A few weeks ago I appeared on CNBC's Closing Bell with Maria Bartiromo to discuss executive pay. One interesting point in the interview was when Ms. Bartiromo argued that it would be difficult to get good people to run big banks if their pay was limited because Wall Streeters are motivated primarily by money. I suggested that if that were true, then you would never see a former CEO of Goldman Sachs Group, Inc. (NYSE: GS) take the enormous pay cut required to become Treasury Secretary.

I am not sure what motivates Wall Streeters to take those pay cuts. But today, another prominent one -- Steve Rattner with whom I worked in the 2004 presidential campaign -- announced he is leaving his private equity firm, Quadrangle Group, and shipping off to Washington to work as Counselor to the Secretary (of the Treasury).

I am reaching the limits of my ability to stand more waste of our money. Today, I learned that Citigroup (NYSE: C) is taking delivery of a $50 million corporate jet from French manufacturer, Dassault. (For that kind of money, it could have at least bought from an American manufacturer).

I know the U.S. invested $45 billion worth of taxpayer money with no strings attached -- but is it really possible that Citi does not get that buying a corporate jet with that money is blazingly stupid?

There is some irony on this front. This evening Maria Bartiromo conducted an interview with John Thain who was deposed last week for various sins. Bartiromo was in Davos, but Thain was not -- although one of his sins was that he had accepted an invitation to attend Davos. But back in 2007 -- almost exactly two years ago -- it was Bartiromo who got in some hot water for taking Citi's corporate jet with then Citi-executive Todd Thomson.

Since Friday's surprise announcement that John McCain picked Alaska governor Sarah Palin as his VP, numerous unpleasant facts have emerged which may make McCain regret his hasty choice. And since she has not been officially nominated by the Republican convention, it's not too late for McCain to pick Karl Rove favorite Mitt Romney instead.

Here are some of the reasons that McCain should reconsider his decision:

• Hearbeat away. She has had very little experience governing and none with foreign policy. This would be fine if McCain was in robust good health. Unfortunately, that is not the case. She could actually become President and it is far from obvious that she has the most executive experience among all the potential VP candidates that might need to step in if McCain could no longer do the President's job.
• No longer a shoe-in for Evangelical vote. She was strongly supported by the Evangelical wing of the Republican party due to her religious beliefs and her decision to keep her fifth child after she learned it would have Down syndrome. But with her 17-year old daughter having a child, some might question how strongly Palin believes in abstention until marriage.
• Corruption concerns. It is not clear whether McCain knew that Palin was under investigation for firing a public safety commissioner who refused to fire her brother-in-law. And did he know that she denied involvement with lobbyists in an interview with Maria Bartiromo, even though a TransCanada lobbyist played a central role in getting a $500 million subsidy for that Canadian company to build a gas pipeline she was pushing?

CNBC star Maria Bartiromo and I share a birthday, and I love a good scandal, so I follow her religiously. Maria is fun because she's both gorgeous and cute, smart and sexy. And then there's the strange case of Todd Thomson (the Citigroup exec who fell so in love with Maria that he flagrantly violated ethics, and common sense, just to spend time with her). She's also fun because her nickname is "Money Honey," and what's more: she's applied for a trademark for the phrase! Delicious.

Well, she might have to move fast to use the phrase before she loses the IP to a new generation of money honeys (money honeyettes?). News Corp. (NYSE: NWS)'s Fox Business News has a bevy of beauties dishing up the news on the stock market and the economy: Liz Claman, Dagen McDowell, Jenna Lee, Alexis Glick. Ben Stein wants to know, where did they all come from? His analysis, that finance is both boring and inscrutable, and that men would rather get this boring, inscrutable and (largely) completely irrelevant news from beautiful women, is certainly sensible.



But there's an undercurrent in his story that has me troubled, and though I think that he's right in many aspects of his analysis (it's certainly true that more men watch financial news than women), I'm peeved that he never wonders whether the financial world has just been extremely sexist and is only just now starting to let loose. I also find it odd that he doesn't wonder if there were financially savvy women being excluded from business journalism until now. (His "where did they all come from" question makes it seem as if they sprung from the head of Lou Dobbs like Athena.)

Whither Money Honeys? Here's my thought:

Yesterday afternoon, Hillary Clinton was on CNBC with Maria Bartiromo, discussing her plan for protecting some homeowners who are in danger of losing their houses due to resetting subprime mortgages. It was supposed to be an interview, but it was more of a spat, and showed the deep pro-Wall Street bias that is typical of much of the financial media.

