We don’t have to tell you people we love ourselves some Vikram Pandit, but is this perhaps laying it on a bit thick? In response to “sources” telling the Post that regulators may take Count Vikula out of the building in order to “signal Washington is taking as hard a line with the banks as it did with General Motors,” Citi CFO Ned Kelly offered: “Replacing [Pandit] would be dramatically de-stabilizing both for Citi and the system.” As for the matter of Tim Geithner paying a visit to the Big C’s offices a week and a half ago? Totally not a big deal, and nothing having to do with Pandito’s job being at risk. The drop by, according to people familiar with the meeting, was “simply to conduct a checkup on the bank.” You know, making sure the building was up to code, that the toilets were all flushing properly, etc. Standard. Paulson used to do the same thing.

Morgan Stanley Eyes Changing PDT Desk (WSJ)
They’re examining rolling the desk out into a hedge fund or opening it to outside investors; though there’s every possibility that they’ll leave it alone. All that’s known is “Discussions about restructuring the group have been under way for more than a year, but have accelerated during the past few months.” At the heart of the issue are the H-1B rules implemented for those institutions holding TARP funds; under the new guidelines you have to prove you made every reasonable effort to hire an American before taking on someone requiring a Visa. The desk is largely quant, and the quants are largely foreign.
Investors Seek To Block Mortgage Securities Bill (FT)
“Bond investors are lobbying hard to change federal policies aimed at reducing foreclosures in the US, saying the measures discriminate against holders of top-rated securities backed by mortgages.
The investors are set to meet senators next week. The next step could be legal action against the US government if the law is passed, on the basis that it could violate the Fifth Amendment, which prohibits the taking of private property for public use without compensation.”
US To Tell Banks How They Did, Scores Posted By Gym At Noon (NYT)
The Gov will be telling the banks what their results looked like at some point today, and this afternoon they should release the details of how the stress tests worked/what metrics were used; the public won’t get a good look at “scores” until May 4th. In the week + weekend you have to wonder how many leaks there’s going to be, and whether Code Pink can possibly survive the nine days of not knowing who they’re going to annoy next.
Pandit Could Be Forced From Citi After Tests (Reuters)
Reuters puts forth a not-so-bad argument that when the tests for Citi come back, the US Gov may have very little (if any) choice but to replace him a-la GM. We have to be fair in socialism, you know.
M.B.A’s Staying Put (WSJ)
It used to be, you could do pretty much whatever you wanted post college (numbers related), go get your MBA, and someone would pick you up. Not so much anymore, as recent MBA Grad’s are finding out – dreams of going into IB are being squashed left and right. For instance, this guy:
“But as he prepares to graduate from the University of Notre Dame in Indiana next month, Mr. Fusco, 27 years old, hasn’t had any luck landing a position in finance. The only solution he has is to go back to his accounting roots. “It’s a tough pill to swallow, but I’ve come to the conclusion that I can’t sit and wait and cross my fingers,” he says.
Madoff Net Losers Safe From Clawback (WSJ)
“Investors with Bernard Madoff who had a net loss due to his fraud won’t be asked to return funds they withdrew from his firm in recent years, said a lawyer who is charged with recovering the firm’s assets.”

$$$ Records Say U.S. Pressed BofA to Cut Dividend. Awkward! [Dealbook]
$$$ Power To The Hedge Funds! [Newsweek]
$$$ Nelson Peltz‘s House of Horrors [Cityfile]
$$$ Kellerman: the Scapegoat of a Self-Fulfilling Prophecy? [Housing Wire]
$$$ A private jet “sensible enough to impress any Congressional Committee” [copyranter]
$$$ Diet Coke Fail: “As at Harvard, Summers functions on exceedingly little
sleep. (A former student told me Summers once praised his dedication after noticing he’d run a computation at 4 a.m.; the student didn’t have the heart to tell him he’d queued it up at six the night before.) To power through the day, Summers relies on a punishing Diet Coke regimen.” [TNR, previously]

