$$$ As previously mentioned, Choo Beng Lee has admitted to insider trading while at SAC. Now the WSJ has more today. [WSJ]

$$$ Want a bailout? There’s an app for that. [The Deal]

$$$ Stamford police seize $1 million in cash, 37 kilos of cocaine [TA]

$$$ Harvard Derivatives Whistleblower: Larry Summers Got Me Fired [BI]

$$$ The Reading Habits Of Wall Street CEOs [NYM]

$$$ Will an ex-Bear guy win the World Series of Poker? Will Jimmy Cayne be named “Most Improved” at bridge camp? Stay tuned.

Having already made his millions on credit-default swaps, David Einhorn wants to see a last call on the controversial derivates.

In his recent speech to the Value Investing Conference, the Greenlight Capital founder lambasted CDS, blaming them for a whole array of social problems and calling them a slippery slope toward Stalinism. What to do with such a social virus? Stamp it out.

“I think that trying to make safer credit-default swaps is like trying to make safer asbestos,” Einhorn said. Quite a statement from one of the hedge fund chieftans who earned the ire of many a Wall Street CEO during the height of the financial crisis, in effect agreeing that CDS are un-American.

Yesterday was apparently not the first time Emanual Goffer has been accused of wrongdoing in conducting his biz. In 2003 Boston.com outted Emanuel as the owner-operator of a cheat-sheet note system for coeds at Boston University. Goffer’s firm, which he called Beantown Notes, operated out of Boston on Beacon Street. The University’s lawyer sent a cease and desist order to Goffer’s firm, threatening to sue if they didn’t shut it down. Goffer conceded, and moved on to bigger and better things, like (allegedly) trading on material non-public information with his brother, Zvi. Speaking of: Dealbreaker, in an attempt to learn more about Team Goffer, reached out to Dalia Goffer, the boy’s mother yesterday, and asked if she thought the FBI had arrested the wrong guys. In an email sent late last night she responded:

John Reed, who played kind of a big role in cobbling together the world’s largest diversified whorehouse, has something to get off his chest:

“I’m sorry,” Reed, 70, said in an interview yesterday. “These are people I love and care about. You could imagine emotionally it’s not easy to see what’s happened.”

John S. Reed, who helped engineer the merger that created Citigroup Inc., was apologizing for his role in building a company that has taken $45 billion in direct U.S. aid and said banks that big should be divided into separate parts.

Is he really sorry? Or was this just an attempt to get Vikram to hold him close and insist “it’s not your fault” over and over? Unclear (though we wouldn’t fault him if it were the latter). In any event, does anyone else have something they want to apologize for today? Related to Citi or not? Throw it out there. We’re all listening.

Reed Says I’m Sorry For Role In Creating Citigroup [Bloomberg]

When Zvi “Octopussy” Goffer decided to dip one of his tentacles in the sweetness of insider trading, do you think he realized all that he’d be forced to give up if caught? Obviously we’re not talking about his wife, child, and freedom to wear tracksuits here, but rather the chance to wake up with his brother and a bunch of other dudes the morning after what appears to have been quite the rager?

For the good of the market, encourage your MBA-candidate friends in Cambridge to pursue careers in the cross-dressing and law enforcement fields.

2009 Harvard MBA Indicator Shifts to ‘Neutral’ [PDF]
A Contrary Indicator On MBA’s And Stocks [DealBook]

Actually, that’s not entirely true: CG’s first choice of venue to have a roundtable discussion of the definitive take on the crisis, When Mooks Fail: The Goddamn Beatin’ That Bear Stearns Took, is his local Gold’s Gym (the last stop on the tour, late December). But this is at least preferable to doing it in that place with all the books. Will he step into the ring and regale the crowd with a quick demo from a guy who, little known fact, was a Golden Gloves hopeful? I think you know the answer to that. If you, too, would like to wow clients with a celebrity appearance at your annual investor dinner, get in touch.

From: Strategas Research Partners

Subject: Strategas - Boxing Night 2009 at the NYAC

It’s time for the 3rd Annual Strategas Boxing Night at the New York Athletic Club. As a way to socially say ‘thank you’ for the support we’ve received all year, Jason Trennert and I want to invite you to join us for a great night of steaks and boxing. This year the event will take place on Monday, November 23rd at the New York Athletic Club with dinner & drinks to start at 5:30PM / intercollegiate bouts starting at 7:30PM. Charlie Gasparino will also be on hand to discuss his new book, “The Sellout.”

Please let me know if you’d like to attend.

