Yesterday the NYT introduced us to an entire industry of motherfuckers who rip off (hopefully only) rich people by selling them advice on how to get their spawn into the breathtakingly expensive school of his or her choice.

While the going national rate for such work is about $185 an hour, a counselor in Vermont and another in New York City are among those who charge some families more than $40,000. Their packages might begin when a child is in eighth grade.

"It's annoying when people complain about the money," the Vermont-based counselor, Michele Hernandez, said. "I'm at the top of my field. Do people economize when they have a brain tumor and are looking for a neurosurgeon? If you want to go with someone cheaper, or chance it, don't hire me."

Our sincere hope that anyone hiring these people must have far, far too much disposable income already(here's a pretty modest price chart)—and the fact that these counselors inevitably steer kids towards schools that segregate wealthy lacrosse progenies from the rest of society—are the only thing keeping us from complaining more vociferously, on the internet, about their existence. Luckily for them.

Look, here is a place called "IvyWise" that offers packages costing more than $40K to, what, tell your kid to be smart? They also consult on nursery school admissions. As usual, our anger at Fake Ass Job hustlers is superseded by our envy that they thought of this first. Fuckers.
[NYT. Pic via]

Loehr is 44. She spent the entire decade of the 90s running hotel and safari operations in Kenya. Nevertheless, she has managed to master the subtle nuances of Generation Boomer, Generation X, and Generation Y. She uses her knowledge to educate the olds about "people born in the late 1970s or early 1980s." That's us, and you, creative underclass! Marvel at how she seems to know you personally:

"People say to me, 'Why do they talk like that?' Because they grew up on reality TV. Okay? It's not good, it's not bad. That's what they grew up on. They think it's okay to talk like that."

She has Richard Lawson nailed already!

"They saw 9/11," she says. "Connection is vital, they want to be connected all the time. People say, 'Why are they on Facebook all the time? Why are they texting?' They really want balance, too. They saw their parents go crazy in Generation X. They are not having that lifestyle. They are going to do it their way. They're going to go to yoga at 4, and the Red Sox game at 7, and do their work at midnight. It might be a good idea to let them go to yoga at 4!"

And how!

"If you can say you are 'green,' or politically correct or socially correct, whatever, that goes a long way with them. Nike, no way. Gen Y will not buy Nike — that big, ugly globalized company. This generation is very well-educated — both parents probably have MBAs."

She's speaking your language! Assuming both of your parents have MBAs. And her seminars get results. Her clients are learning to "walk the walk," as Gen Y says:

Xiaoyuan "Wennie" Hanson, 29 (Gen X/millennial), a financial adviser at Morgan Stanley, looks puzzled. She came to the seminar because many of her clients are "trust-fund babies who are Generation Y," she says, and she is slowly beginning to use words like "cool" and "sucks" to make better inroads with them

You can financially advise me any day, "Wennie." As long as you don't "suck!" Just keep Anne Loehr's Generational Cheat Sheet close at hand, and remember that if a Gen Y-er seems listless or unfocused, they're probably just thinking about AIDS or the "Internet boom/bust," two "Life-Shaping Events" of their generations. So get off our backs, and give us some money. We're going to yoga at 4.
[Washington Post]

Three years ago, Arnell sold a "personal branding" book to the publisher for $550,000, CityFile reports. It was a nice, tidy coup, particularly since Arnell didn't even have to write the thing himself.

But one year and two ghostwriters later, the marketing maven — with help from his wife and personal assistant, naturally — had produced just 25,000 of the agreed-upon 80,000 words. Now he has to give HarperCollins' $100,000 upfront payment back, after losing his absurd court battle to keep the money.

Book or none, it turns out Arnell has conveyed an important lesson about "personal branding:" Do not take business advice from a hustler who blew an easy, 500-grand score from his last mark.

This comment, purportedly from Kari's father, was left on the Delicate Condition blog:

I am Kari's father. She was adopted in Arizona from Korea when she was 5 months old and we later moved to Utah with my job. Kari was a very bright child probably too smart reading 7th grade level when she started first grade. She got everything she wanted as a child, when you adopt a child you want them to have everything. She was in gymnastics, band, t-ball and many other activities. She had a very spoiled upbringing. I have no idea how she turned out this way, but I hope she gets help and whatever treatment is needed. Kari if you're reading this turn yourself in. I love you.

