This is probably not the type of response the Obama administration was aiming for when it set up the Home Affordable Modification Program. While the program aims to keep risky borrowers in their homes, a loan modification advocacy group, the Foreclosure Law Relief Project, is less than pleased that lenders are still rejecting modification applicants and going after everybody involved in the process. The current list of defendants in their lawsuit includes the Treasury Department, the Federal Housing Finance Agency, Fannie Mae, and Freddie Mac. It seems the real culprit that Tim Geithner may have to answer for is why modification decisions are made “under a cloak of secrecy”. If the government hadn’t been so slow working out an agreement with CNBC to provide constant coverage from inside the credit committee room of each lender so they could break headlines like ‘Jones family just misses keeping their house’, this never would have been a problem.
Archive for July 2009
There are a lot of reasons to love* Paul Tudor Jones, the adorable scamp of a hedge fund manager who doesn’t want anyone to see footage of him from back in the day. One of them is that he keeps his employees well-fed, with artery-clogging fast food. Once a month– and apparently the event is happening next week, for those of you who just started at Tudor– PTJ sends out a company-wide email inviting everyone “for a southern-style BBQ, though it’s actually just KFC, ’cause he’s a huge fan.” Someone is dispatched to go pick it up** (“which can sometimes take almost an hour door to door, so you know he wants it bad”), and then they sit around and shoot the shit. Sure, a lot of firms offer their staffs tasty treats every now and then. SAC is big on individual chocolate fountains. AQR likes Ziplocks of whatever it takes to get people up to Biff Bassness’s speed. And so on and so forth. But no else actually makes it rain buckets of chicken. Jones does, and that is why he is better than everyone else.
In related P to the T to the J news, as previously speculated, he was the one who directed the filmmakers to invoke a copyright claim this afternoon. According to Teri Buhl, when he asked for the documentary to be taken out of circulation back in the 90s, PTJ told producers he’d pay “considerably more” (double or an asston unclear) than whatever they’d make distributing the thing.
*And since sometimes you twits don’t get it when we’re actually being sincere, on the rare occasions it occurs: we mean it!
**Supposedly in Darien, even though there’s a Stamford location, because PTJ thinks it’s cleaner.
It seems inexcusable that after all the IOU issuance and bickering about how to solve California’s budget mess, the solutions were there the entire time. Had Arnold tuned into a seemingly innocent city council meeting in Santa Cruz last year, he would have found the magic bullets for problems such as agricultural reform and commercial real estate. He would have also been clued into the disparities between the slave-based East Coast economy and the more union-centric West Coast economy.
Ahead of Amanda Drury’s scheduled two week visit to Englewood Cliffs this August, Michelle Caruso-Cabrera has declared an all-out war, starting today. Who will emerge victorious? On the one hand Amanda and the Druries take no prisoners. On the other, as evidence in the first thirty seconds of the clip above, CC is tipping the camera guys to linger on her good side.
As a few of you have emailed: yes, Trader: The Documentary has been pulled from YouTube. Those who listened to us at the time and checked it out yesterday should not be too broken up about it, since you got a glimpse of a vintage PTJ, though, yes, it is upsetting to not be able to watch it every night before bed. Those who failed to do so– you fucked up, big time. It’s unlikely that this thing will make it back to the ‘Tube any time soon, as Jones bought up all remaining copies in the mid-90s in an effort to keep it under wraps, and was probably instrumental in getting it yanked today. Nevertheless: we will attempt to get our hands on it, not matter the cost. Then: DB Movie Night.
Update: The original uploader speaks:
At first I had no idea how sought after this piece of material was. I had heard anecdotally about Ebay listing in the $1,000′s but I chalked it up to urban legend. Then late Sunday night I was talking with a colleague about an obscure blogger/marketer who had for months talked about posting the Trader doc. I figured it was just a ploy to build a marketing site and thought it was kind of backwards to encourage this shadowy cottage industry/exchange of VHS tapes. Given the historical relevance, the position of both PTJ and Borish in the industry today and the fact that this aired at some point on public television – I thought posting the videos on YouTube would be educational for other traders and finance professionals. I embedded the videos on the Elite Trader message boards only after John’s seeing John’s site was having “technical difficulties” as the WordPress structure was exposed.
By Monday morning Dealbreaker, zerohedge and influential personalities on Twitter picked up the videos. My email Inbox exploded with messages and comment notifications from YouTube all day long. Some of the commentary, observations and quotes were priceless, I felt like I had given new credence to yuppie culture- often reserved for citations of “American Psycho” and Gordon Gekko. Monday was very distracting and hard to get work done, so I turned off the email notifications and put my head to work. This morning I was reading the Financial Times Alphaville section and saw my YouTube video embedded and knew things had really caught fire. I logged into YouTube to discover in less than 24 hours each video had been watched some than 30,000 times.
