$$$ IRS agents tailing UBS banker visits. What, like there’s something wrong with that? [NYP]
$$$ Attention budding white collar criminals: Canada is the place you want to be. [CBC]
$$$ FINRA: Sucks at managing money, great at investor letters:
While returns from FINRA’s investments were quite positive for the four years prior to 2008, the losses incurred in 2008 erased almost all of those gains. [Reuters]
$$$ Killing it in China [Dealbook]
$$$ It’s already been widely reported that Tim Geither couldn’t sell his house and is now renting it out, so what TG would like to know is why some pissant feels the need to ask “what will happen if he can’t find a tenant next time around?” Does he really need this now? [ABC]
$$$Harry Markopolos was recently named CFE of the Year by the Association of Certified Fraud Examiners at the group’s annual Fraud Conference in Vegas. Naturally Marks was expected to give a speech, which would one might expect to strike some serious notes, given the subject matter, but still remain fairly light. You always want to throw in a few jokes when accepting an award, you know? So what sort of humor do think you’d get from a financial fraud investigator? Borscht Belt? Morbid? Scatological? [Going Concern]
$$$ Ron Insana On High Frequency Trading [ZH]

Timmy G scored a small victory today by not being openly laughed at by the Chinese when he declared, “”We are committed to taking measures to maintaining greater personal saving and to reducing the federal deficit to a sustainable level by 2013″. To their credit, the Obama administration is being very forthcoming about the game plan to “sustainable” deficit levels by saying, “As Americans save more and Chinese are able to spend more, we can put growth on a more sustainable foundation”.
However, what may be lost in translation for the Chinese is that our blueprint to health is to tag the collective 1,3 billion of them as ‘it’ in the game of which nation will allow its citizens to become punch drunk with leverage and spend outside their means. No doubt China will get a harsh lesson in American euphemisms as they digest the true meaning of TG’s statement that, “the crisis has also highlighted the need for a different global growth path going forward”.

As you’re aware, one of the benefits of a financial crisis like the one we’re in now is that it’s designed to extinguish, or severely curb, the amount of self-important douchebags in your direct line of vision. Unfortunately, the mechanism of change doesn’t work quite as well in the Hamptons, where mostly everyone S’s D, save for some of the very special residents Further Lane. Now, those who have “survived” the recession (*on their own terms or on the generosity of others, the example below presumably being the latter) to make it out for another season are congratulating themselves for the accomplishment, and also asking for someone to casually walk by and drop a hand-grenade on where they’ve been hanging, wiping out all the “certain kinds of people” assembled in one fell swoop.

“Whatever you want to say about the economy, the fact is, it’s more selective in the Hamptons this summer,” says one young lady at Day & Night who asked to be named. “It’s only a certain kind of person coming out here now, and honestly, that is the kind of person I want to be around.”

Seasons Tidings [NYP via Daily Intel]

Apparently a “large number of JPM senior macro prop traders” have just left the House of Dimon. No word, yet, on where they’re headed or how JD took it.
Update: Supposedly the defectors are BarCap bound.

It seems the Warren Buffet was doing a lot more than just taking in $650k for a lunch meeting during 2007; he was feeling out unknowing candidates to take the other side of his trades. Two years ago, Mohnish Pabrai, Managing Partner of Pabrai Investment Funds, shelled out around $10,000/minute to thank Buffet personally for his publicly disseminated investing advice. Some of the pearls of wisdom that the Oracle imparted on the fund manager were the benefits of keeping an empty calendar, not scheduling any meetings, ditching the Blackberry, losing the email account and attempting to maintain a general state of information blackout. These helpful hints paid impressive dividends in 2008 when Pabrai’s fund finished the year down 60%.
The fun begins immediately after the jump

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Trader: The Documentary, which Jones requested be pulled out of circulation at some point in the 90s (and bought up all the remaining copies he could find), is now available in 7 parts on YouTube. Take the next hour to watch a 32 year old PTJ get psyched over a $5 million day, chill with a huge turkey who he think of as a pet dog, discuss his start as “a glorified secretary,” trade while kicking back with some Buds, use a huge ass cell phone and put it out there that “if I make the mark I want to make, I’ll stop, I’ll retire.” (No word on whether he’s yet to achieve that mark or if it had to be reset when he decided to start funding the greatest show on earth, which will cost you.)