Clinton claimed that Wall Street played a major role in creating the subprime mess and was looking for support from the Street for the plan to freeze mortgage rates for some borrowers. Bartiromo couldn't hide her strong disagreement with this argument. Her basic point was: What about personal responsibility? Why are people who entered into contracts being bailed out? And she all but shouted, You liberal! Violating the sanctity of contracts! Interfering with the blessed Free Market!

Reuters reports that former Citigroup Inc. (NYSE: C) executives Todd Thomson -- who lost his job in January -- is talking back now that his nemesis, Chuck Prince, has been deposed.

Thomson, who headed up wealth management for Citigroup, got tossed in February. He thinks Prince smeared him -- citing his expensive office, which featured a fishbowl, and his reported flight of General Electric Co. (NYSE: GE) CNBC's Maria Bartiromo on Citigroup's corporate jet from Asia to New York. Here are two highlights:

• Maria-gate. Media reported that in November 2006 when Thomson flew with a group of Citigroup employees to China on a business trip, he flew back with Bartiromo, leaving the Citi employees to find their way home on their own. When asked about his relationship with Bartiromo, Thomson was adamant: "It's an inappropriate question. I've never been accused of having anything other than an appropriate relationship with Maria Bartiromo. And I do have an appropriate relationship with Maria Bartiromo."

The New York Times has written a heartfelt love letter to Maria Bartiromo of General Electric (NYSE: GE)'s CNBC. The most interesting part to me is that Maria feels that Chuck Prince was using her "relationship" with former Citigroup (NYSE: C) executive Todd Thomson -- about which I posted earlier this year -- to divert attention from his mismanagement of the bank. With Prince out, Maria's riding high. But Todd must be kicking himself -- if he hadn't gotten into the Maria mess, he might be in a position to take over from Prince.

Since I have had the privilege of being interviewed by Maria Bartiromo -- here's a link from August -- and was called a couple of times last week to discuss the situation at Merrill Lynch (NYSE: MER), her status at CNBC is of more than academic interest to me. I have never met her in person, but her interviews have always been sharp and professional.

But the Todd Thomson incident raised questions which the article did not completely squelch. As a reminder, in January unidentified executives at Citigroup, which is both a CNBC advertiser and a frequent subject of its coverage, told several publications that among the reasons Thomson was fired was his decision to invite Maria to speak to a group of Citigroup clients in Asia and to fly her to that event in the company jet.

Wall $treet Folly reports that General Electric Company's (NYSE: GE) CNBC's Maria Bartiromo, who interviewed me earlier this week, is in trouble with People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA).

What popped PETA's top? In More magazine's September feature on fashionable female movers and shakers over 40, CNBC's "Money Honey" is seen smiling seductively in a skin-tight Celine matte jersey dress and the Kors coat. She raves: "Chic, sexy clothes are the real me . . . The coat is spectacular; the fur cuffs give it just the right amount of glamour."

PETA's Michael McGraw commented: "There's nothing glamorous about animal electrocution, which is one of the most common methods used to kill foxes for their pelts. She looks morally bankrupt in that fur."

It's important to put this story in a business context. News Corp. (NYSE: NWS) owns the New York Post where McGraw vented. News Corp is also launching Fox Business News (FBN) in October to compete with CNBC. So there's a chance that whatever hurts Maria and CNBC, helps FBN.

Peter Cohan is President of Peter S. Cohan & Associates, a management consulting and venture capital firm. He also teaches management at Babson College and edits The Cohan Letter. He owns GE shares.

The reported tiff between CNBC's Money Honey Maria Bartiromo and upstart Erin Burnett, whom the New York Post dubbed the "Street Sweetie,'' is mana from heaven for News Corp. (NYSE: NWS) Chief Executive Rupert Murdoch.

His Post gets a juicy chick fight to write about -- although the General Electric Co. (NYSE: GE) cable channel denies there is a fight -- and it makes a rival to his yet-to-be launched Fox Business Channel look foolish as a bonus. Plus, it gives Fox a good excuse to try and lure either one of them away from CNBC. Interesting how corporate synergies work in today's media world.

Mind you, I have no idea whether Bartiromo and Burnett hate each other or not. Usually, Page Six is pretty truthy in the Stephen Colbert sense of the word. You have to think that someone close to Bartiromo or Burnett -- perhaps the person who looks back at them in the mirror -- is spilling their guts to the Post. Yes, the media world is just like high school.

