alleged to have committed accounting fraud, provided false information, or engaged in insider trading or other violations of the securities law. The SEC also works with criminal law enforcement agencies to prosecute individuals and companies alike for offenses which include a criminal violation.

To achieve its mandate, the SEC enforces the statutory requirement that public companies submit quarterly and annual reports, as well as other periodic reports. In addition to annual financial reports, company executives must provide a narrative account, called the "management discussion and analysis" (MD&A;), that outlines the previous year of operations and explains how the company fared in that time period. Management will usually also touch on the upcoming year, outlining future goals and approaches to new projects. In an attempt to level the playing field for all investors, the SEC maintains an online database called EDGAR (the Electronic Data Gathering, Analysis, and Retrieval system) online from which investors can access this and other information filed with the agency.

Quarterly and annual reports from public companies are crucial for investors to make sound decisions when investing in the capital markets. Unlike banking, investment in the capital markets is not guaranteed by the federal government. The potential for big gains needs to be weighed against equally likely losses. Mandatory disclosure of financial and other information about the issuer and the security itself gives private individuals as well as large institutions the same basic facts about the public companies they invest in, thereby increasing public scrutiny while reducing insider trading and fraud.

The SEC makes reports available to the public via the EDGAR system. SEC also offers publications on investment-related topics for public education. The same online system also takes tips and complaints from investors to help the SEC track down violators of the securities laws. SEC policy is to never comment on the existence or status of an ongoing investigation.

History

Prior to the enactment of the federal securities laws and the creation of the SEC, there existed so-called Blue Sky Laws that were enacted and enforced at the state level and regulated the offering and sale of securities to protect the public from fraud. Though the specific provisions of these laws varied among states, they all required the registration of all securities offerings and sales, as well as of stock brokers and brokerage firms.

However, these Blue Sky laws were generally found to be ineffective. For example, the Investment Bankers Association told its members as early as 1915 that they could "ignore" Blue Sky Laws by making securities offerings across state lines through the mail. After holding hearings on abuses on interstate frauds (commonly known as the Pecora Commission), Congress passed the Securities Act of 1933 () which regulates interstate sales of securities (original issues) at the federal level. The subsequent Securities Exchange Act of 1934 () regulates sales of securities in the secondary market. Section 4 of the 1934 Act created the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission to enforce the federal securities laws. Both laws are considered part of Franklin Roosevelt's "New Deal" raft of legislation.

The Securities Act of 1933 is also known as the "Truth in Securities Act" or the "Federal Securities Act” or just the "1933 Act." Its goal is to increase public trust in the capital markets by requiring uniform disclosure of information about public securities offerings. The primary drafters of 1933 Act were Huston Thompson, a former Federal Trade Commission chairman, and Walter Miller and Ollie Butler, two attorneys in the Commerce Department's Foreign Service Division, with input from Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis. For the first year of the law's enactment, the enforcement of the statute rested with the Federal Trade Commission, but this power was transferred to the SEC following its creation in 1934. (Interestingly, the first, rejected draft of the Securities Act written by Samuel Untermyer vested these powers in the U.S. Post Office, because Untermyer believed that only by vesting enforcement powers with the postal service could the constitutionality of the act be assured.

The Securities Exchange Act of 1934 is also known as "the Exchange Act" or "the 1934 Act". This act regulates secondary trading between individuals and companies which are often unrelated to the original issuers of securities. Entities under the SEC’s authority include securities exchanges with physical trading floors such as the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE), self-regulatory organizations such as the National Association of Securities Dealers (NASD), the Municipal Securities Rulemaking Board (MSRB), online trading platforms such as NASDAQ and ATS, and any other persons (e.g., securities brokers) engaged in transactions for the accounts of others.

President Franklin D. Roosevelt appointed Joseph P. Kennedy, Sr., father of President John F. Kennedy, to serve as the first Chairman of the SEC, along with James M. Landis (one of the architects of the 1934 Act and other New Deal legislation) and Ferdinand Pecora (Chief Counsel to the United States Senate Committee on Banking and Currency during its investigation of Wall Street banking and stock brokerage practices). Other prominent SEC commissioners and chairmen include William O. Douglas (who went on to be a U.S. Supreme Court justice), Jerome Frank (one of the leaders of the legal realism movement) and William J. Casey (who would later head the Central Intelligence Agency under President Ronald Reagan).

As part of the continuing investigation in 1974–75, Watergate scandal prosecutors offered companies that had given illegal campaign contributions to Richard Nixon's re-election campaign lenient sentences if they came forward. Many companies complied, including Northrop Grumman, 3M, American Airlines and Braniff International Airways.

Corporation Finance is the division that oversees the disclosure made by public companies as well as the registration of transactions, such as mergers, made by companies. The division is also responsible for operating EDGAR.

The Trading and Markets division oversees self-regulatory organizations (SROs) such as FINRA and MSRB, and all broker-dealer firms and investment houses. This division also interprets proposed changes to regulations and monitors operations of the industry. In practice, the SEC delegates most of its enforcement and rulemaking authority to FINRA. In fact, all trading firms not regulated by other SROs must register as a member of FINRA. Individuals trading securities must pass exams administered by FINRA to become registered representatives.

The Investment Management Division oversees investment companies including mutual funds and investment advisors. This division administers federal securities laws, in particular the Investment Company Act of 1940 and Investment Advisers Act of 1940. This Division's responsibilities include: :* assisting the Commission in interpreting laws and regulations for the public and SEC inspection and enforcement staff; :* responding to no-action requests and requests for exemptive relief; :* reviewing investment company and investment adviser filings; :* assisting the Commission in enforcement matters involving investment companies and advisers; and :* advising the Commission on adapting SEC rules to new circumstances.

The Enforcement Division works with the other three divisions, and other Commission offices, to investigate violations of the securities laws and regulations and to bring actions against alleged violators. The SEC generally conducts investigations in private. The SEC's staff may seek voluntary production of documents and testimony, or may seek a formal order of investigation from the SEC, which allows the staff to compel the production of documents and witness testimony. The SEC can bring a civil action in a U.S. District Court or an administrative proceeding which is heard by an independent administrative law judge (ALJ). The SEC does not have criminal authority, but may refer matters to state and federal prosecutors. The current director of the SEC's Enforcement Division is Robert Khuzami, a former federal prosecutor.

Among the SEC's offices are:

The Office of General Counsel, which acts as the agency's "lawyer" before federal appellate courts and provides legal advice to the Commission and other SEC divisions and offices;

The Office of the Chief Accountant, which establishes and enforces accounting and auditing policies set by the SEC. This office has played an important role in such areas as working with the Financial Accounting Standards Board to develop Generally Accepted Accounting Principles, the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board in developing audit requirements, and the International Accounting Standards Board in advancing the development of International Financial Reporting Standards;

The Office of Compliance, Inspections and Examinations, which inspects broker-dealers, stock exchanges, credit rating agencies, registered investment companies, including both closed-end and open-end (mutual funds) investment companies, money funds and Registered Investment Advisors;

The Office of International Affairs, which represents the SEC abroad and which negotiates international enforcement information-sharing agreements, develops the SEC's international regulatory policies in areas such as mutual recognition, and helps develop international regulatory standards through organizations such as the International Organization of Securities Commissions and the Financial Stability Forum;

The Office of Investor Education and Advocacy, which helps educate the public about securities markets and warns investors of fraud and stock market scams; and

The Office of Economic Analysis, which helps the SEC estimate the economic costs and benefits of its various rules and regulations.

Relationship to other agencies

In addition to working with various SROs such as NYSE and NASD, the Securities and Exchange Commission also works with other federal agencies, state securities regulators, international securities agencies and law enforcement agencies.

In 1988 Executive Order 12631 established the President's Working Group on Financial Markets. The Working Group is chaired by the Secretary of the Treasury and includes the Chairman of the SEC, the Chairman of the Federal Reserve and the Chairman of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission. The goal of the Working Group is to enhance the integrity, efficiency, orderliness and competitiveness of the financial markets while maintaining investor confidence.

The Securities Act of 1933 was originally administered by the Federal Trade Commission (FTC). The Securities Exchange Act of 1934 transferred this responsibility from FTC to the SEC. The main mission of the FTC is to promote consumer protection and to eradicate anticompetitive business practices. The FTC regulates general business practices, while the SEC focuses on the securities markets.

The Temporary National Economic Committee was established by joint resolution of Congress 52 Stat. 705 on June 16, 1938. It was in charge of reporting to the Congress on abuses of monopoly power. The committee was defunded in 1941, but its records are still under seal by order of the SEC.

The Municipal Securities Rulemaking Board (MSRB) was established in 1975 by Congress to develop rules for companies involved in underwriting and trading municipal securities. The MSRB is monitored by the SEC, but the MSRB does not have the authority to enforce its rules.

While most violations of securities laws are enforced by the SEC and the various SROs it monitors, state securities regulators can also enforce state-wide securities laws known colloquially as Blue sky laws.

The SEC also works with federal and state law enforcement agencies to carry out actions against actors alleged to be in violation of the securities laws.

The SEC is a member of International Organization of Securities Commissions (IOSCO) and uses the IOSCO Multilateral Memorandum of Understanding as well as direct bilateral agreements with other countries Securities Commissions to deal with cross border misconduct in securities markets.

Related legislation

1934 – Securities Exchange Act of 1934, governing the secondary trading of securities

1938 – Establishment of the Temporary National Economic Committee 52 Stat. 705

1964 – Securities Act Amendments PL 88-467

1968 – Williams Act (Securities Disclosure Act) PL 90-439

1975 – Securities and Exchange Act PL 94-29

1980 – Depository Institutions and Deregulation Money Control Act PL 96-221

1982 – Garn–St. Germain Depository Institutions Act PL 97-320

1984 – Insider Trading Sanctions Act PL 98-376

1988 – Insider Trading and Securities Fraud Enforcement Act PL 100-704

1989 – Financial Institutions Reform, Recovery, and Enforcement PL 101-73

1999 – Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act PL 106-102

2000 – Commodity Futures Modernization Act of 2000

2002 – Sarbanes-Oxley Act

2007 – Regulation NMS

2010 - Dodd–Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act

SEC communications

Comment letters

Comment letters are letters by the SEC to a public company raising issues and requested comments. For example, in October 2001, the SEC wrote to CA, Inc., covering fifteen items, mostly about CA's accounting, including five about revenue recognition. The chief financial officer of CA, to whom the letter was addressed, pleaded guilty to fraud at CA in 2004.

In June 2004, the SEC announced that it would publicly post all comment letters, to give investors access to the information in them. In mid-2005, Allan Beller, former head of the SEC's Division of Corporation Finance, said that the SEC believed that "it is appropriate to expand the transparency of our comment process by making this information available to an unlimited audience."

An analysis in May 2006 of regulatory filings over the prior 12 months indicates, however, that the SEC has not accomplished what it said it would do. The analysis found 212 companies that had reported receiving comment letters from the SEC, but only 21 letters (for these companies) were posted on the SEC's website. John W. White, the current head of the Division of Corporation Finance, told the New York Times: "We have now resolved the hurdles of posting the information.... We expect a significant number of new postings in the coming months."

No-action letters

No-action letters are letters by the SEC staff indicating that the staff will not recommend to the Commission that the SEC undertake enforcement action against a person or company if that entity engages in a particular action. These letters are sent in response to requests made when the legal status of an activity is not clear. These letters are publicly released and increase the body of knowledge on what exactly is and is not allowed. They represent the staff's intrepretations of the securities laws and, while persuasive, are not binding on the courts.

Regulatory action in the credit crunch

The SEC announced on September 17, 2008, strict new rules to prohibit all forms of "naked short selling" as a measure to reduce volatility in turbulent markets.

The SEC investigated into cases involving individuals attempting to manipulate the market by passing false rumors about certain financial institutions. The commission has also investigated into trading irregularities and abusive short selling practices. Hedge fund managers, broker-dealers, and institutional investors were also asked to disclose under oath, certain information pertaining to their positions in credit default swaps. The commission also brought about the largest settlements in the history of the SEC (approximately $51 billion in all) on behalf of investors who purchased auction rate securities from six different financial institutions.

Regulatory failures

Christopher Cox, the former chairman of the SEC, has recognized the organization's own multiple failures in relation to the Bernard Madoff fraud. Starting with an investigation in 1992 into a Madoff feeder fund which only invested with Madoff, and which, according to the SEC, promised "curiously steady" returns, the SEC did not investigate indications that something was amiss in Madoff's investment firm. The SEC has therefore been accused of missing numerous red flags and ignoring tips on Madoff's alleged fraud. As a result, Cox has said that an investigation will ensue into "all staff contact and relationships with the Madoff family and firm, and their impact, if any, on decisions by staff regarding the firm." Approximately 45 per cent of institutional investors felt that better oversight by the SEC could have prevented the Madoff fraud. Financial analyst and whistleblower Harry Markopolos complained to the SEC's Boston office in May 1999, telling the SEC staff they should investigate Madoff because it was impossible to legally make the profits Madoff claimed using the investment strategies that he claimed to use.

In 2009, the Project on Government Oversight, a government watchdog group, sent a letter to Congress criticizing the SEC for failing to implement more than half of the recommendations made to it by its Inspector General According to POGO, in the past 2 years, the SEC had taken no action on 27 out of 52 recommended reforms suggested in Inspector General reports, and still had a "pending" status on 197 of the 312 recommendations made in audit reports. Some of these recommendations included imposing disciplinary action on SEC employees who receive improper gifts or other favors from financial companies and investigating and reporting the causes of the failures to detect the Madoff ponzi scheme.

In June 2010, the SEC settled a wrongful termination lawsuit with former SEC enforcement lawyer Gary Aguirre, who was terminated in September 2005 following his attempt to subpoena Wall Street figure John J. Mack in an insider trading case involving hedge fund Pequot Capital Management. While the insider case was dropped at the time, a month prior to the SEC's settlement with Aguirre the SEC filed charges against Pequot.

Forms

SEC Forms List by category

Form 4 (stock and stock options ownership and exercise disclosure)

Form 8-K

SEC Form 10-K

Form S-1 (IPO)

SecuritiesLinks Links to commonly used SEC forms

See also

:Category:Financial regulation in the United States

:Category:United States federal financial legislation

:Category:United States proposed federal legislation

Commodity Futures Trading Commission

Securities Commission

Chicago Stock Exchange

Financial regulation

List of financial regulatory authorities by country

NASDAQ

New York Stock Exchange

Stock exchange

Regulation D (SEC)

References

External links

U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission website

What the SEC does

SECLaw.com – The Securities Law Home Page

Introduction to the Federal Securities Laws

United States Securities Laws and Rules

Hedge Fund Regulation by the SEC

Take a Look at the Securities and Exchange Commission Dead link as of Aug 17, 2010

SEC Historical Society – Archive and Museum nonprofit and independent from the SEC

Association of Securities and Exchange Commission Alumni, Inc.

TheCorporateCounsel.net (USA) Home of popular securities law blog and related resources

Understanding the Securities Exchange Commission--About.com

SecuritiesLinks Links to U.S. securities laws, rules, forms and other resources

SEC Accounting Bulletins – United States

SEC Division of Corporate Finance – United States

SEC Said to Examine More Ponzi Schemes Bloomberg

Category:New Deal agencies Category:Financial regulatory authorities of the United States Category:Corporate crime Category:Government agencies established in 1934 Category:1934 establishments in the United States Category:Article Feedback Pilot

Subject name	Charles Ponzi
Image name	21rampell.xlarge1.jpg
Birth date	March 03, 1882
Birth place	Lugo, Italy
Death date	January 18, 1949
Death place	Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
Charge	Mail fraud (federal), larceny (state)
Conviction penalty	5 years federal (served 3 and half years before facing state charge), 9 years state, deportation
Occupation	Confidence trickster
Spouse	Rose Gnecco
Parents	Roberto and Maria Ponzi

Charles Ponzi (March 3, 1882 January 18, 1949) was an Italian swindler, who is considered one of the greatest swindlers in American history. His aliases include Charles Ponei, Charles P. Bianchi, Carl and Carlo. The term "Ponzi scheme" was coined because of Charles Ponzi's scam and today it is the description of any scam that pays early investors returns from the investments of later investors. Charles Ponzi promised clients a 50% profit within 45 days, or 100% profit within 90 days, by buying discounted postal reply coupons in other countries and redeeming them at face value in the United States as a form of arbitrage.

Early life

Parts of Charles Ponzi's life are somewhat difficult to determine, owing to his propensity to fabricate and embellish facts. He was born Carlo Pietro Giovanni Guglielmo Tebaldo Ponzi in Lugo, Italy in 1882. He told The New York Times that he had come from a well-to-do family in Parma, Italy. to promote the scheme. He set up shop in a building on School Street. Word spread, and investments came in at an ever-increasing rate. Ponzi hired agents and paid them generous commissions for every dollar they brought in. By February 1920, Ponzi's total take was US$5,000, (approximately US$54,000 in 2008 dollars). By March, he had made $30,000 ($328,000 in 2008 terms). A frenzy was building, and Ponzi began to hire agents to take in money from all over New England and New Jersey. At that time, investors were being paid impressive rates, encouraging yet others to invest. By May 1920, he had made $420,000 ($4.59 million in 2008 terms).

He began depositing the money in the Hanover Trust Bank of Boston (a small bank on Hanover Street in the mostly Italian North End), in the hope that once his account was large enough he could impose his will on the bank or even be made its president; he did, in fact, buy a controlling interest in the bank (through himself and several friends) after depositing $3 million. By July 1920, he had made millions. People were mortgaging their homes and investing their life savings. Most did not take their profits, but reinvested.

Ponzi was bringing in cash at a fantastic rate, but the simplest financial analysis would have shown that the operation was running at a large loss. As long as money kept flowing in, existing investors could be paid with the new money. In fact, new money was the only way Ponzi had to pay off those investors, as he made no effort to generate legitimate profits.

Ponzi lived luxuriously: he bought a mansion in Lexington, Massachusetts, with air conditioning and a heated swimming pool, and he maintained accounts in several banks across New England besides Hanover Trust. He also brought his mother from Italy in a first-class stateroom on an ocean liner. She died soon afterward.

Suspicion

Ponzi's rapid rise naturally drew suspicion. However, when a Boston financial writer suggested there was no way Ponzi could legally deliver such high returns in a short period of time, Ponzi sued for libel and won $500,000 in damages. As libel law in those days placed the burden of proof on the writer and the paper, this effectively neutralised any serious probes into his dealings for some time.

