Ezra Merkin, the financier who steered $1.8 billion into Bernie Madoff's pockets, officially stepped down today as the chairman of GMAC, the financing arm of General Motors. The move was widely expected given the reputation-shattering events of the past few weeks, a staggeringly swift fall for a resident of New York's richest apartment building and the president of one of the city's most prominent synagogues. But when there's blood in the water, the sharks turn up for dinner, which is why Merkin's art adviser, Ben Heller, says his phone is ringing off the hook.

• It wasn't just overly tanned Jews in Palm Beach who were ripped off by Bernie Madoff. London's Evening Standard says Italian fashion designer Valentino may have been a victim as well. [ES]
• Ten days before his arrest, Bernie Madoff convinced elderly Palm Beach entrepreneur and philanthropist Carl Shapiro into giving him an additional $250 million. [WSJ]
• Bank Medici founder Sonja Kohn, who raised $2.1 billion for Madoff from rich Europeans and Russians, is now missing. [NYT]
• Disgraced Madoff pal Ezra Merkin will step down as chair of GMAC. [FT]
• German billionaire Adolf Merckle, who committed suicide earlier this week, was in debt to the tune of $6.7 billion. [BN]
• American companies shed 693,000 jobs in December. [MW]
• Bank of America's Ken Lewis will not be getting a bonus. [BN]
• Ken Griffin's main hedge fund dropped 53 percent in 2008. [CNN]

If you were thinking that author Daphne Merkin would have a good deal to say about the Bernie Madoff saga—and she must considering her brother is Ezra Merkin, the man who lost $1.8 billion of investor cash as part of the scheme—you're probably going to be disappointed by her piece on Tina Brown's website The Daily Beast. Merkin offers up few specifics about the events in question (or whether her own finances were affected), although you can probably take this as a thinly-veiled defense of her embattled brother:

Two more victims of Bernie Madoff's giant Ponzi scheme: Kevin Bacon and his wife, Kyra Sedgwick, reports New York's Daily Intel, news that Bacon's publicist confirmed today. But there's good news for one other Madoff victim: Crain's reports that Yeshiva University, which previously indicated it had lost $110 million as part of the scam, now says it "only" lost $14.5 million, an error the school attributes to "fictitious numbers provided to it by Ezra Merkin."