According to Page Six, Barbara Walters, who recently published her kiss and tell memoirs, may be stinging from some of the criticisms over her affair with then-married Senator Edward Brooke. But more interestingly is what a playa she was, also carrying on simultaneously with Bear Stearns CEO Alan "Ace" Greenberg, and then-future Fed chief Alan Greenpan. And her housekeeper couldn't tell the two Alans apart:
"Audition" also reveals that
after breaking up with Brooke, Walters continued seeing Greenberg while also
dating Alan Greenspan, the future Federal Reserve chairman.
Her Latina housekeeper couldn't keep the
two Alans straight. "When they gave me the message, I could only ask, which
one talked louder?" Walters wrote. "Alan Greenberg . . . talked in a
normal tone of voice. Alan Greenspan was very soft-spoken. He almost whispered.
And that's how I would know whether it was Greenspan or Greenberg."
One of the winners in the demise of Bear Stearns would seem to be CNBC's Charlie Gasparino. According to the NY Post, he got a book deal with an estimated $400K advance from publisher HarperCollins (owned by NY Post parent News Corp). That'll buy at least a few lunches at his fave hang, San Pietro....
Gasparino's book, "The Sellout,"
tells how Bear Stearns tossed out its tradition of hard-nosed, conservative
trading skills and plunged head first into risky debt that's been drowning Wall
Street investment banks.
Gasparino, the on-air editor at CNBC and a former Wall Street Journal reporter,
lamented that smart veterans who'd been running Wall Street banks were
"some of the most conservative traders in the world, so why did they sell
out these principles and begin to roll the dice so recklessly?"
All of those hours spent shriveling up like a prune in the bathtub where he's said to have penned most of his new tome seem to have paid off: Alan Greenspan's "The Age of Turbulence: Adventures in a New World.", is flying off of bookshelves.
The book sold 129,000 copies in its first
week on bookstore shelves, according to Nielsen BookScan, which tracks an
estimated 75% of retail book sales in the U.S. While that is far short of
first-week sales of the memoir of another high-profile Washington figure, former
President Bill Clinton -- whose "My Life" sold 606,000 copies in its
first week in June 2004, according to BookScan -- it is still strong enough to
put the book on top of best-seller lists for both Amazon.com and Barnes &
Noble's hardcover nonfiction.
Doug Stumpf's new novel, "Confessions of a Wall Street Shoeshine Boy" is getting lots of favorable press. We've pointed to reviews, and now Page Six wonders if the main character is based upon Bear Stearns alum / billionalre / alleged perv Jeffrey Epstein, although the author says that all of the characters are composites of many people:
The novel, which centers around rogue
trader "Jeff Steed" and an insider-trading scandal at the fictitious
firm of Medved, Morningstar & Bigelow, reminds some readers of Epstein and
his departure from Bear Stearns in the early 1980s.
In the book, Steed, like Epstein, has a
penchant for sexy, young model types, goes out of his way to avoid boozing, and
lives in a vast Manhattan mansion with gaudy and monstrous furniture as well as
a huge spread in Palm Beach. Steed abruptly leaves Medved (Russian for
"bear") with a hefty bonus in his back pocket amid accusations of
illegal activity. Later, when he learns a magazine is writing a story on him, he
manages to bypass security, corner the editor-in-chief in his office, and
threaten his career.
In early July we highlighted a Barron's review of Doug Stumpf's new novel, Confessions of a Wall Street Shoeshine Boy. It sounded like a fun read, and we're happy to say, after reading it, that it didn't disappoint. Earlier today, the author was interviewed on CNBC along with Michael Wolf of Vanity Fair. Here's the video as well as Vanity Fair's recent review.
Barron's reviews the new novel Confessions of a Wall Street Shoeshine Boy as "complex with entertaining overtones": Wall Street wizards...money grubbing wives...insider trading...mansions....models....sex orgies...How could you go wrong?
DOUG STUMPF'S RIBALD, FAST-MOVING first
novel is light enough to toss into your beach bag. But it's also got an
engrossing serious side. And it's for real: The details of character and plot
are based mainly on testimony of an actual Brazilian shoe-shine boy who, with
polish and brush, breached the inner sanctum of a big Manhattan financial firm
-- where he inadvertently discovered its sometimes amusing, sometimes grimy,
nooks and crannies.
The jigsaw-puzzle plot -- centering on
piecing together the clues to insider-trading scams at the firm -- is thickened
by a Cecil B. DeMille-sized cast of characters...
According to USA Today the new book "Boeing versus Airbus", by former New Yorker magazine writer John Newhouse, describes Airbus' Jean Pierson's 1997 negotiation with US Air's Stephen Wolf over the purchase of a new fleet of planes -- he dropped his pants to make a point, and got the deal done, setting the stage for the big rivalry between Boeing and Airbus:
Pierson, who ran Airbus from 1985 to 1998, was at US Airways' headquarters for what he thought would be a short meeting to tie up a 400-plane deal, the anecdote runs.
At the last minute, US Airways' then-chairman Stephen Wolf started arguing for a 5% discount on the selling price.
"Pierson began slowly lowering his trousers and saying 'I have nothing more to give.' He then allowed the trousers to fall around his ankles," says Newhouse in his book.
This picture, thought to be of former Merrill Lynch banker turned "Golden Handcuffs" author Polly Courtney, was sent in to us by a reader (Thanks!) who wrote:
"Well, in London last week I saw this (see attached [the photo]), driving through town in a crazy convoy... is this the pole-dancing author herself?
We're guessing it's probably her. (See another picture below). From her website, there's even a contest. If you spot one of those little cars, you can score a free copy of her book. Guess our reader didn't know about that -- unless our reader is a sly Ms. Courtney, who knew we'd post it. :)
Sandy Weill's new book accomplishes what nobody expected it could in the era of the bloated and arrogant business autobiography. "The Real Deal: My Life in Business and Philanthropy" is a refreshingly honest and candid reflection by the most important man on Wall Street in the second half of the 20th century.
Last month we noticed
