If there is one thing the administration cannot stand it’s folks who try to play jurisdictional tax arbitrage. The UBS incident proved there is a zero tolerance policy here for unpatriotic individuals who try to skirt their responsibilities with the tax man. However, it turns out there is somebody who can get away with tax evasion and is bold enough to not even try to hide it. The US embassy in London is currently delinquent to the tune of £3,446,420 from accrued traffic congestion fees it has run up ever since the city imposed the £8 fee.
The US embassy spokesman said: “Our policy on the congestion tax is a long-standing policy decided on by Washington. The US government’s position is that this a tax and therefore is prohibited by various treaties.”
It’s good to see there are at least some tax agreements the administration does not have any issues with.
Obama’s ambassador to London will not pay congestion charge backlog [Guardian.co.uk]
We didn’t intend for this to be Bernie Madoff Wick Dipping Day but so be it. Did you work as an administrative at some point in the last few decades? There’s a good chance you got boned by Bernie, says another book about to be released on the topic of Berns’ roving D. According to author Jerry Oppenheimer, the Ponz Master “had flings with numerous secretaries that frequently ended with hush-hush settlements,” including one for $250,000. Most of the girls were “the same type as Ruth” in that they were blond* and blue eyed, and also not the same type, in that they were “young.” Apparently many a tryst took place “in the office,” which should add a little something to the guided tour of the Lipstick Building’s 17th floor that a couple of Bernie’s lovechildren are planning for this fall (people love a good conception-on-copy-machine story). Anyway, not that we necessarily want to hear or picture more on this subject, but one can’t help but think that this would be a great time for anyone touched by Bernie to come forward and weigh in on whether or not Sheryl Weinstein’s assessment of the Madoff package is fact or fiction.
*Ruling out the possibility of an affair with long-time secretary/Liza Minelli doppelgänger Eleanor Squillari, which might explain recent instances of cattiness re: Bernie’s girls: bitch be jealous.
**Sidebar: That’s definitely my new fave pick of the big man.
The Putin Lending Plan for Sberbank (07/22/09):
A significant part of the [branch] network is not profitable but you cannot abandon it,” he said. “This is your payment for the state support.”
The Results (08/18/09):
The head of a Moscow branch of Sberbank, Russia’s largest state bank, is suspected of plundering over $180 million, the Interior Ministry said on Tuesday.
“A criminal investigation has been opened against an organized group comprising the head of a Sberbank branch, its economic security officers and their accomplices, who plundered large amounts of money,” said Alexei Shishko of the ministry’s economic security department.
No word yet on how this will impact vacation permission slips.
Been dying to get some face time with Biff Basness? Now’s your chance! Shoot Bubba a resume today.
AQR has started hiring big time. They have hired a hoard of useless green PhDs recently and are looking for more. Morale of the non-PhD crowd, which is doing most of the grunt work when PhDs are polishing their nails in front of partners, is pretty low. I expect a major churn out in February, after the pay day.
It looks like the Treasury wants to throw down with the bespoke derivatives clan. Riding the wave of structured product tar and feathering, the Treasury believes it has found the solution to curbing the issuance of customized derivatives- which would naturally make the world a better place.
Through higher capital requirements and higher margin requirements for non-standardised derivatives, the legislation will encourage substantially greater use of standardised derivatives and thereby will facilitate substantial migration of OTC derivatives onto central clearing houses and exchanges,” says the Treasury
Before they start lighting up the Cohibas and patting themselves on the back for a job well done, the masterminds behind the plan to increase the cost of doing bespoke business may want to reconsider what they’ve done. Faced with mounting pressure to become profitable without reducing headcount by 50% every 3 months, banks are now being told that if they still want to make large chunks of change on bespoke transactions, they better come up with clever ways to circumvent new capital and margin requirements. The Treasury can thank themselves for the next evolutionary step in structured products antics.
Move to curb non-standard OTCs [FT]
JO&C or attempting to S your own D?
Last week, after hearing a lady named Sheryl Weinstein had written a book about being screwed by Bernie Madoff both as an investor and as one of the skanks he was banging on the side for years, we asked everyone to guesstimate what B-Boy might have going on downtown. Most of you figured he had to be packin’, on account of the evidence at left. Not so, says Weinstein! The Daily News has a few of the “intimate details” included in the tome today. Notable among them: “This man was not well-endowed.”
Obviously the question we’re all asking ourselves is, was he “not well-endowed” relative to Weinstein? Do we have an abnormally large vagina situation on our hands? Are we going to get a completely different take from Berns via his attorney Ira Sorkin later this afternoon, saying the problem didn’t lie with his small penis but rather, with Sheryl’s “HUGE vagina,” as Sorkin makes a wide ‘V’ symbol with his hands? Apparently not. Supposedly Mades was all too aware of his shortcomings, going so far as to call up Weinstein the day after their first time together to apologize. That detail sort of strikes us as a crock, and possible indication of a lady doth protest scenario but S Dubs then goes on to speak rather highly of Ponzi-B’s skills. “I didn’t have a problem,” with the invisible D, Weinstein claims she told B. “When we made love, I was on fire.” (Ed: The Daily News seems to think Weinstein was describing how hot Little B got her though she very well could’ve been describing her own performance.)
