$$$ Does Jim Cramer still think Lenny Dykstra is “one of the great ones in this business“? Possibly not, considering he just fired him. At a time when he could really use the money.
$$$ “When your marriage is on the rocks, you don’t ask the same jamoke who introduced you to your spouse for marital advice.” [The Big Picture]
$$$ Morgan Stanley prop spinoff makes more sense than ever. [Breaking Views]
$$$ JPMorgan: #1 [Portfolio]
$$$ Job of the Week: Macquarie needs a Senior Credit Professional. That could be you. [DB Career Center]
Archive for April 2009
CNBC reports that John Mack has been the only bank CEO, that they’re aware of, to pick up the results of his firm’s stress test. He apparently showed up “in a silver Audi,” met with Fed officials for about an hour and “left without comment or fanfare.” So far Blankfein, Dimon, et al are nowhere to be found,* but if someone would get off their asses and take a walk down to Ulysses, we could surely find them.
*Perhaps suggesting they’ve banded together in a concerted effort to give the impression they don’t give a fuck about these meaningless things, or maybe they do but just got too bombed at lunch on Stone Street.
Or it would seem from the looks of the CNN piece:
General Motors is preparing to announce that the Pontiac car brand — once marketed as GM’s “Excitement division” — will be killed off, according to a source familiar with the decision.
These are, of course, the death cries of the company, which had hitherto been muffled with yards of duct tape bearing Management and UAW fingerprints. This is the end. Can we please stop sending money now?
Pontiac: End of the road [CNN.com]
Yesterday we debated the relative merits of Playboy‘s recent stimulus package, a featured called the “Women of Wall Street,” and whether or not it was an effective boon to your market. Today, for comparison’s sake, we’re hopping in the Delorean and gunning it to August 1989, to study the spank rag’s original WoWS spread. If anyone has any information on where these ladies are today– perhaps you know them as “boss” or “mom”– please get in touch.
Update: It’s been brought to my attention that despite noting what’s after the jump is from a little-known adult publication called Playboy, I should’ve explicitly stated it’s not safe for work. So, yeah– NSFW! (Though we have covered the most intimate parts with a familiar face, and it’s a beautiful Friday, why not live a little?).
From the mailbag: “Just saw SuperFund’s newest employee, Vito Fossella, on Madison and 40th…he did not appear drunk, but I didn’t get close enough to smell his breath.”
Yes, the Charles Manson “Teach Kids To Make Friends,” program was a miss… true, the GM “Health Care Benefits Administration,” program was poorly attended, and yes, yes, we know that Geithner School of Tax Preparation was a flop, but we really think we’ve got a winner this time:
Citigroup Inc. Friday sent out a press release proudly announcing its participation in Teach Children to Save Day.
“Citi volunteers make learning fun, incorporating hands-on scenarios and real-life experiences into lessons that explain the basics of saving, how interest makes money grow, how to create a budget and how to distinguish needs from wants,” the press release says, without so much as a hint of irony.
Citi to teach children about finance [The Deal]
We understand that the word “billion” has lost a good deal of meaning around here lately. Be that as it may, some statistics that contain the word are still useful (at least for entertainment value). To wit:
The Federal Reserve took on more than $74 billion in subprime mortgages, depreciating commercial leases and other assets after Bear Stearns Cos. and American International Group Inc. collapsed.
In its biggest disclosure of the securities accepted to stabilize capital markets, the Fed said yesterday it had unrealized losses of $9.6 billion on the assets as of Dec. 31. The bonds, swaps and notes were taken in from Bear Stearns, once the fifth-biggest Wall Street firm by capitalization, and AIG, which had been the world’s largest insurer.
Oh, and don’t worry about the 13% in losses the Fed has racked up in just over three months. Those are unrealized.
Bear, AIG Dumped $74 Billion in Subprime, CDOs on Fed [Bloomberg]
This Is No Big Deal. A Certain Someone In Stamford Cleans The Office In The Buff All The Time.
By Bess Levin
Using his notoriously overgrown cock-bush as a Swiffer. Employees rig him up in a harness and lower him into the hard to reach nooks and crannies of the trading floor.
Madoff was even more obsessed, if that’s possible, with cleanliness. Even while he was responsible for billions of dollars, it was not uncommon to see him dusting his office or the two-foot sculpture of a screw behind his desk. One staffer recalls getting off the elevator to find Madoff, clad in one of his innumerable tailored suits, on his hands and knees in the lobby, straightening the rugs so that they were aligned perfectly.
That was Madoff’s third fixation. Everything needed to be symmetrical and in straight lines. When Madoff was in the office, all window blinds had to be aligned at the same height, all computer screens had to be arrayed at the same angle and position, and on and on. So insistent was he on perfect alignment that, more than once, he dropped his trousers in the office — startling female employees — to ensure that the line of his shirt buttons was precisely vertical.
David Moffett, who resigned as chief executive officer of Freddie Mac in March, will temporarily return to the company as a consultant on financial management.
Mr. Moffett will help Freddie’s acting Chief Executive Officer John Koskinen oversee the government-backed mortgage company’s finances, filling a gap left by the death Wednesday of acting CFO David Kellermann.
JPMorgan Doesn’t Give A Rat’s Ass If You’ve Got Sticky Fingers, Were Hoping To See The New Exhibt At The Met On The Cheap
By Bess LevinJPMorgan has supposedly “cut back support of various museums” (thereby screwing employees who previously enjoyed free or deeply discounted admission with a flash of their JPM IDs) and “napkins throughout the building.” Apparently, as some sort of coping mechanism, mini-Dimons have been “joking that you are going to have to bring your own toilet paper soon.” Not exactly sure why they’re so cavalierly kidding around about the prospect of BYOTP, since it’s something other firms have wholeheartedly embraced, but whatever helps bear the pain!
Sure, Cuomo may have given him an alibi, but the SEC is still pissed off, and plans to remain so for some time:
Cuomo revealed in a letter yesterday to Congress and federal regulators that Lewis testified in December that then- Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson may have threatened to remove the bank’s management and directors if the lender tried to back out of buying Merrill. Lewis said he was instructed by federal officials not to disclose Merrill’s losses, his desire to back out of the merger or the intervention of regulators, according to Cuomo.
If you needed a more direct example of why it is simply a bad idea in every single instance to permit government ownership of banking firms except for the limited purposes of facilitating liquidation, this is it.
Consider what can only be a devastating long-term message to markets: You can never again believe the disclosures from any firm in distress when the government is involved.
Bank of America’s Lewis May Face SEC Probe on Merrill [Bloomberg]
