Dick Fuld, Disgraced Former CEO Of Lehman Brothers, Makes Bizarre Comeback

Dick Fuld, part villain and part unforgivably very confused bystander to the financial crisis in the eyes of most -- and a victim of the financial crisis to himself -- made a bizarre comeback at a conference in New York on Thursday.

In his first public appearance (other than sworn congressional testimony) since the collapse of Lehman Brothers, Fuld blamed regulators, borrowers and rumors for the end of the 158-year-old, $47 billion firm he led. It was a “perfect storm” that sank Lehman, not his own leadership or decisions, Fuld said, while touting Lehman’s “success” to the audience. He also claimed that every one of the 27,000 employees who once worked for Lehman had been a risk manager, because they owned stock in the firm.

Lehman’s September 2008 collapse was the first of many bank failures and market seizures that fall. It sparked the financial crisis that ended in a $416 billion bank bailout and left the country mired in the Great Recession.

Fuld's comments were initially carried live on the financial news network CNBC, but the feed was pulled by conference organizers part way through his remarks. Technically, Fuld was at the conference to deliver a keynote address titled, "How Emerging Growth Companies Can Succeed in Today's Capital Markets: Perspectives from My Journey." His comments, however, were a well-rehearsed if less-than-convincing defense of his own actions leading up to the largest bankruptcy in U.S. history.

He denied that Lehman was a failed company in September 2008 and intimated that he and the firm were victims of a conspiracy centered around former competitors in regulatory positions with a vendetta against him. Fuld, nicknamed the “Gorilla” during his career for his overly aggressive style, seemed temperamentally unchanged, telling one conference questioner, “Why don’t you bite me?”

Months prior to Lehman’s fall, Fuld had declared that “the worst of the impact of the financial markets is behind us” and pushed subordinates to take more risk, sidelining or firing those who disagreed with him.

Fuld is now working at his own firm, which is focused on the kind of small deals he would have scoffed at as CEO of a massive investment bank. The venue itself was an indication of his fall: an otherwise barely noteworthy conference focused on selling shares in tiny public companies.

Nike Just Became Part Of The FIFA Corruption Scandal

It is not just FIFA officials and little-known sports marketing groups who are finding themselves in the crosshairs of the U.S.'s investigation into long-term corruption in international soccer. Nike seems to be caught up in the maelstrom as well.

Remarks by U.S. Attorney General Loretta Lynch on Wednesday, as well as indictments released by the Justice Department the same day, indicate that the iconic American corporation has been pulled into the massive global corruption scandal. Detailing the long history of bribery by some of the world's soccer governing bodies, Lynch said those offenses also extended to "agreements regarding sponsorship of the Brazilian national soccer team by a major U.S. sportswear company."

Her remarks referred to the landmark ten-year, $160 million deal that Nike struck in 1996 to sponsor the Brazil national team's well-known yellow, blue and green uniforms. Last year, Jose Hawilla, the owner and founder of the Florida- and Brazil-based sports marketing firm the Traffic Group, pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit wire fraud for, among other things, accepting and passing along bribes and kickbacks in connection with that deal. Hawilla paid these bribes and kickbacks to a senior official in the Brazilian Football federation (CBF), who signed the deal along with Hawilla and four Nike executives.

U.S. Attorney General Loretta Lynch discusses the investigation during a press conference on Wednesday.

Lynch's comments followed the Justice Department's announcement that 14 people, including nine FIFA officials, had been arrested and indicted on Wednesday on numerous charges that include "racketeering, wire fraud and money laundering conspiracies."

The Justice Department's indictment notes that Hawilla and the unnamed Brazilian official also engaged in other corrupt deals in the years following the Nike contract. While it does not accuse Nike of any wrongdoing or of any knowledge of Hawilla's corrupt practices, it is unclear to what extent Nike vetted Hawilla before allowing him to act as their middleman with the Brazilian soccer federation.

"Like fans everywhere we care passionately about the game and are concerned by the very serious allegations," Nike said in a statement to The Huffington Post on Wednesday. "Nike believes in ethical and fair play in both business and sport and strongly opposes any form of manipulation or bribery. We have been cooperating, and will continue to cooperate, with the authorities."

