New York Post – IT doesn’t take much to get Harvey Pitt going on the subject of Eliot Spitzer. The former head of the Securities & Exchange Commission clearly isn’t one of the New York Attorney General’s biggest fans.<\/p>\n
“Eliot Spitzer is New York’s AG, and you know what that stands for – Aspiring Governor,” Pitt recently quipped to a small group of journalists who had joined him for a meal at the 21 Club.<\/p>\n
The Brooklyn-born Pitt, now a Washington-based consultant, has a lot to say about things like the safety of hedge funds (they aren’t); the rights of journalists (the SEC shouldn’t subpoena them); and changes that need to be made to the Sarbanes-Oxley financial disclosure act.<\/p>\n
“Eliot Spitzer isn’t really concerned about public investors,” Pitt continued. “He’s concerned about moving on to higher public office.” And, says Pitt, he’s using big companies as “whipping boys.”<\/p>\n
Pitt says that Spitzer “extracted” a huge settlement from Merrill Lynch and then put the money into the state coffers rather than return it to investors. “Why? Because he wasn’t concerned about investors,” said Pitt.<\/p>\n