The Federal Reserve didn’t advise Bank of America or CEO Ken Lewis “on any questions of disclosure,” a spokeswoman for Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke said.
Lewis has told New York’s attorney general that then-Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson and Bernanke pressured him in December not to discuss issues with its pending purchase of Merrill Lynch.
“It has long been the Federal Reserve’s view that questions of this nature are best addressed by individual institutions and their legal counsel, as they are in a position to understand clearly their obligations and responsibilities,” the spokeswoman, Michelle A. Smith, said.–WSJ

Of course, this doesn’t answer the question of whether Bernanke told Paulson to “advise” (e.g. threaten) Lewis,* or if he and Paulson came to that decision together, only that Bernanke himself didn’t directly go to Lewis and say “do it and die, pal!”
*Which is what Cuomo’s letter claims.
Update: Paulson says he was not acting at the behest of Bernanke when he threatened Lewis, as was previously stated by Cuomo.

Then-U.S. Secretary Henry Paulson was delivering his own message, and not the Federal Reserve’s, when he told Bank of America CEO Kenneth Lewis that the bank was in a binding merger contract with Merrill Lynch and Co., a spokesman for Paulson said on Thursday. “Secretary Paulson’s words were his own,” the spokesman said. “(Fed) Chairman (Ben) Bernanke did not instruct him to indicate any specific action the Fed might take,” a spokesman for Paulson said in a statement. New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo said on Thursday that Lewis was pressured by Paulson and Bernanke to go through with Bank of America’s planned merger with Merrill Lynch.

Is Paulson backtracking or did Cuomo have it wrong all along?

As you’re aware, Mike Morgan, proprietor of Facts about Goldman Sachs, a site billed as “an open forum for facts and discussions about what part Goldman Sachs and their executives played in the current Global Economic Crisis,” vowed several weeks back not to back down from his mission to “expose” the firm’s supposed evil-doings, despite provoking the ire of 85 Broad. He chose not to comply with a cease and desist request, and has continued to post information that doesn’t cast the Masters of the Universe in the best light at goldmansachs666.com.
Which is nice and all that, but we assumed that for the right price, he could be silenced (who couldn’t be, right?). Apparently, not so much! Morgan was recently offered $2 million from an unidentified buyer (Goldman Sachs?) to sell the site, which he turned down. Kid’s got principles, we guess (that or he’s holding out for a unit, knowing full well Blankfein’s good for it).
Earlier: Confidential To Mike Morgan: We’ve Got What You Want Right Here

So! Remember last month when we learned that William Cohan’s new book on Bear Stearns has Jimmy Cayne calling Journal reporter Kate Kelly a “cunt,” Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner a back office “clerk” with a “boyfriend” and a “hard on,” and CNBC on-air editor Charlie Gasparino a “snake”? We talked to Charlie Gasparino about that last allegation this morning and, according to Chaz, his inclusion in House of Cards is a total crock, for a couple reasons.
First off, William Cohan never called Gaspo to check things out. Well, he did email Chaz, but that was all the way back last year, and all he wrote was “Hey, we should talk.” Charlie was busy, assumed Cohan “just wanted to go to lunch or something,” and ignored the note. The lack of a call, in Gaspo’s mind, was a failure on Cohan’s part to comply with “Journalism 101 standard operating procedures.”
Second, the whole “snake” comment was a misunderstanding, according to Jimmy Cayne, who last night, perhaps after getting lit, called up Gasparino to clear the air. Removing the bong from his lips long enough to speak, Cayne told Charlie that while, yeah, he did refer to CG as a snake, a) it was said out of anger b) the burn was taken out of context c) he’s sorry d) he said “a lot of great stuff” about Charlie that didn’t make it to print and e) he thinks Charlie is “the best damn reporter” he’s ever seen. “Relentless.”
Earlier: Charlie Gasparino’s Love Affair With Jimmy Cayne