Bartiromo has long been a subject of the gossip pages. I urged CNBC to fire Bartiromo earlier this year after her relationship with ousted Citigroup Inc. (NYSE: C) executive Todd Thompson brought derision on the network. Since then, she's indicated that she's more interested in being a TV star than a journalist. Burnett, whose path I crossed when I was at Bloomberg News, is gaining the good kind of publicity. In fact, Broadcasting and Cable called her CNBC's "secret weapon."

But there's an extra dimension to this tabloid battle that's worth considering.

There are many media conspiracy theorists who argue that Rupert Murdoch will tabloid up the Wall Street Journal once he gets a hold of Dow Jones & Co. (NYSE: DJ). I think that these fears are overblown. Murdoch won't use the Journal to settle scores with his enemies and heap praise on his friends. Why should he when the Post does that so well?

The New York Times's DealBook has a breathless report -- replete with photos -- of Blackstone Group CEO's Stephen Schwarzman's 60th birthday party at the Seventh Regiment Armory on New York's Park Avenue.

General Electric's (NYSE: GE) CNBC reporter Maria Bartiromo was there along with her husband, Jonathan Steinberg. This is an important development since it was not clear where things stood between her and Citigroup's (NYSE: C) former executive Todd Thomson and whether that would affect her marriage.

The Schwarzman bash may also have subtly influenced Dow Jones & Company's (NYSE: DJ) Wall Street Journal (a.k.a. The Towel). On Monday I got a call from the Towel's Alan Murray who told me he was writing an article on whether private equity was peaking. Murray had seen me on CNBC and interviewed me in detail -- requesting a copy of my post on the topic. Today his article [subscription required] came out -- gushing about Schwarzman's party and the prospects for the private equity business.

Make no mistake -- I would love to have attended this party. But as a news consumer, I wonder whether the opportunity to be counted among the New York glitterati has any affect on the objectivity of reporting on the industry.

Peter Cohan is President of Peter S. Cohan & Associates, a management consulting and venture capital firm, He also teaches management at Babson College and edits The Cohan Letter. He owns Citigroup and GE shares and has no financial interest in Dow Jones.

This morning's New York Times reports that The General Electric Company's (NYSE: GE) CNBC reporter Maria Bartiromo helped squelch a story by her colleague Charles Gasparino. The story involved the resignation of Todd Thomson from Citigroup, Inc. (NYSE: C).

I've been wondering whether this story had gone dark. But it looks like it just went into the in-depth reporting phase. Now the New York Times has arrived with this bombshell.

What happened is that CNBC's head of news programming, Jonathan Wald, asked Gasparino to investigate Bartiromo's trip on Citigroup's corporate jet with Thomson. Gasparino did so. But when Bartiromo got wind of it -- and specifically the notion that Thomson's job status was threatened -- she complained to Wald. And for some reason, Gasparino did not discuss his reporting on the air. Moreover, some in the network complain that Bartiromo's complaint was the culprit. Wald suggested that the sourcing for the story was not strong enough to air it.

Now the media is starting to analyze her on-air interviews. Some of them, such as the one with former Home Depot (NYSE: HD) CEO Bob Nardelli, were tough. Since she had no business tie to HD, she felt free to "pepper him with sharp questions relating to his conduct and governance." But, as I posted a few weeks ago, her business tie to Citigroup probably led to a much friendlier style when it came to interviewing Thomson in August 2005.

Here's an idea: Why not hold CNBC reporters to the same disclosure standards to which it holds its on-air guests?

Peter Cohan is President of Peter S. Cohan & Associates, a management consulting and venture capital firm, He also teaches management at Babson College and edits The Cohan Letter. He owns shares of Citigroup and GE and has no financial interest in Home Depot or The New York Times.

My children, it must be admitted, love television. As I'm a financial type who works from home, they're often subjected to my TV choices; so they know Maria Bartiromo and Rachael Ray well, much like faraway telegenic aunts.

If a recent trademark filing is any indication, they soon may get to know Maria even better, not as a CNBC reporter (nor as the center of a scandal involving special treatment by Citigroup Inc. (NYSE:C) bigwig Todd Thomson) but as the cartoon "Money Honey."

No, really! TVNewser was tipped off on the filing, in the name of Bartiromo, Maria for Money Honey to be used for "Entertainment services, namely, an ongoing children's television series; motion picture films; theatrical programs; fan club services; online entertainment services, namely information, interactive games ..." and, of course, more. It's just been filed, on January 16th. I've filed many a trademark application, and in my opinion, this looks as if it was done up in 30 minutes. I'm sure the attorneys at Frankfurt Kurnit Klein & Selz billed a whole hour for it though... No word on whether the resulting show might be live-action or animated.