The (alleged) fraud at German fund of hedge funds firm K1 Group is an embarrassment of riches for the schadenfreude set. Today, for example, we glean new evidence for two well-established facts—that regulators are simply no good at catching fraud on their own, and that Bear Stearns was a disaster waiting to happen—and learn that diplomatic immunity may apply to trans-Atlantic fraud cases.

Let’s start there: Helmut Kiener, who has been arrested on suspicion of fraud by German police but not yet charged with anything, wants to get out of jail. But apparently there’s only one way to do that at this particular stage in a German legal proceeding, and that’s if you are a bonafide diplomat.

Now, we have no idea whether Kiener is such a diplomat, or what country or international organization he claims to represent. But we’ll find out if the German courts buy it “before next week,” according to the prosecutor’s office.

October performance for Tudor’s Tensor Fund (does not spell fried chicken):

October 2009: (4.32%)

YTD: 0.98%

When your dreams of expansion have been rebuffed at just about every turn for a decade, it forces you to think outside the box. So goodbye, London, Paris and Amsterdam: Deutsche Börse is (trying) to go to Warsaw.

Seventy years after a very special moment in German-Polish relations, the owner of the Frankfurt Stock Exchange is bidding for what locals affectionately refer to as the Giełda Papierów Wartościowych w Warszawie. The other other DB hopes to buy a majority stake in the bourse from its current majority owner, a widely-respected exchange operator called the Polish government.

Deutsche Börse thinks the Warsaw exchange is an “attractive investment.” Maybe it is. Maybe anything looks good after you’ve been humiliated in your attempt to buy the London Stock Exchange and bested by those Wall Street bastards in bidding for Euronext.

H.L. Mencken famously said, “no one ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American public.” But Citigroup’s hedge fund and private equity business seems intent on proving the great skeptic wrong.

An awful lot has gone wrong at C in recent years, so maybe the woes of Citi Alternative Investments have passed by your notice. Allow us to recap: Seeking a potential successor to CEO Chuck Prince, Citi ponies up $800 million to buy Old Lane Partners in April 2007, founded by former Morgan Stanley exec. Vikram Pandit, who is named head of Citi AI. Citi quickly guts its existing flagship hedge fund, Tribeca Global Management, to accommodate Pandit. On the one hand, this worked out, because Pandit was running the show at Citi by the end of 2007. On the other hand, it did not work. At all.

That very year, Citi was already bailing out one of its hedge funds, Corporate Special Opportunities, to the tune of almost $1.8 billion. It did not work. Just a month after Vikram took the helm at Citi, CSO froze redemptions, when it went under earlier this year, investors got back just 3 cents on the dollar and its former manager sued the firm for wrongful termination.

Schottenfeld Draws Scrutiny After Goffer Arrest in Insider Case (Bloomberg)
Zvi “Octopussy” Goffer’s employer has stated on previous occasions that this sort of thing is not cool but apparently no one was listening when he laid down the law. “There is no place at our firm for individuals who violate the securities laws,” Schottenfeld’s chairman, Richard Schottenfeld, said in an April 2008 statement.

Citi To Relaunch Troubled Hedge Fund Unit (FT)
Oh but don’t worry about people with good memories. C’s got a plan to throw them off the trail: “People close to the situation said that the company wanted to change the name of the unit - which has $14bn under management and also includes private equity operations - from Citi Alternative Investments (CAI) to Citi Capital Advisors.”

AIG Swings To Third-Quarter Profit After Write-Downs (WSJ)
AIG posted a profit of $455 million, or 68 cents a share, compared with a year-earlier loss of $24.47 billion, or $181.02 a share. The latest results included $1.8 billion in capital losses, while the previous year’s results included billions in write-downs from credit-default swaps and $15.06 billion in capital losses.

SEC Appoints Hedge Fund Veteran As Adviser (NYT)
Mr. Bookstaber, a former risk manager at banks like Salomon Brothers and Morgan Stanley and hedge funds like Ziff Brothers International and Moore Capital Management, is one of three new advisers to help the S.E.C. identify risks and trends in the financial markets. Also, he wrote a book! 2007’s “A Demon of Our Own Design.”

Banks Thwarting Feinberg Pay Model By Changing Bonus Formula (Bloomberg)
Suck it, Comp Cop.

Final Arguments Against 2 In Bear Stearns Fraud Case (NYT)
Mr. Cioffi, whose wife and children have attended the proceedings nearly every day, seemed confident he would be exonerated as he chatted with family members and friends before closing statements. “You can listen to the government call me a bum for three hours, and then my lawyers will get up and set the record straight,” he told a friend.