batmagadanleadoff

How bad might the Mets pitching staff be this season? Topps ain't sayin', but Dickey and Johan are the only Mets starters to get their own 2012 Heritage cards.* *And Schwinden. Rookie card craze and all.

2012: Meet 1963. And the Mets get screwed again. The leader is supposed to occupy the center diamond. Topps put Reyes in the runner-up slot.

2012: Meet 1963.

The NYT produced a folder for that pin set. It folds three ways (tri-fold), and can be had for less than $5.00 on ebay, when available. It works like those holders for coin collections, where each coin fits into a round slot, roughly the size of the coin itself.

Koufax called Bobby Parnell's arm "exceptional" and had a long chat with the righty. The crux of their talk revolved around mechanics more than mental approach: �Just little slight changes, nothing definite, where you hold [the ball], how you hold it and how you use it a lot," Koufax said. "This was more mechanical. Times have changed. Times have changed in what people believe, and I just believe a little differently sometimes." Oh for fucks sake Sandy, it's the same nonsense you tell each Spring Training at Mets camp. I know spring has arrived when Koufax spouts auld guff talk. Cue Bobby saying all manner of nonsense about the great advice he got. All time great though is Sandy. If it's Thursday, Koufax must be dishing out pitching tips to the young Mets hurlers. By this weekend, he'll be touting Fred Wilpon for Humanitarian of the Year. "I used to be the best pitcher in the world. But now, thanks to my BFF Fred Wilpon, I'm penniless. Vote for Fred."

Simon Sez ....... Fart!

It needs some paisley.

Edgy DC wrote: By setting a damages floor, but also openly expressing skepticism that trustee can prove his case, it seems like he is providing both sides with motivation to settle. If Picard settles, he can't take an appeal. And Picard most likely wants to appeal the ceiling on damages imposed by Judge Rakoff. My guess is that this lawsuit will be around for years.

Gwreck wrote: Ceetar wrote: Dynamic pricing is looking interesting. Looks like they'll be able to better capitalize financially on hype (OD already up about $10). That they have lowered prices each year doesn't mean the tickets are now priced correctly. Dynamic pricing would be interesting if it was true dynamic pricing, but it isn't, as there is an artificial price floor. There will be no market-value price drop for midweek/early season games because the Mets committed to not dropping the price below the season ticketholder price. Similarly, Stubhub sales also have an artificial price floor because of the minimum $5/ticket service charge and $5 delivery fee. I get what you're saying, but there's nothing to stop a ticket holder from selling his $100 face value ticket on StubHub for less than face value, right? And if interest peters out in 2012, the Mets will have shot themselves in the foot by committing to face value when, presumably, the same or comparable ticket might sell for 50% or 75% less on Stubhub.

Catchers tend to fade rapidly by age 32-33. Most catchers are toast by then, even those that were effective two years before.

Benjamin Grimm wrote: These are fun! (How exactly did Willets inspire this thread? I must have missed something.) I did this with MS Paint about five months ago in the Madoff's Curveball thread. Dad ... instead of selling 10 two percent shares for $20 million each, we could offer 200 two percent shares at just two million dollars each.

