Manhattan, NY, United States (AHN) – The trustee appointed by the court to run after hedge fund operator Bernard Madoff’s millions told the court Tuesday that the bank account of Madoff’s wife, Ruth, received at least $14 million from the fraud.

Irving Picard, based his claims on monthly bank statements, canceled checks and other financial records of the Madoff couple from January 2002 to December 2008.

Picard said the money that was deposited in Ruth’s personal bank account came from the companies established by her husband.

When the Ponzi scheme of Madoff collapsed in 2008, the funds become property of Madoff’s clients, Picard argued when he filed a lawsuit in 2009 against Ruth.

Ruth, who is scheduled to respond to the lawsuit on March 31, gave up houses, jewelry and bank accounts to the U.S. government in June 2009.

According to reports, she has severed ties with Bernard and no longer visits him in jail after their son Mark took his life late last year out of shame.

She has moved to Florida from New York and lives a more frugal life. Friends of Ruth said she barely spends and lives in a house in Boca Raton loaned to her since the government also seized Madoff’s home in Palm Beach, Florida and a yacht.

Ruth got a $2.3 million deposit in her Bank of New York account that came from a Madoff brokerage firm used to buy the yacht, Picard disclosed. Most of the deposits were masked as interest payments on loans made to Madoff’s companies.

Aside from the 2009 lawsuit Picard filed against Ruth to recover $44.8 million profit from the Ponzi-like fraud, the trustee included her in another $1-billion lawsuit he filed against owners of the Mets baseball team – Fred Wilpon and Saul Katz – who were also partners in Sterling Equities where the Madoffs invested $12 million.

Ruth reportedly dyed her hair red and uses her maiden name of Alpem as part of her attempt to maintain a low-profile life in Florida. She drives a 14-year-old car and has been seen renting $1 DVDs from a kiosk at a Publix grocery.

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Jerusalem, Israel David Rosenberg – Israel’s venture capital funds – the principal source of finance for Israel’s vaunted high technology industry – are running out of money, but industry executives say the dry patch should end soon while new classes of investors should ensure the country’s start-ups get the cash they need to develop software, biotechnology and green technology.

The country’s venture capital (VC) funds saw the capital they have available to invest in the future fall to just $1.4 billion at the end of 2010, according to a survey published Tuesday by the IVC Research Center and accounting firm KPMG Somekh Chaikin Israel. With the VCs investing an average of $520 million annually over the past three years, their stock of capital could run out in less than three years without new capital.

But VCs raised no new money in 2010, the IVC Research Center said. It was the first year of nil new investment since 2003 when the industry was pounded by the bursting high tech bubble and the Palestinian intifada. The year 2009, when VCs raised $239 million, wasn’t much better. In 2005-2008, they raised an average of just over $1 billion a year.

“There’s no doubt at all that it is difficult to raise money for VC. VC as an asset class is not held in the same high regard it once was,” Ed Mlavsky, chairman emeritus of Gemini Israel funds and a founding partner, told The Media Line. “I think it’s coming back, but there were the years of the big bubble and blowouts.”

Venture capital is a critical component of the Israeli economy, where high technology created by start-ups the funds invest in have been responsible for booming exports and high-paid jobs and attracting foreign investment. But VC funds need to raise capital themselves from investors like pension funds to invest in start-ups and that has been a struggle amid the global financial crisis.

Venture capital has had to compete for investors with hedge funds, which in recent years offered higher returns and allowed investors to take out their money out more easily than VCs, where funds are locked up for years. Things got worse for VC when the global financial crisis laid low the investment community, including the U.S. investors Israeli VCs depend on as backers.

For investors, the financial crisis is long over, but the Israeli VC industry, like its U.S. peer, has been slower to recover. The IVC expects some improvement in fundraising by the funds, forecasting Israeli VCs attracting some $800 million in new capital during the year. The new cash is critical, said Koby Simana, chief executive officer of IVC Research, which monitors the industry.

“Without improvement, it threatens the survival of numerous Israeli high tech companies that cannot raise needed capital,” Simana said. “VC funds will not be able to finance new companies or, in some cases, support their existing portfolio companies.”

One reason for his cautious optimism is new legislation approved by the Israeli government introduced to encourage domestic investors to invest in venture capital. Until now, local investors generally didn’t back their own country’s VC funds, but IVC estimates they will invest some $220 million over the next two years, although most of that will occur in 2012.

