$$$ Yahoo Annual Meeting Delayed; Preliminary Proxy Filed [PaidContent]

$$$ Currency for the Blind [TheBigPicture]

$$$ I'm a 28 year old hedge fund guy, living in Greenwich. I was supposed to be going to Paris with my girlfriend for memorial day weekend, but I caught her cheating on me and now the trip's obviously off. I'm still going, and am looking for some company. [craigslist]

Reporters and editors at The Wall Street Journal, Barron's, Marketwatch and Dow Jones Newswires received an email this afternoon telling them that they'll likely be moving up to the News Corp headquarters in midtown next year.

While some media watchers will no doubt bemoan the move as further endangering the independence of the Journal, our informal survey says the newsroom is divided on the move. The so-called "Park Slope lefty" contingent dreads the move, partly because it will lengthen the commute from Brooklyn. The "Westchester family" contingent welcomes it as it brings them closer to Grand Central Station.

WSJ, Dow Jones, Marketwatch, Barron's to move to Manhattan in 2009 [Talking Biz News]

S&P PLACES MOODY'S CORP. 'A-1' SHORT-TERM RTG ON WATCH NEGATIVE-- Bloomberg

It's been a bloodbath! Everyone else is dead! They were told to wait for Fitch at the warehouse! After the carnage they wrought, there's no one left to destroy but each other! Who will survive this last shootout? No one! They all die in the end! Cue Harry Nilsson's 'Coconut!'

Bill Miller, the Legg Mason fund manager who controls 5.4 percent of Yahoo, wants to see Microsoft buy the company. Halfway measures--such as a joint venture --don't interest him.

That would seem to put him squarely in Icahn's camp. But Miller's still being coy, saying he's undecided on how he'll vote in the proxy fight.

Legg's Miller undecided on Icahn's Yahoo slate [Retuers]

Late last night the Quebec Court of Appeal put the kibosh on biggest buyout of all time, ruing that the sale of Bell Canada to a consortium of buyers led by the Ontario Teachers' Pension Plan is unfair to bondholders. The deal was already under pressure from lenders who were balking at providing financing, demanding tough debt covenants and high interest rates.

Andrew Willis of the Globe and Mail's Streetwise Blog points out that the Chinese walls at the investment banks working on the deal has produced a very strange result: the banks advising on the deal are the same ones who brought the lawsuit that now has placed it in peril.

Find out what happened after the jump.

Some of you may recall that several weeks ago, after hearing about a stunning feat accomplished by Ian Roncoroni, an energy OTC options broker with Power Merchants Group (Oyster Boy ate 244 Oysters in 1 hour at Ulysses), we rewarded the boy with a very special delivery: a Delmonico's cheesesteak, on us. Despite some minor bumps in the road early on (Ronco took nearly twelve hours to thank us for the treat), overall, we enjoyed the tingly good feeling derived from sending roasted animal carcass slathered with processed cheesestuff to a random financial services hack we'd never met. It conveniently assuaged the guilt we sometimes feel for our unrelenting mockery of you people.

To recapture that feeling and to demonstrate that, despite anecdotal evidence to the contrary, we love you idiots, we decided to send a delicious sandwich to randomly selected analysts/associates/traders/CEOs/fund managers of our choosing each week, starting in mid-May. We called it The Sandwich Fairy (TSF). So far, it's gone quite well, and the lucky recipients seem to enjoy the free food. That is not to say the initiative has gone off hitch-free. Some of you, it seems, are unfamiliar with the concept of how one receives food that has been sent to them. Just so that we don't have another unfortunate incident like the one that took place earlier this week at Sredit Cuisse, here are some helpful tips to keep in mind moving forward.

-- If you get a call that there's a cheesesteak delivery for you in the lobby from a place called Shorty's, it's not a bomb

-- Or a practical joke

-- It's, how to put this, a cheesesteak. A CHEESESTEAK. And not a synthetic, half-assed NYC simulacrum of a cheesesteak. But a real, honest-to-Rocky Philly cheesesteak. Wiz/wit. So good it's worth JO'ing while crying over because you miss it when it's gone. (The proprietor of said establishment, a Philly guy and former Wall Streeter named Evan, is awesome enough to foot the bill for DB's TSF needs, as the cost of three months' worth of sammie deliveries runs higher than you-know-who's annual take-home.)

-- Now, here's the thing with cheesesteaks: though they are magically delicious, they don't yet have the ability to walk themselves up to your desk. You will have to go downstairs and pick them (yes, them: we have been sending several, so you can share with your friends) up

-- Another thing about cheesesteaks: they don't have the best shelf life. GO GET THEM NOW.

-- Nominating a friend for one and want it to be a surprise? Maybe hint that at some point in the week they'll be getting a delivery around lunchtime, so that we don't have then get in touch with another DealBreakerette who happens to work in the same building to pick up the delivery, and your friend is left cheesesteak-less.

Consequences for failing to follow the above will result in the following: the next time you go down to get your Seamless order, there'll be enough food to feed all of the Bear Stearns employees who can no longer afford to feed themselves, and it'll be on you.

