And not for anything trivial.
Since the feds allowed the General Motors Acceptance Corporation to
become a bank, a kindness worth billions to this automobile lending
company and to other combines that were able to shift their character
overnight, one would have thought that the authorities would look closely
at who runs these shops.
Well, J. Ezra Merkin happens to be the chairman of the board of
GMAC. Yes, the same Merkin who has been complicit in the Madoff
criminal enterprise and who took his clients, charities of all sorts and
families, super-rich families, too be sure (others wouldn't have been
worth his precious time) to the cleaners. That is, they are cleaned
out, and he was compensated for every dime they lost at the rate of 1
1/2% per annum.
Now, it's true that the papers have been peculiarly inattentive to
Merkin's activities at GMAC. They haven't reported his role in the
company, even in their dispatches telling the public that GMAC is also
lapping off the bailout.
Surely, Henry Paulson knows about Merkin's chairmanship. Merkin has
resigned as president of the Fifth Avenue Synagogue (great cantor there,
by the way) and as treasurer of Yeshiva University. Why should he
not be compelled to resign from a post that has him supping off the
public trough?