Here, it's Kari's famous "I Love Beards" tat! [We got one tip that said, simply, "my friend grew a beard for her because it was her 'last dying wish' that he do so"]. A beard advocate from Bearduary tells us: "Kari shot a photo project at the Bearduary end party. Pretty much her hip tattoo next to a bunch of bearded faces. I do not think she ripped anyone off that night just shot her photos and left. Kari claimed that she had a coffee table book coming out through vice of those photos." Alas, this is the closest that book will come to fruition. This fine tipster also forwards this, an email he says Kari sent to him, which includes the infamous "hot dog down my hallway" phrase in its full contextual glory:

"I am looking for a boy to allow me to be his beard,
if you know what I mean. Basically, I need someone
to toss their hot dog down my hallway, while I sing
theme songs from syndicated television programs
from the late 70's, early 80's.
If you think you (or a friend) are up to the challenge, let's convene on the interwebs."

-Korean Abdul-Jabbar

"she told me she didn't have facebook but showed me her myspace page and her favorite group, which was pictures of rookie major league baseball players with mustaches," says the guy who sent in this picture. Poignant.


These photos are from Kari's Photobucket account, which is a treasure trove of her active lifestyle.

Finally, we'll call this Kari's film debut. This is a clip from Joshua Heller which is a "pilot" for "Mini Sex Cops," a show some dudes got drunk and came up with and then videotaped themselves talking about. Our hero appears at the 1:20 mark in the clip.

Mini Sex Cops from JoshuaHeller on Vimeo.

America's mayor may be the economic downturn's littlest victim. The Post says that his laughable "consulting" firm, originally created to smelt nickels out of the smoking husk of the World Trade Center, is flagging:

The firm's client list has thinned out in the past few years, as have partner salaries, the sources said. Some partners have left, and some support staffers let go.

The former mayor himself is infrequently there, the sources said, adding that he's still working the speaker's circuit hard and making international trips.

Incredible! Has the market for clientss eager to pay money to a firm nominally led by a man who turned an early Presidential campaign lead into utter collapse through sheer bad planning shrunk somehow? One would think that there's always a great pool of suckers ready to pay some lazy fascist to help them "solve critical strategic issues, accelerate growth, and enhance the reputation and brand of their organizations in the context of strongly held values." (Values: Rudy Giuliani loves money; Rudy Giuliani would kill your fucking kitten for some press; Sadism in general.)

The firm says no, things are fine, although they acknowledge the company's "down to about 30 employees from the 60 it had about two years ago." You know who else I hear has experienced similar shrinkage? Ronn [sic] Torossian's 5WPR. Birds of a feather. [NYP]

After its package redesign, sales of the Tropicana Pure Premium line plummeted 20% between Jan. 1 and Feb. 22, costing the brand tens of millions of dollars. On Feb. 23, the company announced it would bow to consumer demand and scrap the new packaging, designed by Peter Arnell. It had been on the market less than two months.

Whoa, that's not good for a guru's aura. At least the gravitational field of Pepsi remains strong. Arnell has a longstanding rep as one of New York's worst bosses. Allow one of our tipsters to add to that:

He had an assistant from Brazil I think. He would make this poor guy rub his feet during working meetings and would have him retrieve some arbitrary item from the parking garage (2 stories down, via elevator) in a specific time or he would threaten firing him and sending him back to Brazil.

Um.

He also usually requested the same limo/town car driver when coming to Los Angeles. (The company I worked for at the time was in LA, near the ocean.) He would rent a MB convertible and have the limo driver follow him when driving all over the city. Peter would routinely get lost and the driver would have to find him since he would lose the driver by being in front.

If you have Peter Arnell stories (even positive ones!) to share, email us.

Today we have three—count em, then count em again with a more honest accountant—three new mini-Madoff frauds! Well they're not all "Mini-Madoffs" because they're not all massive Ponzi schemes. But the alliteration, you can't deny. Let's take them in order of outrage:

Mark Bloom took millions from investors, lied about where he invested it, collected $1.6 million in fees, and is now insolvent!

James Nicholson told investors he was putting their money into hedge funds, and that those funds were performing well. When the Madoff scandal broke, people asked for their money back from Nicholson. The checks bounced. Now investigators think he may have vaporized up to $900 million!

Paul Greenwood and Stephen Walsh took hundreds of millions from investors and just blew it all on stupid shit like expensive teddy bears. But they wrote IOU's for all of it, okay!

But Greenwood and Walsh used "$160 million for personal expenses, including rare books at auctions, horses, Steiff teddy bears for as much as $80,000 [each] at various auctions . . . and a residence for Walsh's ex-wife, Janet Walsh, in the amount of $3 million," the Commodities Futures Trading Commission said in a civil suit.

Greenwood, who was elected town supervisor of North Salem in Westchester in 2007, and his wife are believed to own the world's largest collection of rare Steiffs - 1,350 of them...