Nonetheless, there were still signs of his eventual ruin. Joseph Daniels, a Boston furniture dealer who had given Ponzi furniture which he could not afford to pay for, sued Ponzi to cash in on the gold rush. The lawsuit was unsuccessful, but it did start people asking how Ponzi could have gone from being penniless to being a millionaire in so short a time. There was a run on the Securities Exchange Company, as some investors decided to pull out. Ponzi paid them and the run stopped. On July 24, 1920, the Boston Post printed a favorable article on Ponzi and his scheme that brought in investors faster than ever. At that time, Ponzi was making $250,000 a day. Ponzi's good fortune was increased by the fact that just below this favorable article, which seemed to imply that Ponzi was indeed returning 50% return on investment after only 45 days, was a bank advertisement that stated that the bank was paying 5% returns annually. The next business day after this article was published, Ponzi arrived at his office to find thousands of Bostonians waiting to give him their money.

Despite this reprieve, Post acting publisher Richard Grozier and city editor Eddie Dunn were suspicious and assigned investigative reporters to check Ponzi out. He was also under investigation by the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, and on the day the Post printed its article, Ponzi met with state officials. He managed to divert the officials from checking his books by offering to stop taking money during the investigation, a fortunate choice, as proper records were not being kept. Ponzi's offer temporarily calmed the suspicions of the state officials.

Collapse of the scheme

By this time, Ponzi was seeking another deal to get him out of trouble, but time was running out. On July 26, the Post started a series of articles that asked hard questions about the operation of Ponzi's money machine. The Post contacted Clarence Barron, the financial analyst who published the Barron's financial paper, to examine Ponzi's scheme. Barron observed that though Ponzi was offering fantastic returns on investments, Ponzi himself was not investing with his own company.

Barron then noted that to cover the investments made with the Securities Exchange Company, 160 million postal reply coupons would have to be in circulation. However, only about 27,000 actually were. The United States Post Office stated that postal reply coupons were not being bought in quantity at home or abroad. The gross profit margin in percent on buying and selling each IRC was colossal, but the overhead required to handle the purchase and redemption of these items, which were of extremely low cost and were sold individually, would have exceeded the gross profit.

The stories caused a panic run on the Securities Exchange Company. Ponzi paid out $2 million in three days to a wild crowd outside his office. He canvassed the crowd, passed out coffee and donuts, and cheerfully told them they had nothing to worry about. Many changed their minds and left their money with him. However, this attracted the attention of Daniel Gallagher, the United States Attorney for the District of Massachusetts. Gallagher commissioned Edwin Pride to audit the Securities Exchange Company's books—an effort made difficult by the fact his bookkeeping system consisted merely of index cards with investors' names.

In the meantime, Ponzi had hired a publicity agent, William McMasters. However, McMasters quickly became suspicious of Ponzi's endless talk of postal reply coupons, as well as the ongoing investigation against him. He later described Ponzi as a "financial idiot" who did not seem to know how to add.

The denouement for Ponzi began in late July, when McMasters found several highly incriminating documents that indicated Ponzi was merely . He went to his former employer, the Post, with this information. The paper offered him $5,000 for his story. On August 2, 1920, McMasters wrote an article for the Post declaring Ponzi hopelessly insolvent. The article claimed that while Ponzi claimed $7 million in liquid funds, he was actually at least $2 million in debt. With interest factored in, McMasters wrote, Ponzi was as much as $4.5 million in the red. The story touched off a massive run, and Ponzi paid off in one day. He then sped up plans to build a massive conglomerate that would engage in banking and import-export operations.

However, trouble came from an unexpected quarter—Massachusetts Bank Commissioner Joseph Allen. An initial investigation into Ponzi's banking practices found nothing illegal, but Allen was afraid that if massive withdrawals exhausted Ponzi's reserves, it would bring Boston's banking system to its knees. When Allen found out a large number of Ponzi-controlled accounts had received more than $250,000 in loans, he ordered two bank examiners to keep an eye on Ponzi's accounts. On August 9, they reported that enough investors had cashed their checks on Ponzi's main account there that it was almost certainly overdrawn. Allen then ordered Hanover Trust not to pay out any more checks from Ponzi's main account. He also orchestrated an involuntary bankruptcy filing by several small Ponzi investors. The move forced Massachusetts Attorney General J. Weston Allen to release a statement that there was little to support Ponzi's claims of large-scale dealings in postal coupons. State officials then invited Ponzi note holders to come to the Massachusetts State House to furnish their names and addresses for the purpose of the investigation. On the same day, Ponzi received a preview of Pride's audit, which revealed Ponzi was at least $7 million in debt.

On August 11, it all came crashing down for Ponzi. First, the Post came out with a front-page story about his activities in Montreal 13 years earlier—including his forgery conviction and his role at Zarossi's scandal-ridden bank. That afternoon, Bank Commissioner Allen seized Hanover Trust after finding numerous irregularities in its books. Although the commissioner did not know it, this move foiled Ponzi's last-ditch plan to "borrow" funds from the bank vaults after all other efforts to obtain funds failed.

With reports that he was due to be arrested any day, Ponzi surrendered to federal authorities on August 12 and was charged with mail fraud for sending letters to his marks telling them their notes had matured. He was originally released on $25,000 bail, but after the Post released the results of the audit, the bail bondsman withdrew the bail due to concerns he might be a flight risk.

The news brought down five other banks in addition to Hanover Trust. His investors were practically wiped out, receiving less than 30 cents on the dollar. The Post won a Pulitzer Prize in 1921 for its exposure of Ponzi's fraud.

Prison and later life

In two federal indictments, Ponzi was charged with 86 counts of mail fraud. At the urging of his wife, on November 1, 1920, Ponzi pleaded guilty to a single count before Judge Clarence Hale, who declared before sentencing, "Here was a man with all the duties of seeking large money. He concocted a scheme which, on his counsel's admission, did defraud men and women. It will not do to have the world understand that such a scheme as that can be carried out ... without receiving substantial punishment." He was sentenced to five years in federal prison.

He was released after three and a half years and was almost immediately indicted on 22 Massachusetts state charges of larceny.

Ponzi was released on bail as he appealed the state conviction. He went to the Springfield neighborhood of Jacksonville, Florida and launched the Charpon Land Syndicate ("Charpon" is an amalgam of his name), offering investors in September 1925 tiny tracts of land, some under water, and promising 200 percent returns in 60 days. Ponzi was indicted by a Duval County grand jury in February 1926 and charged with violating Florida trust and securities laws. A jury found him guilty on the securities charges, and the judge sentenced him to a year in the Florida State Prison. Ponzi appealed his conviction and was freed after posting a $1,500 bond.

Ponzi traveled to Tampa, His charismatic confidence had faded, and when he left the prison gates, he was met by an angry crowd. He told reporters before he left, "I went looking for trouble, and I found it."

Rose stayed behind and later divorced him in 1937, as she did not want to leave Boston. Rose, who later remarried, eventually became the bookkeeper for the New Cocoanut Grove Inc, the parent company of Boston's Cocoanut Grove nightclub.

In Italy, Ponzi jumped from scheme to scheme, but little came of them. He eventually got a job in Brazil as an agent for Ala Littoria, the Italian state airline..

Death

Ponzi spent the last years of his life in poverty, working occasionally as a translator. His health suffered. A heart attack in 1941 left him considerably weakened. His eyesight began failing, and by 1948, he was almost completely blind. A brain hemorrhage paralyzed his right leg and arm. He died in a charity hospital in Rio de Janeiro, the Hospital São Francisco de Assis of Federal University of Rio de Janeiro on January 18, 1949.

Supported by his last and only friend who spoke English and had notions of Italian, the barber Francisco Nonato Nunes, was how Mr. Ponzi granted one last interview to an American reporter, telling him, "Even if they never got anything for it, it was cheap at that price. Without malice aforethought I had given them the best show that was ever staged in their territory since the landing of the Pilgrims! It was easily worth fifteen million bucks to watch me put the thing over." He also admitted, after years of maintaining his innocence, that he had engaged in a swindle.

See also

List of Ponzi schemes

References

Further reading

The History Channel. "In Search of History: Mr. Ponzi and His Scheme". February 9, 2000. (AAE-42325, ISBN 0767016726)

Category:1882 births Category:1949 deaths Category:People from Lugo, Italy Category:Brazilian people of Italian descent Category:Confidence tricksters Category:Italian criminals Category:Italian fraudsters Category:Italian white-collar criminals Category:People deported from the United States Category:Pyramid and Ponzi schemes

Name	Norman Mineta
Order	14th
Title	United States Secretary of Transportation
Term start	January 25, 2001
Term end	July 7, 2006
President	George W. Bush
Predecessor	Rodney E. Slater
Successor	Mary Peters
Order2	33rd
Title2	United States Secretary of Commerce
Term start2	July 20, 2000
Term end2	January 20, 2001
President2	Bill Clinton
Predecessor2	William M. Daley
Successor2	Donald Evans
State3	California
District3	13th and 15th
Term start3	January 3, 1975
Term end3	October 10, 1995
Predecessor3	Robert J. Lagomarsino
Successor3	Thomas J. Campbell
Order4	59th
Title4	Mayor of San Jose, California
Term start4	1971
Term end4	1975
Predecessor4	Ron James
Successor4	Janet Gray Hayes
Title5	Chairman of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee
Term start5	1993
Term end5	1995
Predecessor5	Robert A. Roe
Successor5	Bud Shuster
Birth date	November 12, 1931
Birth place	San Jose, California
Spouse	Danealia Mineta
Children	David MinetaStuart MinetaRobert Brantner (stepson)Mark Brantner (stepson)
Party	Democratic
Alma mater	Haas School of Business (University of California-Berkeley)
Branch	United States Army
Unit	Intelligence

Norman Yoshio Mineta, (born November 12, 1931) is a United States politician of the Democratic Party. Mineta most recently served in President George W. Bush's Cabinet as the United States Secretary of Transportation, the only Democratic Cabinet Secretary in the Bush administration. On June 23, 2006, Mineta announced his resignation after more than five years as Secretary of Transportation, effective July 7, 2006, making him the longest-serving Transportation Secretary in the Department's history. On July 10, 2006, Hill & Knowlton, a public relations firm, announced that Mineta would join it as a partner.

Mineta also served as President Bill Clinton's Secretary of Commerce for the last six months of his term (July 2000–January 2001). Save for a span of five days between the end of Clinton's term and Bush's appointments, Mineta spent nearly six full years as a Cabinet member.

Biography

Early life, career, and family

Mineta was born in San Jose, California, to Japanese immigrant parents who were not allowed to become U.S. citizens at that time due to the Asian Exclusion Act. During World War II the Mineta family was interned for several years in the Heart Mountain internment camp near Cody, Wyoming, along with thousands of other Japanese immigrants and Japanese Americans. Upon arrival to the camp, Mineta, a baseball fan, had his baseball bat confiscated by authorities who feared that it was a weapon. Many years later, after Mineta was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives, a Los Angeles man sent Mineta a $1,500 bat that was once owned by Hank Aaron, which Mineta was forced to send back as it violated the House ban on accepting gifts valued over $250. Mineta was quoted as saying, "The damn government's taken my bat again."

While detained in the camp, Mineta, a Boy Scout, met fellow Scout Alan K. Simpson, future U.S. Senator from Wyoming, who often visited the Scouts in the internment camp with his troop. The two became, and have remained, close friends and political allies.

He graduated from the University of California, Berkeley's School of Business Administration (since named in honor of Walter A. Haas, Sr.) in 1953 with a degree in Business Administration. Upon graduation, Mineta joined the US Army and served as an intelligence officer in Japan and Korea. He then joined his father in the Mineta Insurance Agency.

Mineta is married to Danealia (Deni) Mineta. He has two sons, David and Stuart Mineta, and two stepsons, Robert and Mark Brantner.

Councilman and Mayor of San Jose

His political career began in 1967 when he was appointed to a vacant San Jose City Council seat by mayor Ron James. In 1969 he was elected to office for the first time, after completing the city council term he had been appointed to. He was elected vice mayor by fellow councilors during that term. In 1971 he ran against 14 other candidates to replace outgoing mayor Ron James. Mineta won every precinct in the election with over 60% of the total vote and became the 59th Mayor of San Jose, the first Asian American mayor of a major U.S. city. As mayor, Mineta ended the city's 20 year old policy of rapid growth by annexation, creating development-free areas in East and South San Jose. His vice mayor, Janet Gray Hayes, succeeded him as mayor in 1975.

United States Congress

From 1975 to 1995 he sat in the United States House of Representatives representing the Silicon Valley area. He co-founded the Congressional Asian Pacific American Caucus and served as its first chair. Mineta served as chairman of the House Public Works and Transportation Committee between 1992 and 1994. He chaired the committee's aviation subcommittee between 1981 and 1988, and chaired its Surface Transportation Subcommittee from 1989 to 1991.

During his career in Congress he was a key author of the landmark Intermodal Surface Transportation Efficiency Act of 1991. He also pressed for more funding for the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA). Mineta, with his friend Republican Senate Whip Alan Simpson, was also the driving force behind passage of H.R. 442, the Civil Liberties Act of 1988, which officially apologized for and redressed the injustices endured by Japanese Americans during World War II. In 1995, George Washington University awarded the Martin Luther King, Jr. Commemorative Medal to Mineta for his contributions to the field of civil rights.

Private sector

Mineta resigned his seat mid-term to accept a position with Lockheed Martin in 1995. The Democrats subsequently lost this district when Republican Tom Campbell defeated Democratic candidate Jerry Estruth in the special election held to fill the vacated seat. Mineta chaired the National Civil Aviation Review Commission, which in 1997 issued recommendations on reducing traffic congestion and reducing the aviation accident rate. Many of the commission's recommendations were adopted by the Clinton administration, including reform of the FAA to enable it to perform more like a business.

Secretary of Commerce

After serving as vice president of Lockheed Martin Corporation, he was appointed in 2000 by President Clinton as the United States Secretary of Commerce, making him the first Asian American to hold a post in the presidential cabinet.

Secretary of Transportation

He was appointed United States Secretary of Transportation by President George W. Bush in 2001, a post he was originally offered eight years previously by Bill Clinton. He was the only Democrat to have served in Bush's cabinet and also the first Secretary of Transportation to have previously served in a cabinet position. He became the first Asian American to hold the position, and only the fourth person to be a member of Cabinet under two Presidents from different political parties (after Edwin M. Stanton, Henry L. Stimson, and James R. Schlesinger) Secretary of Defense Robert Gates would go on to be the fifth serving in that capacity under both George W. Bush and Barack Obama. In 2004, Mineta received the Tony Jannus Award for his distinguished contributions to commercial air transportation.

When he was re-elected, President Bush invited Mineta to continue in the position, and he did so until resigning in June 2006. When he stepped down on July 7, 2006, he was the longest serving Secretary of Transportation since the position's inception in 1967.

September 11

During the September 11, 2001 attacks, Mineta issued an order to ground all civilian aircraft traffic for the first time in U.S. history.

Mineta's testimony to the 9/11 Commission about his experience in the Presidential Emergency Operating Center with Vice President Cheney as American Airlines flight 77 approached the Pentagon was not included in the 9/11 Commission Report. In one colloquy testified by Mineta, the vice president refers to orders concerning the plane approaching the Pentagon:

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Commissioner Lee Hamilton queried if the order was to shoot down the plane, to which Mineta replied that he did not know that specifically.

White House Press Secretary Tony Snow announced on June 23, 2006, that Mineta would resign effective July 7, 2006, because "he wanted to," with a spokesman for Mineta saying he was "moving on to pursue other challenges." He left office as the longest-serving Secretary of Transportation in history.

After leaving Bush administration

Hill & Knowlton announced on July 10, 2006, that Mineta would join the firm as vice chairman, effective July 24, 2006.

In 2007, the Japanese government conferred the Grand Cordon, Order of the Rising Sun.

In December 2006, Mineta was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom.

On February 4, 2008, the day before the closely contested California Democratic Primary, Mineta endorsed Barack Obama.

Beginning in summer 2008, Mineta began service as Chairman of a Panel of the National Academy of Public Administration overseeing a study of modernization efforts at the United States Coast Guard. Other notable members of the Panel include former Office of Personnel Management Director Janice Lachance and former NASA Administrator Sean O'Keefe.

He served as the keynote speaker at the UC Berkeley December Graduates Convocation on December 13, 2009.

See also

List of U.S. political appointments that crossed party lines

9/11 Commission Report

References

External links

Category:1931 births Category:Living people Category:United States Secretaries of Commerce Category:United States Secretaries of Transportation Category:Clinton Administration cabinet members Category:George W. Bush Administration cabinet members Category:San Jose City Council members Category:Mayors of San Jose, California Category:Members of the United States House of Representatives from California Category:United States Army officers Category:American military personnel of Japanese descent Category:Presidential Medal of Freedom recipients Category:Haas School of Business alumni Category:California Democrats Category:Japanese-American internees Category:American politicians of Japanese descent Category:Recipients of the Order of the Rising Sun Category:Members of the United States Congress of Asian descent

Name	Harry Markopolos
Birth date	October 22, 1956
Birth place	Erie, Pennsylvania
Residence	Whitman, Massachusetts
Known for	Whistleblower in Bernie Madoff securities fraud scandal
Alma mater	Loyola College in MarylandBoston College
Occupation	Financial investigator

Harry M. Markopolos or Harry Markopoulos (born October 22, 1956) is an independent financial fraud investigator for institutional investors and others seeking forensic accounting expertise. He has received public acclaim for uncovering and repeatedly tipping off the US Securities & Exchange Commission (SEC), over a period of nine years, about what would become the estimated $65 billion ponzi scheme and conspiracy of Bernard Madoff. In March 2010 his book on uncovering the Madoff fraud was published titled, "." It was ghostwritten by David Fisher and reportedly has a first-hand account of uncovering the Madoff fraud and Markopolos's experience repeatedly tipping off the SEC, as well as explaining how Madoff duped his victims. He was formerly a securities industry executive.

In a recent media interview Markopolos was scathing in his criticism of the US Securities & Exchange Commission (SEC) for both failing to uncover the Madoff fraud in spite of repeated tips, and also for failing to investigate the larger firms under their supervision. He also described the "private moments" he's had with victims of the Madoff fraud as: "Heartfelt, gut-wrenching things. People trying to commit suicide or losing loved ones who’ve died of heartbreak."