Transcript. It's all gibberish, nonsense and double-talk. Did any of the reporters ask follow-ups? Mets principal owner Fred Wilpon held his own news conference on Field 2 Monday morning as the team stretched behind him during the first day of full-squad workouts. Here's what he had to say in the complete 22-minute interview: Q: What's your outlook for the Mets? Fred Wilpon: "You always want to be optimistic and I think what Terry and Sandy have said is that we're going to surprise a lot of people. I think we have some very good players. I think that some of them didn't perform to where they would have liked to last year. I think that they have something to prove. I've been around 33 years and I know it's hard to tell in spring training, but we're very optimistic that this team is going to be far better than you all have reported." Q: What's the status of your financials? FW: (Takes out of a wad of bills from his front pocket) "OK. We're OK. Obviously I can't talk about anything like that in detail. I can't talk about the lawsuit, but that's proceeding as you all have been reading, and we're proceeding with bringing in partners. We have seven partners -- not only numbers of people, some groups -- seven that have money in escrow because they've been through Major League Baseball, we have two that are ready to almost finalize in major league baseball, and then a couple of others that are in the process. It's a real process. If you have three or four people in your group, everybody is vetted. So they're all in there and we hope to be able to close that out shortly." Q: Is it possible that you have more than originally planned? FW: "If nothing falls out right now, we have more than 10. But you never know. We probably would consider selling 12 because we bought the first two, and we said to the partners that, we might, when it's all over, we might consider at some point whether we'll do it now, at some point, we might consider selling two." Q: Of those 12, how many have no ties to the Mets? FW: "For example, there are people that are friends of ours, there's groups - a couple of them - that we don't know at all. The SNY group, they have an interest on both sides, so that was a natural kind of thing. Q: The NY Times said that SNY has four shares. Is that accurate? FW: "Yes." Q: How concerned should Mets fans be about the future and viability of you owning the franchise? FW: "Well, they shouldn't be concerned about us owning the franchise because we intend to own the franchise for a very long time. Whether they're happy about that right now or not I don't know. But don't forget, we cut a lot of payroll that wasn't producing. If you look at the payroll now, it's fluid. I don't know what's going to happen. I don't know what Sandy is going to do. Many of the people that weren't producing are not here now. We didn't make major any moves that Sandy and Terry wanted to make, but we're pretty satisfied with some of the people that were coming back from injury, and pretty satisfied with some of the people whose career years were not great last year, and they weren't satisfied. They think they have a pretty good team. So do I." Q: Is your intention to try to lock Wright up and keep him here for good? FW: "My intention is always to follow what the baseball people - in spite of what you all say, that we're running the baseball department. Sandy Alderson has a great feel for this, so does Terry. And if it works out, I would be thrilled . . . I think there's no finer guy. He's just a very fine young man. Any of us who are old enough to have him as a son would be proud to have him as a son." Q: When will you get the payroll back to spend for big free agents again? FW: "That's Sandy's view. Sandy was the one who said look, he's the architect when he came in of saying, I want to do some things, I want to have some flexibility, and I want to have flexibility in the four or five areas that you can have flexibility in and that's what he's doing. I don't know whether there's someone out there that he might want. I don't remember a time when we've turned down -- when the GM and the manager and the people wanted certain people, look at our history. We had a lot of people, at one period in time, some of it wasn't well invested and you criticized us for that. Right? So now you have a right to say, OK, you'd like seven more stars here, but if some of these guys become stars then . . . ." Q: So it's Sandy's discretion on signing big free agents? FW: "We certainly acted in certain broad parameters, but the parameters have always changed. But I think Sandy made an offer of around $100 million that Jose [Reyes] could have earned if he were healthy. But Jose did what is best for Jose. Jose is a very nice young man and a very good player and we wish him well. I think we've got a very nice young player that's going to play shortstop this year." Q: Not signing Jose a baseball decision instead of a financial one? FW: "I think it was clearly a baseball decision. As you say, are we a little leery of six years, seven-year, eight-year contracts? Yes. Is Sandy leery of it? You bet. Big time leery of it. Listen, others have done it. I don't want to criticize anybody else who's done something different. We did different also, you know. And we were burned. It doesn't mean there won't be some player in the future that we think that we would do something with longer term. But the history has not been very good." Q: Is selling the team in vocabulary or do you plan to own this team long term? FW: "As long as I can, I plan to be the owner of this team." Q: Is 12 shares basically the max for selling minority ownership for you? FW: "It's correct arithmetically, but it's really not correct because you can find teams, a lot of ownership where someone might own 20 percent, and yet they are the control person, so it doesn't matter" Q: Do you have to keep 50.1 percent? FW: "You don't have to. But I doubt whether we would sell