Bloomberg new has gone especially gloomy lately. On Tuesday it was the really, really long expose on counterparty risk in credit default swaps. Today Mark Pittman follows up on variable interest entities, the ugly step child of the off-balance sheet special purpose vehicles that Enron made infamous.

We wrote about these way back in February, when people were first waking up to the fact that banks had undisclosed exposure to mortgage backed securities held by VIEs. Now lawmakers, regulators and accounting standards people are considering rules that would prevent off-balance-sheet treatment for VIEs.

Bloomberg highlights one short-lived VIE with a particularly unfortunate name. Launched by Citigroup just as the mortgage market was collapsing, the $2.5 billion entity known as Bonifacius Ltd was loaded up with subprime mortgages. Six months later it was dead. Bonifacius, as our readers with classics degrees undoubtedly know, was named called "the last of the Romans" by historian Edward Gibbon, author of The Decline And Fall Of The Roman Empire. Bonifacius "fought and died for a fading empire."

Citigroup's `Last Roman' CDO Shows Enron Accounting [Bloomberg]

In our more contrarian moods we like to point out to people that a real housing crisis would involve mass homelessness rather than a surplus of homes pushing down housing values. And when we get really cranky we go all generational war about it: "Well, this just means we'll get to buy those baby boomers' houses for less."

We didn't realize we were channeling a former head of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. After the jump, read William Isaac from today's Wall Street Journal on why you should stop worrying and learn to love the housing crash.

Earlier today we were pointed in the direction of Dickipedia.org and our initial thought: fantastic. As its name would suggest, it's a site based on the Wikipedia model, but confined to entries on people who are dicks. What fun! We've long kept running tallies of the various dicks we know in our mind, so to put it down on the internet was the next logical step we hadn't yet had the initiative to take. There's only one very glaring problem. Specifically, an omission that cannot be overlooked.

Self-styled shareholder superman Carl Icahn says Barack Obama would be a "terrible" president, Bloomberg reports. His election, backed by a filibuster proof majority in the Senate, would lead to runaway legislation, higher interest rates and accelerating inflation, Icahn told a conference of investors last night.

"I don't normally get involved in politics, but this time I am," Icahn said. "I don't think Obama really understands economics."

Does this mean Larry Kudlow was right?

Carl Icahn Says Obama Would Be a 'Terrible' President for U.S. [Bloomberg]

It seems like all we ever hear about is what a nice guy Jamie Dimon is, and how he's a "giant among midgets" and his souvlaki is out of this world, but the direction he's taking Bearpont Morgan Chase** is deeply disturbing and very much brings his judgment into question.

Not two weeks ago JPMorgan's head of Latin American Credit, along with four MD's and one ED were laid off for reasons related to "cost cutting and expenses." Today we're told that a JPM director paid a visit to 383 Madison this morning to fire all but two analysts from Bear's Latam Research division, telling the peasants, "As you probably realize, we cannot take you on and as you may or may not be aware, JPMorgan decided to keep the headcount the same as before the merger. So now, you are free to look for other jobs." Obviously we knew that there would be (severance-saddled) victims in this whole thing but the fact that Jamie Dimon can't spare a few pesos to keep the group which inspired "Project Awesome" (the fictional Latam division of the fictional JS Spencer bank which spent most of its time chilling in Cabo with the odd Brazilian mention in Dana Vachon's Mergers and Acquisitions) fully intact is a hard pill to swallow and quite nearly criminal. To Dimon's credit, however, he apparently was instrumental in coming up with the line, "You are free to look for other jobs," which was inspired. (Especially after he asked everyone to stay put for the last several months and requested that other banks hold off on hiring Bear employees until he could decide who would be getting fired.)

*It's funnier than "vivan."
**Not yet official, just in the hopper. Also under consideration: JPMorgan Cayne, the reasoning being that "this whole thing would never have happened without JC's inspired management of Bear."

Citigroup might want to rethink its insomniac slogan. Although the "Citi Never Sleeps" slogan is meant to convey a sense of never-ending vigilance, a new study shows that sleep deprivation leads to a loss of attentiveness and interferes with visual processing.

The study, which will be published in the Journal of Neuroscience, shows that losing only one night's sleep has a dramatic effect on the brain, making it prone to short, sudden shutdowns. The study suggests that sleep-deprived people alternate between periods of near-normal brain function and dramatic lapses in attention and visual processing.

"It's as though it is both asleep and awake and they are switching between each other very rapidly," said David Dinges of the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine. "Imagine you are sitting in a room watching a movie with the lights on. In a stable brain, the lights stay on all the time. In a sleepy brain, the lights suddenly go off."

Losing just one night's sleep makes brain prone to 'sudden shutdowns' [Evening Standard]

Please, God, for the love of watching Cody Willard pass out after one chug let the tip we just received be true. Supposedly, Bloomberg TV has challenged Fox Business to a "drink off." One unnamed anchor who recently moved from BTV to FBN believes (and I dare you to read this line without peeing your pants), "We have some hard core mo'fos up in here--could be quite a challenge." No idea who said that (though Sandra Smith and Brian Sullivan are among those who jumped ship), or where/when this thing is taking place but we will keep you abreast of the situation and be distributing Team Cavuto t-shirts (at cost), this much I promise you. (Don't particularly like the guy, just have our money on the fact that he's in it to win it and has no qualms about playing dirty.)