It’s becoming tougher and tougher to even dream up a series of events which would officially qualify the SEC as having violated its duty to vigorously pursue alleged frauds. Taking some guy named Harry’s word is one thing; doing nothing with your own investigation is another. Back in 2005, the SEC were, for once, on the right track to getting at the root cause of the formerly well air conditioned Sir Allen’s super-CD offerings. However, the fact that the guy accused of running the whole scheme didn’t offer up his ‘Here’s How I Pulled Off A $5 Billion Fraud’ manuscript to investigators was enough for a SEC inspector general to rule that the agency did not breach its pinky swear promise to give it their all in fraud investigations. Apparently the SEC qualifies as too big to fail.
I sincerely hope no Bank of America employees are not reading the internet today because really? The blows are going fast, hard and low. If Ken Lewis and Co were already feeling a bit bad about themselves, if they were starting to think, “maybe it’s true, maybe we really do suck,” if they were beginning to take the trash talk that they can’t do anything right to heart, the absurdly catty critique of the Bryant Park building over at Bloomberg will not do wonders for the ego. First off, according to architecture critic James S. Russell, the place is a constant reminder that before Ken Lewis came up with the genius idea to buy Countrywide and Merrill Lynch, BAC wasn’t in the toilet.
The building was touted as costing $1 billion in 2004, and the bank has declined to update the figure. After the 64 percent slump in the bank’s shares since September, this glinting bundle of shards, nearing completion across from Bryant Park, could be considered a monument to bonus-coddled, overindulgent, corporate excess.
And that stuff about it being the antidote to global warming? Bull.
Cook & Fox touts One Bryant Park as “the world’s most environmentally responsible high-rise office building.”
This is an overstatement. Around the world, eco-buildings have moved far beyond this design.
Okay, but besides the greed and green stuff, is she doable? No. Russel wouldn’t fuck her with Angelo Mozilo’s dick.
The 54-story result is among the most ungainly forms on the skyline, like a matron who swathes herself in thick layers of fabric in a vain attempt to slim her burgeoning silhouette.
What the? And after that thinly veiled shot at KL’s cankles? Anything else you wanna say? Yes. Jimmy would like to get one more thing off his chest.
…dumpy.
OH NO, SHE DI’INT. On the bright side! Russell does slip in one thing that, if they’re smart, BAC execs will use to their benefit on the off-chance the next few quarters don’t go their way. How can anyone be expected to make money money take take money money when they can’t even see due to an environment that fosters 24/7 squinting?
Though bands of white ceramic dots fused onto the glass are designed to cut unwanted sun, a bank official said the company had regretted not investing in shades that would automatically lower when the sun beats in.
Bank of America’s Earnest Eco-Tower Rises From New York Slump [Bloomberg via DI]
Typically Mad Max’s response to any question starting with,”who is responsible for trying to defeat this piece of legislation which will save our country” includes some variation on ‘current Goldman employee’, ‘ex-Goldman employee’, or ‘friend of a current or ex-Goldman employee’. But not this time. Maxie was after Rahm-bo this morning for recruiting a few too may right leaning Democrats when he was in the Congressional leadership and now the Blue Dogs are to blame for holding up health care reform. After unloading on the Dogs, Maxine did find the time to neatly summarize how to solve the housing crisis by focusing on abrogating contracts and the need for negative interest rates.
Eliot Spitzer says no, and reiterates that the entire operation in a Ponzi scheme. While we’re on the subject, know who else can’t be trusted? You think you’re paying top dollar for them to keep quiet and then they run their mouth to anyone who’ll listen. You can bet I’ve learned my lesson. Port Authority, no names, only way to do it.
A “new” article-by-numbers is out today discussing the fact that the recession is affecting people’s love lives. Naturally, John Carney would like to know if that translates to less on the job fucking. Carney’s conducting an actual survey, not just fact-finding for his personal amusement, so let’s do him a solid with some hard data. If the matter of getting things going isn’t an issue, are you more likely to err on the side of caution these days, out of fear that security tapes of you fornicating on the desk might put your job security at risk? Or are you more likely to say, fuck it, let’s do this? The dearly departed Keith Hahn loves to regale me with tales of a former colleague of his who “used to take down people in the JPM trading floor bathroom like nobody’s business.” But that was circa 2005 when you could do practically anything. For the Dimonettes in the group is that venue still fair game? Is there less on-site banging but more one-man QT in the handicapped stall, especially around bonus time? Are our favorite southern CT shemales f-blasting each other on big money days? Are there any firms where this sort of behavior is a-okay, as long as no one’s getting hurt (possibly one of the more outside the box thinking hedge funds)? In these difficult times, are some employers going to so far as to facilitate interoffice action, with mood lighting and aphrodisiacs? Or is it pretty much explicitly frowned upon? Let’s get into this.
Always at the leading edge of making an illicit buck, Sin City’s home state is doing its part to make the story of stimulus spending even more comical. Nevada governor Jim Gibbons is considering raiding a state contingency fund for $500,000 to appoint a “stimulus czar” to oversee the $2b or so in freshly printed Monopoly money headed out west. In a place that built its fortunes on knowing the location of every last dollar well enough that only Danny Ocean & Co. can make them disappear, shelling out half a mil for somebody to keep a journal of where the money is going can only be viewed as Nevada’s homage to handling stimulus funds the Washington way.