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Shanghai Mayor Sees Bankers Bereft of Conscience (Bloomberg)
“Financiers have the least conscience in the world when it comes to making money,” Han, 55, said in an interview. “By saying that, I would have offended many bankers and financiers, but this is my personal experience.” Sing it, sister.
UBS tax deal may pave way for bank’s recovery (Reuters)
An interesting theory out today is that by simply handing over the names of the clients it helped avoid pay taxes, the Swiss bank’s name and “image” will no longer be tainted, and that people will stop leaving the comment “UBS sucks” on every post mentioning it.
Supreme Court To Hear Case On Executive Pay (NYT)
Jones v. Harris Associates, this fall, re: doling out huge bonuses, while one’s company bites the big one. Judge Richard Posner had this to say last summer, which no doubt pleased Eliot Spitzer greatly: “Executive compensation in large publicly traded firms often is excessive because of the feeble incentives of boards of directors to police compensation.”
Jury Finds Butler Did It (NYP)
Ex-Credit Suisse broker Eric Butler, possibly going to jail for 45 years, cried after being convicted of securities fraud.
‘Terminator’ Producers File Suit Against Hedge Fund Backer (Media Decoder)
For the love of god tell us another one of these is about to come out. It’s August, and we need this.
Regulators Were Told Of Stanford Fraud, Investors Say (Reuters)
“These agencies along with Stanford have robbed me of my American dream,” Craig Nelson, a 55-year-old resident of Magnolia Springs, Ala., testified at a Senate Banking Committee field hearing. We could’ve had a Coach reunion if you worthless bastards had done your jobs! (Don’t even with the “it’s a different Craig Nelson. The SEC knows exactly what we’re talking about.)
Few Gender Differences In A Recession (WSJ)
“A new study, on women with MBAs, being published in the Harvard Business Review, found men and women were roughly equally likely to be promoted or laid off. Among men, 36% were promoted and 10% lost jobs; among women, 31% were promoted and 12% lost jobs. The authors said the differences weren’t statistically significant.”
London Bankers’ Pay Rises 6% in July (CNBC)
The average salary paid to financial sector workers in London rose to 53,223 pounds ($87,220) in July, up 6 percent from June but down 1 percent from a year ago, recruiters Morgan McKinley said. Also, managers are looking for people with “multiple skill sets.”
$$$ Guaranteed Bonuses: Good or Bad? [The Deal]
$$$ Comp Watch: AIG Chief Benmosche Gets $7 Million Annual Salary [Bloomberg]
$$$ Goldman Sachs doesn’t care what you think of Goldman Sachs, Matt Taibbi! [Dealbook]
$$$ Deadline To Seek Indictment Of Sergey Aleynikov Extended [DJ]
$$$ Alleged International Hacker Indicted for Massive Attack on U.S. Retail and Banking Networks [DOJ]
Once worth more than the US Dollar, the undisputed king of high denomination currencies, the Zimbabwean dollar is fighting for its life. The country’s finance minister, Tendai Biti, is trying to end the era of one of the few currencies that had to adjust the font size on its notes to accommodate the number of zeroes.
“We are putting the tombstone on the corpse of the Zimbabwe dollar,” Biti told lawmakers in a midyear fiscal policy statement. In a speech to business leaders, he said, “We are no longer printing our own money.”
Still, there are some individuals determined to use their last three trillion to ride the bus and avoid using non-trillion denominated currencies such as the USD and ZAR. While the currency may be reaching multi-year highs based on eBay sale prices, there is one individual in particular who sees a role for the currency beyond a collector’s item.
President Robert Mugabe has called for the return of the Zimdollar as legal tender, complaining that most Zimbabweans lack the hard currency needed to buy basic goods.
Basic goods like the wheelbarrows needed to transport enough cash to buy anything other than a bus pass.
I don’t know how this was missed this Friday but damn if Berns is not growing on us. The question is did he actually lay it on this thick or did the secretary, who cannot stop talking about Big B’s proclivs for massage parlor handies and skanks, just misunderstand him?
“She’s a pain in the ass, but I guess I have to go out with her for lunch,” Bernard Madoff would say to his secretary about the aggressive blond woman nearly a decade younger than his wife Ruth, who would show up at his Lipstick Building office and demand that he leave in the middle of the day.
If there is one thing the administration cannot stand it’s folks who try to play jurisdictional tax arbitrage. The UBS incident proved there is a zero tolerance policy here for unpatriotic individuals who try to skirt their responsibilities with the tax man. However, it turns out there is somebody who can get away with tax evasion and is bold enough to not even try to hide it. The US embassy in London is currently delinquent to the tune of £3,446,420 from accrued traffic congestion fees it has run up ever since the city imposed the £8 fee.
