http://www.nytimes.com/2002/11/15/business/15WALL.html It's good to see that our vaunted CEOs have their priorities straight.
I'm torn between the sarcastic "well, education is important" and the sincere "I think I'm gonna vomit now."
Hey, you have no idea how competitive nursery school admissions are in New York City! The benevolent Sandy Weill saved those poor kids from going to a lesser nursery school where they would have had to play with the hoi polloi. Just a reminder for those who don't want to subscribe to the NYT site, or nearly any other free site, for that matter -- username bigsoccer, password bigsoccer.
Bonfire of the Vanities Redux? Gotta love Wall Street. Where else can you make $10m/yr on up and still feel the need to brag in an email about how you got your kids into the "right" nursery school? Hope Grubman goes to jail where he belongs.
I know from someone who works there that the NY Times editors love this story, and have already decided to latch onto it like a pit bull. Expect Page 1, above-the-fold "analysis" of this in the coming days (Sunday?). Besides, Citibank is already down to zero ad pages in the NYT. Note that the story makes Armstrong look like a dupe, instead of the influence peddler that he is. AT&T Wireless remains a major ad buyer in the NYT.
The Wall Street Journal also ran with the story on its front page this morning. This is a great newspaper story.
As a matter of fact, there's a second story about it on the front page of the NYT Metro section today: No Talking Out of Preschool Favoritism in Nursery School Entrance? No Comment
I read obie's link...is this a Jewish preschool? Grubman, Schiff, Woody Allen, Friedman, Warburg, Bronfman, etc. I just found that interesting, at the "Y", since "Y" is short for YMCA (or YWCA), and the "C" is for Christian. Can a New Yawker explain this to an ign'ant southern boy?
I don't want to seem cynical but this is a drop in the bucket on the type of back scracthing that goes on in these circle. If there is no email, there is no story.
Here's a link to the Wall Street Journal story. http://www.msnbc.com/news/835469.asp?0dm=N17NB God bless America.
So is the YMCA...it isn't affiliated with Catholics or Presbyterians or what have you. It's still a Christian organization.
Actually, now that I've looked it up, the 92nd St Y has never been a YMCA. Why do they use the "Y"? Because they were the Young Men's Hebrew Association. They still consider themselves a "proudly Jewish institution", but non-sectarian and open to all religions.
My point was that this goes on all the time. If there wasn't an email in this case it would be another incident we don't hear about.
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/11/16/business/16WALL.html Follow up story. Bottom line is corporate corruption is considered routine by the so called elites.
The incestuous relations between stock analysts, the financial media and the companies that both of them are supposed to report on and the conflicts of interest these cause are so well known as to be banal. Hell, they've even become the grist for advertisements by brokerage firms themselves. I'm thinking of the commercial where brokers are cold calling clients advising them to always "buy, buy, buy" and the one broker accidently says "sell" and his entire office goes deadly silent. It's supposed to be humorous but it perfectly encapsulates how the process works.