Nike introduced its first soccer boot in 1971, but its market share remained small. Globally, it was barely a player in a multibillion-dollar market, then dominated by its chief competitor, Adidas. In 1994, Nike began a major push to increase its presence in the soccer world. As part of this effort, the company's co-founder and chairman, Phil Knight, "openly set his sights" on sponsoring Brazil's national team that year. By 1996, the company was able to sign the deal with CBF and has supplied the Brazilian team's uniforms ever since.

Brazil soccer player Luiz Gustavo poses for pictures during the presentation of the team's new uniform for the 2014 FIFA World Cup on Nov. 24, 2013.

Now, however, Brazil's soccer federation is named in the Justice Department's investigation.

"Other alleged schemes relate to the payment and receipt of bribes and kickbacks in connection with the sponsorship of CBF by a major U.S. sportswear company, the selection of the host country for the 2010 World Cup and the 2011 FIFA presidential election," read a statement from the department.

In 2008, Nike renegotiated its contract with Brazil, which now lasts until 2018 and is expected to be worth $34 million, SportsPro Media reported last year.

Charter Communications To Buy Time Warner Cable In $55.33 Billion Deal

NEW YORK (AP) — Charter Communications will spend $55.33 billion to acquire Time Warner Cable in a cash-and-stock deal that would instantly create one of the largest pay-television and broadband operators in the U.S.

As part of the agreement, Charter will also buy Bright House Networks for more than $10 billion.

Charter will provide $100 in cash and shares of a new public parent company equal to 0.5409 shares of Charter for each outstanding Time Warner Cable Inc. share. The transaction values each Time Warner Cable share at about $195.71.

The companies on Tuesday valued Time Warner Cable at a total of $78.7 billion.

Shares of Charter Communications Inc. are up more than 3 percent in premarket trading.

Women Need To Listen To This Advice Given To Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer

You may think the advice that one super-successful corporate titan gives to another super-successful almost-CEO is something you can safely ignore.

Yet the last thing that Google founder Sergey Brin told Marissa Mayer right before she ascended to the throne of chief executive of Yahoo is something we all need to hear. Especially women.

In an interview with Patricia Sellers at Fortune, Mayer dished about the guidance Brin gave her in the minutes before Yahoo announced her appointment back in 2012. She said that Brin gave her all sorts of minor advice that she later wound up acting on -- like changing the Yahoo logo, one of the first things she did as CEO.

But as she was headed out the door, Brin called her back, Mayer told Sellers. "'Marissa, wait! Don’t forget to be bold,'" he said.

That’s it. That’s the advice women need to hear. Because many of us have confidence issues. I reported earlier Wednesday on a new study that offered up more evidence of the problem. The study revealed that female college students are less confident about their job and salary prospects than men.

It is the latest brick in a hard wall of evidence that shows women hold themselves back at work by not aiming higher. Facebook Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg talked about the issue in her highly publicized book “Lean In,” and the Atlantic published a long piece last year called the Confidence Gap that detailed a lot of depressing examples of women’s propensity to be very much not bold.

In one anecdote, authors Katty Kay and Claire Shipman tell the story of their friend who supervises two direct reports: Rebecca and Robert. Rebecca plugs away at her job, diligently doing good work. When she needs to talk to the boss, she makes an appointment. She doesn’t speak up in client meetings. When she gets tough feedback, sometimes she cries. Meanwhile, Robert is at the boss’s office door constantly with new ideas. A lot of them are bad, but he doesn’t seem to care.

Kay and Shipman wrote:

Our friend had come to rely on and value Rebecca, but she had a feeling it was Robert’s star that would rise. It was only a matter of time before one of his many ideas would strike the right note, and he’d be off and running—probably, our friend was beginning to fear, while Rebecca was left behind, enjoying the respect of her colleagues but not a higher salary, more responsibilities, or a more important title.

Of course, as the authors note, women are often in a double-bind when it comes to boldness. Women who are bossy and decisive at work are often labeled as "bitches." But things are changing, thanks to people like Sandberg and Mayer herself.

We can also thank some great new female comics. In a recent episode of “Inside Amy Schumer” called “I’m Sorry,” there’s a hilarious takedown of the female propensity to undersell ourselves and apologize for no reason. It involves a fake panel of women geniuses who step over themselves with self-deprecating nonsense.

You should check it out. Meanwhile, I’m so sorry for taking up your time with this.