Records showed that of the $812 million in assets held by their operation, $794 million were in promissory notes saying Greenwood and Walsh owned their own fund money.

Now that Wall Street is losing money and investors are all spooked and asking for their cash back, we expect more and more of these every day. It is the idle entertainment of the bitter poor! [NYP]

Remember the old Tropicana logo, which was perfectly fine?

When PepsiCo realized this logo was classic and popular, they immediately rushed out and paid millions to the Arnell Group, the bullshit experts behind the new Pepsi logo, to change it to this:

And then all their customers complained about it and Tropicana realized that their juice now looked like every anonymous house brand in America so they're changing it back. "Rebranding" is a stupid idea about 90% of the time, the end. [NYT. Pic: Flickr]

Stanford disappeared on Tuesday when news of his scam broke, but the FBI's tracked him down in Fredericksburg, VA, which is not really the type of glamorous location you would expect to be hiding out if you had billions of dollars at your disposal. This was all just to serve him with papers, though—he hasn't even been arrested yet. Never too early to do so, though, guys!

The most amusing aspect of this story is that the BBC refers to Stanford as "Sir Allen" eight times in its story on this, although Reuters points out:

Company publications are peppered with devotional mentions of "Sir Allen," a reference to the title given to him in 2006 by Antiguan authorities, not the Queen of England.

Let's just hope this vile web doesn't stretch all the way up to Colonel Sanders.

Reports say brokers are already visiting the hedge fund hustler's penthouse with an eye towards putting it up for sale to pay back creditors. But Bernie is, you know, on house arrest at the moment, in the apartment. Which gives you a good reason to go take a look at the place!

Because he must remain inside the two-story apartment as a condition of his $10 million bail, Madoff will be in awkward proximity to brokers when they eyeball its four bedrooms, at least five bathrooms, kitchen and library.

"They'll probably have him in the dining room when we're in the bedrooms and vice versa," said the broker.

But not if you're a disgruntled investor packing a gun. Others welcome. [NYP]

Marc Rich reportedly lost $10-15 mil via a money manager who invested in Madoff on his behalf. Rich's spokeswoman called this an "insignificant exposure," so yes, Marc Rich is still mad rich, in case you were wondering. But he won't be getting it back:

The idea that Mr. Rich, the onetime fugitive, may now turn to an American court to seek redress struck some lawyers as fraught with problems and unlikely at best.

“I don’t think you’ll ever see Marc Rich personally,” said John F. Fornaciari, a Washington defense lawyer at Sheppard Mullin, who had to stifle a laugh thinking about the legal complications stemming from the flight from justice and the contested pardon.

Luckily Rich's protector-in-chief Eric Holder is all set to run the Justice Department under Hussein NObama, so soon Rich will be showered with your taxpayer dollars, somehow, just watch. [NYT]

Madoff, of course, is suspected of cheating wealthy investors for decades. That's how he was able to steal a full $50 billion!

And yet here's a video (at top) of the former Nasdaq chairman saying things like, "it's impossible for a violation to go undetected — certainly not for a considerable period of time."

He forgot to add, "unless the president is gutting the SEC's enforcement wing, or your daughter is dating the guy the SEC sent to review your books."

As Cajun Boy notes, Madoff looks very cool and collected here, even when he says "most firms do try to comply" with the law. He's smooth enough to appear on CNBC. How many more scamsters are out there?

(Original, much longer YouTube clip.)

Look who else has been added to the victim list today:

Arpad Busson, the billionaire fiancee of Uma Thurman! Busson runs a hedge fund called EIM, which has more than $150 million in exposure in Madoff's funds. You can do better, Uma.


Hollywood mogul Jeffrey Katzenberg, the CEO of Dreamworks! He lost millions. It's the Hollywood thing to do—so did Katzenberg's pal...


Steven Spielberg! His charity got swindled out of an unknown amount. Sad. But not as sad as...


Elie Wiesel, Nobel laureate and humanitarian! His charitable foundation may have been almost wiped out. That's despicable. Then there's...


Mort "Mort" Zuckerman, real estate mogul and Daily News owner! More than 10% of his charitable trust was invested with Madoff. And finally...


Frank Lautenberg, ancient New Jersey senator! His charity also took a hit.

Of course there's also a laundry list of banks and rich individuals and whatnot, which can be seen in its fullest version here. God bless whatever unlucky WSJ drones were forced to assemble it.

You'll recall:

Madoff primarily worked the so-called "Jewish circuit" in both New York and Florida, where he used his position with prominent organizations to win confidence.