significant, that's not the plan right now." Q: How long will it take for Mets to be big players again for top echelon players? FW:"Well, I think it's a combination. When you say financial things, when I said three years ago that the Mets weren't affected by the Madoff thing, I was telling the truth. I know you don't want to hear it - because we weren't sued then. It was prior to the suit, OK. Then did it affect it? Sure. I would tell you that let's see how this team plays. Let's see what we need. I can tell you that my view of what I see in winning teams is they have a core of players and that core usually comes from the minor league system and then they fill in. May he rest in peace, Gary Carter came at the end of '84. And Gary was -- I don't mean a fill-in -- but they were ready for that kind of great player to play around the core that was in place. You look around, Sandy tells me the number of calls that he got on the rightfielder, the number of calls that he got on the injured first baseman, the number of calls he got on some of these young guys is very significant this winter." Q: So there's a waiting period for this next generation to mature and develop? FW: They've had some experience now. We can be talking six months from now or three months from now at the All-Star break and say, well, this core looks like it's matured. He may want to do something then. Q: How much have you been affected by Madoff? FW: "It started with a really big number out there and now, I'm not minimizing it, but it's a different number. So I think the next couple of weeks will tell. We'll see. I think things will become a lot clearer in the next months. Q: What's your message to Mets fans? FW: "My message would be the same message I said to you. I actually believe we have a far better team than what you all feel. And I would tell them to feel good about it. One of the questions is when will you get back? We've got to win the fans back. No, strike that. Win the fans and the customers back. . . . We have a diminished population coming to Citi Field. We need that revenue to support, and the only way we're going to get that revenue is if we have a competitive, interesting team on the field. Otherwise, they're not going to come just because they like Citi Field. So we're hoping to do that and we're hoping that trend starts to go in the other direction this year. Q: What about the lower expectations? FW: "I've stood here many times when you guys have said well, how soon are you going to win the division and who are you going to kill in the World Series, that kind of thing. I've been through that. I've been through the early '80s when we had no one to all of a sudden '83 or '84 and '85 and the core developed. Sure, I would love to stand here and say we're All-Stars at every position. By the way, you can have All-Stars at every position and you know damn well that doesn't mean you win. Q: Will the court proceedings impact Wright's future? FW: No. They're not tied at all. Q: Do the 12 shares includes Jeff's and Saul's stakes? FW: The family purchased two to begin with to start the process, and then we said we would sell 10 . . . up to 10 more. Q: How much was the payroll affected by Madoff. Would Reyes still be a Met? FW: No, because I don't think Sandy would have made that kind of arrangement that he was able to make elsewhere. I think Sandy offered $100 million if he stayed on the field at the year end, and it was less time that he got elsewhere. And that was Sandy's decision. That was absolutely Sandy's decision. Q: Was cutting the payroll your decision? FW: "No, that was in conjunction with our baseball people. . . . No, but remember, we had payroll that wasn't even on the field, and some of it that was on the field wasn't very productive. . . . Your correlation is higher payroll, better team in every single case, and I'm not sure that that has proven to be the case. The Mets have had the highest payroll for numbers of years and we weren't successful. Q: So the payroll wasn't affected by Madoff? FW: "No, because it was affected by the revenues that we got, that was affected by the operations of the team and what the team was doing. There was a point when the suit was almost three times what it is now and seems to be going in hopefully the right direction. It has some effect, but the fact is that was not the deciding factor. Q: Is the 2013 All-Star Game at Citi Field announcement waiting on your loan payback to MLB? FW: The loan has nothing to do with it. I think the hold-up in the announcement is conditions have changed for New York City and their finances and what they can do. . . . We're very optimistic that we will have the All-Star Game in 2013. Q: Will the loan be paid back once all the shares are finalized? FW: That's the plan. None of the money that's coming in, by the way, is going out. All of the money that's coming in is staying in. Q: Are you optimistic about a favorable court result? FW: "I don't want to comment. I'm always optimistic, but I don't want to comment about what's happening in court. Q: Do you have to wait for all the minority investors to come in before MLB approval? FW: We're waiting for the other three to come in. They're all committed. (why need to be done all at once?) People were ready. They were all anxious. They wanted to make sure they were in, so we did it that way. There's one group that has now been approved that probably will be announced. We're not announcing the names, by the way. You guys are all guessing names. . . . It's a great group, by the way, I'll tell you." Q: What will the influx of money allow you to do? FW: "Well it'll be better for the organization because we'll pay off a lot of debt. We'll reduce the mortgage on the debt. And we'll have ready cash, additional ready cash to run the team. Q: Can you add payroll in midseason? FW: "Yes." Q: Do you follow Sandy Alderson on Twitter (@MetsGM)? FW: "No. I think he's got a great sense of humor though."

