Bloomberg: Crane Collapse ‘Intolerable’The mayor gives developers and union leaders a piece of his mind at a press conference on this morning’s crane collapse, students and colleagues of a popular Wall Street figure are flabbergasted by the SEC charges filed against him, and CNN’s Jessica Yellin gets into a war of words about the war.
in other news
Bloomberg’s Secret PainThe mayor was supposed to have a part in the ‘Sex and the City’ movie, but then “something came up.” OR SO THEY SAID.
Bloomberg’s Baby Problems: They Just Keep Popping OutFINANCE
• Another woman joined the federal discrimination lawsuit against Bloomberg LP. After her first child in 2005, her pay fell and her colleagues turned into sharks. One supervisor even asked, “What is this, your third baby?” [NYT]
• More of the same on the Street: Bank of America wrote down $3 billion, Bear Stearns $1.2 billion, and British bank HSBC took the cake with $3.4 billion, largely due to U.S. mortgage weaknesses. Meanwhile, Goldman CEO Lloyd Blankfein laughed in everyone’s face, predicting no more write-downs (not that they lost much in the first place) at the Teflon bank. [NYP, NYT, NYT, DealBreaker]
• Is the credit crunch just like Enron all over again? So says Bethany McLean, the reporter who first broke Ken Lay’s fraud wide open. [Fortune]
it just happened
Bloomberg’s Got Mommy IssuesThe federal government filed a lawsuit today against Mayor Michael
Bloomberg’s company, Bloomberg L.P., after receiving complaints from three senior-level executives at the company and finding “a pattern or practice of wrongful discrimination against females based on their sex and pregnancy by decreasing their pay, demoting them, diminishing their job duties and excluding them from other employment opportunities when they become pregnant and when they return from maternity leave.” According to a copy of the suit obtained by New York, the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission claims that after their pregnancies some of Bloomberg’s female employees were demoted, isolated from meetings and other employees without justification, and told, “You are not committed” and “You do not want to be here” by their superiors. When Bloomberg’s pregnant staffers complained, the lawsuit alleges, their complaints were dismissed. A Bloomberg spokeswoman could not be reached for immediate comment.—Geoffrey Gray
Related: Baby Bust at Bloomberg? [NYM]
Chairman Mike [NYM]
UPDATE: From Bloomberg spokeswoman Judith Czelusniak: “We believe strongly that this lawsuit is without merit and we will defend the case vigorously.”
(You can download a copy of the suit here)
in other news
Except for at Bloomberg, It’s Not Easy Being GreenAnother day, another company going green: Today it’s Bloomberg LP (which, frankly, was a bit of a surprise; we’d assumed Mike’s moneymaker has long been running on, oh, let’s say discarded trans fats). It was only a matter of time, then, before we’d see some sort of backlash from the “traditional” utility forces. In California, L.A.’s Department of Water & Power (yes, the corporate villain of Chinatown) has pulled the plug on Gore Vidal’s home solar-power plant, literally ripping out the wires and taking down the panels. Supposedly the system was improperly installed; now Vidal is back on the grid like a good little customer.