While I love the concept (it's far prettier than Warren Buffett's animated series, though a little less fun), the timing leaves something to wonder, wonder, wonder, wonder... did Maria file in anticipation of a brou-ha-ha resulting in calls for CNBC to fire her? Had she just discovered that her biggest fan's Sundance deal was going to fall through, and this was the next-best thing? Is it just a complete coincidence?

Like they say on Psych, there's no such thing as coincidence.

January 23rd's departure of Citigroup, Inc. (NYSE: C) executive Todd Thomson may have been helped along by his use of Citigroup's corporate jet to fly General Electric Company's (NYSE: GE) CNBC reporter, Maria Bartiromo from Asia. This is just the tip of the iceberg. Todd & Maria-gate Memo will follow the ongoing saga.

The New York Times Company's (NYSE: NYT) New York Times [subscription required] reports this morning that Maria Bartiromo has repeatedly appeared at events sponsored by CNBC advertisers. Are CNBC advertisers, in effect, paying for good press? Bartiromo's August 2005 interview with Thomson makes me wonder.

Bartiromo's attended alot of corporate events -- some for companies on which she's reported. For example, in 2006, she appeared at 46 events three of which were on behalf of Citigroup. She also appeared at events for Google, Inc (NASDAQ: GOOG), Charles Schwab Company, Inc. (NASDAQ: SCHW) and Dow Jones Company (NYSE: DJ), which publishes the Wall Street Journal.

As noted earlier, Bartiromo -- who is married to Jonathan Steinberg, son of financier Saul Steinberg -- flew back from Asia on Citigroup's corporate jet. She also flew back from Davos last year on Citigroup's jet and appeared at a Citigroup-sponsored awards event in London in 2005, as co-host of the event with another CNBC anchor, Simon Hobbs.

Maria Bartiromo, who rose to fame as CNBC's Money Honey during the bull market of the 90s, should be fired for showing incredible lapses in judgment regarding her relationship with ousted Citigroup Inc. (NYSE:C) executive Todd Thomson.

One of the cardinal rules of journalism is that you aren't supposed to write about or show favor toward your friends. The Wall Street Journal's (subscription required) expose of Bartiromo's relationship with Thomson shows that they were at a minimum buddies.

What's more disturbing, however, is CNBC's reluctance to look into the matter further. I'd like to know if CNBC ever reimbursed Citigroup for Bartiromo's air travel. Moreover, doesn't the channel's corporate owner General Electric Co. (NYSE:GE) have an ethics rule or two about employes accepting gratuities from clients? Citigroup, after all, after all does by advertising on CNBC.

But I guess CNBC like most media organization has a thin skin. It is eager to expose faults in others but when it comes to its own problems forget it.

Jonathan Berr is the editor of http://www.desperateinvestors.com

Yesterday's departure of Citigroup, Inc. (NYSE: C) executive Todd Thomson may have been helped along by his use of Citigroup's corporate jet to fly General Electric Company's (NYSE: GE) CNBC reporter, Maria Bartiromo from Asia. This is just the tip of the iceberg. Todd & Maria-gate Memo will follow the ongoing saga.

This morning's Wall Street Journal [subscription required] reports that Todd Thomson used $5 million of his Citigroup marketing budget to finance a Sundance Channel program which was slated to be hosted by Robert Redford and Maria Bartiromo. [Bartiromo is no longer slated to host this program].

But wait, there's more. In 2005, current Chief Operating Officer Bob Druskin spotted Thomson having dinner with Bartiromo at the ritzy Daniel restaurant while Druskin was hosting a holiday dinner there for his investment banking management team.

Last November, Thomson flew Bartiromo to speak to Citigroup's private-banking clients at luncheons in Hong Kong and Shanghai. He flew with a group of Citigroup employees to Asia, but flew back to the U.S. on the corporate jet with Bartiromo.

After this November incident, Citigroup CEO, Chuck Prince, asked Thomson to stop spending Citigroup money on Bartiromo. Six weeks later, Thomson surprised Prince with The Sundance sponsorship announcement. This prompted Thomson's departure.

This saga raises questions of interest to Citigroup and GE investors, including:

• After all of Prince's blunders, are Citigroup directors debating his fate?
• Was GE CEO, Jeff Immelt, involved in approving Bartiromo's $48,000 flight from Asia on Citigroup's jet?
• Will GE require CNBC anchors to disclose their business relationships with the companies they cover?

Peter Cohan is President of Peter S. Cohan & Associates, a management consulting and venture capital firm, a Professor of Management at Babson College, and editor of The Cohan Letter. He has appeared as a guest on CNBC and owns Citigroup and GE stock.