TheOldMole wrote: This one's my fave. Because Jeff should be getting noogied by Moe or head-locked by Larry.

Wait a minute... FOUR to SNY? Nothing new there. _______________________ The Mets owners keep peddling a story about new investors, but who's buying? By Howard Megdal 9:23 am Feb. 23, 2012 Here we go again. Newsday reported on Wednesday evening that Fred Wilpon and his partners, who own the New York Mets, had reached an agreement to sell seven minority shares in the club. Only one buyer, Steven A. Cohen, manager of the hedge fund SAC Partners, was identified. But the news, presented by the embattled Mets ownership group as progress, is anything but. If the Mets have only seven minority share commitments, that means they are still three short of the ten they need simply to pay some fast-approaching debts, with their latest deadline, the end of the month, just a few days away. Let's review. For the better part of a year now, the Mets have reportedly been close to a $200 million infusion of capital through the sale of minority shares, first in the person of hedge-funder David Einhorn, then through sales of ten smaller, $20 million blocks. Thanks to the reporting of the Times' Rich Sandomir, we know that two of those blocks are to be purchased by... Fred Wilpon and his partner, Saul Katz. The reason they'd do this, rather than simply invest that money into the team directly, is precisely the same reason the Mets aren't closing on the minority sales individually, but only once they line up ten such investors: the move wouldn't be likely to earn approval from the team's current debtholders. Keep in mind that the minority shares are, in reality, additional debt against the team. Minority owners would earn three percent interest on their shares per year, for six years, and then would have the right to sell those shares back to the Wilpon group and collect their interest. As a result, the current owner of the debt against the New York Mets, JPMorgan Chase, wants a substantial payment from that $200 million investment in exchange for approving the deal. During the Einhorn negotiations, JPMorgan Chase was set to receive half of that money, and held up the deal until they were satisfied in this regard. Sandomir also reported that SNY, the Mets-partnered cable network, would be purchasing four shares, for a total of $80 million. SNY, which is 65-percent owned by Wilpon and his partners, has plenty of motivation to try to bail them out as owners of the Mets. Their minority partner at SNY, Comcast/Time Warner, knows that SNY becomes far less valuable if decoupled from the Mets in terms of ownership. The network earns its profits almost entirely through showing Mets games, and pays a far lower rate for those rights than a new owner would likely demand. So that's six shares. The seventh is from Cohen, who is in the bidding to purchase the Dodgers, and would need to sell whatever Mets share he owns if he manages to buy the Dodgers outright. His purchase amounts to little more than a gesture of goodwill toward Bud Selig and Major League Baseball. In other words, despite months of aggressively seeking buyers, the Mets appear to have found exactly no one, other than people who are already owners, who is willing to risk $20 million in what amounts to a low-return CD from a company with a high chance of bankruptcy. After all, a minority owner can't expect a clear shot at earning back $20 million plus three percent annually in six years if the $430 million debt against the Mets due in 2014, the $450 million debt against SNY due back in 2015, the roughly $600 million remaining in debt payments on Citi Field due twice annually for the forseeable future, or the $386 million lawsuit brought against the owners by trustee for the Bernie Madoff victims, Irving Picard, gets the Wilpons first. Meanwhile, the Mets owners have more immediate hurdles to clear. Wilpon and his partners took out a $40 million bridge loan at the end of November simply to pay one of their Citi Field debt payments on December 15; that bridge loan is due back in March. They still owe $25 million to M.L.B., long past due�the minority sales are supposed to pay that debt, too. And Thursday, Federal District Court Judge Jed S. Rakoff will hear arguments about whether he should rule in favor of summary judgment for Picard's seeking of $83 million in fictitious profits Madoff paid the Wilpon group over the final two years of Madoff's scheme. Rakoff has previously indicated that he may well rule in Picard's favor on this. If he does, Wilpon and his partners need to either come up with the $83 million, or post a bond worth 110 percent of the judgment�around $91 million�just to appeal. The math isn't that hard: $83 million judgment plus $40 million in bridge loan repayment plus $25 million to M.L.B. plus $100 million to JP Morgan Chase is a far greater sum than the $200 million they'd raise with ten minority owners. But facing such a problem will require something else first, something that, more than a year after the process started, the Wilpon group doesn't yet appear to have: a single soul willing to put up real money on the premise that Mets ownership will be good for it. Here's what the Mets had to say about it, in a statement: "As has been our practice, we will not comment on any aspect of the limited partnership sale process." http://www.capitalnewyork.com/article/null/2012/02/5333055/mets-owners-keep-peddling-story-about-new-investors-whos-buying

