Reverse Spin: Congress’ compassionate conservatives

Something is always better than nothing.

President Bush on Wednesday signed into law the third tax cut package in three years. The cuts total $350 billion, less than half what he originally wanted.

Nevertheless, Mr. Bush has embraced the plan, calling it an “essential action to strengthen the American economy.”

The tax cut is the third-largest in history, even though the president recently derided it as “little bitty,” according to Reuters.

Of course, it will end up being small potatoes for some. A last-minute revision by congressional leaders will prevent millions of minimum-wage families from receiving the increased child credit that is in the measure.

“I think this tax bill is very irresponsible in the way it treats families,” Sen. Blanche Lincoln, D-Ark., reportedly said.

Wearing a halo

Here’s another Wall Streeter who got bitten in the you-know-what by a damning e-mail and is now claiming that he’s as pure as the driven snow.

Frank Quattrone, the former star investment banker who ran the technology group of Credit Suisse First Boston Corp. of New York until he resigned in March, pleaded not guilty Tuesday to criminal charges of obstructing justice and tampering with witnesses.

“I’m innocent,” Mr. Quattrone told a U.S. district judge in Manhattan.

Now he has to explain why he forwarded a colleague’s e-mail to CSFB employees which urged them to “catch up on file cleaning” amid a government investigation of the way the firm had handled initial public offerings.

Fed-up investor

Greed may be good, but it can catch up with you.

A shareholder of Boston-based John Hancock Financial Services Inc. has decided he’s mad as hell, and he’s not going to take it anymore.

Aaron E. Landy Jr., a shareholder from Southlake, Texas, filed a civil lawsuit in federal court Wednesday over the compensation of the firm’s chief executive and other top officers.

Mr. Landy wants the company to return much of the $42.3 million the officers received in compensation last year.

Hancock CEO David F. D’Alessandro received total compensation of $21.7 million in 2002, more than double his 2001 take. This was in spite of the fact that the firm’s stock price plunged 32%, and its earnings slid 15% last year.

Hancock’s board “breached its fiduciary duty to act lawfully,” the complaint states. The company called the suit “frivolous.”

Hocus-pocus

Here we go again.

NASD has charged a former Merrill Lynch & Co. Inc. equities analyst with issuing misleading research on Tyco International Ltd. Merrill is located in New York.

The regulatory organization said that Phua K. Young’s ties to Tyco were too close, and his research didn’t reflect his private concerns about the Bermuda company.

Mr. Young flew on Tyco’s corporate jets, according to NASD. The former analyst wrote glowing reports about the troubled company from 1999 to early 2002.

NASD also said Mr. Young shared advance copies of his research reports with Tyco and improperly disseminated non-public information about the company.

“The conduct of this analyst, as evidenced by his own e-mails, gifts to the CEO of Tyco and favors he received from the company amounted to a betrayal of objectivity and honesty in research,” said Mary Schapiro, NASD’s vice chairman of regulatory policy and oversight.

Closing Quote

“This is just another group of pretenders to the throne trying to hitch their caboose to the gravy train of hedge funds.”

– James R. Hedges IV, president of LJH Global Investments LLC, on the growing number of traditional advisers who, though insufficiently prepared, are launching hedge funds. Page 3