All about Miers

Harriet Miers6.jpgHere are a couple of sites that provide comprehensive information regarding President Bush’s nomination of Harriet Miers to the Supreme Court:

This University of Michigan Law Library site is a good resource for background materials on Ms. Miers (hat tip to Tom Mighell for the link);

and

This Legacy Network site that provides a comprehensive outline of, and background materials on, the pro and con arguments in regard to the Miers nomination (hat tip to Gordon Wood for the link).

Better, I think, to focus one’s evaluation of the nomination based on information gleaned from these resources than this type of thing.

Criminal case against former Duke Energy traders goes to trial

dukeenergy.gifIt’s not as sexy as some of the Enron-related criminal trials, but the trial of two former Duke Energy natural gas traders began in Houston federal court yesterday.
Former Duke traders Timothy Kramer and Todd Reid face racketeering, conspiracy, wire and mail fraud, money laundering and falsifying corporate books charges in connection with an alleged scheme to book phony electricity and natural-gas trades to boost trading volumes and inflate profits in a trading book that was the basis of their annual bonuses (you can download a copy of the indictment here). A third former Duke Energy trader defendant — Brian Lavielle — previously copped a plea and will presumably testify against Messrs. Kramer and Reid during the trial.

Continue reading

The Lord of Regulation stumbles

Spitzer35.jpgWell, Eliot Spitzer has had better days at the office than yesterday.
First, Mr. Spitzer finally chose not to retry (persecute ?) former Bank of America Corp. broker Theodore Sihpol III, who was acquitted on 29 of 34 criminal charges relating to alleged improper trading of mutual funds in June and settled related civil charges with the Securities and Exchange Commission yesterday. The Lord of Regulation had announced a short time ago that that he planned to retry Mr. Sihpol on the charges. Here are the earlier posts on the Sihpol case.

Continue reading