In addition, the government is sponsoring in a public-private fund specializing in biotechnology that will be raising capital this year, UVC said.

Finally, venture capital is starting to come back into fashion among U.S. investors, who have soured on hedge funds, said Mlavsky of Gemini, which manages more than $700 million. In any case, Israeli technology start-ups have other sources of capital, including foreign VCs that invest in Israel, technology incubators that provide seed funding and facilities for fledgling companies and private investors, known as angels.

Israel’s incubators have been privatized in recent years, which has led to an improvement in management, he said. The angel community has grown more sophisticated as it comes to encompass people who made their fortunes in high tech and understand the business. The cost of starting up a new company, especially in the Internet, has fallen, he added.

Foreign VCs are already a major presence in Israel. Last year they provided 70 percent of the $1.26 billion raised by Israeli tech companies in 2010, the biggest proportion in at least a decade, according to IVC data. Bessemer Venture Partners, a U.S. firm with $2 billion in VC under management, is reportedly raising up to $1.5 billion for a new fund that will invest in Israel and India, as well as in the U.S.

Even with the flow of investment threatened by VCs’ financing woes, Israel’s high tech sector is still thriving. Exports in fields such as computers and communications equipment posted double-digit growth last year and foreign companies are acquiring start-ups for their technology, a seal of approval for Israeli technological prowess.

Mlavsky said he sees no let-up in the number of new companies being formed or the quality of the technology they are developing. As the industry matures, more companies are being headed by entrepreneurs with the experience of leading a young and growing company.

“In many ways deal flow much better than it used to be,” Mlavsky said. “There are a lot of repeat entrepreneurs.”

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D.C., Washington, United States (AHN) – The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission joined legislators and stockholders who want to rein in exorbitant Wall Street bonuses, pinpointed as the prime incentive for large banks, brokerage companies and hedge funds to take excessive risks.

The excessive risk taking, in turn, is being blamed for the global financial crisis in 2008.

The SEC proposed to mandate companies to provide the regulator details of all bonuses paid out to staff as part of their incentive-based pay. The SEC would have the power to prohibit the award of excessive bonuses.

The regulator proposed the oversight over bonuses because of the 2008 global financial crisis, which highlighted the risks large banks place on the financial system and subsequently the national economy. The proposal is similar to regulations suggested by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation and required by the Dodd-Frank financial regulatory law.

The SEC proposal came right after Wall Street firms handed out performance incentives amounting to millions to their staff while majority of Americans are still reeling from the impact of the crisis.

Bank of America Chief Executive Officer Brian Moynihan got a $9.05 million bonus in restricted stocks and Thomas Montag, head of BofA’s global banking and markets, got $14.3 million in restricted stocks and $900,000 in cash.

Other companies, in response to pressure from regulators on bonuses, increased instead base salaries. Goldman Sachs gave Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Lloyd Blankfein a $12.6 million stock bonus and hiked his base salary to $2 million for 2011 from $600,000 last year.

Citigroup hiked CEO Vikram Pandit’s base pay to $1.75 million from $1 million.

The SEC proposal would give more teeth to shareholders’ opinion on compensation after the regulator allowed stockholders in January a nonbinding vote on salaries, bonuses and retirement packages.

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Butner, NC, United States (AHN) – Hedge fund trader Bernard Madoff insists that his family was unaware of his fraudulent Ponzi scheme. However, he indicated that banks and hedge funds – whom Madoff did not identify – were part of the scheme.

In the ongoing lawsuits filed by Irving Picard, the Madoff trustee charged that JPMorgan Chase, Madoff’s primary banker, aided and abetted the hedge fund trader’s fraud, but at the same time protected its investments in the BLMIS feeder funds.

Picard cited as proof that JPMorgan only reported Madoff to government officials in October 2008, but the bank did not restrict Madoff’s access to the BLMIS account, which was used to launder money from the Ponzi scheme. The lawyer said JPMorgan ignored its anti-money laundering obligations and repeatedly permitted suspicious transactions in the BLMIS account.

Madoff, now serving a 150-year sentence in North Carolina, stressed in recent interviews that the banks and hedge funds apparently played blind to his businesses. He cited as proof the financial institutions’ failure to examine discrepancies between his regulatory filings and other information he made available.

