$$$Because your Ken Lay Lives tighty-whities have seen better days: Lucy Gao boxers. [Cafe Press]
$$$Mecca, as you know it: The Money Shirt. (Settle down, spaz, there’ll be no strokes on our watch). [Clay's Place]
$$$Manic-depressive, pessimist banking loser seeks petite 25-35 year old equally bitter, maladjusted borderline nymph for comiseration, “good” times. And we totally call dibs. (Don’t even act like you’re not just as turned on as we are by this, people). [Craigslist]
Archive for August 2006
We’re awash in photos of the summer classes of London banks. To the left you see Lucy Gao’s fellow Citigroup interns, and after the jump we’ve got the Goldman 2006 summer class. No one, however, has seen fit to send us any group shots of summer interns from out home town of New York City. This is an injustice that will not be tolerated. Only you can set things right by emailing us your photos. (And have no fear—we protect the identity of our sources with even more tenacity than Robert effin Novak.)
Now you can have all your Lucy Gao in one spot. That’s right. Someone’s gone out and started a blog dedicated to our Lucy. It’s mostly stuff you’ve seen around here before but if you’re just joining us for the Gao story, you can catch up on things over there.
Or you can feast yourself on DealBreaker’s own dedicated Lucy Gao archive.
Lucy Gao Blog [Blogspot]
We hope nobody shows the folks all worked up about the alleged naked shorting conspiracy the Depository Trust and Clearing Corp’s recent statement , which we came across over on Gary Weiss’s blog. The anti-naked shorting Don Quixote’s are endlessly entertaining—reading their bulletin boards makes us laugh the same way we laugh when we watch little kids trip over their shoe laces—and it would be a real loss to have them encounter such a decisive debunking of their world view.
More Baloney Debunking [Gary-Weiss.Com]
When we were in college, a competing student paper ran into trouble paying its bills. Our paper, which was notorious for its outlandishly reactionary viewpoint, offered to financially bail out the other if it would modify its editorial policy in certain ways, including supporting a ban on fractional reserve banking and the abolition of the Federal Reserve. These fond memories were brought back this afternoon when we read Peter Cohan’s item speculating that the Fed may be playing politics with interest rates.
Many polls indicate that the Republican party is unpopular and that Democrats are therefore likely to make gains in November. How do interest rates figure into the election in November? With consumer credit card borrowing at near record levels of $2.2 trillion in June and 26.8% of mortgages in adjustable rates, each time the Fed raises rates, it puts the squeeze on millions of voters who are already paying close to $3 a gallon to drive to work.
So if the Fed raises rates, it turns up the anger boil against the party in power. If the Fed can hold off raising rates until after the election, it will take away a bit of potential pain from voters who might be making up their mind about whether to keep incumbents in power. Meanwhile, the 7% increase in labor costs translates into more money in the pockets of these potential voters.
Is election pressure keeping the Fed from controlling inflation? [BloggingStocks]
This is going to sound mean so let’s get right down to business. This morning when we linked to the New York Post’s story about Donald Trump firing Carolyn Kepcher, we included an excerpt indicating her age was thirty-six.
And when we re-read it after a few more cups of coffee, we thought, “Woah. She’s been Donald Trump’s assistant forever. How young was she when she started? Could she really be only thirty-six?”
Well, maybe. Our Googling in depth research has uncovered a wikipedia article claiming she was born in 1968. Which would mean she first turned thirty-six in 2004, and has apparently been the same age ever since.
[Editor's Note: It has been suggested that we need an advice columnist for DealBreaker, so we went out an found one. Meet Brock Fantasia.]
Brock Fantasia is the only remaining person in the JPMorgan analyst class of 2002 to still work at JPMorgan, which is in no way testament to the work environment at JPMorgan. In fact, Brock likes to think of himself as the Highlander of his analyst class, wielding an indestructible claymore of corporate finance.
