As a not-so-hot week for Goldman Sachs' came to a close, Mayor Bloomberg embraced the investment bank. The New York Times reports that Bloomberg visited Goldman's headquarters Thursday for some handshakes and burgers, and explained his support of the firm on his radio show Friday. "It's my job to stand up and support companies that are here in this city that bring us a tax base and that employ our people," he said on the show according to the Times.

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Last night's presidential address was all about the state of our great nation, but New Yorkers got a nod with the announcement that our very own attorney general will head a new task force charged with investigating abusive lending and risky mortgages. You know, all that fun stuff that led to the housing crisis and destroyed our economy...

New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman will chair the new unit, which Barack Obama discussed in his speech last night, saying the group will target Wall Street and the big, bad banks and mortgage lenders that messed everything up for the rest of us.

"This new unit will hold accountable those who broke the law, speed assistance to homeowners, and help turn the page on an era of recklessness that hurt so many Americans," he said.

A task that big requires a New Yorker like Schneiderman, who was formerly a state senator representing the Upper West Side before he became the state's top law enforcement officer.

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Gage Skidmore

Banks benefited even more from the public bailout than previously known.

It's been three years since the the cataclysmic financial crisis that nearly destroyed the global economy, and three years since the government offered up $700 billion in public money to prop up the banks that caused the crisis in the first place.

Those loans, offered up through the Treasury's TARP program, have now all been paid back with interest, and as far as the banks are concerned, everything's back to normal. It wasn't such a big deal anyway! They didn't even want to take that money! And they sure as hell don't think any further government regulation is necessary.

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​The International Monetary Fund, once headed by new Tribeca resident and alleged sex offender Dominique Strauss-Kahn, has been hit by a cyber attack that an official called a "very major breach." Anonymous, is this you? The attack occurred over the last few months, but as of yet it's unclear as to what kind of information the hackers were able to get to. The I.M.F. has information in its databases that is "potentially market-moving," and communications with leaders that could be "political dynamite in many countries." At the beginning of the month, a spokesman for the fund said that they were aware of a possible threat from "hacktivist" collective Anonymous and were taking preventative measures.

For further reading, here's Anonymous' statement of purpose on the attack.

[NYT]

[rgray@villagevoice.com] [@_rosiegray]

Crazy kids! Instead of being appropriately bewildered and concerned by credit card and education debts, young adults are feeling "empowered" by what they owe, according to a new study from Ohio State University. In fact, the more credit card and college loan debt they have, the better these incorrigible youngsters feel about themselves! Once they get to be a little older, however, say 28 to 34, they start getting stressed. As the scientists behind the study point out, credit card debt might be helping people feel good because they're not thinking about their debt at all but instead are thinking about what they can get with their credit cards -- a/k/a instant gratification. It's hard to compete with that.

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Anonymous, the loosely organized hacktivist collective operating lately in support of WikiLeaks, dropped extensive correspondence at 12 a.m. on Monday between employees they claim were working for a previously Bank of America-owned insurance company, Balboa Insurance. According to Anonymous, the leak -- led by @OperationLeakS -- shows that the bank removed documents from loan files, and subsequently foreclosed on homes faultily. The correspondence is currently collected at BankofAmericasuck.com, where the leak is being referred to as "Black Monday," though other sites meant to host the documents, like http://boa.anonleaks.ch/, are currently down, possibly due to high traffic. "We are confident that his extravagant assertions are untrue," a Bank of America spokesperson said.

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As long speculated, Julian Assange's WikiLeaks will release classified documents from Bank of America, in a break from harassing international governments. The confirmation of the target comes via John Carney's NetNet blog at CNBC.com, where he sources an anonymous "person who has close contact with top people at Wikileaks." Speculation about Bank of America's vulnerability ramped up in November when Assange told Forbes that leaks would come from a large U.S. bank in early 2011. Today Assange claimed that more documents will be coming more quickly as he fights extradition to Sweden, though he did not confirm news regarding Bank of America.

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​In case you were feeling a little too cheerful this holiday season, the Fiscal Policy Institute has a new report [pdf] to remind you about New York City's ever-widening income gap. According to the report, "if New York City were a nation, it would rank 15th worst among 134 countries with respect to income concentration, in between Chile and Honduras."

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Auto bailout czar Steve Rattner is not out of the woods yet. Rattner may be able to put his problems with the Securities Exchange Commission behind him today. But he's still got a ways to go with state Attorney General Andrew Cuomo's office which launched the state pension probe and which has already won seven guilty pleas including that of ex-comptroller Alan Hevesi.

Sources in the AG's office say the proposed deal with the SEC --a $5-$6 million fine and a two-year ban from market trading --falls far short of an adequate penalty for Rattner's financial escapades. "It's not enough," says one source.

Back in 2005, Rattner's Quadrangle Group paid a $1 million fee to Hevesi's political guru Hank Morris in exchange for a $100 million investment by state pension funds. To grease the skids, he also invested in a slapstick movie, Chooch, produced by the brothers of former pension fund investment manager, David Loglisci, who has also pled guilty in the case.

Rattner's Folly

Ex-auto bailout king Steve Rattner is reportedly settling his pay-to-play charges stemming from his state pension fund schemes with the Securities Exchange Commission. He'll take a two-year bar from the securities markets, plus ante up $6 million, says the Wall Street Journal. The Times goes with an unusually vague description of the length of the ban its ex-star financial reporter will serve, leaving it as a "few years." That somehow sounds like the phrase Rattner himself might be using with close friends, such as Times publisher Arthur Sulzberger, Jr. who only last week was toasting his pal's new book Overhaul, about his brief reign as national auto czar at The Four Seasons with Mike Bloomberg and other Rattner fans. The paper of record also says he's shelling out just $5 million.

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