Madoff’s Ponzi scheme, which lasted 16 years, cost the loss of $20 billion in cash investments and $65 billion in paper wealth. Picard filed the lawsuit against JPMorgan to recover almost $1 billion in profits and $5.4 billion in damage

Picard cited as proof of the bank’s knowledge of Madoff’s scheme internal bank emails that bluntly warned bank executives of speculation that the hedge fund trader was running a Ponzi scheme and financial reports that were clear evidences of fraud.

Because of shame over Madoff’s crimes, his son Mark committed suicide late last year by hanging himself in his New York apartment.

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New York, NY, United States (AHN) – At least two JPMorgan Chase bank officers warned the company of their doubts over the Ponzi-like scheme of Bernard Madoff, but the bank management continued to do business with Madoff.

According to bank internal documents made public Thursday in a hearing, one bank officer sent an email on June 15, 2007 to colleagues after a bank executive told him of a “well-known cloud over the head of Madoff.”

More than a year earlier, a risk analyst of the bank told his bosses that returns of the Madoff investments did not make sense because of its better performance than securities in its portfolio.

Despite these red flags, the bank allowed Madoff to transact through his bank accounts until his arrest in December 2008. By then, the bank had withdrawn $241 million out of $276 million it had invested in Madoff hedge funds.

Bankruptcy trustee Irving Picard filed on Dec. 2 the lawsuit against JPMorgan on behalf of Madoff’s victims in a bid to recover their investments. The lawsuit was filed under seal, but the bank and Picard agreed to unseal the complaint.

JPMorgan denied Picard’s accusations that the bank continued business with Madoff despite warning from its own staff.

The company claimed it was not aware of the fraud in Madoff’s business and did not play any role, nor had the bank ignored the warnings because of income from the investments.

Aside from the lawsuit against JPMorgan, Picard also filed several cases against other large banks such as HSBC and UBS. He has so far collected $10 billion through settlements and asset sales, which is about half of the estimated $20 billion cash losses from the Madoff scheme.

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Davos, Switzerland (AHN) – Hedge fund owner George Soros advised British Prime Minister David Cameron at the World Economic Forum for the U.K. to change its economic policies.

Soros warned Wednesday that the austerity cuts places Britain at the risk of returning to a recession.

His word of caution came a day after Cameron refused to budge and insisted the coalition government is on the right track, despite Britain registering a negative 0.5 percent growth rate for the last quarter of 2010.

A similar call was made Tuesday by Labour leader Ed Miliband.

Soros said that pushing for an austerity program is not intrinsically wrong, but the government must change it if the negative impact is felt. He forecast that the austerity program will likely be unsustainable.

Soros is considered an authoritative voice when it comes to government financers because his pronouncements on the British currency made the U.K. government remove the sterling in 1992 from the exchange rate mechanism.

Soros’s warning echoed a similar statement made by New York University Professor of Economics Nouriel Roubini – also known as Dr. Doom. Roubini cautioned the British government of a double-dip recession and deflation worse than 2010′s.

One solution that Soros suggested was for a fiscal stimulus to improve Britain’s competitiveness. He favored more infrastructure investments over tax cuts. He pointed out that the large bulk of previous stimulus programs went into consumption and worsened the problem.

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Washington, D.C., United States (AHN) – The United States on Thursday was shocked for the second time in ten months by the ground-based missile defense system after the interceptor on Wednesday failed to strike the target missile, the Missile Defense Agency said.

Asked to comment on the twin failures, Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General James Cartwright told journalists at the Pentagon, “We don’t know today what the cause of the failure was yesterday.”

‘Until we understand it, I’m going to be conservative, at least in my recommendations about how many of those warheads are used, versus how many retained of the older configuration, to have a high confidence that anything that should become a threat to the United States can be handled,” noted Gen. Cartwright.

On the question if the U.S. is capable of countering any North Korean missile threat, Gen. Cartwright said, “We’d like to have this capability because it gives us some things that we didn’t have in the older version. But, no, I’m not worried, because I have the hedge.”

Gen. Cartwright said, “The question now is, make sure we understand: Was it two failures that were of the same ilk, or was it two very different failures? That takes us in different directions. We just don’t know those answers yet.”

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United States (CNS) – 94 minutes

In theaters November 19, 2010

Rating: R, Drama

It should be static. But it’s not. It should be unwatchable. But it’s not. And it should be depressing. But it’s not.