After “totally wrecking” (in his own words) the Analyst-to-Associate program in the M&A group, Brock was briefly moved to the Natural Resources group, due to increased deal flow in the M&A group. Brock graduated from the prestigious University of Pennsylvania Wharton with a degree in Finance and is working in investment banking until he can find a buy-side job. Brock has been interviewing for buy-side jobs throughout the past 3 years and has not been a “good fit” anywhere, despite his ever-burgeoning skill-set. [Editor's P.S.,- Some of this is true. But only some of it. Send your questions to : brock AT dealbreaker DOT com]
Hi, it’s me, Brock here, with my advice for this week.
How many of you have been in this situation? You’re the go-to guy on a project. You know this because your staffer told you that this project could go “live” at any moment, including weekends. This makes working Friday night fun, because you know that after the client sees that page of tombstones you prepared dating back from 1999, they might realize that they’re dealing with an institution that has been the co-advisor on more $50-$100mm second lien loans to media companies in Europe than all but 4 other banks. Who do you think they’ll sign up with? If you said the 4 other banks in front of us, you must not work here, because if you did you’d realize that you can’t fight the JPMentum! (More after the jump…)
It was just about twelve years ago that we met Princess Tatiana Von Metternich. We had been having drinks with an old Irish drunk in a part of France that was more German than French and the topic of discussion was how to avoid having to do anything that might resemble working for a living. Our proposal was marrying a wealthy young woman who we had run into on the Spanish Mediterranean.
“She’s an heiress?” Timothy asked.
“Yeah. Her grandfather invented a machine that makes extension cords or something?”
“Eh. Women who stand to inherit only money are no good. Heiress should be a dirty word. What you need, lad, is a woman from one of the old families.”
Six days later we were at a party being introduced to Tatiana Von Metternich, who was then in her late seventies and completely stunning. It made us wish we had been young during her youth, and then made us thank God we weren’t. Living your life knowing you had (at best) married the second best woman in the world would have been too painful.
Yesterday the Princess died. The world is a little less pretty and a little less magical today.
Princess Tatiana von Metternich [Telegraph]
As everyone knows, the most miserable people on any deal are not the analysts. They’re not the interns. They’re not even the people who bind and clip 1,289 ever-expanding pitchbooks that no one will read.
The most miserable people on any deal are the lawyers. (DealBreaker editor/ex-M&A lawyer John Carney will confirm.) And mostly because they’re almost powerless. As the joke goes, an analyst at Morgan Stanley can get a partner at Cravath out of bed at 4 AM, but the reverse can’t happen. So while the poor lawyers are sitting around waiting for the bankers to make decisions, we made something for them to read. A DealBreaker for lawyers, if you will.
Introducing… our new legal tabloid, AboveTheLaw.com. AboveTheLaw is written by David Lat, a former lawyer (natch) and most recently, editor at Wonkette.com and founder of Underneath Their Robes. (More on David’s background in this New Yorker profile.)
ABOVE THE LAW
We never really got the point of “The Apprentice.” If you win you get to manage a golf course or some building? So, like, you get to be a super? The guy we call when our sink starts spewing Hell Mouth? Sounds great. Oh, wait. What’s that? Good point. You also get to work for a total jerk. The sort of guy who fires his long time friends and companions? Sounds great. Uhm. Fuck that. We’re firing ourselves.
Carolyn Kepcher, Donald Trump’s co-star on “The Apprentice,” has heard him say “You’re fired!” for the last time – because this time he said it to her, sources told The Post.
The icy, 36-year-old blonde – who was running the Trump National Golf Club in Briarcliff in Westchester and helping supervise the Trump National in Bedminster, N.J. – was let go earlier this week.
“She became a prima donna,” said one insider. “Being on ‘The Apprentice’ went to her head. She was no longer focused on business. She was giving speeches for $25,000 and doing endorsements.”
Trump dumps his firing-squad aide Carolyn [New York Post}
So it seems that our gift wasn’t enough for Warren. Yesterday he decided to make an honest woman of long-time girl friend Astrid Menks. Of course, Warren didn’t spring for a nice ceremony—the whole affair took 15 minutes, was held at his daughter’s house and apparently no one was invited. Even worse—no honeymoon.
Well done, Astrid. You’ve just married the world’s wealthiest cheapskate. Scrooge McDuck call your office.
Warren Buffett remarries – reports [Reuters]
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