Education and career

Markopolos, who comes from a family of Greek-Americans, graduated from Cathedral Preparatory School in Erie, Pennsylvania in 1974. He received an undergraduate degree in Business Administration from Loyola College in Maryland in 1981 and an M.S. in finance from Boston College in 1997.

In May 1978 he received a reserve commission as a 2nd Lieutenant, Infantry, in the US Army from Loyola College ROTC. Mr. Markopolos is a graduate of several Army post-graduate schools including Infantry Officer’s Basic and Advanced Courses, the Civil Affairs Officers Advanced Course and US Army Command & General Staff College. Mr. Markopolos has commanded troops at every rank from 2nd Lieutenant to Major during 17 years of part-time reserve component service in the Army National Guard and Army Reserve. He left the Army Reserve in April 1995 to apply for and enter graduate school at Boston College the following September.

He worked at Boston-based Rampart Investment Management Co. from 1991 through 2004, ultimately becoming its chief investment officer, and is a past president of Boston Security Analysts Society Inc. He is a Chartered Financial Analyst (CFA) and a Certified Fraud Examiner (CFE). He now works, with a certain degree of anonymity, as a forensic accounting analyst for attorneys who sue companies under the False Claims Act and other statutes, focusing on tips that lead to continuing investigations into medical billing, Internal Revenue Service, and United States Department of Defense frauds, where a whistleblower would be compensated.

On February 11, 2009, the Boston Security Analysts Society honored him with a silver whistle in recognition of his efforts in calling attention to disgraced money manager Bernard Madoff.

Involvement with Madoff scandal

Boston-based Rampart Investment Management Co. is a firm that specializes in the trading of options (contracts that let investors buy or sell stocks and other financial instruments at set prices). In 2000, Markopolos' bosses wanted to learn how they could match Madoff's double-digit returns. Markopolos was assigned to deconstruct Madoff's strategy to see if he could replicate it. Again and again, he could not simulate Madoff's returns, using information he had gathered about Madoff's trades in stocks and options. Markopolos eventually decided Madoff was either running a Ponzi scheme - using money from new clients to pay off old ones - or he was engaging in illegal "front running," improperly trading in investors' private accounts ahead of orders the firm received from outside clients. Even after leaving Rampart, he persevered, driven by the intellectual challenge of cracking a Wall Street legend, and the ongoing encouragement from a Boston SEC staffer, Ed Manion.

The culmination of his analysis was a 21-page memo Markopolos sent in November 2005, to SEC regulators, "The World's Largest Hedge Fund is a Fraud." It outlined his suspicions in more detail and invited officials to check his theories. In the document Markopolos states:

Bernie Madoff is running the world's largest unregistered hedge fund. He's organized this business as [a] "hedge fund of funds privately labeling their own hedge funds which Bernie Madoff secretly runs for them using a split-strike conversion strategy getting paid only trading commissions which are not disclosed."

On June 3, 2009 Markopolos told a conference at Boston College, his graduate-school alma mater, that he believes Bernard Madoff personally kept less than 1 percent of the $65 billion reported stolen, and will probably lose what remains of his cut to money launderers. Markopolos estimates that $35 billion to $55 billion of the money Madoff claimed to have stolen never really existed, simply fictional profits he reported. Markopolos believes that his customers lost $10 billion to $35 billion, most of which went to early investors. "Madoff will wind up in a special prison designed as much to keep the crook’s victims out as Madoff in. He’s a guy who can’t afford not to be in prison,” he said.

Congressional testimony

On February 4, 2009, he testified before the United States Congress' House Financial Services Committee’s capital markets panel and on March 1, appeared on CBS's 60 Minutes. “Nothing was done. There was an abject failure by the regulatory agencies we entrust as our watchdog,” he explained in 65 pages of prepared testimony. Describing Madoff as “one of the most powerful men on Wall Street,” Markopolos stated that there was “great danger” in raising questions about him: "My team and I surmised that if Mr. Madoff gained knowledge of our activities, he may feel threatened enough to seek to stifle us.”

Markopolos had originally concealed his identity from SEC regulators in May 1999, After the SEC did not respond, Markopolos was fearful of taking his complaints to the industry's self-regulatory authority, the National Association of Securities Dealers (since succeeded by the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA)), because of the power Bernie Madoff's brother, Peter, had in that organization (he is a former Vice Chairman). Markopolos believed the Federal Bureau of Investigation would reject his allegations without the SEC staff's endorsement. Markopolos also testified he gave details about the case in 2005 to John Wilke, a Wall Street Journal investigative reporter, but that it was never pursued. Markopolos testified he (anonymously) sent a package of documents concerning Madoff to former New York Attorney General Eliot Spitzer, who had successfully prosecuted a number of securities fraud cases, but that Spitzer took no apparent action, either. Spitzer's family trust had invested in Madoff.

"Government has coddled, accepted, and ignored White-collar crime for too long," he testified. "It is time the nation woke up and realized that it's not the armed robbers or drug dealers who cause the most economic harm, it's the white collar criminals living in the most expensive homes who have the most impressive resumes who harm us the most. They steal our pensions, bankrupt our companies, and destroy thousands of jobs, ruining countless lives." He testified to Rep. Gary Ackerman-D-NY that he has never been compensated for his efforts. "I did it for our (American) flag, for patriotism." Markopolos presented recommendations to improve the SEC's operations, which included mandatory department standards: Good ethics, full transparency, full disclosure, and fair dealing for all. The SEC must establish a unit to accept whistleblower tips, and move its activity closer to financial centers away from Washington, D.C. He also disclosed information regarding a dozen as-yet-unknown foreign Madoff feeder funds, “hiding in the weeds” in Europe, whose silent victims likely included Russian mobsters and Latin American drug cartels, “dirty money” investors. A former SEC compliance officer, Eric Swanson, married Madoff's niece Shana, a Madoff firm compliance attorney. Markopolos expressed no interest in a political career.

"I'm definitely not in the running for any public office. I know I have been approached already, and have said no and will continue to say no. It is not in my future. I'm apolitical. I support all third party candidates. I think they have a voice that needs to be heard, I wish America would listen to voices outside the two major parties. I think it is time for change. We've had Democratic and Republican parties in existence for well over a century each and maybe it's time for something new, something different. It is time to embody a party that really reflects America's core values."

Biography

Markopolos's account of the Madoff scandal, , was released in March 2010.

References

External links

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Category:Living people Category:American writers Category:American businesspeople Category:American money managers Category:American people of Greek descent Category:American whistleblowers Category:1956 births Category:Boston College alumni Category:Financial analysts Category:Hedge fund managers Category:Loyola University Maryland alumni Category:Madoff investment scandal Category:People from Erie, Pennsylvania Category:People from Boston, Massachusetts Category:United States Army officers

Name	Bernard L. Madoff
Image name	BernardMadoff.jpg
Birth date	April 29, 1938
Birth place	Queens, New York, USA
Religion	Judaism
Place of residence	Manhattan, New York, United States
Education	Hofstra University (1990)
Employer	Bernard L. Madoff Investment Securities
Political party	Democratic
Ethnicity	Jewish
Known for	Ponzi scheme, Chairman of NASDAQ (prior)
Nationality	American
Spouse	Ruth Alpern Madoff
Occupation	Stock broker, financial adviser (retired), former chairman of NASDAQ
Conviction status	Inmate #61727-054 at the Metropolitan Correctional Center, 150 Park Row, New York City, NY 10007.
Children	Mark Madoff (ca. 1964 - 2010),Andrew Madoff (ca. 1966)
Charge	Securities fraud, investment advisor fraud, mail fraud, wire fraud, money laundering, false statements, perjury, making false filings with the SEC, theft from an employee benefit plan
Conviction penalty	150 years in federal prison and$170 billion in restitution

The Madoff investment scandal is the Ponzi scheme that former NASDAQ chairman Bernard Madoff confessed to in 2008. He founded the Wall Street firm Bernard L. Madoff Investment Securities LLC in 1960, and was its chairman until his arrest. Alerted by his sons, federal authorities arrested Madoff on December 11, 2008. On March 12, 2009, Madoff pleaded guilty to 11 federal crimes and admitted to operating what has been called the largest investor fraud ever committed by an individual. On June 29, 2009, he was sentenced to 150 years in prison with restitution of $170 billion. According to the original federal charges, Madoff said that his firm had "liabilities of approximately US$50 billion". Prosecutors estimated the size of the fraud to be $64.8 billion, based on the amounts in the accounts of Madoff's 4,800 clients as of November 30, 2008. Ignoring opportunity costs and taxes paid on fictitious profits, half of Madoff's direct investors lost no money.

Investigators have determined others were involved in the scheme. The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has also come under fire for not investigating Madoff more thoroughly; questions about his firm had been raised as early as 1999. Madoff's business, in the process of liquidation, was one of the top market makers on Wall Street and in 2008, the sixth-largest.

Madoff's personal and business asset freeze has created a chain reaction throughout the world's business and philanthropic community, forcing many organizations to close, including the Robert I. Lappin Charitable Foundation, the Picower Foundation, and the JEHT Foundation.

Background

Madoff started his firm in 1960 as a penny stock trader with $5,000 (about $35,000 in 2008 dollars), earned from working as a lifeguard and sprinkler installer. His fledgling business began to grow with the assistance of his father-in-law, accountant Saul Alpern, who referred a circle of friends and their families. Initially, the firm made markets (quoted bid and ask prices) via the National Quotation Bureau's Pink Sheets. In order to compete with firms that were members of the New York Stock Exchange trading on the stock exchange's floor, his firm began using innovative computer information technology to disseminate its quotes. After a trial run, the technology that the firm helped develop became the NASDAQ. At one point, Madoff Securities was the largest buying-and-selling "market maker" at the NASDAQ.

In 1992, The Wall Street Journal described him:

..."one of the masters of the off-exchange "third market" and the bane of the New York Stock Exchange. He has built a highly profitable securities firm, Bernard L. Madoff Investment Securities, which siphons a huge volume of stock trades away from the Big Board. The $740 million average daily volume of trades executed electronically by the Madoff firm off the exchange equals 9% of the New York exchange's. Mr. Madoff's firm can execute trades so quickly and cheaply that it actually pays other brokerage firms a penny a share to execute their customers' orders, profiting from the spread between bid and asked prices that most stocks trade for."

Several family members worked for him. His younger brother, Peter, was Senior Managing Director and Chief Compliance Officer,

Federal investigators believe the fraud in the investment management division and advisory division may have begun in the 1970s. However, Madoff himself stated his fraudulent activities began in the 1990s.

In the 1980s, Madoff's market-maker division traded up to 5% of the total volume made on the New York Stock Exchange. who paid a broker to execute a customer's order through his brokerage, called a "legal kickback", which gave Madoff the reputation of being the largest dealer in NYSE-listed stocks in the U.S., trading about 15% of transaction volume. Academics have questioned the ethics of these payments. Madoff has argued that these payments did not alter the price that the customer received.

By 2000, Madoff Securities, one of the top traders of US securities, held approximately $300 million in assets. Madoff ran a branch office in London, separate from Madoff Securities, which employed 28, handling investments for his family of approximately £80 million. Two remote cameras installed in the London office permitted Madoff to monitor events from New York.

Modus operandi

In 1992, Bernard Madoff explained his purported strategy to The Wall Street Journal. He said the returns were really nothing special, given that the Standard & Poors 500-stock index generated an average annual return of 16.3% between November 1982 and November 1992. "I would be surprised if anybody thought that matching the S&P; over 10 years was anything outstanding." The majority of money managers actually trailed the S&P; 500 during the 1980s. The Journal concluded Madoff's use of futures and options helped cushion the returns against the market's ups and downs. Madoff said he made up for the cost of the hedges, which could have caused him to trail the stock market's returns, with stock-picking and market timing. Madoff's sales pitch was an investment strategy consisting of purchasing blue-chip stocks and taking options contracts on them, sometimes called a split-strike conversion or a collar. "Typically, a position will consist of the ownership of 30–35 S&P; 100 stocks, most correlated to that index, the sale of out-of-the-money 'calls' on the index and the purchase of out-of-the-money 'puts' on the index. The sale of the 'calls' is designed to increase the rate of return, while allowing upward movement of the stock portfolio to the strike price of the 'calls'. The 'puts', funded in large part by the sales of the 'calls', limit the portfolio's downside."

Example of a Madoff Investment Securities LLC monthly statement

In his 1992, "Avellino and Bienes" interview with The Wall Street Journal, Madoff discussed his supposed methods: In the 1970s, he had placed invested funds in "convertible arbitrage positions in large-cap stocks, with promised investment returns of 18% to 20%", Barron's raised the possibility that Madoff's returns were most likely due to front running his firm's brokerage clients.

Sales methods

Rather than offer high returns to all comers, Madoff offered modest but steady returns to an exclusive clientele. The investment method was marketed as "too complicated for outsiders to understand". He was secretive about the firm’s business, and kept his financial statements closely guarded. The New York Post reported that Madoff "worked the so-called 'Jewish circuit' of well-heeled Jews he met at country clubs on Long Island and in Palm Beach". The New York Times reported that Madoff courted many prominent Jewish executives and organizations; according to the Associated Press, they "trusted [Madoff] because he is Jewish". A scheme that targets members of a particular religious or ethnic community is a type of affinity fraud, and a Newsweek article identified Madoff's scheme as "an affinity Ponzi".

Madoff was a "master marketer", and his fund was considered exclusive, giving the appearance of a "velvet rope". around 10%, and were a key factor in perpetuating the fraud. Ponzi schemes typically pay returns of 20% or higher, and collapse quickly. One Madoff fund, which described its "strategy" as focusing on shares in the Standard & Poor's 100-stock index, reported a 10.5% annual return during the previous 17 years. Even at the end of November 2008, amid a general market collapse, the same fund reported that it was up 5.6%, while the same year-to-date total return on the S&P; 500-stock index had been negative 38%.

The Swiss bank, Union Bancaire Privée, explained that because of Madoff's huge volume as a broker-dealer, the bank believed he had a perceived edge on the market because his trades were timed well, suggesting they believed he was front running.

Access to Washington

The Madoff family gained unusual access to Washington's lawmakers and regulators through the industry's top trade group. The Madoff family has long-standing, high-level ties to the Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association (SIFMA), the primary securities industry organization.

Bernard Madoff sat on the Board of Directors of the Securities Industry Association, which merged with the Bond Market Association in 2006 to form SIFMA. Madoff's brother Peter then served two terms as a member of SIFMA’s Board of Directors. Peter's resignation as the scandal broke in December 2008 came amid growing criticism of the Madoff firm’s links to Washington, and how those relationships may have contributed to the Madoff fraud. Over the years 2000–08, the two Madoff brothers gave $56,000 to SIFMA,

In addition, Bernard Madoff's niece Shana Madoff was active on the Executive Committee of SIFMA's Compliance & Legal Division, but resigned her SIFMA position shortly after her uncle's arrest. She married an SEC compliance official, Eric Swanson, after an SEC investigation concluded in 2005. A spokesman for Swanson, who has left the SEC, said he "did not participate in any inquiry of Bernard Madoff Securities or its affiliates while involved in a relationship" with Shana Madoff.

Previous investigations

Madoff Securities LLC was investigated at least eight times over a 16-year period by the United States Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and other regulatory authorities.

Avellino and Bienes

In 1992, the SEC investigated one of Madoff's feeder funds, Avellino & Bienes, the principals being Frank Avellino, Michael Bienes and his wife Dianne Bienes. Bienes began his career working as an accountant for Madoff's father-in-law, Sol Alpern. Then, he became a partner in the accounting firm Alpern, Avellino and Bienes. In 1962, the firm began advising its clients about investing all of their money with a mystery man, a highly successful and controversial figure on Wall Street, but until this episode, not known as an ace money manager,

Represented by Ira Sorkin, Madoff's present attorney, Avellino & Bienes were accused of selling unregistered securities, and in its report the SEC mentioned the fund's "curiously steady" yearly returns to investors of 13.5% to 20%. However, the SEC did not look any more deeply into the matter, and never publicly disclosed Madoff.

In 2004, after published articles appeared accusing the firm of front running, the SEC's Washington office cleared Madoff. "The staff found no evidence of fraud". In September, 2005 Madoff agreed to register his business, but the SEC kept its findings confidential.

In 2007, SEC enforcement completed an investigation which began on January 6, 2006, into a Ponzi scheme allegation which resulted in neither a finding of fraud, nor a referral to the SEC Commissioners for legal action.

FINRA

In 2007, the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA), the industry-run watchdog for brokerage firms, reported without explanation that parts of Madoff's firm had no customers. "At this point in time we are uncertain of the basis for FINRA's conclusion in this regard," SEC staff wrote shortly after Madoff was arrested. A former SEC compliance officer, Eric Swanson, married Madoff's niece Shana, a Madoff firm compliance attorney. He had also approached the Wall Street Journal about the existence of the Ponzi scheme in 2005, but its editors decided not to pursue the story. The paper specified 29 numbered red flags. In part, the memo concluded: "Bernie Madoff is running the world's largest unregistered hedge fund. He's organized this business as a 'hedge fund of funds privately labeling their own hedge funds which Bernie Madoff secretly runs for them using a split-strike conversion strategy getting paid only trading commissions which are not disclosed.' If this is not a regulatory dodge, I do not know what is." Markopolos considered if Madoff's "unsophisticated portfolio management" was either a Ponzi scheme or front running, placing the fund's orders before his brokerage clients' when placing them in the market, and concluded it was most likely a Ponzi scheme. questioning Madoff's secrecy and wondering how he obtained such consistent returns. She reported that "Madoff's investors rave about his performance – even though they don't understand how he does it. 'Even knowledgeable people can't really tell you what he's doing,' one very satisfied investor told Barron's."

By selling its holdings for cash at the end of each period, Madoff avoided filing disclosures of its holdings with the SEC, an unusual tactic. Madoff rejected any call for an outside audit "for reasons of secrecy", claiming that was the exclusive responsibility of his brother, Peter, the company's chief compliance officer".

Markopolos later testified to Congress that to deliver 12% annual returns to the investor, Madoff needed to earn 16% gross, so as to distribute a 4% fee to the feeder fund managers, who would secure new victims, be "willfully blind, and not get too intrusive". In 2007, hedge fund advisory fund firm Aksia LLC advised its clients not to invest with Madoff, because of the appearance of limited accounting service personnel.