The pictures used on Kranepool's Topps '64 and '65 cards were shot in 1964, Krane's last season in uniform #21, and Krane's only season at Shea in that uni #. The #1 digit is partially visible in the pics. Topps didn't bother to use a '65 photo of Krane, or perhaps, not even photograph Krane in '65, for his '66 card. Here's a 2004 Kranepool card (2004 Topps Finest Moments - Autographs), using yet another shot from that same '64 photo session. Below is a Topps negative, also from Krane's '64 photo shoot. It appears to be the pic used in Krane's 2004 card, just above.

Who woulda thunk? On every Mets team that he played on, Gary Carter is the first, and only, Met player to have passed away. Every single Mets teammate of Gary Carter is still alive.

Vic Sage wrote: I read GATSBY in HS and it was a life-changing experience. So what fancy schmancy HS did you go to that included Gatsby on the student syllabus? Oh, never mind. I slipped through the cracks. Or maybe Gatsby slipped through my cracks. I read TGG for the first time ever, last Spring, almost a year ago. Not a bad line in the whole damn book, as they say. Until Frayed Knot's post, I would've guessed that I was the last person on this forum to have read TGG for the first time.

Jerry Seinfeld, Chris Rock, Jon Stewart and Greg Prince all mentioned in the same New Yorker article. February 15, 2012 Laughing at the Mets Posted by Seth Berkman �I don�t think there�s anything more fun than being a Mets fan,� Jerry Seinfeld once said. �The team always has personality.� Seinfeld was not joking, though to say his words currently lack punch would be an understatement. The Mets, who are coming off a 77-85 record and fourth-place finish in the National League East, lost their best player to free agency, cut their payroll by more than $50 million, and have owners hanging onto the team by a thread after suffering devastating financial losses during the Bernie Madoff saga. In the afterglow of the Giants Super Bowl victory, and with Linsanity at its apex, the Mets currently stand somewhere between the Islanders and L.I.U. basketball on the city�s sports totem pole. The Mets have long been a comedic foil, and their fans have always been able to laugh at themselves. In addition to Seinfeld�who, along with �pretty boy� Keith Hernandez, is responsible for the best Mets-related moment in comedy�the team counts Chris Rock, Ray Romano, Kevin James, and Jon Stewart among its fan base. The franchise was terrible right out of the gate, losing a hundred and twenty games during its first season in 1962 and prompting manager Casey Stengel to note that he�d �been in this game one-hundred years, but I see new ways to lose �em I never knew existed before.� With the Braves, Phillies, Marlins, and even Nationals fielding better teams in the offseason, the jokes were likely to be plentiful this year. But no one expected the opening salvo to come from Mets general manager Sandy Alderson, a man usually characterized as a no-nonsense numbers cruncher. Yet last Thursday, tweeting for the first time as @MetsGM, he wrote: Getting ready for Spring Training-Driving to FL but haven�t left yet. Big fundraiser tonight for gas money. Also exploring PAC contribution. The potshots continued: Will have to drive carefully on trip; Mets only reimburse for gas at a downhill rate. Will try to coast all the way to FL. Alderson has continued his shtick this week. He mocked his stinginess by joking that he bought his wife an IHOP gift card for Valentine�s Day. And he tweeted: Prepping for trip. Bought 4 like-new tires at chop shop across from Citi. He threw in free wiper fluid. Better than the Wheeler deal! These may not be as good as some of Chris Rock�s jabs, but Alderson has shown a penchant for making light of the team�s dire straits. Just a few weeks into last season, Alderson said that watching the team was �a nightly crucible, really.� A few weeks later, as people gathered in Times Square to welcome the end of the world on May 21st, Alderson joked, �I was thinking, if the world had ended on Saturday the way it was supposed to, we wouldn�t have to deal with these things.� You�d think the Wilpons, who own the Mets, would take issue with such quips, but they obviously have more pressing issues at hand. Mets fans seem to enjoy the banter, perhaps as a distraction from Johan Santana�s balky shoulder or the David Wright trade rumors. Greg Prince of the blog Faith and Fear in Flushing wrote in an e-mail: �If you can�t handle a few self-deprecating laughs, then you should probably find a new baseball team or other diversionary enterprise with which to align your allegiances. Sandy�s gentle gibes show a reassuring self-awareness on the part of the organization�s public face that�like R. A. Dickey�we�ve got a mountain to climb, but we�re gonna climb it with good humor.� Of course, there will be Mets fans bitter from now until September, when rivals like the Yankees and Phillies will likely be in the midst of pennant races. Earlier this month, Brad Pitt was on the �The Daily Show� promoting his movie �Moneyball.� Jon Stewart, never bashful about his Mets fandom, asked him, �Do you think they�ll ever make a movie about a big-market team that has the money to spend, but still sucks? We could call it something fictitious, like, �The Mets.�� While there will be plenty of inning-ending double plays and ninth-inning blown saves at Citi Field this season, at least �Jerry from Queens,� the famous late-night caller to the local sports station WFAN, offers some hope. �If the grass is green, the gloves are leather, and the bats are wood, I�m good.� Read more http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/sportingscene/2012/02/laughing-at-the-mets.html#ixzz1mW7rIVjm