Los Angeles Votes To Raise Minimum Wage To $15

Los Angeles on Tuesday became the biggest U.S. city to raise its minimum wage to $15 an hour.

Following a hot debate, the city council voted 14 to 1 to approve a plan to gradually increase the required wage to $15 an hour by July 2020. The current $9-an-hour minimum wage was already slated to increase to $10 in January.

The pay bump will affect about 567,000 workers in the city.

“This is a game changer,” Tsedeye Gebreselassie, a senior staff attorney at the wage advocacy group National Employment Law Project, told The Huffington Post minutes after the vote. “L.A. is such a huge city, and it’ll have a national impact on the normalization of $15 as the minimum wage.”

The move comes less than a year after the city council voted to raise hourly pay to $15.37 for nearly 10,000 hotel workers.

The debate over the new minimum wage divided the city. Business groups, including the Los Angeles Chamber of Commerce and the Valley Industry and Commerce Association, warned that the increase would hurt small companies and lead to layoffs.

“A lot of businesses are going to struggle,” Stuart Waldman, president of the Valley Industry and Commerce Association, told HuffPost minutes after the vote. “There’s a lot of employees are going to get raises, but there’s also some employees that are going to lose their jobs.”

Los Angeles, the nation’s second-largest city, joins other West Coast cities, including Seattle and San Francisco, which raised their hourly wages to $15 following waves of protests across the country. Meanwhile, the federal minimum wage has stagnated at a paltry $7.25 an hour for the last four years, despite calls to raise it from President Barack Obama.

“You can see over the course of two years, there’s an evolution of position on what a reasonable minimum wage is,” John Schmitt, research director at the liberal-leaning nonprofit Washington Center for Equitable Growth, told The Huffington Post ahead of the vote. “There’s political activity taking place at city and state level, and it’s moved the national debate.”

The city-by-city approach represents one of a two-pronged strategy by activists to increase minimum wages across the country. The second, centered around the wage activism group Fight for $15, has seen mass demonstrations against fast-food companies, which are some of the largest employers of minimum-wage workers.

“It’s highlighted for the American public that raising wages isn’t just about helping workers and making sure people who are struggling to have enough to get by,” Gebreselassie said. “It’s to address income inequality and have truly meaningful economic recovery.”

“People like me, who work hard for multibillion-dollar corporations like McDonald’s, should not have to rely on food stamps to survive,” Albina Ardon, a 29-year-old mother of two who works at a McDonald’s in Los Angeles, said in a statement sent by a Fight for $15 spokeswoman. “My life would be completely different if I were paid $14 an hour. I could afford groceries without needing food stamps, my family could stop sharing our apartment with renters for extra money, and I’d be able to provide my daughters with some security.”

The wage hike will face one final council vote later this year after City Attorney Mike Feuer drafts a plan to implement the new base pay.

Why A Wegmans In Brooklyn Is Great News For Low-Income Locals

The announcement that Wegmans plans to open a Brooklyn store sent a wave of excitement through New Yorkers on Wednesday. The proposed grocery store, slotted to open in 2017, would bring affordable food prices to a segment of the Fort Greene neighborhood that has long been waiting for its own high-quality supermarket.

The site sits next to the Farragut Houses, a public housing project near the Brooklyn Navy Yard, a city-owned industrial park on the East River. For many years, residents had little access to cheap grocery stores with large selections of fresh foods, even as new buyers poured money into historic townhouses and luxury condos several blocks away.

Back in 2010, former Mayor Michael Bloomberg's administration committed to a redevelopment plan for the dilapidated houses along Admiral’s Row at the Navy Yard. The plan included the construction of a supermarket, but it never got off the ground. Two potential developers had already pulled out by the time Steiner NYC secured its bid this week, with a Wegmans store anchoring the project.

The Navy Yard is situated along the northern border of Fort Greene, where home prices have climbed steadily over the last five years, according to market data from real estate website Trulia.

Townhouses within a quarter-mile of city housing are selling for around $1,100 per square foot, said Jerry Minsky, a broker at Douglas Elliman who also lives in Fort Greene. “You’re getting a lot of people from Europe and Manhattan with an extreme level of wealth,” Minsky said, adding that the area is “going through this Shangri-La now of being great for young professionals” who are making investments with parental support.