Typically, hedge funds hold their portfolio at a securities firm (a major bank or brokerage) acting as the fund's prime broker, which allows an outside investigator to verify their holdings. Madoff's firm was its own broker-dealer and allegedly processed all of its trades. unlike most hedge funds which email statements to be downloaded for convenience and investor personal analysis.

Madoff operated as a broker-dealer who also ran an asset management division. In 2003, Joe Aaron, a hedge fund professional, also found the structure suspicious and warned a colleague to avoid investing in the fund, "Why would a good businessman work his magic for pennies on the dollar?" he concluded.

Charles Gradante, co-founder of hedge-fund research firm Hennessee Group, observed that Madoff "only had five down months since 1996", and commented on Madoff's investment performance: "You can't go 10 or 15 years with only three or four down months. It's just impossible."

In 2001, a story in MARHedge interviewed traders who were incredulous that Madoff had 72 consecutive gaining months, an unlikely possibility.

Madoff received $250 million around December 1 from Carl J. Shapiro, a 95-year-old Boston philanthropist and entrepreneur who was one of Madoff's oldest friends and biggest financial backers. On December 5, he accepted $10 million from Martin Rosenman, president of Rosenman Family LLC, who wanted to recover a never-invested $10 million, deposited in a Madoff account at JPMorgan, wired six days before Madoff's arrest. Bankruptcy Judge Lifland ruled that Rosenman was "indistinguishable" from any other Madoff client, so there was no basis for giving him special treatment to recover funds. The judge separately declined to dismiss a lawsuit brought by Hadleigh Holdings, which claims it entrusted $1 million to the Madoff firm three days before his arrest.

On December 10, 2008, he suggested to his sons, Mark and Andrew, that the firm pay out over 170 million dollars in bonuses two months ahead of schedule, from $200 million in assets that the firm still had.

“Simply from an administrative perspective, the act of putting together the various account statements, which did show trading activity, has to involve a number of people. ... You would need office and support personnel, people who actually knew what the market prices were for the securities that were being traded. You would need accountants so that the internal documents reconcile with the documents being sent to customers at least on a superficial basis,” said Tom Dewey, a securities lawyer. Another lawsuit filed by bankruptcy trustee Irving Picard is seeking funds for Madoff victims. Jaffe has requested the Court dismiss the charges in both cases. # Stanley Chais, of the Brighton Company. On May 1, 2009, Picard filed a lawsuit against Stanley Chais, 82. The complaint alleges he "knew or should have known" he was involved in a Ponzi scheme when his family investments with Madoff averaged 40% return. It also claims Chais was a primary beneficiary of the scheme for at least 30 years, allowing his family to withdraw more than $1 billion from their accounts since 1995. The SEC filed a similar civil suit mirroring these claims. On September 22, 2009 Chais was sued by California Attorney General Jerry Brown seeking $25 million in penalties as well as restitution for victims, saying the Beverly Hills investment manager was a 'middleman' in Madoff's Ponzi scheme. # Madoff Securities International Ltd. in London. # Carl J. Shapiro, women's clothing entrepreneur, self-made millionaire and philanthropist, and one of Madoff's oldest friends and biggest financial backers, who helped him start his investment firm in 1960. He was never in the finance business. In 1971, Mr. Shapiro sold his business, Kay Windsor, Inc. for $20 million. Investing most with Madoff, that sum grew to hundreds of millions of dollars and possibly to more than $1 billion. Shapiro personally lost about $400 million, $250 million of which he gave to Madoff 10 days before his arrest. His foundation lost more than $100 million. # David G. Friehling, 49, the sole practitioner at Friehling & Horowitz CPAs, waived indictment and pleaded not guilty to criminal charges on July 10, 2009. He agreed to proceed without having the evidence in the criminal case against him reviewed by a grand jury at a hearing before U.S. District Judge Alvin Hellerstein in Manhattan. Friehling was charged on March 18, 2009, with securities fraud, aiding and abetting investment adviser fraud, and four counts of filing false audit reports with the Securities and Exchange Commission. On November 3, 2009 Friehling plead guilty to the charges. # Peter B. Madoff, 63, Chief Compliance Officer, worked with his brother Bernie for more than 40 years, and ran the daily operations for the past 20 years. He helped create the computerized trading system. # Ruth Madoff, Bernard's wife, agreed as part of Bernie's sentencing issues, to keep $2.5 million of her claim of more than $80 million in assets and to give up all of her possessions. The money is not protected from civil legal actions pursued by a court-appointed trustee liquidating Madoff's assets or by investor lawsuits. On July 29, 2009, she was sued by trustee Picard for $45 million, which supported her "life of splendor". According to court filings, she received more than $3 million from the business over the last six years to pay personal expenses charged to her American Express card, and $2 million in payments to a business called PetCare RX. “Ruth Madoff was never an employee of BLMIS yet millions of dollars belonging to BLMIS and its customers found their way into her personal accounts and investments without any legitimate business purpose or any value to BLMIS, simply because of her relationship with Bernard Madoff.” She is also required to itemize any expenditures over $100. The case is Picard v. Madoff, 1:09-ap-1391, U.S. Bankruptcy Court, Southern District of New York (Manhattan). On November 25, 2008, she withdrew $5.5 million and $10 million on December 10, 2008, from her brokerage account at Cohmad, a feeder fund which had an office in Madoff’s headquarters and was part-owned by him. In November, she also received $2 million from her husband's London office, Madoff Securities International Ltd. She has not been charged with any crime, and has not been questioned by prosecutors. She has been seen riding the N.Y. subway and did not attend her husband's sentencing. # Madoff's sons – Mark, 45, and Andrew, 42, worked in the trading arm in the New York office, but also raised money marketing the Madoff funds. Their assets were frozen on March 31, 2009. The two have been estranged from their father, since December 10, 2008, and haven't spoken with their mother On October 2, 2009 a civil lawsuit was filed against them by trustee Picard for a judgment in the aggregate amount of at least $198,743,299. Peter Madoff and daughter, Shana are also defendants. On March 15, 2010, they filed a motion to dismiss. On December 11, 2010, the second anniversary of Madoff's arrest, Mark Madoff was found hanging from a ceiling pipe in the living room of his SoHo loft apartment. # Frank DiPascali, 52, who referred to himself as "director of options trading" and as "chief financial officer" at Madoff Securities pled guilty on August 11, 2009, to 10 counts: conspiracy, securities fraud, investment advisor fraud, mail fraud, wire fraud, perjury, income tax evasion, international money laundering, falsifying books and records of a broker-dealer, and an investment advisor. He has agreed to connect the dots and to name names, with sentencing in May, 2010. He is awaiting bail. was filed against DiPascali. # Enrica Cotellessa-Pitz, controller Bernard L. Madoff Investment Securities LLC, but not a licensed certified public accountant. Her signature is on checks from BMIS to Cohmad Securities Corp. representing commission payments. She was the liaison between the SEC and BLMIS regarding the firm's financial statements. The SEC has removed the statements off its website. # Fairfield Greenwich Group, based in Greenwich, Connecticut, had a "Fairfield Sentry" fund which was one of many feeder funds that gave investors portals to Madoff. On April 1, 2009, the Commonwealth of Massachusetts filed a civil action charging Fairfield Greenwich with fraud, breaching its fiduciary duty to clients by failing to provide promised due diligence on its investments. The complaint seeks a fine and restitution to Massachusetts investors for losses and disgorgement of performance fees paid to Fairfield by those investors. It alleges that in 2005 Mr. Madoff coached Fairfield staff about ways to answer questions from SEC attorneys who were looking into Harry Markopolos' complaint about Madoff's operations. The Secretary of State has no plans to settle the lawsuit in spite of the fact that Fairfield Greenwich has offered to repay all Massachusetts investors, and is expected to force Fairfield to explain e-mails and other evidence he has uncovered that appear to show company officials knew about potential problems with Madoff but failed to disclose them to clients. On May 18, 2009, the hedge fund was sued by trustee Picard, seeking a return of $3.2 billion during the period from 2002 – Madoff's arrest in December, 2008. However, the money may already be in the hands of Fairfield’s own clients, who are likely off-limits to Picard, since they weren’t direct investors with Madoff. # J. Ezra Merkin, a prominent investment advisor and philanthropist, has been sued for his role in running a "feeder fund" for Madoff. On April 6, 2009, New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo filed civil fraud charges against J. Ezra Merkin alleging he "betrayed hundreds of investors" by moving $2.4 billion of clients' money to Bernard Madoff without their knowledge. The complaint states, he lied about putting the money with Madoff, failed to disclose conflicts of interest, and collected over $470 million in fees for his three hedge funds, Ascot Partners LP with Ascot Fund Ltd., Gabriel Capital Corp. and Ariel Fund Ltd. He promised he would actively manage the money, but instead, he misguided investors about his Madoff investments in quarterly reports, in investor presentations, and in conversations with investors. "Merkin held himself out to investors as an investing guru...In reality, Merkin was but a master marketer." # Jeffry Picower and his wife, Barbara, of Palm Beach, Florida, and Manhattan, had two dozen accounts. He was a lawyer, accountant, and investor who led buyouts of health-care and technology companies. Mr. Picower's foundation stated its investment portfolio with Madoff was valued at nearly $1 billion at one time. # Tremont Group Holdings started its first Madoff-only fund in 1997. That group managed several funds marketed under the Re Select Broad Market Fund. # The Maxam fund invested through Tremont. Sandra L. Manzke, founder of Maxam Capital, had her assets temporarily frozen by the same Connecticut court. #Daniel Bonventre, former operations director for Bernard Madoff Investment Securities. #Joann Crupi (Westfield, NJ) and Annette Bongiorno (Boca Raton, FL) were arrested in November 2010. Both were back office employees and according to the Associated Press "authorities previously said Bongiorno was a staff supervisor and was responsible for answering questions from Madoff's clients about their purported investments. They allege she oversaw the fabrication of documents."

Charges and sentencing

The criminal case is U.S.A. v. Madoff, 1:08-mJ-02735.

The SEC case is Securities and Exchange Commission v. Madoff, 1:08-cv- 10791, both U.S. District Court, Southern District of New York (Manhattan). The cases against Fairfield Greenwich Group et al. are consolidated as 09-118 in U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York (Manhattan).

While awaiting sentencing, Madoff has met with the SEC's Inspector General, H. David Kotz, who is conducting an investigation into how regulators failed to detect the fraud despite numerous red flags. Former SEC Chairman Harvey Pitt estimated the actual net fraud to be between $10 and $17 billion, because it does not include the fictional returns credited to the Madoff's customer accounts.

Criminal complaint

U.S. v. Madoff, 08-MAG-02735.

The original criminal complaint estimated that investors lost $50 billion through the scheme, though The Wall Street Journal reports "that figure includes the alleged false profits that Mr. Madoff's firm reported to its customers for decades. It is unclear exactly how much investors deposited into the firm." He was originally charged with a single count of securities fraud and faced up to 20 years in prison, and a fine of $5 million if convicted.

Court papers indicate that Madoff's firm had about 4,800 investment client accounts as of November 30, 2008, and issued statements for that month reporting that client accounts held a total balance of about $65 billion, but actually "held only a small fraction" of that balance for clients.

Madoff was arrested by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) on December 11, 2008, on a criminal charge of securities fraud. he had told his sons that his business was "a giant Ponzi scheme". They called a friend for advice, Martin Flumenbaum, a lawyer, who called federal prosecutors and the SEC on their behalf. FBI Agent Theodore Cacioppi made a house call. "We are here to find out if there is an innocent explanation," Cacioppi said quietly. The 70-year-old financier paused, then said: "There is no innocent explanation." Madoff was released on the same day of his arrest after posting $10 million bail. Madoff has reportedly received death threats that have been referred to the FBI, and the SEC referred to fears of "harm or flight" in its request for Madoff to be confined to his Upper East Side apartment. Cameras monitored his apartment's doors, its communication devices sent signals to the FBI, and his wife was required to pay for additional security. also forbade trading from the companies Madoff Securities International Ltd. ("Madoff International") and Madoff Ltd.

On January 5, 2009, prosecutors had requested that the Court revoke his bail, after Madoff and his wife allegedly violated the court-ordered asset freeze by mailing jewelry worth up to $1 million to relatives, including their sons and Madoff's brother. It was also noted that $173 million in signed checks had been found in Madoff's office desk after he had been arrested. His sons reported the mailings to prosecutors. Previously, Madoff was thought to be cooperating with prosecutors.

On March 10, 2009, the United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York filed an 11-count criminal information, or complaint, charging Madoff with 11 federal crimes: securities fraud, investment adviser fraud, mail fraud, wire fraud, three counts of money laundering, false statements, perjury, making false filings with the SEC, and theft from an employee benefit plan. The complaint stated that Madoff had defrauded his clients of almost $65 billion—thus spelling out the largest Ponzi scheme in history, as well as the largest investor fraud committed by a single person.

Madoff pleaded guilty to three counts of money laundering. Prosecutors allege that he used the London Office, Madoff Securities International Ltd. to launder more than $250 million of client money by transferring client money from the investment-advisory business in New York to London and then back to the U.S. to support the U.S. trading operation of Bernard L. Madoff Investment Securities LLC. Madoff gave the appearance that he was trading in Europe for his clients.

Plea proceeding

On March 12, 2009, Madoff appeared in court in a plea proceeding, and pleaded guilty to all charges.

In his pleading allocution, Madoff admitted to running a Ponzi scheme, and expressed regret for his "criminal acts".

Judge Denny Chin accepted his guilty plea and remanded him to incarceration at the Manhattan Metropolitan Correctional Center until sentencing. Chin said that Madoff was now a substantial flight risk given his age, wealth and the possibility of spending the rest of his life in prison.

Madoff's attorney, Ira Sorkin filed an appeal, to return him back to his "penthouse arrest", await sentencing, and to reinstate his bail conditions, declaring he would be more amenable to cooperate with the government's investigation, and prosecutors filed a notice in opposition. On March 20, 2009, the appellate court denied his request.

On June 26, 2009, Chin ordered Madoff to forfeit $170 million in assets. His wife Ruth will relinquish her claim to $80 million worth of assets, leaving her with $2.5 million in cash. The Bureau of US Prisons had recommended 50 years, while defense lawyer Ira Sorkin had recommended 12 years, arguing that Madoff had confessed. The judge granted Madoff permission to wear his personal clothing at sentencing. Commentators noted that this was in contrast to other high-profile white collar trials such as that of Andrew Fastow, Jeffrey Skilling, and Bernard Ebbers who were known for their philanthropy and/or cooperation to help victims; however Madoff's victims included several charities and foundations, and the only person that pleaded for mercy was defense lawyer Ira Sorkin. Chin called the fraud "unprecedented" and "staggering", and stated that the sentence would deter others from committing similar frauds. "Here the message must be sent that Mr. Madoff's crimes were extraordinarily evil." Many victims, some of whom had lost their life savings, applauded the sentence.

Chin said "I have a sense Mr. Madoff has not done all that he could do or told all that he knows," noting that Madoff failed to identify accomplices, making it more difficult for prosecutors to build cases against others. Chin dismissed Sorkin's plea for leniency, stating that Madoff made substantial loans to family members and moved $15 million from the firm to his wife's account shortly before confessing. The court-appointed receiver of Bernard L. Madoff Investment Securities L.L.C., Irving Picard, has also said that Madoff had not provided substantial assistance, complicating efforts to locate assets. A former federal prosecutor suggested Madoff would have had the possibility of a sentence with parole if he fully cooperated with investigators, but Madoff's silence implied that there were other accomplices in the fraud which led the judge to impose the maximum sentence.

"I have left a legacy of shame, as some of my victims have pointed out, to my family and my grandchildren. This is something I will live in for the rest of my life. I'm sorry," he said simply. "I know that doesn't help you," Madoff said, after his victims recommended to the judge that he rot in jail.

On June 29, 2009, inmate number #61727-054, Bernard Madoff was sentenced to 150 years imprisonment at the Metropolitan Correctional Center in New York, and ordered to pay $170 billion in restitution.

Madoff was incarcerated at Butner Federal Correctional Complex in North Carolina.

On July 28, 2009, he gave his first jailhouse interview to Joseph Cotchett and Nancy Fineman, attorneys from San Francisco, because they threatened to sue his wife, Ruth, on behalf of several investors who lost fortunes. During the 4 and 1/2 hour session, he was described as arrogant and cocky, and upon query, apologized to all his clients.

Recovery of funds

Madoff's combined assets are about $826 million and have been frozen. Madoff provided a confidential list of his and his firm's assets to the SEC on December 31, which was subsequently disclosed on March 13, 2009 in a court filing. Madoff had no IRAs, no 401(k), no Keogh plan, no other pension plan and no annuities. He owned less than a combined $200,000 in securities in Lehman Brothers, Morgan Stanley, Fidelity, Bear Stearns, and M&T;. No offshore or Swiss Bank accounts were listed.

On March 17, 2009, prosecutor filed a document listing more assets including $2.6 million in jewelry and about 35 sets of watches and cufflinks, more than $30 million in loans owed to the couple by their sons, and Ruth Madoff's interest in real estate funds sponsored by Sterling Equities, whose partners include Wilpon. Ruth Madoff, and Peter Madoff, invested as “passive limited partners” in real estate funds sponsored by the company, as well as other venture investments. Assets also include the Madoffs' interest in Hoboken Radiology LLC. in Hoboken, New Jersey; Delivery Concepts LLC, an online food ordering service in midtown Manhattan that operates as "delivery.com"; an interest in Madoff La Brea LLC; an interest in the restaurant, PJ Clarke’s on the Hudson LLC; and Boca Raton, Florida-based Viager II LLC.

On March 2, 2009, Judge Louis Stanton modified an existing freeze order to surrender assets Madoff owns: his securities firm, real estate, artwork, and entertainment tickets, and granted a request by prosecutors that the existing freeze remain in place for the Manhattan apartment, and vacation homes in Montauk, New York, and Palm Beach, Florida. He has also agreed to surrender his interest in Primex Holdings LLC, a joint venture between Madoff Securities and several large brokerages, designed to replicate the auction process on the New York Stock Exchange. Madoff's April 14, 2009 opening day New York Mets tickets were sold for $7,500 on ebay.

