Detroit Economic Club cancels Steve Rattner; Bloomberg pal Rattner continues book tour while not in jail for illegal bribes

• Update #4, 12/7/11, "The Auto Czar Hangs Up," Planet Gore

Rattner went on WJR radio in Detroit on 12/7/11 to hype his book, hung up on a caller who asked about his SEC judgement.

• Update #3: 10/19, Steve Rattner speaking engagement canceled by Detroit Economic Club. ""When you accept a multimillion-dollar fine from the SEC, it doesn't seem appropriate to have him speak here.""...

Update #2: Instead of going to jail, Rattner was free to pitch his book Friday on Fox Business News, per WSJ.com, "Rattner on GM bailout: Taxpayer hit won't be more than $10 or 20 billion,"

• "Rattner, of course, was on Fox Business to plug his new book about his time as the “car czar.” He didn’t mention the possible settlement of an SEC probe into his role in a pay-to-play scheme involving the New York state pension fund. SEC commissioners on Thursday tabled a scheduled vote on the settlement, the Journal reported.
  
• UPDATE: Rattner said in the interview that his attorneys have made it clear he cannot talk about the situation until it is resolved."....(These guys seem to be media addicts in addition to everything else, ed.)
  

Update: It's a miracle Ruling Class manipulators ever get charged with a crime. The SEC charge against Rattner should have happened long ago, or at least yesterday. It's postponement enabled the shameless Rattner to go on public radio today and plug his new book.

• Rattner should long ago have left the stage, but like Bloomberg he has no reason to fear government regulators because they don't exist. It's one big crime family.
  

It was even said Rattner wanted to be Treasury Secretary in a Democrat White House. Steve Rattner's elegant book party Tuesday night for the glitterati was hosted by New York's Mayor Bloomberg and NY Times publisher, Arthur "Pinch" Sulzberger. Why not,

• Rattner is Bloomberg's idea of a "great public servant." (4/24/09).

The now crumbling career of Steve Rattner began as a journalist at the New York Times. It is a common mistake to assume that an academically smart person should be writing newspaper articles.

Joe Klein says people like Steve Rattner are the reason we have the Tea Party today (which like the NY Times, Time Magazine may view as a national embarrassment).

• Mayor Bloomberg is a fierce ally and business partner to this day of Rattner.

Steve Rattner's $5 million slap on the wrist fine and 2 year banishment from SEC transactions was leaked earlier today and hasn't yet been publicly announced. Rattner has reportedly long fought announcement of wrongdoing on his part wishing to avoid embarrassment.

Forbes.com Weinberg, 10/14/10, "Former Obama Administration car czar Rattner’s apparent crimes:

• defrauding the people and
  

• perjuring himself to downplay his involvement.

As punishment for what are arguably among the most heinous sorts of financial crimes, the centi-millionaire will apparently be forced by the Securities and Exchange Commission to cough up $5 million or $6 million and steer at least partly clear of Wall Street for a couple of years. If past is any precedent, Rattner won’t even be required to admit to wrongdoing."...

10/13/10, NY Observer, Abelson: "It's important to understand that he isn't just an important person,

• he is a very specific kind of a very important New York person.
  

He works for important clients at important banks, writes important books, throws important parties in important homes, keeps important friends, is called on to do important things in the capital, and has a wife that does important Democratic Party fundraising. That will all change depending on how long his ban is, and how Mr. Rattner settles the remaining charges with New York State Attorney General Andrew Cuomo.

Allegedly, Mr. Rattner paid the political operative Hank Morris more than $1 million in exchange for a $100 million investment from the state's pension fund, and had a subsidiary of his firm pay $88,841 to buy up the DVD rights to a lowbrow comedy called Chooch, produced by state official David Loglisci and his brothers. Earlier this year, Mr. Loglisci pled guilty to a corruption charge."

• 10/13/10 from the NY Times, "Thwarted Ambitions for Rattner, a Financial Tycoon"

"On Tuesday night, Steven L. Rattner was surrounded by an assemblage of stars from the financial and media worlds at the Four Seasons restaurant in Manhattan. Chief executives and powerful politicians had gathered to celebrate his new book on the restructuring of the American auto industry.

