$$$ Did Microsoft Overpay for Its Facebook Stake? [DealBook]

$$$ GLG Hits Investors With Exit Fee [Times Online]

$$$ The Only Election That Matters [Globe And Mail]

$$$ GOOG [WallStrip]

We spent part of the afternoon combing through our Career Center in search of the most interesting jobs. There are dozens to choose from, all categorized according to specialization. Our inspiration today was to find a job that might suit the folks from JP Morgan’s Latin American credit desk who were let go yesterday. Well, we’ve got some good news…

A bulge bracket European investment bank looking for a Vice President and a Director for Latin America Project Finance. Candidates must have experience in the Latin America markets, prior experience in project finance, and a rolodex of clientele.

Today at Citigroup, in accordance with Vikram's promise to shareholders that the company will begin taking steps toward realizing the enormous potential of the C, a member of the fixed income group was paid 3 grand to execute "the reverse bowl cut," according to sources. To claim the money, he must sport the haircut proudly on the trading floor for a full calendar week. We're told the money is being donated to charity.

Pictures after the jump.

We’re pretty much suckers for anything about American Psycho. The obsessive attention to things like lunch reservations and business cards are more frightening than any of the mass murder scenes because they happen to be strikingly true. Some people, however, don’t quite get the subtext. And for those folks, the boys at College Humor have helpfully re-imagined a crucial scene in American Psycho where all the subtext is brought to the foreground.

Which is a fancy way of saying they’ve made a penis-joke version of American Psycho. Check it out after the jump.

Bianna Golodryga is apparently Washington DC’s favorite “money honey.” The former CNBC reporter moved over to ABC last year. But her appearance at the White House Correspondents’ Association Dinner is garnering her a lot of attention. “She’s smoking,” a Bush administration official tells Paul Bedard, who writes the Washington Whispers gossip column for US News & World Report.

“I was walking around with her, and all the big shots were coming up and introducing themselves. They were gaga over her,” a “financial industry source” tells Bedard.

The New TV Money Honey [US News]

Mark Petrinovic, JPM's head of Latin American Credit, along with 4 MD's and 1 ED, are said to have been laid off yesterday. Supposedly the cuts were "quite unexpected as they were unrelated to the Bear integration." Which begs the question, would you rather be fired through no fault of your own, or for reasons that can be placed squarely on your drug use*? Personally, we're inclined to go with the latter. If** I'm going to get fired, I'm going to do it on my own terms.

*Merely a "for instance."
**"If," ha.

As part of Morgan Stanley's new cost-cutting initiative, taxi reimbursement will not be provided until after 10 pm.

There's mucho dinero to be made in this mortgage meltdown situation, but instead of jumping in your time machine, traveling back to last summer and shorting subprime, why not get creative about it? According to the Journal, anyone interested in getting rich should dive into the fish fucking business, stat. Michael Corkery reports that the Gambusia affinis, i.e. the "mosquito fish," is making a name for itself in California, Arizona, Florida and anywhere else you might find a ton of foreclosed homes con swimming pools. Apparently the abandoned estate's water-based recreational facilities are becoming infested by mosquitoes, and causing worry about the spread of diseases like West Nile. Instead of using humans to spray pesticides, the fish are increasingly being deployed to the areas of concern, where they eat up to 500 larvae a day. "They are the real heroes," said Josefa Cabadad, a technician with the Contra Costa Mosquito & Vector Control District. "I've never seen a mosquito in a pool with mosquito fish." Start breeding.

For Mortgages Underwater, Help Swims In [WSJ]

I'm not exactly sure what we're supposed to do with this but a (soon to be?) former Bear employee just bcc'd us on this message to a higher up at the bank so we'll put it out there. That's what we do at DealBreaker, give voices to those who cannot be heard. We're practically a human rights watch group, wouldn't you say? I just wish we'd been non-blind carbon copied, in which case it would be appropriate to re all with "Yeah!" or "We concur!" or something to that effect. If anyone else has a message they'd like to more widely disseminate, send it our way.