On April 13, 2009, a Connecticut judge dissolved the temporary asset freeze from March 30, 2009, and issued an order for Fairfield Greenwich Group executive Walter Noel to post property pledges of $10 million against his Greenwich home and $2 million against Jeffrey Tucker's. Noel agreed to the attachment on his house "with no findings, including no finding of liability or wrongdoing". Andres Piedrahita's assets continue to remain temporarily frozen because he was never served with the complaint. The principals are all involved in a lawsuit filed by the town of Fairfield's pension funds, which lost $42 million. The pension fund case is Retirement Program for Employees of the Town of Fairfield v. Madoff, FBT-CV-09-5023735-S, Superior Court of Connecticut (Bridgeport). Maxam Capital and other firms that allegedly fed Madoff's fund, which could allow Fairfield to recover up to $75 million were also part of the dissolution and terms.

Professor John Coffee, of Columbia University Law School, said that much of Madoff's money may be in offshore funds. The SEC believed keeping the assets secret would prevent them from being seized by foreign regulators and foreign creditors.

The Montreal Gazette reported on January 12, 2010 that there are unrecovered Madoff assets in Canada.

In December 2010 Barbara Picower and others reached an agreement with Irving Picard to return 7.2 billion dollars from the estate of her deceased husband Jeffrey Picower to other investors in the fraud.

Affected clients

On February 4, 2009, the U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Manhattan released a 162-page client list with at least 13,500 different accounts, but without listing the amounts invested. Individual investors who invested through Fairfield Greenwich Group, Ascot Partners, and Chais Investments were not included on the list.

Clients included banks, hedge funds, charities, universities, and wealthy individuals who have disclosed about $41 billion invested with Bernard L. Madoff Investment Securities LLC, according to a Bloomberg News tally, which may include double counting of investors in feeder funds.

Although Madoff filed a report with the SEC in 2008 stating that his advisory business had only 11–25 clients and about $17.1 billion in assets, thousands of investors have reported losses, and Madoff estimated the fund's assets at $50 billion.

Other notable clients included former Salomon Brothers economist Henry Kaufman, Steven Spielberg, Jeffrey Katzenberg, actors Kevin Bacon, Kyra Sedgwick, John Malkovich, and Zsa Zsa Gabor, Mortimer Zuckerman, Baseball Hall of Fame pitcher Sandy Koufax, the Wilpon family (owners of the New York Mets), broadcaster Larry King and World Trade Center developer Larry Silverstein. The Elie Wiesel Foundation for Humanity lost $15.2 million, and Wiesel and his wife, Marion, lost their life savings.

Largest stake-holders

According to The Wall Street Journal the investors with the largest potential losses, including feeder funds, are:

Fairfield Greenwich Group, $7.50 billion

Tremont Capital Management, $3.30 billion

Banco Santander, $2.87 billion

Bank Medici, $2.10 billion

Ascot Partners, $1.80 billion

Access International Advisors, $1.40 billion

Fortis, $1.35 billion

HSBC, $1 billion

The potential losses of these eight investors total $21.32 billion.

Eleven investors had potential losses between $100 million and $1 billion:

Natixis SA

Carl J. Shapiro (a 95-year-old Boston philanthropist)

Royal Bank of Scotland Group PLC

BNP Paribas

BBVA

Man Group PLC

Reichmuth & Co.

Nomura Holdings

Maxam Capital Management

EIM SA

Union Bancaire Privée

Twenty-three investors with potential losses of $500,000 to $100 million were also listed, with a total potential loss of $540 million. The grand total potential loss in the Wall Street Journal table is $26.9 billion.

Some investors have amended their initial estimates of losses to include only their original investment, since the profits Madoff reported to them which they were including were most likely fraudulent. Yeshiva University, for instance, said its actual incurred loss was its invested $14.5 million, not the $110 million initially estimated, which included falsified profits reported to the university by Madoff.

IRS penalties

It is estimated the potential tax penalties for foundations invested with Madoff are $1 billion.

Although foundations are exempt from federal income taxes, they are subject to an excise tax, for failing to vet Madoff's proposed investments properly, to heed red flags, or to diversify prudently. Penalties may range from 10% of the amount invested during a tax year, to 25% if they fail to try to recover the funds. The foundation’s officers, directors, and trustees face up to a 15% penalty, with up to $20,000 fines for individual managers, per investment.

Impact and aftermath

Criminal charges Aurelia Finance

Criminal charges against five directors will proceed against Swiss wealth manager Aurelia Finance, which lost an alleged $800 million of client money. The directors' assets have been frozen.

Grupo Santander

Clients primarily located in South America who invested with Madoff through the Spanish bank Grupo Santander, filed a class action against Santander in Miami. Santander proposed a settlement that would give the clients $2 billion worth of preferred stock in Santander based on each client's original investment. The shares pay a 2% dividend. Seventy percent of the Madoff/Santander investors accepted the offer.

Union Bancaire Privee

Union Bancaire Privée, invested less than $1.08 billion (of its $124.5 billion in assets) in Madoff funds.

In March 2009, Geneva-based wealth manager, Union Bancaire Privée, offered to partially compensate investors 50% of the money they initially invested with Madoff if they agree to stay with the bank for the next five years and promise not to sue.

On May 8, 2009, a lawsuit was filed against the bank on behalf of New York investor Andrea Barron in the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York. The lawsuit is seeking class-action status for investors in UBP Funds as of December 11, 2008, and damages, including the return of management fees.

Notz Stucki

Geneva-based wealth manager, Notz Stucki's Plaza Fund, will compensate up to $103.2 million to those clients who did not specifically request access to Madoff. Compensation would be with an issue of a note payable over five years, which would be held by a separate legal entity.

Bank Medici

Bank Medici is an Austrian bank founded by Sonja Kohn, who met Madoff in 1985 while living in New York. Ninety percent of the bank's income was generated from Madoff investments. In December 2008, Medici reported that two of its funds—Herald USA Fund and Herald Luxemburg Fund—were exposed to Madoff losses. On January 2, 2009, FMA, the Austria banking regulator, took control of Bank Medici and appointed a supervisor to control the bank. Bank Medici, and its Austrian banking license is now for sale and has been sued by its customers both in the United States and in Austria. The Vienna State Prosecutor has launched a criminal investigation of Bank Medici and Kohn, who had invested an estimated $2.1 billion with Madoff. On May 28, 2009, Bank Medici lost its Austrian banking license. Kohn and the Bank are under investigation.

The Innocence Project

The Innocence Project was partly funded by the JEHT Foundation, a private charity backed by a wealthy couple, Ken and Jeanne Levy-Church, financed with Madoff's mythical money. Jeanne Levy-Church's losses forced her to shut down her Foundation, and her parents’ foundation, the Betty and Norman F. Levy Foundation, lost $244 million. JEH helped the less fortunate, especially ex-convicts. (See Participants in the Madoff investment scandal: Norman F. Levy) Madoff's corruption has deprived it of necessary funds to secure the release of others. The organization uses the latest DNA techniques to prove the innocence of the wrongfully imprisoned. On November 25, 2008, Steven Barnes was set free from jail with the evidence gained from the DNA tests, after serving 20 years for crimes he did not commit (rape and murder).

Westport National Bank

In April 2010, Connecticut Attorney General Richard Blumenthal sued the Westport National Bank and Robert L. Silverman for "effectively aiding and abetting" Madoff's fraud. The suit seeks recovery of $16.2 million, including the fees that the bank collected as custodian of customers' holding in Madoff investments. Silverman's 240 clients invested about $10 million with Madoff using the Bank as the custodian. The Bank denies any wrongdoing.

Suicides

René-Thierry Magon de la Villehuchet

On December 23, 2008, one of the founders of Access International Advisors LLC, René-Thierry Magon de la Villehuchet, was found dead in his company office on Madison Avenue in New York City. His left wrist was slit and de la Villehuchet had taken sleeping pills, in what appeared to be suicide.

He lived in New Rochelle, New York and came from a very prominent French family. Although no suicide note was found at the scene, his brother Bertrand in France received a note shortly after his death in which he expressed remorse and a feeling of responsibility. In 2002, Access invested about 45% of its $1.2 billion under management with Madoff. By 2008, it managed $3 billion and raised the proportion of funds with Madoff to about 75%. De la Villehuchet had also invested all of his wealth and 20% of his brother, Bertrand's, with Madoff. Bertrand said that René-Thierry did not know Madoff but the connection was through René-Thierry's partner in AIA, French banker, Patrick Littaye.

William Foxton

On February 10, 2009, highly-decorated British soldier William Foxton, OBE, 65, shot himself in a park in Southampton, England, having lost all of his family's savings. He had invested in the Herald USA Fund and Herald Luxembourg Fund, feeder funds for Madoff from Bank Medici in Austria.

Mark Madoff

Madoff's eldest son, Mark Madoff, was found dead on December 11, 2010, two years to the day after his father turned himself in. He was found hanged inside his New York apartment in an apparent suicide, but authorities said he left no suicide note.

Mark had unsuccessfully sought a Wall Street trading job after the scandal broke, and it was reported that he was distraught over the possibility of criminal charges, as federal prosecutors were making criminal tax-fraud probes. Among the many Madoff family members being sued by the court-appointed trustee Irving Picard were three of Mark's children.

In his lawsuit, Picard stated that Mark and other Madoff family members improperly earned tens of millions of dollars, though "fictitious and backdated transactions" investment transactions, and falsely documented loans to buy real estate that weren't repaid. Picard also argued that Mark certainly was in a position to recognize the fraud of his father's firm, as Mark was a co-director of trading, was the designated head of the firm in his father's absence, and he held several securities licenses—series 7, 24 and 55 with the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority.

Securities and Exchange Commission

Following the Madoff investment scandal, the Securities and Exchange Commission's inspector general conducted an internal investigation into the agency's failures to uncover the scheme despite a series of red flags and tips. In September 2009, the SEC released a 477-page report on how the SEC missed these red flags and identifies repeated opportunities for SEC examiners to find the fraud and how ineffective their efforts were.

See also

Earl Jones (investment advisor)

Federal Reserve Bank

Financial crisis of 2007-2010

Marc Stuart Dreier

Petters Group Worldwide

Ponzi Scheme

Pyramid scheme

Scott Rothstein

Stanford Financial Group

References

External links

United States Department of Justice">Criminal complaint, transcripts of hearings and other documents from the United States Department of Justice

113 Victim Impact Statements: Letters urging Justice June 12, 2009

Defense Attorney pre-sentencing request for leniency letter, June 22, 2009

Madoff Client List February 4, 2009

Bernard Madoff Victim Support and Advocacy Group

SEC civil complaint

SEC press release and update for investors

Bernard L. Madoff Investment Securities The front page is now a placeholder for information on the case. (Archive)

Jewish charities hit by Madoff scandal BBC

Madoff Scandal ongoing coverage from the Financial Times

Ruth Madoff Biography and photos

Serious Fraud Office broadens investigation to Madoff feeders The Guardian, March 27, 2009, British government's investigation into the London activities of certain feeder funds that channeled investments to Madoff

Deposition of J. Ezra Merkin: Madoff Charities Investigation, State of New York (January 30, 2009)

Merkin Civil Fraud Complaint State of New York (April 6, 2009)

Merkin Exhibits, Civil Fraud Complaint

continued Merkin Exhibits, Civil Fraud Complaint State of New York, (April 6, 2009)

Complaint against J P Morgan Chase (April 23, 2009)

Complaint against J. Ezra Merkin (May 7, 2009)

Complaint against Harley International (Cayman) Limited (May 12, 2009)

Commonwealth of Massachusett Secretary of State Complaint (January 14, 2009)

Picard v. Cohmad Securities Corp. 09-AP-1305 (June 22, 2009)

SEC v. Cohmad Securities Corp., 09 Civ. 5680 (June 22, 2009)

Picard v. Chais et al. 08-01789 (May 1, 2009)

SEC v. Stanley Chais, 09 CIV 5681 (June 22, 2009)

Picard v. Ruth Madoff, 1:09-ap-1391 (July 29, 2009)

Bernard Madoff

Category:Corporate scandals Category:Criminal investigation Category:Pyramid and Ponzi schemes

Name	Hillary Rodham Clinton
Office	67th United States Secretary of State
President	Barack Obama
Deputy	Jim Steinberg
Term start	January 21, 2009
Predecessor	Condoleezza Rice
Jr/sr2	United States Senator
State2	New York
Term start2	January 3, 2001
Term end2	January 21, 2009
Preceded2	Daniel Patrick Moynihan
Succeeded2	Kirsten Gillibrand
Office3	First Lady of the United States
Term start3	January 20, 1993
Term end3	January 20, 2001
Preceded3	Barbara Bush
Succeeded3	Laura Bush
Office4	First Lady of Arkansas
Term start4	January 11, 1983
Term end4	December 12, 1992
Predecessor4	Gay Daniels White
Successor4	Betty Tucker
Term start5	January 9, 1979
Term end5	January 19, 1981
Predecessor5	Barbara Pryor
Successor5	Gay Daniels White
Birth date	October 26, 1947
Birth place	Chicago, Illinois, U.S.
Party	Democratic Party
Spouse	Bill Clinton
Children	Chelsea
Residence	Chappaqua, United States
Alma mater	Wellesley CollegeYale Law School
Profession	Lawyer
Religion	Methodist
Signature	Hillary Rodham Clinton Signature.svg
Website	Official website

Hillary Diane Rodham Clinton (; born October 26, 1947) is the 67th United States Secretary of State, serving in the administration of President Barack Obama. She was a United States Senator for New York from 2001 to 2009. As the wife of the 42nd President of the United States, Bill Clinton, she was the First Lady of the United States from 1993 to 2001. In the 2008 election, Clinton was a leading candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination.

A native of Illinois, Hillary Rodham first attracted national attention in 1969 for her remarks as the first student commencement speaker at Wellesley College. She embarked on a career in law after graduating from Yale Law School in 1973. Following a stint as a Congressional legal counsel, she moved to Arkansas in 1974 and married Bill Clinton in 1975. Rodham cofounded the Arkansas Advocates for Children and Families in 1977 and became the first female chair of the Legal Services Corporation in 1978. Named the first female partner at Rose Law Firm in 1979, she was twice listed as one of the 100 most influential lawyers in America. First Lady of Arkansas from 1979 to 1981 and 1983 to 1992 with husband Bill as Governor, she successfully led a task force to reform Arkansas's education system. She sat on the board of directors of Wal-Mart and several other corporations.

In 1994 as First Lady of the United States, her major initiative, the Clinton health care plan, failed to gain approval from the U.S. Congress. However, in 1997 and 1999, Clinton played a role in advocating the creation of the State Children's Health Insurance Program, the Adoption and Safe Families Act, and the Foster Care Independence Act. Her years as First Lady drew a polarized response from the American public. The only First Lady to have been subpoenaed, she testified before a federal grand jury in 1996 due to the Whitewater controversy, but was never charged with wrongdoing in this or several other investigations during her husband's administration. The state of her marriage was the subject of considerable speculation following the Lewinsky scandal in 1998.

After moving to the state of New York, Clinton was elected as a U.S. Senator in 2000. That election marked the first time an American First Lady had run for public office; Clinton was also the first female senator to represent the state. In the Senate, she initially supported the Bush administration on some foreign policy issues, including a vote for the Iraq War Resolution. She subsequently opposed the administration on its conduct of the war in Iraq and on most domestic issues. Senator Clinton was reelected by a wide margin in 2006. In the 2008 presidential nomination race, Hillary Clinton won more primaries and delegates than any other female candidate in American history, but narrowly lost to Senator Barack Obama. As Secretary of State, Clinton became the first former First Lady to serve in a president's cabinet.

Early life and education

Early life

Hillary Diane Rodham was born at Edgewater Hospital in Chicago, Illinois. She was raised in a United Methodist family, first in Chicago and then, from the age of three, in suburban Park Ridge, Illinois. Her father, Hugh Ellsworth Rodham, was the son of Welsh and English immigrants; he managed a successful small business in the textile industry. Her mother, Dorothy Emma Howell, was a homemaker of English, Scottish, French, French Canadian, and Welsh descent. She participated in swimming, baseball, and other sports. For her senior year, she was redistricted to Maine South High School, where she was a National Merit Finalist and graduated in the top five percent of her class of 1965. Her mother wanted her to have an independent, professional career,

Raised in a politically conservative household, at age thirteen Rodham helped canvass South Side Chicago following the very close 1960 U.S. presidential election, where she found evidence of electoral fraud against Republican candidate Richard Nixon. She then volunteered to campaign for Republican candidate Barry Goldwater in the U.S. presidential election of 1964. Rodham's early political development was shaped most by her high school history teacher (like her father, a fervent anticommunist), who introduced her to Goldwater's classic The Conscience of a Conservative, and by her Methodist youth minister (like her mother, concerned with issues of social justice), with whom she saw and met civil rights leader Martin Luther King, Jr., in Chicago in 1962.

College

In 1965, Rodham enrolled at Wellesley College, where she majored in political science. During her freshman year, she served as president of the Wellesley Young Republicans; with this Rockefeller Republican-oriented group, she supported the elections of John Lindsay and Edward Brooke. She later stepped down from this position, as her views changed regarding the American Civil Rights Movement and the Vietnam War. In contrast to the 1960s current that advocated radical actions against the political system, she sought to work for change within it. In her junior year, Rodham became a supporter of the antiwar presidential nomination campaign of Democrat Eugene McCarthy. In early 1968, she was elected president of the Wellesley College Government Association and served through early 1969; In 1969, she graduated with a Bachelor of Arts, Her speech received a standing ovation lasting seven minutes. She was featured in an article published in Life magazine, due to the response to a part of her speech that criticized Senator Edward Brooke, who had spoken before her at the commencement. She also appeared on Irv Kupcinet's nationally syndicated television talk show as well as in Illinois and New England newspapers. That summer, she worked her way across Alaska, washing dishes in Mount McKinley National Park and sliming salmon in a fish processing cannery in Valdez (which fired her and shut down overnight when she complained about unhealthy conditions).

Law school

Rodham then entered Yale Law School, where she served on the editorial board of the Yale Review of Law and Social Action. During her second year, she worked at the Yale Child Study Center, learning about new research on early childhood brain development and working as a research assistant on the seminal work, Beyond the Best Interests of the Child (1973). She also took on cases of child abuse at Yale-New Haven Hospital Edelman later became a significant mentor. She was recruited by political advisor Anne Wexler to work on the 1970 campaign of Connecticut U.S. Senate candidate Joseph Duffey, with Rodham later crediting Wexler with providing her first job in politics.