If I'm interpreting Megdal's latest column correctly and the surrounding innuendo, the Mets had second thoughts about de-credentialing Megdal, flip-flopped, and are now once again granting Megdal access, probably caving in to the overwhelming support for Megdal in the immediate aftermath of the Mets short-lived petulant and spiteful ban. The Mets, however, simply state that Megdal's credentialing never changed. Whatever. If I'm right on the events, then this latest Mets announcement is just as embarrassing as their original ban on Megdal. An Updated Note On Access Posted by: Howard Megdal - Posted in Business of Baseball, Citi Field, Today's Mets headlines on Feb 15, 2012 I have been informed by the Mets that the credentialing process has not changed from 2011. Since I received credentials 100 percent of the time they were requested by The Journal News on my behalf last year, the news comes as a great relief to me. I want to thank all of those who were supportive of me over the past two weeks, not least my editor, Sean Mayer, who stuck by me throughout this process. I have been gratified to hear from so many of you about my work, and I am thrilled that my efforts to write are receiving the response I�ve heard. I will continue to do all I can to report on what I think will most matter to you, hopefully informing in an interesting way, on matters large and small, on and off the field. Now if you�ll excuse me, it�s Jeremy Lin Time. http://mets.lohudblogs.com/2012/02/15/an-updated-note-on-access/

LeiterWagnerFasterStrongr wrote: Ceetar wrote: when did they first start investing with Madoff? Wasn't it in like the 80s? It'd been a while regardless and after that long I imagine it's pretty hard to be convinced by anyone, much less a new employee, that it's a scam. It's hard, yes. Because it doesn't behoove you to know it is, because you're making bank. Then when you run something like Sterling Stamos, you're making bank regardless of eventual losses/revelation of a scam, thanks to commissions. When you don't do due dilligence at the hedge fund YOU RUN, that's not turning-a-blind-eye... that's willful disregard. Sure. Sterling can't avoid its responsibility, and liability, by sticking its head in the sand ... by intentionally looking away.