It saddens me that you have so simply, arrogantly and cruelly changed the severance classification of the equity research department personnel on the very day no-less that layoffs commenced. This change is reprehensible and you-can-bet grounds for litigation. Many of us in the research department were persuaded to stay and await final determination of our employment status because of the way the severance packages were structured; mind-you, a very deliberate structuring on JPMorgan/Bear's part for the very reason to dupe us into staying at Bear. Shame on you! You lied! And, of course, the loyal employees your glib lies hurt the most are those who earned the least, the Associates.

Barbara Walters' book came out this week and it's not just for those of you interested in a behind the scenes look at the catty infighting over at The View, though rest assured, Julian Robertson, there is plenty of that (as Babs tells it, "Star Jones was so obese she could barely walk onto the...set"). Apparently while Walters was dating Alan Greenspan, she was also seeing former Bear chairman Alan "Ace" Greenberg. (Ironic enough for you? Well try this one for size-- though it's not included in the autobiography, we hear the lady of the night additionally had a standing appointment with Jimmy Cayne ever week, which ultimately resulted in the birth of Ben Bernanke.) Before you go writing BW off as a harlot, keep in mind that the men served two distinct purposes-- Greenberg bought her a show dog, and Greenspan doled out terrible investment advice.* It wasn't all fun and games, however. Babs notes that lots o' confusion would ensue when her maid would take messages and report that "Alan called." Since she refused to refer Greenberg by his nickname-- like Cayne, she thought the handle "Ace [in the hole]" was stupid and, in her words, "hypocritical, considering the number of times I had to shout, 'No, Alan, no! You're not even close!'")-- Walters and the cleaning woman came to differentiate the two as "loud Alan" (Greenberg) and "soft Alan" (Greenspan). Though he rarely identified himself, Walters says it was readily apparent when Cayne was calling, because "you could hear the the announcer's voice over the loudspeaker at the tracks in the background."

Barbara Walters On Greenspan [National Economist]

*Such as telling her not to buy a 4-bedroom co-op on Fifth for $250,000 in 1977.

Citigroup considers $400bn asset sale (FT) Citigroup plans to sell 1/5th of its assets, or $400bn worth of goods, as part of a major cost cutting initiative, according to FT. Evidently, the company feels it has "legacy" lines that need to be flensed. We love the use of the word legacy to basically rationalize any flailing operations. Something not doing well? Oh, it's a legacy business, might as well strip it out of your models. All that being said, don't expect CEO Vikram Pandit to announce a breakup of the business --- just a $400 billion sale, that's all.

Questions of Rent Tactics by Private Equity (NYT)
Sort of a classic NYT business section article here... Apparently, private equity firms that have bought into NYT housing developments have a business model that depends on a high degree of renter turnover -- i.e. folks in rent-controlled units leaving at a higher rate than in other buildings. And so tenants are claiming that renters of rent-controlled units are subject to various harrassment and whatnot. You can judge for yourself the situation, however this has to be one of the best/worst paragraphs we've seen in the paper: "Private investment funds have boomed in recent years, buying companies they considered undervalued in industries as diverse as communications, hotels and energy, streamlining operations and then selling them at a profit. For example, private equity firms have bought nursing homes, often slashing expenses and reducing staff to increase their profit." Really good example there.

Would making insider trading restrictions optional for corporations suffice? (Knowledge Problem)
This is a debate we've always enjoyed: why can't companies just say: "We allow our employees to trade on inside information, caveat emptor." Given the arbitrariness of current insider trading laws (you rarely, for example, see anyone hauled in for not selling shares based on inside info), this always seemed like it would work. The above post offers some interesting points to think on.

The 18-Cent Solution (NYT)
McCain and Hillary have been looking for an economist to support them on their plan to eliminate the federal gas tax. We've been figuring that one would eventually, you know, just to get some exposure, but for a long time, nobody did. Finally, Bryan Caplan (most known for his recent work "The Myth Of The Rational Voter") has done it, penning an op-ed in the NYT in support of the measure. It's tepid as hell, and it basically comes down to this: it's not the worst thing you could do. In other words, politicians have that urge just to do something, and usually that something is fairly awful. It wouldn't be hard for you to come up with a list of ten awful ways politicians might try to solve the gas problem. But, as Caplan explains: cutting gas taxes isn't really so awful, and if it precluded other measures, it wouldn't be so bad. Now let's see Hillary run to trot this guy out -- of course, making no mention of his recent book.