Behind every billionaire there is a story!

Billionaire NYC mayor powerless to stop meltdown

On the morning after Lehman Brothers filed for bankruptcy, Mayor Michael Bloomberg was in the middle of a news conference at a public school library in Brooklyn when an aide slipped him his Blackberry with an urgent message.

“Barclays - Lehman announcement - Not yet,” read the e-mail from another aide back at City Hall, relaying a message from Lehman CEO Richard Fuld, a longtime friend of the billionaire mayor.

Earlier that morning, Fuld had told the mayor that British bank Barclays PLC was poised to buy part of Lehman. Fuld said one way Bloomberg could help would be to publicize the good news at his daily news conference, stressing that thousands of New York City jobs would be saved. But the e-mail on Tuesday morning derailed that plan at the last minute because the deal was not yet final.

More than any other time in Bloomberg’s mayoralty, the public and private careers of the former CEO are merging as he tries to manage a city that is ground zero for the nation’s financial meltdown.

He calls old friends like Fuld to console them and offer assistance. He gives advice to presidential candidates and the nation’s economic leaders, gets hints about the next wave of bad news and what the losses might mean for the city’s economy. He offers to help different parties network and gives his insight on how both the markets and policymakers are going to react to the developments of the day.

read the rest published by CNBC here:

http://www.cnbc.com/id/26796240/for/cnbc/