We're told that layoffs began yesterday in the structured leverage finance group at JP Morgan. Yesterday heads rolled among the senior staff. Today junior people are feeling the axe-man's blade, according to a source familiar with the matter.

Did we ever find out what it was that disgraced former New York governor Eliot Spitzer wanted from his hookers that made the folks running the prostitution ring warn girls about his "dangerous" desires? We can't remember. But Emily Gould spent 36 hours watching Sex and the City, and now she might have an idea.

OMG. You guys! Microsoft chief Steve Ballmer totally had to scramble (heh) for cover when a protester wearing a shirt reading "Microsoft = corruption" started hurling eggs at him. Video after the jump.

(We meant to post this yesterday but got distracted by the big fight about women on Wall Street. An intern has been executed for this oversight.)

On slow summer afternoons in the DealBreaker bunker we like to play a game we call "Market Movers." The point is to come up with a one or two sentence explanation for broad market movements. Whoever comes up with the most ridiculous yet vaguely plausible explanation wins.

Yesterday's winning entry in Market Movers was a bit lengthy but so ridiculous that it ended the game entirely.

One of the things we've learned during the Democratic primary battle is that Hillary's victories are bullish for stocks and Obama's wins are bearish.

The clearest example was Hillary's massive West Virginia victory. Stocks opened strong the following day. But after Obama's big North Carolina win, a night he nearly carried Indiana, stocks opened way down.

Even though Hillary clocked Obama in Kentucky, since Obama took Oregon convincingly, he really carried last night's elections and now stands on the verge of gaining the Democratic nomination. Not surprisingly, stocks opened down 80 points this morning.

So who was the genius who came up with the nonsense that the market moves because of the Oregon primary while discounting the Kentucky primary? Amazingly, it was Larry Kudlow, who doesn't even work at DealBreaker. We were going to send him an email congratulating him on the win until we realized that he wasn't playing Market Movers at all. He was being absolutely sincere.

Stocks Don't Like Obama [NRO]

We're surprised as you are to hear ourselves parroting New York senator Charles Schumer but that's what it's come to: the truly shocking thing about yesterday's Financial Times report on Moody's screwing up the ratings on complex debt derivatives is that it took Moody's nearly a year to fix the problem after it was discovered.

"The ratings inaccuracies that were disclosed are deeply troubling," Schumer wrote in a letter sent to the Securities and Exchange Commission yesterday. "However, the fact that Moody's only downgraded these incorrectly rated products in January of 2008, nearly a full year after they became aware of the problem, is much worse, and is indicative of a culture of shirking responsibility that must end."

Moody's says it has employed Sullivan & Cromwell, the white shoe law firm right next door to Goldman Sachs, to conduct an external review. That's wonderful but, again, why did it take a report from the Financial Times to prompt the review?

Moody's launches review in wake of errors [Financial Times]

Understanding and Outrage From Air Travelers (NYT)
It's been interesting to hear the reactions from travelers and folks we've talked to about AA's new policy of charging $15 to check a bag on a plane. You can probably guess, but we like it. The problem though is how they positioned it. They should've just said anyone who doesn't check their bag will get $15 knocked off the ticket price (of course, at the same time, raising all ticket prices across the board by $15). On the other hand, while that would've come off as less outrageous, perhaps their headline fairs would then look too expensive, compare to their peers, kind of like the way cable and wireless operators like to make the headline number low, before tacking on all kinds of charges. Anyway, we will like the idea either way, and we wouldn't be shocked to see others follow suit.

High gas prices drive farmer to switch to mules (AP)
Obviously, this link comes courtesy of Drudge. Notice the headline is "farmer" not "farmers". Yes, one farmer in McMinnville, TN found it economical to buy a pair of mules rather than some gas guzzling farm equipment. That's our economy today folks. Well, that's one little anecdote in today's interesting economy.

Bush tests Cuba by easing embargo (FT)
Bush is obviously in the "reclaiming whatever's left of his Presidency" stage of his Presidency. Regardless of what happens to the economy, or how things play out in Iraq, he will go down as the President that allowed people to send mobile phones, as gifts, to Cuba. Presumably this is some little overture to Cuba with Castro I having stepped down, but really, given the destabilizing power of communications technology, shouldn't this have been done ages ago?

UBS to Sell Shares at 31% Discount in Rights Offer (Bloomberg)
Get 'em while you can. UBS is selling shares at a 31 percent discount, so it can take on another $15.1 billion in cash. And current investors will have the right to buy 7 new shares for every 20 that they own, so it's very democratic... not some sweetheart sale to a well-connected investor. Meanwhile, several folks noted an interesting data point yesterday, that the financials are no longer the biggest sector in the S&P 500. It's now tech. Not sure what that means