Tell It To Al

Former Denver Broncos QB John Elway has been mum on his multimillion-dollar losses in a Ponzi scheme since April when the hedge fund manager he entrusted with his money turned out to be just another Bernie Madoff wannabe.

Elway has declined all requests for comment – except one, which he answered last week with a simple declarative sentence. And from the sound of it, Elway is just as mad at me as he is at Sean Mueller, the confessed Ponzi schemer who blew all his money.

Click here to read why.

“Flagrant violations” and “unethical practices” at a major U.S. bank?

Say it ain’t so.

Speculation runs rampant that Wikileaks is about to blow the lid off something at a major bank, and that bank may be Bank of America. Click here for the details in The Wall Street Journal.

Scuttlebutt, rumors, inuendo – maybe - but who puts anything past a bank these days? Bank of America denies knowledge. Wikileaks is just going to make us wait and see.

Too bad, Bank of America can’t bank on a solid reputation in times like these.

Another sluggish year for retailers. Is consumerism dead?

Black Friday sales, if nothing else, marked a third year of sluggish consumerism since the recession officially began in December 2007.

So many nameplate retailers – from Circuit City to Linens N’ Things – have simply vanished  over these years. But what I find amazing are some of the stores that survive. Who’d have thought, for instance, that as the great slog went on, we’d still be shopping at Sears. 

Click here to read column.

Ever have that feeling you’re shopping in a store that should have been wiped out? Tell me your “I can’t believe it’s still here” story.

I am thankful the global economic collapse didn’t totally unfold – at least not yet.

Click here to read my column.

It would have been fun watching two giant banks ringing each others’ throats in courts, except that neither of these banks would exist in their current form if it weren’t for taxpayer bailouts.

When it comes to big banks, it seems like whoever wins, the taxpayers lose. 

Click here to read my column.

What kind of a crook doesn’t leave his secretary enough of a slush fund to make bail in the event that the entire criminal enterprise is shut down?

Bernie Madoff had the foresight to confess his crimes, and even the loyalty to claim that the crimes were his alone, but history’s biggest Ponzi schemer couldn’t find $5 million for his longtime secretary to make bail?

Annette Bongiorno, 62, will be transferred from Florida to New York to face charges. A federal magistrate judge ruled she can’t be free until someone comes up with sufficient assets to secure  bail.

Last week, the feds arrested Bongiorno, who worked for Madoff for more than 40 years, from her home in Boca Raton, Fla. They also nailed JoAnn Crupi, who worked for him 25 years from her home in Westfield, N.J. 

Charged with conspiracy, securities fraud and other crimes, Madoff’s personal assistants bring the total number of people charged in the case to eight.

They face decades in prison if convicted. Their boss is already serving a 150 years.

Wonder what kind of cards they’ll send on Bosses Day.

Why is that whenever spiritual leaders talk about sin, they are really just talking about their own misdeeds?

New Jersey pastor Cedric Miller was again preaching that Facebook leads to infidelity on Sunday, telling people to cancel their accounts, according to the Asbury Park Press.

Now, he’s offering to leave his church over a past affair of his own. OK, it was 10 years ago. He apologized. And it is the Jersey Shore.

But the preacher’s affair was reportedly a three-way thing with his wife and a male church worker. Click here to read more from the Asbury Park Press.

Facebook is indeed a handy tool for having an affair, but so is the car, the telephone and the Visa card. And the Rev. here proves you don’t need Facebook to have a rather unusual affair.

What do you think? Are you more likely to have an affair because of Facebook and other social media sites?

I am swimming in emails and comments today from readers – most of whom are angered, and even terrified, by the TSA’s enhanced security procedures.

Travelers selected for the TSA’s new imaging machines have a choice.

They can be exposed to a high-tech strip search, which includes a naked photo and a dose of radiation with debateable health effects. Or they can be patted-down everywhere, including groin and breasts.

Whatever happened to the Constitutional protection against unreasonable searches and seizures?

Lawsuits are flying. And there’s an National Opt-Out-Day slated for Nov. 24. Organizers are asking travelers to opt out of the scanner on that day and submit to a hand search. If everyone requested a hand search, the TSA would sure be busy, and the airport operations could come to a crawl.

Has the TSA gone too far? Or will anything go in the name of protecting us from terrorists?

Also, this just in. Another protest is being organized for Dec. 1 that aims to shut down airports with protesters. Check out shutdowntheairports.com.

Denver money manager Tom Marsico played the 1990s mutual fund bubble perfectly.

He delivered 20%-plus returns to investors at Janus mutual funds. He left the firm in 1997 and started his own namesake mutual fund company.

He then sold the company he built in less than three years to Bank of America for $1 billion, and continued to work there, racking up respectable gains for his investors, as always.

But Marsico made the biggest leveraged bet of his life just before the mortgage bubble popped. In 2007, he bought back his firm from Bank of America for about $2.5 billion.

Why was he so right in the late 1990s and early 2000s, and so wrong in 2007?

Marsico has an answer.

Click here to read it in my column.