In the late spring of 1971, she began dating Bill Clinton, also a law student at Yale. That summer, she interned at the Oakland, California, law firm of Treuhaft, Walker and Burnstein. The firm was well-known for its support of constitutional rights, civil liberties, and radical causes (two of its four partners were current or former Communist Party members); Clinton canceled his original summer plans, in order to live with her in California; the couple continued living together in New Haven when they returned to law school. The following summer, Rodham and Clinton campaigned in Texas for unsuccessful 1972 Democratic presidential candidate George McGovern. She received a Juris Doctor degree from Yale in 1973, having stayed on an extra year to be with Clinton. Clinton first proposed marriage to her following graduation, but she declined. Discussing the new children's rights movement, it stated that "child citizens" were "powerless individuals" and argued that children should not be considered equally incompetent from birth to attaining legal age, but that instead courts should presume competence except when there is evidence otherwise, on a case-by-case basis. The article became frequently cited in the field.

Marriage and family, law career and First Lady of Arkansas

From the East Coast to Arkansas

During her postgraduate study, Rodham served as staff attorney for Edelman's newly founded Children's Defense Fund in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and as a consultant to the Carnegie Council on Children. During 1974, she was a member of the impeachment inquiry staff in Washington, D.C., advising the House Committee on the Judiciary during the Watergate scandal. Under the guidance of Chief Counsel John Doar and senior member Bernard Nussbaum, Wright thought Rodham had the potential to become a future senator or president. Meanwhile, Clinton had repeatedly asked her to marry him, and she continued to demur. However, after failing the District of Columbia bar exam and passing the Arkansas exam, Rodham came to a key decision. As she later wrote, "I chose to follow my heart instead of my head". She thus followed Bill Clinton to Arkansas, rather than staying in Washington where career prospects were brighter. Clinton was then teaching law and running for a seat in the U.S. House of Representatives in his home state. In August 1974, she moved to Fayetteville, Arkansas, and became one of only two female faculty members in the School of Law at the University of Arkansas, Fayetteville, where Bill Clinton also was. She gave classes in criminal law, where she was considered a rigorous teacher and tough grader, and was the first director of the school's legal aid clinic. She still harbored doubts about marriage, concerned that her separate identity would be lost and that her accomplishments would be viewed in the light of someone else's.

Early Arkansas years

of Little Rock from 1977 to 1979 while he was Arkansas Attorney General.]] Hillary Rodham and Bill Clinton bought a house in Fayetteville in the summer of 1975, and Hillary finally agreed to marry. Their wedding took place on October 11, 1975, in a Methodist ceremony in their living room. She announced she was keeping the name Hillary Rodham, although her decision upset their mothers. Bill Clinton had lost the congressional race in 1974, but in November 1976 was elected Arkansas Attorney General, and so the couple moved to the state capital of Little Rock. There, in February 1977, Rodham joined the venerable Rose Law Firm, a bastion of Arkansan political and economic influence. She specialized in patent infringement and intellectual property law

Rodham maintained her interest in children's law and family policy, publishing the scholarly articles "Children's Policies: Abandonment and Neglect" in 1977 and "Children's Rights: A Legal Perspective" in 1979. The latter continued her argument that children's legal competence depended upon their age and other circumstances and that in serious medical rights cases, judicial intervention was sometimes warranted. while conservatives said her theories would usurp traditional parental authority,

In 1977, Rodham cofounded the Arkansas Advocates for Children and Families, a state-level alliance with the Children's Defense Fund. Later that year, President Jimmy Carter (for whom Rodham had been the 1976 campaign director of field operations in Indiana) appointed her to the board of directors of the Legal Services Corporation, and she served in that capacity from 1978 until the end of 1981. From mid-1978 to mid-1980, she served as the chair of that board, the first woman to do so. During her time as chair, funding for the Corporation was expanded from $90 million to $300 million; subsequently she successfully fought President Ronald Reagan's attempts to reduce the funding and change the nature of the organization.

Following her husband's November 1978 election as Governor of Arkansas, Rodham became First Lady of Arkansas in January 1979, her title for twelve years (1979–1981, 1983–1992). Clinton appointed her chair of the Rural Health Advisory Committee the same year, where she successfully secured federal funds to expand medical facilities in Arkansas's poorest areas without affecting doctors' fees.

In 1979, Rodham became the first woman to be made a full partner of Rose Law Firm. From 1978 until they entered the White House, she had a higher salary than her husband. During 1978 and 1979, while looking to supplement their income, Rodham made a spectacular profit from trading cattle futures contracts; an initial $1,000 investment generated nearly $100,000 when she stopped trading after ten months. The couple also began their ill-fated investment in the Whitewater Development Corporation real estate venture with Jim and Susan McDougal at this time. she also took a leave of absence from Rose Law to campaign for him full-time. As First Lady of Arkansas, Hillary Clinton was named chair of the Arkansas Educational Standards Committee in 1983, where she sought to reform the state's court-sanctioned public education system. In one of the Clinton governorship's most important initiatives, she fought a prolonged but ultimately successful battle against the Arkansas Education Association, to establish mandatory teacher testing and state standards for curriculum and classroom size. She was named Arkansas Woman of the Year in 1983 and Arkansas Mother of the Year in 1984.

Clinton continued to practice law with the Rose Law Firm while she was First Lady of Arkansas. She earned less than the other partners, as she billed fewer hours, but still made more than $200,000 in her final year there. She seldom did trial work,

From 1982 to 1988, Clinton was on board of directors, sometimes as chair, of the New World Foundation, which funded a variety of New Left interest groups. From 1987 to 1991, she chaired the American Bar Association's Commission on Women in the Profession, which addressed gender bias in the law profession and induced the association to adopt measures to combat it. When Bill Clinton thought about not running again for governor in 1990, Hillary considered running, but private polls were unfavorable and, in the end, he ran and was reelected for the final time.

Clinton served on the boards of the Arkansas Children's Hospital Legal Services (1988–1992) and the Children's Defense Fund (as chair, 1986–1992). In addition to her positions with nonprofit organizations, she also held positions on the corporate board of directors of TCBY (1985–1992), Wal-Mart Stores (1986–1992) and Lafarge (1990–1992). TCBY and Wal-Mart were Arkansas-based companies that were also clients of Rose Law. Once there, she pushed successfully for Wal-Mart to adopt more environmentally friendly practices, was largely unsuccessful in a campaign for more women to be added to the company's management, and was silent about the company's famously anti-labor union practices.

Bill Clinton presidential campaign of 1992

Hillary Clinton received sustained national attention for the first time when her husband became a candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination of 1992. Before the New Hampshire primary, tabloid publications printed claims that Bill Clinton had had an extramarital affair with Arkansas lounge singer Gennifer Flowers. In response, the Clintons appeared together on 60 Minutes, where Bill Clinton denied the affair but acknowledged "causing pain in my marriage." This joint appearance was credited with rescuing his campaign. During the campaign, Hillary Clinton made culturally disparaging remarks about Tammy Wynette and her outlook on marriage, and about women staying home and baking cookies and having teas, that were ill-considered by her own admission. Bill Clinton said that in electing him, the nation would "get two for the price of one", referring to the prominent role his wife would assume. Beginning with Daniel Wattenberg's August 1992 The American Spectator article "The Lady Macbeth of Little Rock", Hillary Clinton's own past ideological and ethical record came under conservative attack. At least twenty other articles in major publications also drew comparisons between her and Lady Macbeth.

First Lady of the United States

Role as First Lady

When Bill Clinton took office as president in January 1993, Hillary Rodham Clinton became the First Lady of the United States, and announced that she would be using that form of her name. She was the first First Lady to hold a postgraduate degree and to have her own professional career up to the time of entering the White House. She was part of the innermost circle vetting appointments to the new administration, and her choices filled at least eleven top-level positions and dozens more lower-level ones. She is regarded as the most openly empowered presidential wife in American history, save for Eleanor Roosevelt.

on Marine One, 1993. ]] Some critics called it inappropriate for the First Lady to play a central role in matters of public policy. Supporters pointed out that Clinton's role in policy was no different from that of other White House advisors and that voters were well aware that she would play an active role in her husband's presidency. Bill Clinton's campaign promise of "two for the price of one" led opponents to refer derisively to the Clintons as "co-presidents", or sometimes the Arkansas label "Billary". The pressures of conflicting ideas about the role of a First Lady were enough to send Clinton into "imaginary discussions" with the also-politically-active Eleanor Roosevelt. from the time she came to Washington, she also found refuge in a prayer group of The Fellowship that featured many wives of conservative Washington figures. Triggered in part by the death of her father in April 1993, she publicly sought to find a synthesis of Methodist teachings, liberal religious political philosophy, and Tikkun editor Michael Lerner's "politics of meaning" to overcome what she saw as America's "sleeping sickness of the soul" and that would lead to a willingness "to remold society by redefining what it means to be a human being in the twentieth century, moving into a new millennium." Other segments of the public focused on her appearance, which had evolved over time from inattention to fashion during her days in Arkansas, to a popular site in the early days of the World Wide Web devoted to showing her many different, and frequently analyzed, hairstyles as First Lady, to an appearance on the cover of Vogue magazine in 1998.

Health care and other policy initiatives

favorable and unfavorable ratings, 1992–1996 ]] In January 1993, Bill Clinton appointed Hillary Clinton to head the Task Force on National Health Care Reform, hoping to replicate the success she had in leading the effort for Arkansas education reform. She privately urged that passage of health care reform be given higher priority than the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) (which she was also unenthusiastic about the merits of). The recommendation of the task force became known as the Clinton health care plan, a comprehensive proposal that would require employers to provide health coverage to their employees through individual health maintenance organizations. Its opponents quickly derided the plan as "Hillarycare"; some protesters against it became vitriolic, and during a July 1994 bus tour to rally support for the plan, she was forced to wear a bulletproof vest at times. The plan did not receive enough support for a floor vote in either the House or the Senate, although Democrats controlled both chambers, and the proposal was abandoned in September 1994. Republicans made the Clinton health care plan a major campaign issue of the 1994 midterm elections, which saw a net Republican gain of fifty-three seats in the House election and seven in the Senate election, winning control of both; many analysts and pollsters found the plan to be a major factor in the Democrats' defeat, especially among independent voters. The White House subsequently sought to downplay Hillary Clinton's role in shaping policy. Opponents of universal health care would continue to use "Hillarycare" as a pejorative label for similar plans by others.

Along with Senators Ted Kennedy and Orrin Hatch, she was a force behind the passage of the State Children's Health Insurance Program in 1997, a federal effort that provided state support for children whose parents could not provide them with health coverage, and conducted outreach efforts on behalf of enrolling children in the program once it became law. She promoted nationwide immunization against childhood illnesses and encouraged older women to seek a mammogram to detect breast cancer, with coverage provided by Medicare. She successfully sought to increase research funding for prostate cancer and childhood asthma at the National Institutes of Health. The First Lady worked to investigate reports of an illness that affected veterans of the Gulf War, which became known as the Gulf War syndrome. As First Lady, Clinton hosted numerous White House conferences, including ones on Child Care (1997), on Early Childhood Development and Learning (1997), and on Children and Adolescents (2000). She also hosted the first-ever White House Conference on Teenagers (2000) and the first-ever White House Conference on Philanthropy (1999).

Clinton traveled to 79 countries during this time, breaking the mark for most-traveled First Lady held by Pat Nixon. She did not hold a security clearance or attend National Security Council meetings, but played a soft power role in U.S. diplomacy. A March 1995 five-nation trip to South Asia, on behest of the U.S. State Department and without her husband, sought to improve relations with India and Pakistan. Clinton was troubled by the plight of women she encountered, but found a warm response from the people of the countries she visited and a gained better relationship with the American press corps. The trip was a transformative experience for her and presaged her eventual career in diplomacy. declaring "that it is no longer acceptable to discuss women's rights as separate from human rights" She helped create Vital Voices, an international initiative sponsored by the United States to promote the participation of women in the political processes of their countries. It and Clinton's own visits encouraged women to make themselves heard in the Northern Ireland peace process.

Whitewater and other investigations

The Whitewater controversy was the focus of media attention from the publication of a New York Times report during the 1992 presidential campaign, and throughout her time as First Lady. The Clintons had lost their late-1970s investment in the Whitewater Development Corporation; at the same time, their partners in that investment, Jim and Susan McDougal, operated Madison Guaranty, a savings and loan institution that retained the legal services of Rose Law Firm Independent counsels Robert Fiske and Kenneth Starr subpoenaed Clinton's legal billing records; she said she did not know where they were. The delayed appearance of the records sparked intense interest and another investigation about how they surfaced and where they had been; After the discovery of the records, on January 26, 1996, Clinton made history by becoming the first First Lady to be subpoenaed to testify before a Federal grand jury. After several Independent Counsels had investigated, a final report was issued in 2000 that stated there was insufficient evidence that either Clinton had engaged in criminal wrongdoing. The 1996 discovery of a two-year-old White House memo caused the investigation to focus more on whether Hillary Clinton had orchestrated the firings and whether the statements she made to investigators about her role in the firings were true. The 2000 final Independent Counsel report concluded she was involved in the firings and that she had made "factually false" statements, but that there was insufficient evidence that she knew the statements were false, or knew that her actions would lead to firings, to prosecute her. Following deputy White House counsel Vince Foster's July 1993 suicide, allegations were made that Hillary Clinton had ordered the removal of potentially damaging files (related to Whitewater or other matters) from Foster's office on the night of his death. Independent Counsel Kenneth Starr investigated this, and by 1999, Starr was reported to be holding the investigation open, despite his staff having told him there was no case to be made. When Starr's successor Robert Ray issued his final Whitewater reports in 2000, no claims were made against Hillary Clinton regarding this. In March 1994 newspaper reports revealed her spectacular profits from cattle futures trading in 1978–1979; allegations were made in the press of conflict of interest and disguised bribery, An outgrowth of the Travelgate investigation was the June 1996 discovery of improper White House access to hundreds of FBI background reports on former Republican White House employees, an affair that some called "". The 2000 final Independent Counsel report found no substantial or credible evidence that Hillary Clinton had any role or showed any misconduct in the matter.

Lewinsky scandal

favorable and unfavorable ratings, 1997–2000 Events surrounding the Lewinsky scandal eventually led to the impeachment of Bill Clinton. When the allegations against her husband were first made public, Hillary Clinton stated that they were the result of a "vast right-wing conspiracy", characterizing the Lewinsky charges as the latest in a long, organized, collaborative series of charges by Clinton political enemies rather than any wrongdoing by her husband. She later said that she had been misled by her husband's initial claims that no affair had taken place. After the evidence of President Clinton's encounters with Lewinsky became incontrovertible, she issued a public statement reaffirming her commitment to their marriage, but privately was reported to be furious at him and was unsure if she wanted to stay in the marriage.

There was a variety of public reactions to Hillary Clinton after this: some women admired her strength and poise in private matters made public, some sympathized with her as a victim of her husband's insensitive behavior, others criticized her as being an enabler to her husband's indiscretions, while still others accused her of cynically staying in a failed marriage as a way of keeping or even fostering her own political influence. In her 2003 memoir, she would attribute her decision to stay married to "a love that has persisted for decades" and add: "No one understands me better and no one can make me laugh the way Bill does. Even after all these years, he is still the most interesting, energizing and fully alive person I have ever met."

Traditional duties

Clinton initiated and was Founding Chair of the Save America's Treasures program, a national effort that matched federal funds to private donations to preserve and restore historic items and sites, including the flag that inspired "The Star-Spangled Banner" and the First Ladies Historic Site in Canton, Ohio. and hosted Millennium Evenings, a series of lectures that discussed futures studies, one of which became the first live simultaneous webcast from the White House.

In the White House, Clinton placed donated handicrafts of contemporary American artisans, such as pottery and glassware, on rotating display in the state rooms. the redecoration of the Treaty Room into the presidential study along 19th century lines, and the redecoration of the Map Room to how it looked during World War II. Once she decided to run, the Clintons purchased a home in Chappaqua, New York, north of New York City, in September 1999. She became the first First Lady of the United States to be a candidate for elected office. Initially, Clinton expected to face Rudy Giuliani, the Mayor of New York City, as her Republican opponent in the election. However, Giuliani withdrew from the race in May 2000 after being diagnosed with prostate cancer and having developments in his personal life become very public, and Clinton instead faced Rick Lazio, a Republican member of the United States House of Representatives representing New York's 2nd congressional district. Throughout the campaign, opponents accused Clinton of carpetbagging, as she had never resided in New York nor participated in the state's politics before this race. Clinton began her campaign by visiting every county in the state, in a "listening tour" of small-group settings. During the campaign, she devoted considerable time in traditionally Republican Upstate New York regions. Clinton vowed to improve the economic situation in those areas, promising to deliver 200,000 jobs to the state over her term. Her plan included tax credits to reward job creation and encourage business investment, especially in the high-tech sector. She called for personal tax cuts for college tuition and long-term care. Clinton won the election on November 7, 2000, with 55 percent of the vote to Lazio's 43 percent. She was sworn in as United States Senator on January 3, 2001.

United States Senator

First term

by Vice President Al Gore in the Old Senate Chamber, as President Clinton and daughter Chelsea look on. January 3, 2001.]] Upon entering the Senate, Clinton maintained a low public profile and built relationships with senators from both parties. She forged alliances with religiously inclined senators by becoming a regular participant in the Senate Prayer Breakfast.

Clinton has served on five Senate committees: Committee on Budget (2001–2002), Committee on Armed Services (since 2003), Committee on Environment and Public Works (since 2001), She is also a Commissioner of the Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe (since 2001).

Following the September 11, 2001, attacks, Clinton sought to obtain funding for the recovery efforts in New York City and security improvements in her state. Working with New York's senior senator, Charles Schumer, she was instrumental in quickly securing $21 billion in funding for the World Trade Center site's redevelopment. She subsequently took a leading role in investigating the health issues faced by 9/11 first responders. Clinton voted for the USA Patriot Act in October 2001. In 2005, when the act was up for renewal, she worked to address some of the civil liberties concerns with it, before voting in favor of a compromise renewed act in March 2006 that gained large majority support.