it was Harrington's strong recommendation that Sterling Stamos not invest with Merkin. Additional due diligence revealed that Madoff and Merkin's strategies did not result in the returns they both claimed, while their footprint in the marketplace was not apparent based on the trades they claimed to have made. In other words, according to Harrington's DD, there was no evidence that Madoff was making the trades he claimed to have made. Harry Markopolos, the individual credited with unearthing Madoff's scheme, also could not find any evidence that Madoff was making any trades. Although the Harrington article doesn't detail her DD, it's reasonable to conclude that Harrington and Markopolos came to the same conclusions about Madoff, independently of each other. In 1999, Markopolos found that one of Rampart's frequent trading partners, Access International, was dealing with a hedge fund manager who consistently delivered net returns of 1-2 percent a month. Frank Casey, one of Rampart's principals, met with Access CEO Thierry de la Villehuchet, and found out the manager was Bernie Madoff, who was secretly operating a wealth management business in which his clients essentially gave him carte blanche to use the money however he wanted. Casey and Rampart's managing partner, Dave Fraley, asked Markopolos to try to design a product similar to Madoff's split-strike conversion in hopes of getting Access to diversify away from Madoff. When Markopolos got his hands on a copy of Madoff's revenue stream, he suspected problems almost immediately. To his mind, Madoff's strategy was so poorly structured that on paper, it couldn't possibly make money. Additionally, his return stream rose upward with only a few downticks--a nearly perfect 45-degree angle. Markopolos knew that the markets were too volatile even in the best of conditions for this to be possible. He believed there were only two ways to explain the figures--either Madoff was running a Ponzi scheme (by paying established clients with newer clients' money) or front running (buying stock for his own account based on knowledge about his clients' orders). Either way, Markopolos believed there was no legal way for Madoff to deliver his purported returns. Markopolos later said that he knew within five minutes that Madoff's numbers didn't add up. It took him another four hours to prove that they could have only been obtained through fraud.[14][15] Despite this, Markopolos' bosses at Rampart asked Markopolos 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. For instance, he discovered that for Madoff's strategy to work, he would have had to buy more options on the Chicago Board Options Exchange than actually existed.[14] He also couldn't find any evidence the market was responding to any Madoff trades, even though by his estimate Madoff was running as much as $6 billion--far more money than any known hedge fund even then. In Markopolos' mind, this suggested that Madoff wasn't even trading. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harry_Markopolos

Sterling Stamos was a hedge fund. Noreen Harrington was its CIO. For the right to earn a commission by investing other people's money, Sterling is obligated to perform due diligence. In other words, Sterling is supposed to investigate the companies or funds that it invests its clients' money with. Sterling was overly invested in Madoff, and therefore, "wanted" to diversify -- to spread its risk ... you know ... don't put all your eggs in one basket and all that jazz -- and so Sterling considered also investing with Melkin's fund, because Melkin's profits were as spectacular as Madoff's. Harrington discovered that Melkin's fund was a feeder for Madoff. In other words, Melkin was investing his funds with Madoff. That's why Melkin's profits were able to match Madoff's This is what feeder funds do: They invest with other funds. In fact, David Boies is currently representing a large class of investors who invested in a hedge fund that in turn, placed much of its capital with Madoff. Boies alleges that this feeder fund did no due diligence at all, and in fact, simply turned over much of its capital to Madoff in return for guaranteed commissions. The fund made multi-millions of dollar while many of their clients were wiped out when Madoff's Ponzi scheme was discovered. Harrington believed that Madoff's fund was illegitimate; that Madoff was either trading on inside information (frontrunning) or operating a Ponzi scheme and fabricating his earnings statements out of thin air. When Harrington tried to obtain Melkin's research/due diligence, she claims she was thwarted, essentially being told that she has no right to question Melkin's investment decisions. Fairfield Greenwich Group link, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fairfield_Greenwich_Group

Jay Horwitz announces that Miami shortstop Jose Reyes will be banned from entering Citi Field this upcoming season. Press conference at 1PM.

Ceetar wrote: Ceetar wrote: metsmarathon wrote: no, she's saying "i told thm back then that it was crooked, and likely a big scam, and they kept pouring more money into it" that's pretty fucking damning. What's a "feeder fund"? And was that testimony that she discovered that back then, or that's what it turned out to be? Because the lawsuit isn't about this Merkin guy, and she never really got to investigate/meet Madoff. That's because who the fuck is Noreen Harrington to get to ask any questions? irrelevant of course, since Picard has to prove they asked said question and got a "we're cheating" response. But again, is there a difference between hearing it from Merkin and not Madoff? What's irrelevant? What are you saying?

Ceetar wrote: metsmarathon wrote: no, she's saying "i told thm back then that it was crooked, and likely a big scam, and they kept pouring more money into it" that's pretty fucking damning. What's a "feeder fund"? And was that testimony that she discovered that back then, or that's what it turned out to be? Because the lawsuit isn't about this Merkin guy, and she never really got to investigate/meet Madoff. That's because who the fuck is Noreen Harrington to get to ask any questions?