NON-PROFIT ORGANIZATIONS WERE DUPED BY A PONZI SCHEMER

BERNARD MADOFF established a reputation in Wall street only to be uncovered that he is a fraud and a scammer using the old Ponzi scheme. His total loot..50 billion dollars.

Deborah Coltin learned yesterday morning that the $8 million foundation she has led for a decade, which supported a wide range of Jewish programs on the north shore of Massachusetts, did not actually exist.

The foundation had invested its endowment with Bernard L. Madoff, a storied name on Wall Street. Every year, Madoff paid out several hundred thousand dollars to the foundation. But on Thursday, Madoff was charged with securities fraud after confessing to his sons that his business was a Ponzi scheme, according to a complaint filed by the Securities and Exchange Commission. The returns paid to investors came from money invested by other people. And there was almost nothing left.

It may be the largest fraud in the history of Wall Street, authorities said. Madoff is charged with stealing as much as $50 billion, in part to cover a pattern of massive losses, even as he cultivated a reputation as a financial mastermind and prominent philanthropist.

War is all about global oil supply--Greenspan

Alan Greenspan admitted that the war is all aobut global oil supply and the ouster of Saddam is crucial for oil security.


Greenspan: Ouster Of Hussein Crucial For Oil Security

Alan Greenspan, the former Federal Reserve chairman, said in an interview that the removal of Saddam Hussein had been "essential" to secure world oil supplies, a point he emphasized to the White House in private conversations before the 2003 invasion of Iraq.

Greenspan, who was the country's top voice on monetary policy at the time Bush decided to go to war in Iraq, has refrained from extensive public comment on it until now, but he made the striking comment in a new memoir out today that "the Iraq War is largely about oil." In the interview, he clarified that sentence in his 531-page book, saying that while securing global oil supplies was "not the administration's motive," he had presented the White House with the case for why removing Hussein was important for the global economy.

Read the entire news here.

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Trade Secrets are Trade Secrets

Trade secrets are trade secrets. Steal it and you will be convicted when caught.

The excerpt of the news:

ATLANTA - A federal judge ignored a former Coca-Cola secretary’s tearful plea for mercy Wednesday and sentenced her to eight years in prison for conspiring to steal trade secrets from the world’s largest beverage maker.

U.S. District Judge J. Owen Forrester told Joya Williams, 42, that he was giving her a longer sentence than recommended by federal prosecutors and sentencing guidelines because, “This is the kind of offense that cannot be tolerated in our society.”

Williams had faced up to 10 years in prison on the single conspiracy charge in a failed scheme to sell Coke’s trade secrets to rival Pepsi for at least $1.5 million.

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Google Aims To Revitalize Advertising On Radio

More about Google advertising strategies.


Google Aims To Revitalize Advertising On Radio

By Sara Kehaulani Goo
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, December 9, 2006; D01

Last week, listeners in Boston and Sacramento heard a commercial for Floorone.com, a small Internet company that aired its first radio ad with the help of Google Inc.

Until recently, Fred Yazdizadeh, owner of the Simi Valley, Calif., company, said radio air time was too expensive and the process of creating an audio message had been too daunting to consider. But under a new program being tested by Google, Yazdizadeh's ad was affordable and easy to manage. And, more important, it generated calls from potential customers living in the areas where the ad was broadcast.

"What Google is doing now is so good because I can now penetrate any market area I want," said Yazdizadeh. "It's going to take my business to the next level."

By tapping into its customer base of millions of small online advertisers, Google is looking to transform old media by removing the middleman, such as a radio station's ad department, and make it easier for small companies to gain access to radio, magazines and newspapers through the same types of online auctions that Google has used to sell its popular search ads.

This week, the company formally launched a test of the program, following almost a year of experimentation since it acquired dMarc Broadcasting, a small radio advertising firm, for $102 million in cash last January. DMarc had developed a technology that allowed radio stations to sell excess ad inventory at the last minute, using online tools.

Here's how the Google program works: A small advertiser logs into Google's Web site and creates a radio ad campaign online, selecting the geographical area, demographics of the radio audience, time of day and radio format. The advertiser bids on how much it is willing to pay to buy the air time, but doesn't know the exact station that will carry the ad.

If the advertiser doesn't already have a radio ad created, Google provides access to on-air talent and producers who bid on the job, allowing the two sides to negotiate the price and content.

The radio stations can see how many advertisers bid on each slot, listen to an ad and choose or reject one -- all online. Google makes a commission off of the transaction with the radio station.

"One of our primary objectives is to mobilize and introduce radio to our extensive advertising base and also introduce new advertisers to radio," said Ryan Steelberg, a founder of dMarc and now head of radio operations at Google. "If we can mobilize a few thousand advertisers, it's great for Google and great for radio broadcasters."

Some radio executives have expressed concern that Google's entry could force their own sales teams to compete against the search giant for the biggest customers and eventually degrade the value of a radio commercial. But others see Google's approach as a low-risk opportunity that could help bolster radio companies' lackluster results in recent years.

National radio advertising sales grew 2 percent from January to September, according to Radio Ink, an industry publication, but local ad sales during the period fell 1 percent. Next year, radio ad revenues are expected to rise 2 percent, said Mark R. Fratrik, vice president of BIA Financial Network.

Google's radio ad system "really has potential," Fratrik said. "It will take a little while, just because it's a new technique. . . . We will be seeing some impact in a year or two."

The search giant faces competition from SoftWave Media Exchange, which has a similar online technology and also sells cable television ads through its Web site. SoftWave's chief operating officer, Bill Figenshu, said Google lacked many big-market radio stations as part of its network, and its emphasis on small advertisers and excess inventory would go only so far in terms of generating sales.

"There isn't a market for all those small little advertisers to be on these big radio stations," he said. "The flower shop in Reston can't afford to be on WTOP."

But broadcasters participating in the Google test said they have been satisfied with the results.

XM Satellite Radio executive D. Scott Karnedy said Google had sold "hundreds, if not thousands of ads" since August. Rick Cummings, president of Emmis Radio, which owns 23 stations, said the experiment has not had an impact on his company's bottom line but has been worthwhile, regardless.

"There's been so much fear of Google -- they are red hot and we aren't," Cummings said. "We think doing more things in a Google-like manner might rub off on this industry and would be good for it."

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