Still, 127 Hours, a nightmarish account of a horrific ordeal, is not for everybody, even though it’s well-made, well-acted, and well worth two hours.

Regardless, recommending a movie that traps you with (nearly) its only character — a mountain climber who is trapped under a canyon boulder and must eventually do something unthinkable that will not be described here even though you probably already know what it is — is not an easy thing to do.

127 Hours pays off so differently than the typical movie experience, and asks so much more of the viewer in terms of patience and fortitude and open-mindedness and commitment, even a proponent feels the need to issue a warning.

And a reminder that not all experiences and writings lend themselves to the movie screen, even those that can be translated in commendable fashion, as this one is.

James Franco plays real-life hiker Aron Ralston, who fell into Blue John Canyon in Utah, where he was pinned under an immovable fallen boulder for an unthinkable five days, a harrowing ordeal he described in his 2004 memoir, Between a Rock and a Hard Place.

Danny Boyle (Slumdog Millionaire, 28 Days Later, Shallow Grave, Trainspotting), who co-wrote the adapted screenplay with Simon Beaufoy, takes on the challenge of filming the unfilmable, and overcomes the problem inherent in this action flick with no action by taking an impressionistic approach, including Ralston’s flashbacks, fantasies, hallucinations, and memories as a hedge against the claustrophobia of the canyon.

And in the film’s most dramatic, excruciating, and inevitable scene, one that involves an act that you fear even as you submit and root for it, you confront the momentous What-would-I-have-done moment. Expect to find it necessary to look away but impossible to stay away.

As the desperate and courageous but undeniably reckless canyoneer, Franco — who obviously carries virtually the entire film with no one else to play off of: even Tom Hanks had more company in Cast Away — is nothing short of spectacular. His tour de force performance not only fulfills but exceeds the expectations he just hinted at in such films as Spider-Man, Pineapple Express, Milk, and Eat Pray Love. Put him on the short list for a Best Actor Oscar nomination.

There’s not much motion in this motion picture, but plenty of emotion. So bring your sense of indoor dread, as well as your belief that you’ll survive this tale of outdoor survival.

An intensely visceral real-life-and-limb drama, 127 Hours is certainly not a movie experience you’re likely to enjoy, but one that provides a vivid view of a mountain of accomplishments by Aron Ralston, Danny Boyle, and James Franco that you’re sure to admire.

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New York, NY, United States (AHN) – U.S. stocks fell slightly on Monday as hedge-seeking investors went for commodities and sent gold prices up to a record high of $1,403 an ounce.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average lost 37 points or 0.3 percent to close at 11,407. Boeing Co., Home Depot Inc. and Travelers Cos. were the top losers.

The Standard & Poor’s 500 Index gave up 2.6 points or 0.2 percent to close at 1,223.

The Nasdaq Composite Index gained a point ending at 2,580.

Oil for December delivery gained 36 cents to settle at $86.85 per barrel.

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New York City, NY, United States (AHN) – Patti Stanger is back with a new season of her show, “The Millionaire Matchmaker.” Set in New York City, she’s been busy working with NYC millionaires, but she’d love to work with other single celebrities, especially Betty White.

Responding to White’s recent request for a man, Stanger told Life and Style who she’d set the “Golden Girls” actress up with. “Twilight” actor Robert Pattinson, who reportedly called White “one of the sexiest women alive,” was her first choice.

Stanger also suggested 84-year-old actor and comedian Mel Brooks, telling Life and Style, “Betty and Mel would laugh all the way to heaven!” She added Playboy mogul Hugh Hefner — if he dated anyone his own age — and former “The Price is Right” host Bob Barker would be good matches for White. “(Barker and White) are both animal lovers, huge animal lovers. They would bond over that.”

“The Millionaire Matchmaker” premieres on Bravo on Tuesday, Oct. 19, and the cast moved from sunny California to the fast-paced Big Apple. Back in March, the New York Daily News reported that Stanger hired Vinnie Potestivo Entertainment to cast her show’s fourth season, and a source close to the company said that a plethora of “society types, hedge-fund guys and even a couple of hot-spot club owners” have applied to get in on the action.

Watch the show’s premiere Tuesday to see what the upcoming season of “Matchmaker” holds.

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