Places like Palm Beach Country Club and the Boca Pointe Golf Club in Boca Raton were filled with deep-pocketed targets.

Those are the types of clubs that Jewish people started back when the damn WASPs wouldn't let them into their own fancy, racist clubs. And now it has backfired upon them! Had Jewish people never pursued the stupid, WASPy idea of founding an exclusive Florida country club for the ultra-rich, this never would have happened.

Madoff also made millions earmarked for Jewish charities disappear. Stealing from children, and education, and the arts! Wiping out the wealth of entire Jewish dynasties! Why oh why couldn't the Jews be more stereotypical, "hoarding" their wealth in gold coins in secret compartments in their homes, slipping in to embrace it every night and cackle evilly about how they were soaking the foolish Gentiles for everything they have?

Turns out that the greatest thief of Jewish wealth since the Nazis is a hedge fund crook named Bernie Madoff. I'm grasping for the ultimate significance here, but it's probably contained in the Bible, or possibly the Torah. Actual Jewish people with knowledge of these subjects, please speculate in the comments. [Pic via]

• His ignoble end: opening the door "in his upper East Side apartment in pale blue bathrobe and slippers, facing two FBI agents."
• Madoff had a super-select client list, including the co-owners of the New York Mets. A spokesman says this won't effect the team at all. Focus, Reyes.
• One competitor investigated Madoff's firm and wrote a letter in 1999 (!) to the SEC saying, "Madoff Securities is the world's largest Ponzi scheme." That dude should start his own hedge fund, tomorrow.
• Who did Madoff's scam really hurt? The rich! And the Jews! And above all, the rich Jews! He may have totally broken most of the Jewish members of the Palm Beach Country Club:
  

  He was a brilliantly successful money manager who may well have handled the assets of a majority of the 300 members, as well as that of those of a largely Jewish clientele across the eastern United States and a number of wealthy WASPs.

  Lots of Palm Beach millionaires are wiped out! And their charity money!

  There was one largely Jewish charity event last evening.
  "It was like the Titanic," one attendee said. "The ship was sinking, and people were crying, 'I lost this and that.' And everybody was drunk. The Titanic was going down, and we might as well carry on."

  College funds! Pensions! Everything! Up and down the east coast!

  “There are people who were very, very well off a few days ago who are now virtually destitute,” said Brad Friedman, a lawyer with the Milberg firm in Manhattan. “They have nothing left but their apartments or homes — which they are going to have to sell to get money to live on.”

  At least it's gone to a better place:

  And one hedge-fund manager, Douglas Kass, estimates that "at least $15 billion of wealth, much of which was concentrated in southern Florida and New York City, has gone to 'money heaven.' "

[Pic via]

1. RECLAIM: Reframing our power relationship with Companies. Driven by Icon Toppling — A new socioquake transforms mainstream America and the world as the pillars of society are questioned and rejected.
Look for: The death of the Consumer, long live the Citizen.

You will die, in other words.

2. RETRENCH: Hunkering down and praying for survival. Driven by Cocooning: Retreating to home to protect oneself from the harsh, unpredictable realities of the outside world.
We'll see that: Cuddles Trump Coupons.

This also means that you will die. The last two are "Reset" and "Reinvent" and have equally inexplicable descriptions, but the alliteration makes them true. Read all about it! Now here is your mandatory honorary Faith Popcorn salvia appreciation video of the day:

Media futurist Jack Myers knows how to make billions of dollars for the media!

Media companies need to convince investors they have the management team in place that can develop and implement a coherent and intelligent vision for the future – a future in which they will be forced to be less dependent on advertising revenues...
Go to www.JackMyers.com to see the chart or to order your free copy of Jack Myers' Investment forecast.

How exactly can all the flailing media companies scoop up these billions they've left on the table? Simple, folks:

Each media brand needs to be assessed for its potential to generate revenues from events, sales promotion, database marketing, cause related initiatives, long-tail sales, and other below-the-line marketing communications budgets.

But I don't understand. Help!

To communicate with or to be contacted by the executives and/or companies mentioned in this column, link to the JackMyers Connection Hotline.

Thanks, media futurist and "blogger" for HuffPo Jack Myers!

[Faith Popcorn]:We are going to be doing a lot of traveling on the Internet. Get me out of here — wheeee. And we’re going to be taking drugs with that travel.

WWD: Drugs, what do you mean?

F.P.: Facilitated travel. Like salvia, which is an herb. There are going to be induced or supported [Internet] trips. So we’re going to learn a lot from the Seventies.

Ha, yes. And here is exclusive video of Faith Popcorn at work:

[WWD]

Everything is different now.