Few if any of the guests sipping sauvignon blanc and snacking on crab cakes could have guessed that Mr. Rattner was near a settlement with the Securities and Exchange Commission over illegal kickbacks to New York State pension fund officials.

In many ways, the high-wattage at the party traced the career arc of Mr. Rattner, 58, who has been a financial reporter,

• an esteemed media investment banker,
  

• a highflying private equity executive and
  

• a member of the Obama administration.

Many believed that Mr. Rattner had set his sights even higher — to become Treasury secretary in a Democratic administration. If he held such national ambitions, they have now likely been vanquished by a scandal involving

• corruption at the New York state pension fund.

The legal morass has ensnared Mr. Rattner for the last 18 months. A settlement with the Securities and Exchange Commission, including a multiyear ban from the securities industry and a multimillion dollar fine, over illegal kickbacks to officials at the New York State pension fund may be announced as soon as Thursday.

The scandal involved associates of Alan Hevesi, former New York State comptroller. Mr. Hevesi and others have pleaded guilty to charges that private equity executives paid for access to pension fund officials. The investigations, by the S.E.C. and Attorney General Andrew M. Cuomo of New York, have tarnished others in the private equity industry, including the Carlyle Group and the firm Mr. Rattner helped found, the Quadrangle Group, which have settled charges.

They have also changed the way these firms solicit business from big pension funds, eliminating a sometimes shadowy world of informal middlemen that arrange meetings between potential investors and investment funds. The New York State and City pension funds now forbid the use of agents who connect officials with investment firms, though the practice continues in other parts of the country.

And the impact of the so-called “pay to play” investigations has reached far beyond New York and Quadrangle.

• On Tuesday, the California Public Employees Retirement System cut ties to the Pacific Corporate Group, another firm that has settled charges with Mr. Cuomo.

But few buyout figures were as affected as Mr. Rattner, who while at Quadrangle helped distribute a film produced by the New York pension fund’s chief investment officer. Mr. Rattner had long been the most prominent target of the investigations, which continued after he left Quadrangle

• last year to join the Obama administration.

Raised on Long Island, Mr. Rattner graduated from Brown University in 1974. He became a reporter at The New York Times in its Washington and London bureaus. He then left journalism to pursue banking, moving from Lehman Brothers to Morgan Stanley and then Lazard as an investment banker.

Along the way, he became known as a top-flight mergers and acquisitions expert who specialized in media companies, brokering deals on behalf of companies like Viacom and Comcast.

• Vanity Fair once described Mr. Rattner as “the most talked about investment banker of his generation,”
  

a smooth negotiator whose advice won the confidences of moguls like the telecom entrepreneur Craig McCaw and Brian L. Roberts, the chief executive of Comcast. His parties at his homes on Fifth Avenue and Martha’s Vineyard,

• which drew the likes of Charlie Rose and Charles Schumer, were often the buzz of the town.

He also rose as high as Lazard’s deputy chief executive, though he clashed frequently with Felix G. Rohatyn, the firm’s senior deal-maker.

But Mr. Rattner left in 2000 to pursue yet another career change, banding together with three other Lazard partners to form Quadrangle. While there, he pursued leveraged buyouts of media companies like the takeovers of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer and most of the American titles of Dennis Publishing, including men’s magazines like Maxim and Stuff. (Some of those investments have faltered;

• M.G.M. is close to filing a prepackaged bankruptcy that will wipe out its equity holders, including Quadrangle.)

Mr. Rattner had also sought to gain influence in the Democratic Party, giving millions of dollars to candidates like Hillary Rodham Clinton and Barack Obama. His appointment as the White House’s car czar, in charge of its ambitious plan to reorganize General Motors and Chrysler, was in part the

• culmination of years of hosting fund-raisers and writing opinion articles on economic issues in major newspapers.

After assiduously working his way up the New York media and financial worlds, Mr. Rattner drew an elite crowd on Tuesday night. Among the guests at Tuesday’s book party were Henry R. Kravis of Kohlberg Kravis Roberts, Millard S. Drexler of J. Crew

• and Tina Brown of The Daily Beast.

His closest friends include the co-hosts of his book party, Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg of New York City and Arthur Sulzberger Jr., the publisher of The New York Times, as well as Mr. Roberts of Comcast."