Clinton strongly supported the 2001 U.S. military action in Afghanistan, saying it was a chance to combat terrorism while improving the lives of Afghan women who suffered under the Taliban government. Clinton voted in favor of the October 2002 Iraq War Resolution, which authorized United States President George W. Bush to use military force against Iraq, should such action be required to enforce a United Nations Security Council Resolution after pursuing with diplomatic efforts.

After the Iraq War began, Clinton made trips to Iraq and Afghanistan to visit American troops stationed there. On a visit to Iraq in February 2005, Clinton noted that the insurgency had failed to disrupt the democratic elections held earlier, and that parts of the country were functioning well. Noting that war deployments were draining regular and reserve forces, she cointroduced legislation to increase the size of the regular United States Army by 80,000 soldiers to ease the strain. In late 2005, Clinton said that while immediate withdrawal from Iraq would be a mistake, Bush's pledge to stay "until the job is done" was also misguided, as it gave Iraqis "an open-ended invitation not to take care of themselves." Her stance caused frustration among those in the Democratic Party who favored immediate withdrawal. Clinton supported retaining and improving health benefits for veterans, and lobbied against the closure of several military bases. favorable and unfavorable ratings, 2001–2009

In 2005, Clinton called for the Federal Trade Commission to investigate how hidden sex scenes showed up in the controversial video game . Along with Senators Joe Lieberman and Evan Bayh, she introduced the Family Entertainment Protection Act, intended to protect children from inappropriate content found in video games. In 2004 and 2006, Clinton voted against the Federal Marriage Amendment that sought to prohibit same-sex marriage.

Looking to establish a "progressive infrastructure" to rival that of American conservatism, Clinton played a formative role in conversations that led to the 2003 founding of former Clinton administration chief of staff John Podesta's Center for American Progress, shared aides with Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, founded in 2003, and advised the Clintons' former antagonist David Brock's Media Matters for America, created in 2004. Following the 2004 Senate elections, she successfully pushed new Democratic Senate leader Harry Reid to create a Senate war room to handle daily political messaging.

Reelection campaign of 2006

In November 2004, Clinton announced that she would seek a second Senate term. The early frontrunner for the Republican nomination, Westchester County District Attorney Jeanine Pirro, withdrew from the contest after several months of poor campaign performance. Clinton easily won the Democratic nomination over opposition from antiwar activist Jonathan Tasini. Clinton's eventual opponents in the general election were Republican candidate John Spencer, a former mayor of Yonkers, along with several third-party candidates. She won the election on November 7, 2006, with 67 percent of the vote to Spencer's 31 percent, carrying all but four of New York's sixty-two counties. Clinton spent $36 million for her reelection, more than any other candidate for Senate in the 2006 elections did. Some Democrats criticized her for spending too much in a one-sided contest, while some supporters were concerned she did not leave more funds for a potential presidential bid in 2008. In the following months, she transferred $10 million of her Senate funds toward her presidential campaign.

Second term

Navy Admiral Mike Mullen responds to a question during his 2007 confirmation hearing with the Senate Armed Services Committee.]]

Clinton opposed the Iraq War troop surge of 2007. In March 2007, she voted in favor of a war-spending bill that required President Bush to begin withdrawing troops from Iraq by a deadline; it passed almost completely along party lines but was subsequently vetoed by President Bush. In May 2007, a compromise war funding bill that removed withdrawal deadlines but tied funding to progress benchmarks for the Iraqi government passed the Senate by a vote of 80-14 and would be signed by Bush; Clinton was one of those who voted against it. Clinton responded to General David Petraeus's September 2007 Report to Congress on the Situation in Iraq by saying, "I think that the reports that you provide to us really require a willing suspension of disbelief."

In March 2007, in response to the dismissal of U.S. attorneys controversy, Clinton called on Attorney General Alberto Gonzales to resign. In May and June 2007, regarding the high-profile, hotly debated comprehensive immigration reform bill known as the Secure Borders, Economic Opportunity and Immigration Reform Act of 2007, Clinton cast several votes in support of the bill, which eventually failed to gain cloture.

As the financial crisis of 2007–2008 reached a peak with the liquidity crisis of September 2008, Clinton supported the proposed bailout of United States financial system, voting in favor of the $700 billion Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 2008, saying that it represented the interests of the American people. It passed the Senate 74–25.

Presidential campaign of 2008

Clinton had been preparing for a potential candidacy for United States President since at least early 2003. On January 20, 2007, Clinton announced via her web site the formation of a presidential exploratory committee for the United States presidential election of 2008; she stated, "I'm in, and I'm in to win." No woman had ever been nominated by a major party for President of the United States. In April 2007, the Clintons liquidated a blind trust, that had been established when Bill Clinton became president in 1993, to avoid the possibility of ethical conflicts or political embarrassments in the trust as Hillary Clinton undertook her presidential race. Later disclosure statements revealed that the couple's worth was now upwards of $50 million,

Clinton led candidates competing for the Democratic nomination in opinion polls for the election throughout the first half of 2007. Most polls placed Senator Barack Obama of Illinois and former Senator John Edwards of North Carolina as Clinton's closest competitors. Clinton and Obama both set records for early fundraising, swapping the money lead each quarter. By September 2007, polling in the first six states holding Democratic primaries or caucuses showed that Clinton was leading in all of them, with the races being closest in Iowa and South Carolina. By the following month, national polls showed Clinton far ahead of Democratic competitors. At the end of October, Clinton suffered a rare poor debate performance against Obama, Edwards, and her other opponents. Obama's message of "change" began to resonate with the Democratic electorate better than Clinton's message of "experience".

in Minneapolis, Minnesota, two days before Super Tuesday 2008.]] In the first vote of 2008, she placed third in the January 3 Iowa Democratic caucus to Obama and Edwards. Obama gained ground in national polling in the next few days, with all polls predicting a victory for him in the New Hampshire primary. However, Clinton gained a surprise win there on January 8, defeating Obama narrowly. Explanations for her New Hampshire comeback varied but often centered on her being seen more sympathetically, especially by women, after her eyes welled with tears and her voice broke while responding to a voter's question the day before the election. The nature of the contest fractured in the next few days. Several remarks by Bill Clinton and other surrogates, and a remark by Hillary Clinton concerning Martin Luther King, Jr., and Lyndon B. Johnson, were perceived by many as, accidentally or intentionally, limiting Obama as a racially oriented candidate or otherwise denying the post-racial significance and accomplishments of his campaign. Despite attempts by both Hillary Clinton and Obama to downplay the issue, Democratic voting became more polarized as a result, with Clinton losing much of her support among African Americans. She lost by a two-to-one margin to Obama in the January 26 South Carolina primary, setting up, with Edwards soon dropping out, an intense two-person contest for the twenty-two February 5 Super Tuesday states. Bill Clinton had made more statements attracting criticism for their perceived racial implications late in the South Carolina campaign, and his role was seen as damaging enough to her that a wave of supporters within and outside of the campaign said the former President "needs to stop." On Super Tuesday, Clinton won the largest states, such as California, New York, New Jersey and Massachusetts, while Obama won more states; they almost evenly split the total popular vote. But Obama was gaining more pledged delegates for his share of the popular vote due to better exploitation of the Democratic proportional allocation rules.

rally in support of her former rival, Barack Obama; October 2008.]] The Clinton campaign had counted on winning the nomination by Super Tuesday, and was unprepared financially and logistically for a prolonged effort; lagging in Internet fundraising, Clinton began loaning her campaign money. Obama won the next eleven February caucuses and primaries across the country, often by large margins, and took a significant pledged delegate lead over Clinton. On March 4, Clinton broke the string of losses by winning in Ohio among other places, Throughout the campaign, Obama dominated caucuses, which the Clinton campaign largely ignored organizing for. Obama did well in primaries where African Americans or younger, college-educated, or more affluent voters were heavily represented; Clinton did well in primaries where Hispanics or older, non-college-educated, or working-class white voters predominated. Some Democratic party leaders expressed concern that the drawn-out campaign between the two could damage the winner in the general election contest against Republican presumptive nominee John McCain, especially if an eventual triumph for Clinton was won via party-appointed superdelegates. On April 22, she won the Pennsylvania primary, and kept her campaign alive. She won some of the remaining contests, and indeed, over the last three months of the campaign she won more delegates, states, and votes than Obama, but it was not enough to overcome Obama's lead. In a speech before her supporters on June 7, Clinton ended her campaign and endorsed Obama, declaring, "The way to continue our fight now to accomplish the goals for which we stand is to take our energy, our passion, our strength and do all we can to help elect Barack Obama." By campaign's end, Clinton had won 1,640 pledged delegates to Obama's 1,763; at the time of the clinching, Clinton had 286 superdelegates to Obama's 395, with those numbers widening to 256 versus 438 once Obama was acknowledged the winner. with both breaking the previous record. Clinton also eclipsed, by a very large margin, Congresswoman Shirley Chisholm's 1972 mark for most primaries and delegates won by a woman. Clinton gave a passionate speech supporting Obama at the 2008 Democratic National Convention and campaigned frequently for him in Fall 2008, which concluded with his victory over McCain in the general election on November 4. Clinton's campaign ended up severely in debt; she owed millions of dollars to outside vendors and wrote off the $13 million that she lent it herself.

Secretary of State

Nomination and confirmation

holds the Bible.]] In mid-November 2008, President-elect Obama and Clinton discussed the possibility of her serving as U.S. Secretary of State in his administration, and on November 21, reports indicated that she had accepted the position. On December 1, President-elect Obama formally announced that Clinton would be his nominee for Secretary of State. Clinton said she was reluctant to leave the Senate, but that the new position represented a "difficult and exciting adventure".

The appointment required a Saxbe fix, passed and signed into law in December 2008. Confirmation hearings before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee began on January 13, 2009, a week before the Obama inauguration; two days later, the Committee voted 16–1 to approve Clinton. By this time, Clinton's public approval rating had reached 65 percent, the highest point since the Lewinsky scandal. On January 21, 2009, Clinton was confirmed in the full Senate by a vote of 94–2. Clinton took the oath of office of Secretary of State and resigned from the Senate that same day. She became the first former First Lady to serve in the United States Cabinet.

Tenure

in April 2009]] Clinton spent her initial days as Secretary of State telephoning dozens of world leaders and indicating that U.S. foreign policy would change direction: "We have a lot of damage to repair." She advocated an expanded role in global economic issues for the State Department and cited the need for an increased U.S. diplomatic presence, especially in Iraq where the Defense Department had conducted diplomatic missions. She pushed for a larger international affairs budget; In March 2009, Clinton prevailed over Vice President Joe Biden on an internal debate to send an additional 20,000 troops to the war in Afghanistan. An elbow fracture and subsequent painful recuperation caused Clinton to miss two foreign trips in June 2009 amid media speculation about her level of influence within the administration. Clinton returned to the diplomatic scene sitting down with ousted Honduran President Manuel Zelaya, who agreed on a U.S.-backed proposal to begin talks with the Micheletti government. Clinton announced the most ambitious of her departmental reforms, the Quadrennial Diplomacy and Development Review, which establishes specific objectives for the State Department’s diplomatic missions abroad; it is modeled after a similar process in the Defense Department that she was familiar with from her time on the Senate Armed Services Committee. (The first such review was issued in late 2010 and called for the U.S. leading through "civilian power" as a cost-effective way of responding to international challenges and defusing crises.) In September, Clinton unveiled the Global Hunger and Food Security Initiative at the annual meeting of her husband's Clinton Global Initiative. The new initiative seeks to battle hunger worldwide as a strategic part of U.S. foreign policy, rather than just react to food shortage emergencies as they occur, and emphasizes the role of women farmers. The same month, when asked about her political future, she said: “I have absolutely no interest in running for president again. None. None.”

In a major speech in January 2010, Clinton drew analogies between the Iron Curtain and the free and unfree Internet. Chinese officials reacted negatively towards it, and it garnered attention as the first time a senior American official had clearly defined the Internet as a key element of American foreign policy. By mid-2010, Clinton and Obama had forged a good working relationship; she was a team player within the administration and a defender of it to the outside, and was careful that neither she nor her husband would upstage him. She met with him weekly, but did not have the close, daily relationship that some of her predecessors had had with their presidents. Clinton assumed a prominent role in the September 2010 resumption of direct talks in the stalled peace process in the Israeli–Palestinian conflict, after having cajoled the reluctant parties to the table. In late November 2010, Clinton led the U.S. damage control effort after WikiLeaks released confidential State Department cables containing blunt statements and assessments by U.S. and foreign diplomats. A few of the cables released by WikiLeaks concerned Clinton directly: they revealed that directions to members of the foreign service, written by the CIA, had gone out in 2009 under her (systematically attached) name to gather biometric and other personal details on foreign diplomats, including officials of the United Nations and U.S. allies.

Political positions

Kevin Rudd in March 2008]] In a Gallup poll conducted during May 2005, 54 percent of respondents considered Clinton a liberal, 30 percent considered her a moderate, and 9 percent considered her a conservative.

Several organizations attempted to measure Clinton's place on the political spectrum scientifically using her Senate votes. National Journal's 2004 study of roll-call votes assigned Clinton a rating of 30 in the political spectrum, relative to the then-current Senate, with a rating of 1 being most liberal and 100 being most conservative. National Journal's subsequent rankings placed her as the 32nd-most liberal senator in 2006 and 16th-most liberal senator in 2007. A 2004 analysis by political scientists Joshua D. Clinton of Princeton University, Simon Jackman and Doug Rivers of Stanford University found her to be likely the sixth-to-eighth-most liberal Senator. The Almanac of American Politics, edited by Michael Barone and Richard E. Cohen, rated her votes from 2003 through 2006 as liberal or conservative, with 100 as the highest rating, in three areas: Economic, Social, and Foreign; averaged for the four years, the ratings are: Economic = 75 liberal, 23 conservative; Social = 83 liberal, 6 conservative; Foreign = 66 liberal, 30 conservative. Average = 75 liberal, 20 conservative.

Interest groups also gave Clinton scores based on how well her Senate votes aligned with the positions of the group. Through 2008, she had an average lifetime 90 percent "Liberal Quotient" from Americans for Democratic Action and a lifetime 8 percent rating from the American Conservative Union.

Writings and recordings

As First Lady of the United States, Clinton published a weekly syndicated newspaper column titled "Talking It Over" from 1995 to 2000, distributed by Creators Syndicate. It focused on her experiences and those of women, children and families she met during her travels around the world.

Other books released by Clinton when she was First Lady include Dear Socks, Dear Buddy: Kids' Letters to the First Pets (1998) and (2000). In 2001, she wrote an afterword to the children's book Beatrice's Goat.

In 2003, Clinton released a 562-page autobiography, Living History. In anticipation of high sales, publisher Simon & Schuster paid Clinton a near-record advance of $8 million. The book set a first-week sales record for a nonfiction work, went on to sell more than one million copies in the first month following publication, and was translated into twelve foreign languages. Clinton's audio recording of the book earned her a nomination for the Grammy Award for Best Spoken Word Album.

Cultural and political image

Hillary Clinton has frequently been featured in the media and popular culture from a wide spectrum of perspectives. In 1995, New York Times writer Todd Purdum labeled Clinton "the First Lady as Rorschach test", Clinton has often been described in the popular media as a polarizing figure, James Madison University political science professor Valerie Sulfaro's 2007 study used the American National Election Studies' "feeling thermometer" polls, which measure the degree of opinion about a political figure, to find that such polls during Clinton's First Lady years confirm the "conventional wisdom that Hillary Clinton is a polarizing figure", with the added insight that "affect towards Mrs. Clinton as first lady tended to be very positive or very negative, with a fairly constant one fourth of respondents feeling ambivalent or neutral." University of California, San Diego political science professor Gary Jacobson's 2006 study of partisan polarization found that in a state-by-state survey of job approval ratings of the state's senators, Clinton had the fourth-largest partisan difference of any senator, with a 50 percentage point difference in approval between New York's Democrats and Republicans. Northern Illinois University political science professor Barbara Burrell's 2000 study found that Clinton's Gallup poll favorability numbers broke sharply along partisan lines throughout her time as First Lady, with 70 to 90 percent of Democrats typically viewing her favorably while 20 to 40 percent of Republicans did not. University of Wisconsin–Madison political science professor Charles Franklin analyzed her record of favorable versus unfavorable ratings in public opinion polls, and found that there was more variation in them during her First Lady years than her Senate years. The Senate years showed favorable ratings around 50 percent and unfavorable ratings in the mid-40 percent range; Franklin noted that, "This sharp split is, of course, one of the more widely remarked aspects of Sen. Clinton's public image." Troy further wrote that Hillary Clinton "has been uniquely controversial and contradictory since she first appeared on the national radar screen in 1992"

for fifteen years. Her professional career and political involvement set the stage for public reaction to her as First Lady.]] Burrell's study found women consistently rating Clinton more favorably than men by about ten percentage points during her First Lady years. In particular, Anderson states there has been a cultural bias towards traditional first ladies and a cultural prohibition against modern first ladies; by the time of Clinton, the First Lady position had become a site of heterogeneity and paradox. University of Indianapolis English professor Charlotte Templin found political cartoonists using a variety of stereotypes such as gender reversal, radical feminist as emasculator, and the wife the husband wants to get rid of to portray Hillary Clinton as violating gender norms.

Over fifty books and scholarly works have been written about Hillary Clinton, from many different perspectives. A 2006 survey by The New York Observer found "a virtual cottage industry" of "anti-Clinton literature", put out by Regnery Publishing and other conservative imprints, Van Natta, Jr., found that Republican and conservative groups viewed her as a reliable "bogeyman" to mention in fundraising letters,

Going into the early stages of her presidential campaign for 2008, a Time magazine cover showed a large picture of her, with two checkboxes labeled "Love Her", "Hate Her", while Mother Jones titled its profile of her "Harpy, Hero, Heretic: Hillary". Democratic netroots activists consistently rated Clinton very low in polls of their desired candidates, while some conservative figures such as Bruce Bartlett and Christopher Ruddy were declaring a Hillary Clinton presidency not so bad after all and an October 2007 cover of The American Conservative magazine was titled "The Waning Power of Hillary Hate". By December 2007, communications professor Jamieson observed that there was a large amount of misogyny present about Clinton on the Internet, up to and including Facebook and other sites devoted to depictions reducing Clinton to sexual humiliation. that "We know that there's language to condemn female speech that doesn't exist for male speech. We call women's speech shrill and strident. And Hillary Clinton's laugh was being described as a cackle." Newsweek editor Jon Meacham summed the relationship between Clinton and the American public by saying that the New Hampshire events, "brought an odd truth to light: though Hillary Rodham Clinton has been on the periphery or in the middle of national life for decades ... she is one of the most recognizable but least understood figures in American politics." She gained consistently high approval ratings, and her favorable-unfavorable ratings during 2010 were easily the highest of any active, nationally prominent American political figure. She continued to do well in Gallup's most admired man and woman poll; in 2010 she was named the most admired woman by Americans for the ninth straight time and the fifteenth overall.