As a result, goods and services are also becoming more costly. A few affordable grocery stores in Fort Greene have already or will soon be shuttered, and public housing residents often travel several miles to Costco and Pathmark for lower prices, according to The New York Times.

“It’s hard for people on a lower income to deal with the cost of living when the neighborhood reaches a crescendo like in Fort Greene,” Minsky said. “I can go to a bodega and get organic if I choose it, but some people can’t afford that.”

The arrival of Wegmans, known for its fresh produce and low prices, will likely be a relief for its new neighbors. The store is also looking forward to serving the local community, said Jo Natale, a spokeswoman for the chain. It will begin by creating jobs, with an initial hiring round of 450 employees, many of them locals. Wegmans hopes its Brooklyn store will eventually employ as many as 600 people.

The chain had been looking to open a store in New York, but first needed a substantial plot of land. “This one is 74,000 square feet and large by New York standards,” Natale said of the Admiral's Row location.

The retailer was eager to settle in the Navy Yard when the site was proposed, having previously worked with the developer Steiner NYC on two New Jersey stores in Bridgewater and Manalapan.

Wegmans is still a relatively small retailer, with just 85 stores, mostly located in upstate New York and the mid-Atlantic region. But its popularity is buoyed by a cult-like following of devoted customers and a strong reputation for employee compensation. It’s been named the best supermarket in the country several times.

“Even this morning, we’ve been surprised by the reaction on social media,” Natale said Wednesday. “It’s very heartwarming. We are by most measures a small regional supermarket chain, and it makes it even more exciting to look forward to the opening.”

For now, Steiner doesn't expect the $140 million redevelopment project to impact nearby housing prices.

“New York is so dense that I don’t think it will change the fundamental dynamics of the neighborhood,” said Doug Steiner, chairman of Steiner NYC and Steiner Studios, one of the largest soundstages outside Hollywood and the set of several HBO shows, including "Girls."

As part of the redevelopment deal, Steiner NYC will preserve two buildings on the site. One will be converted into a community facility, and the other set aside for retail or light industrial space, Steiner said.

In addition, the firm will restore an area of around 20 acres near Kent Ave. as part of a studio expansion.

“Wegmans checks all the boxes in terms of affordability and quality, and they’re fantastic employers,” Steiner said. “They’re the ideal supermarket, and it’s long overdue for the area, both for shopping and job opportunities.”

The States With The Most Stay-At-Home Fathers

Not too long ago, it was practically unheard of for a father to raise his children full-time instead of working for money. In the 1970s, only six U.S. men identified themselves as stay-at-home parents. Not 6 percent -- six men, in the entire country.

Last year, by contrast, an estimated 1.9 million fathers remained home with the kids -- accounting for 16 percent of the stay-at-home parent population, according to a HuffPost analysis of U.S. Census data.

That’s definitely a huge step forward for fathers seeking to shed the stigma that still lingers around the idea of a man as primary caretaker. But the figure comes with a significant caveat: Most fathers aren't staying home voluntarily. According to one prominent researcher, 80 percent of those 1.9 million dads would be working outside the home if they could.

The reasons why any parent might stay home are complex and often very personal. The job market is certainly a factor, but the cost of child care and cultural issues also likely play a key role, says Noelle Chesley, an associate professor of sociology at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee who has researched stay-at-home fathers.

The Huffington Post took a state-by-state look at men as stay-at-home caregivers, as seen in the map and table in this article. We found some instances where high proportions of dad caregivers seemed to correspond with high unemployment rates. In West Virginia, for example, where men account for an estimated 30 percent of stay-at-home parents, the unemployment rate is 6.6 percent -- well above the national average of 5.4 percent -- and the percentage of adults who are employed is the lowest in the nation.

Yet elsewhere, the correlation did not hold. In South Dakota, for example, 39 percent of stay-at-home parents are fathers, but unemployment is comparatively low.

The very definition of "stay-at-home dad" is also up for debate. The Census Bureau defines the term very narrowly, excluding same-sex partners, single dads and parents of kids who are older than 15, as well the fathers in families where both parents do not work.

Our analysis used a broader definition: any father who's been unemployed for at least a year, and who is also at home with a child or children under 18. With this approach, we sought to replicate the methodology used by the Pew Research Center in a 2014 report.

[Click the column header to sort the data]