Awards and honors

Clinton has received many awards and honors during her career from American and international organizations for her activities concerning health, women, and children.

Electoral history

Notes

References

Bibliography

Further reading

External links

;Official sites Official Biography of First Lady Clinton

}}

Category:1947 births Category:Living people Category:American female lawyers Category:American feminists Category:American legal scholars Category:American legal writers Category:American memoirists Category:American Methodists Category:American people of English descent Category:American people of French-Canadian descent Category:American people of Scottish descent Category:American people of Welsh descent Category:Arkansas lawyers Category:Children's rights activists Category:College Republicans Category:Arkansas Democrats Category:Female foreign ministers Category:Female United States presidential candidates Category:Female United States Senators Category:First Ladies and Gentlemen of Arkansas Category:First Ladies of the United States Category:Grammy Award winners Category:New York Democrats Category:Obama Administration cabinet members Category:People from Park Ridge, Illinois Category:Presidents of the United Nations Security Council Category:United Methodists Category:United States presidential candidates, 2008 Category:United States Secretaries of State Category:United States Senators from New York Category:Wal-Mart people Category:Wellesley College alumni Category:Westchester County, New York politicians Category:Women in New York politics Category:Women members of the Cabinet of the United States Category:Yale Law School alumni Category:Democratic Party United States Senators

Name	Timothy Geithner
Office	75th United States Secretary of the Treasury
President	Barack Obama
Deputy	Neal Wolin
Term start	January 26, 2009
Predecessor	Henry Paulson
Office2	9th President of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York
Term start2	November 17, 2003
Term end2	January 26, 2009
Predecessor2	William McDonough
Successor2	William Dudley
Birth date	August 18, 1961
Birth place	Brooklyn, New York, United States
Party	Independent
Spouse	Carole Sonnenfeld
Children	1 daughter1 son
Alma mater	Dartmouth CollegePeking UniversityBeijing Normal UniversityJohns Hopkins University
Profession	Civil servant
Signature	Tim Geithner sig.jpg
Website	Official website

Timothy Franz Geithner (; born August 18, 1961) is an American economist, banker, and civil servant. He is the 75th and current United States Secretary of the Treasury, serving under President Barack Obama. He was previously the president of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York.

Geithner's position includes a large role in directing the Federal Government's spending on the financial crisis of 2007–2010, including allocation of $350 billion of funds from the Troubled Asset Relief Program enacted during the previous administration. At the end of his first year in office, he continued to deal with multiple high visibility issues, including administration efforts to restructure the regulation of the nation's financial system, attempts to spur recovery of both the mortgage market and the automobile industry, demands for protectionism, President Obama's tax changes, and negotiations with foreign governments on approaches to worldwide financial issues.

Family and education

Geithner was born in Brooklyn, New York, but spent most of his childhood in other countries, including present-day Zimbabwe, Zambia, India, and Thailand where he completed high school at the International School Bangkok. In the process he studied Mandarin at Peking University in 1981 and at Beijing Normal University in 1982. He earned an M.A. in international economics and East Asian studies from Johns Hopkins University's School of Advanced International Studies in 1985. He has studied Mandarin

Geithner's paternal grandfather, Paul Herman Geithner (1902–1972), emigrated with his parents from the German town of Zeulenroda to Philadelphia in 1908. His father, Peter F. Geithner, was the director of the Asia program at the Ford Foundation in New York in the 1990s. During the early 1980s, Peter Geithner oversaw the Ford Foundation's microfinance programs in Indonesia being developed by Ann Dunham Soetoro, President Barack Obama's mother, and they met in person at least once. Timothy Geithner's mother, Deborah Moore Geithner, is a pianist and piano teacher in Orleans, Massachusetts where his parents currently reside. Geithner's maternal grandfather, Charles F. Moore, was an adviser to President Dwight D. Eisenhower and served as Vice President of Public Relations from 1952-1964 for Ford Motor Company.

Early career

Geithner worked for Kissinger Associates in Washington for three years and then joined the International Affairs division of the U.S. Treasury Department in 1988. He went on to serve as an attaché at the Embassy of the United States in Tokyo. He was deputy assistant secretary for international monetary and financial policy (1995–1996), senior deputy assistant secretary for international affairs (1996–1997), assistant secretary for international affairs (1997–1998). but other sources call him a Rubin protégé. He was director of the Policy Development and Review Department (2001–2003) at the International Monetary Fund. he was named president of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. His salary in 2007 was $398,200. As President of the New York Fed, he served as Vice Chairman of the Federal Open Market Committee. In 2006, he also became a member of the Washington-based financial advisory body, the Group of Thirty. In May 2007 he worked to reduce the capital required to run a bank. In the same year, he played a supporting role to Henry Paulson, former CEO of Goldman Sachs, in the decision to bail out AIG just two days after deciding not to rescue Lehman Brothers from bankruptcy. Some Wall Street CEOs subsequently expressed the opinion that decisions in which Geithner participated, especially the failure to rescue Lehman, contributed to worsening the global financial crisis. As a Treasury official, he helped manage multiple international crises of the 1990s

Geithner believes along with Henry Paulson, that the United States Department of the Treasury needs new authority to experiment with responses to the financial crisis of 2007–2010. On November 24, 2008, then-President-elect Barack Obama announced his intention to nominate Geithner to be Treasury Secretary.

Personal tax issues

At the Senate confirmation hearings, it was revealed that Geithner had not paid $35,000 in self-employment taxes for the years 2001–2004. The International Monetary Fund (IMF), an international agency and his employer during the time in question, did not withhold FICA taxes, but instead reimbursed the usual employer responsibility of 50% of these taxes to employees who were subject to the taxes. Geithner had received the reimbursements, and paid the amounts received to the government, but had not paid the other 50% which would normally have been withheld from his pay. This failure to pay was noted during a 2006 audit by the Internal Revenue Service (IRS), in which Geithner was assessed additional taxes of $14,847 for the 2003 and 2004 tax years. The statute of limitations had expired for 2001 and 2002, and Geithner did not file amended returns or pay the additional amounts due for those years until after Obama expressed his intent to nominate Geithner to be Secretary of the Treasury. Geithner subsequently paid the IRS the additional taxes owed, and was charged $15,000 interest, but was not fined for late payment.

In a statement to the Senate Finance Committee, Geithner called the tax issues "careless", "avoidable" and "unintentional" errors, and he said he wanted to "apologize to the committee for putting you in the position of having to spend so much time on these issues". The Obama campaign stated that Geithner was advised by his accountant that he did not owe any taxes beyond those assessed by the IRS following the 2006 audit. Geithner said at the hearing that he had always believed he was an employee, not a self-employed contractor, while serving at the IMF.

Confirmation

On January 26, 2009, the U.S. Senate confirmed Geithner's appointment by a vote of 60–34. Geithner was sworn in as Treasury Secretary by Vice President Joe Biden and witnessed by President Barack Obama.

Bank bailout

Geithner has the authority to decide what to do with the second tranche of $350 billion from the $700 billion banking bailout bill passed by Congress in October 2008. He is not mandated to seek Congressional approval, but went to Congress on February 10–11, 2009 to explain his plans. He proposes to create one or more "bad banks" to buy and hold toxic assets, using a mix of taxpayer and private money. He also proposes to expand a lending program that would spend as much as $1 trillion to cover the decline in the issuance of securities backed by consumer loans. He further proposes to give banks new infusions of capital with which to lend. In exchange, banks would have to cut the salaries and perks of their executives and sharply limit dividends and corporate acquisitions. The plan has been criticized by Nobel-prize winning economist Paul Krugman as well as fellow Nobel laureate and former World Bank Chief Economist Joseph Stiglitz.

AIG bonuses

Although President Obama expressed strong support for Geithner, the outrage over the AIG bonuses has undermined public support. AIG paid bonuses to executives in its Financial Services division after receiving more than $170 billion in federal bailout aid. Even prior to the election, senior aides to Timothy Geithner have closely dealt with American International Group Inc. on compensation issues including bonuses, both from his time as president of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York and as Treasury secretary. In early November, 2008, a committee concluded that the bonuses, which were in contracts signed before the government takeover, couldn't be legally blocked. On March 3, 2009, appearing at a hearing of the House Ways and Means Committee Rep. Joseph Crowley, a New York Democrat, asked him about the bonuses that AIG would be paying to financial-products employees "in the coming weeks." On March 11, Geithner called Mr. Edward Liddy, AIG chief, to protest the bonus payouts. Mr. Geithner and Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke attended a hearing by Congress on March 24, 2009.

AIG payments to banks

In November 2009, Neil Barofsky, the Treasury Department Inspector General responsible for oversight of TARP funds, issued a report critical of the use of $62.1 billion of government funds to redeem derivative contracts held by several large banks which AIG had insured against losses. The banks received face value for the contracts although their market value at the time was much lower. In the report, Barofsky said the payments "provided [the banks] with tens of billions of dollars they likely would have not otherwise received". Terms for use of the funds had been negotiated with the New York Federal Reserve Bank while Geithner was president.

In January 2010, Rep. Darrell Issa released a series of e-mails between AIG and the New York Fed. In these e-mails, the Fed urged AIG not to disclose the full details of the payments publicly or in its SEC filings. Issa pushed for an investigation of the matter, and for records and e-mails from the Fed to be subpoenaed. Rep. Edolphus Towns, Chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, issued subpoenas for the records and scheduled hearings for late January. Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke said the Fed would welcome a full review of its actions regarding the AIG payments.

Geithner and his predecessor, former Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson, both appeared before the Committee on January 27. Geithner defended the bailout of AIG and the payments to the banks, while reiterating previous denials of any involvement in efforts to withhold details of the transactions. His testimony was met with skepticism and angry disagreement by House members of both parties.

China

at the opening session of the first U.S.–China Strategic and Economic Dialogue on July 27, 2009.]]

In written comments to the Senate Finance Committee during his confirmation hearings, Geithner stated that the new administration believed China was "manipulating" its currency and that the Obama administration would act "aggressively" using "all the diplomatic avenues" to change China's currency practices. The Obama administration would pressure China diplomatically to change this practice, more strongly than the George W. Bush Administration did. The United States maintained that China's actions hurt American businesses and contributed to the financial crisis.

Shortly after assuming his role as Secretary of the Treasury, Geithner met in Washington with Chinese Foreign Minister Yang Jiechi. He told Yang that the U.S. attached great importance to its relations with China and that U.S.–China cooperation was essential in order for the world economy to fully recover.

On June 1, 2009, during a question-and-answer session following a speech at Peking University, Geithner was asked by a student whether Chinese investments in U.S. Treasury debt were safe. His reply that they were "very safe" drew laughter from the audience.

Geithner co-chaired the high-profile U.S.–China Strategic and Economic Dialogue from July 27 to 28 in Washington, DC and led the Economic Track for the U.S. side.

Opposing extension of tax cuts

In summer, 2010, Geithner "is President Obama’s point man in opposing the extension of the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy after their Dec. 31 expiration. ... [Geithner] has cited the projected $700 billion, 10-year cost of the tax cuts, and nonpartisan analyses that they do not stimulate the economy because the wealthy tend to save the additional money rather than spend it. 'I believe there is no credible argument to be made that the purpose of government is to borrow from future generations of Americans to finance an extension of tax cuts for the top 2 percent,' [he] said in a recent speech." One journalist has argued that this initiative injects more Populism into his policy portfolio, in line with the Administration's inclination.

Criticism

Geithner weathered criticism early in the Obama presidency, when Republican Rep. Connie Mack of Florida suggested he should resign over the AIG bonus scandal and Alabama Senator Richard Shelby said that Geithner was "out of the loop". Democrats largely joined Obama in supporting Geithner, and there was no serious talk of him losing his job.

In November, 2009, Geithner again came under fire from members of both the Congressional Progressive Caucus and the Republican Party. Oregon Representative Peter DeFazio suggested that both Geithner and Lawrence Summers, the director of the National Economic Council, should be fired in order to curtail unemployment and signal a new direction for the Obama administration's fiscal policy. "We think it is time, maybe, that we turn our focus to Main Street," said DeFazio, speaking for himself and some fellow members of the Progressive Caucus. When Geithner appeared in front of the Congressional Joint Economic Committee, the ranking House Republican, Kevin Brady of Texas, said to the secretary, "Conservatives agree that, as point person, you've failed. Liberals are growing in that consensus as well. Poll after poll shows the public has lost confidence in this president's ability to handle the economy. For the sake of our jobs, will you step down from your post?" Geithner defended his record, suggesting Brady was misrepresenting the situation and overestimating popular disapproval of his job performance.

Family

Geithner married Carole Sonnenfeld on June 8, 1985, at his parents' summer home in Orleans, Massachusetts. She was working as a research associate for Common Cause at the time. Her father, Albert Sonnenfeld, was a professor of French and comparative literature at Princeton University, and her mother, Portia Sonnenfeld, was the conductor of the Chamber Symphony of Princeton. They have two children, a daughter and a son.

See also

List of U.S. political appointments that crossed party lines

Memberships

Center for Global Development (Board of Directors)

Council on Foreign Relations

Economic Club of New York (trustee)

Bank for International Settlements, Committee on payment and settlement systems (chairman)

Bilderberg Group

References

Further reading

Stewart, James B., "Eight Days: the battle to save the American financial system", The New Yorker magazine, September 21, 2009.

External links

Biography at the United States Department of the Treasury

Biography at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York

Who’s Who: The Federal Open Markets Committee at MSNBC

Bernanke's quiet skipper makes waves, MarketWatch.com

Toxic Assets Reduction Plan Release by The Justice Dept: 23Mar2009.

"Liquidity Risk and the Global Economy", from the Summer 2007 issue of International Finance

(2007–2009)

"Eight Days", New Yorker Sept 14, 2009, pages 58-81 by James Stewart summarizing what occurred in the eight days Sept 15-23, 2008 with heavy interviews by James Stewart of Paulson, Bernanke, Geithner

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Category:1961 births Category:American people of German descent Category:Central bankers Category:Council on Foreign Relations Category:Dartmouth College alumni Category:Federal Reserve Bank presidents Category:Group of Thirty Category:Johns Hopkins University alumni Category:Living people Category:Obama Administration cabinet members Category:People from Brooklyn Category:United States Secretaries of the Treasury

B

Name	Charlie Rose
Caption	Charlie Rose, May 2010
Birthname	Charles Peete Rose, Jr.
Birth date	January 05, 1942
Birth place	Henderson, North Carolina, U.S.
Education	Duke University B.A. (1964) Duke School of Law J.D. (1968)
Occupation	Talk show hostJournalist
Years active	1972–present
Credits	Charlie Rose, 60 Minutes II, 60 Minutes, CBS News Nightwatch
Url	http://www.charlierose.com/

Charles Peete "Charlie" Rose, Jr. (born January 5, 1942) is an American television talk show host and journalist. Since 1991, he has hosted Charlie Rose, an interview show distributed nationally by PBS since 1993. He was concurrently a correspondent for 60 Minutes II from its inception in January 1999 until its cancellation in September 2005, and was later named a correspondent on 60 Minutes.

Early life

Rose was born in Henderson, North Carolina, the only child As a child, Rose lived above his parents' store in Henderson and helped out with the family business from age seven. A high school basketball star, Rose entered Duke University intending to pursue a degree with a pre-med track, but an internship in the office of Democratic North Carolina Senator B. Everett Jordan got him interested in politics. Rose graduated in 1964 with a bachelor's degree in history. At Duke, Rose was a member of the Kappa Alpha Order fraternity. He earned a Juris Doctor from the Duke University School of Law in 1968, and also attended New York University Stern School of Business. in a 2000 episode of The Simpsons. and in the 2008 movie Elegy.

Conflict-of-interest accusations

While hosting the 2002 Coca-Cola Company shareholders' meeting, Rose said "few companies are able to connect as completely with consumers in the way that Coca-Cola is. It is a privilege to be associated with [The Coca-Cola family] ... This is the business of Coca-Cola: being part of a family, being worldwide, doing well and doing good at the same time." Afterward, Coca-Cola agreed to become what Rose called "a leading underwriter" of The Charlie Rose Show, paying "six or possibly seven figures." Even the Charlie Rose mugs used on his PBS show feature a Coca-Cola logo on one side. Although CBS News policy bars correspondents from doing commercials and product endorsements, the Washington Post reported CBS was "comfortable" with Rose's actions. Rose insists he "would never do a story on 60 Minutes II about anybody who underwrites my PBS show." It was also Rose however, who previously told Amy Goodman while elaborating on the subject of independent media, "I promise you, CBS News and ABC News and NBC News are not influenced by the corporations that may own those companies, since I know one of them very well and worked for one of them."

Personal life

Rose's twelve-year marriage to Mary Rose (née King) ended in divorce in 1980. Mary is the sister-in-law of Morgan Stanley Chairman John J. Mack. From 1993 until 2005, his companion was socialite and city-planning advocate Amanda Burden, a stepdaughter of CBS founder William S. Paley.

On March 29, 2006, after experiencing shortness of breath in Syria, Rose was flown to Paris and underwent surgery for mitral valve repair in the Georges-Pompidou European Hospital. His surgery was performed under the supervision of Alain F. Carpentier, a pioneer of the procedure. Rose returned to the air on June 12, 2006, with Bill Moyers and Yvette Vega (the show's executive producer), to discuss his surgery and recuperation.

Rose owns a farm in Oxford, North Carolina, an apartment overlooking Central Park in New York City, and a beach house in Bellport, New York.

References

External links

Charlie Rose Official website of his eponymous show

Charlie Rose official channel on YouTube

Downloadable episodes of the Charlie Rose Show on Google Video

Charlie Rose on Audible.com

Why Business Loves Charlie Rose David A. Kaplan, Fortune, September 28, 2009

Category:60 Minutes correspondents Category:American journalists Category:American television talk show hosts Category:Duke University alumni Category:New York television reporters Category:New York University alumni Category:People from Henderson, North Carolina Category:1942 births Category:Living people