Maybe! From someone supposedly in the know:
Pretty sure this slore worked at Barclays. “Ex-banker” is an extremely generous way to describe herself. “Pitchbook monkey bitch” would be more like it. She is worse in person than she comes off in the article.
First off, PMB? Cold. Second, while Barclays is apparently the early contender, why don’t Citi or UBS or the big ballers at Jefferies get a shot? And most importantly, which firm will step up to the plate and claim ownership next? Girlfriend is living off the taxpayer dime (“we thank God for unemployment insurance because it pays us to live in our expensive luxury apartments with no income”) and could use a new gig. Who’s got an opening?
If the case of Bradley Birkenfeld is any guide, the US government better hope he knew all there is to know about tax evasion because the reward for coming forward and giving the JV investigators at the IRS every detail they failed to uncover isn’t looking so sweet. After coming forward and helping the IRS get back $52 million in back taxes from his former tax evasion client, the powers that be turned around and slapped the former UBSer with a stiffer penalty than both his client, Igor Olenicoff, and his boss for failing to mention that he had been involved in the scheme. While Olenicoff enjoys his two years of probation and Birkenfeld’s boss is running free in Switzerland, the whistleblower will be spending the next three+ years in a federal jail.
Unless there are legions of people who just happened to stumble upon reams of detailed Swiss bank account information intended for the shredder, motivation for helping out the IRS seems hard to come by. The government has said it wants to send a strong message to tax evaders. With well thought out decisions like this one, the message is clear- don’t say a word and keep your passport handy.
Judge Rips SEC On BofA Pact (WSJ)
Rakoff: “Whatever this chain of vague expressions may mean, if it is intended to suggest that Bank of America settled this case to curry favor with the SEC or to avoid retaliation by the SEC, the Court needs to know the specifics.”
Sen. Edward Kennedy Dies After Battle With Cancer (WSJ)
Pour one out for T-Bone tonight.
The Ex-Banker Living On Alcohol, Hook-Ups, And Unemployment (NYM)
“Dinner with one of my old men. I am currently dating a few to finance my Manhattan meal plan. I promised myself the liquid diet, but not when you are having a free fabulous dinner at Del Posto. Mumble an excuse after dinner about not feeling well and having to call it an early night.”
Elle Macpherson Can’t Counter London Gloom as Americans Flee (Bloomberg)
Andrew Wesbecher is one of the many Americans escaping high taxes and a shrinking financial industry across the pond even though Elle is one of his neighbors. Of course, he might’ve stayed put if Arki Busson’s ex had done the neighborly thing and invited him over for tea and whatnot but no matter. According to Mark Tilden, “Expats feel the tone has changed; it’s less welcoming. London’s ability to attract talent has gone down.”
Citadel Cuts Name From Unit (WSJ)
Citadel Solutions LLC will become Omnium in order to “boost the perception that its fund-administration arm is managed independently from its hedge-fund business, employees of the firm have told people.”
April Thank You From Obama Started Embrace of Bernanke at Fed (Bloomberg)
Apparently Obama always liked Bernanke just fine, but he really started taking a shining to the guy on Good Friday, and it was his idea to wear matching outfits to yesterday’s press conference.
Goldman’s Trading Huddles Called Off Sides (NYP)
William Galvin: “We want to know everything that occurred in the trading huddles and how it was disseminated.”
It has been a rough two years for the Celtic Tiger. Faced with a GDP contraction around 8.5% this year and unemployment headed towards 15%, there are more than enough reasons for the Irish to head to the pub and grab a pint of the Black Stuff and listen to some Christy Moore. But things are so bad on the Emerald Isle that people are foregoing this time honored tradition and pubs have fired close to 5,000 workers so far.
“Rural pubs seem to be suffering the most and those pubs which relied on tourism trade are also well down,” Padraig Cribben, Chief Executive Officer of the VFI, said in the report. “We are now calling on the government to help us save the pub trade in Ireland.”
Having seen countless head-scratching auto and bank bailouts around the world that drive most people to drink, the least the Irish government can do now is make sure people still have a place to do just that.
Irish Pub Closures Lead to 4,800 Job Losses, Report Shows [Bloomberg]
Jamie Dimon was recently interviewed on a whole slew of topics, the most pressing one being Obama’s supposed hard-on for the guy, fueled by the media. Our favorite Boy Toy CEO stressed that he barely knows the President, and certainly not in the biblical sense, and in response to the query, “Are you Obama’s favorite banker?” which we all know is the god damn truth, JD answered, “I’m not sure he has favorites.”
This, of course, was a lie,* uttered for a couple reasons. The first is that it was a terrible question. Even if James wanted to answer “fuck hell yeah,” or “yeah man, he’s my number one fan– worships daily at The Church of JD,” Dimon’s not going to come out and say it (and he didn’t have to, thanks to being teed with such an easily evaded query). It’d make Lloyd’s blood boil, and obviously things are easier on him if he doesn’t have the general public thinking he’s got Obama wrapped around his finger. Maybe, we could’ve gotten there eventually, if the interviewer had used a little thing I like to call finesse. Maybe, next time, he’ll ease into that shit slowly, with more subtle but leading Q’s like:
“Do you get the impression Obama thinks about you when he’s doing his wife?” “Do you suspect he’s pressing Tim Geithner to enact Pantless CEO Fridays, a take-off on Hawaiian Shirt Day?” “Have you been told point blank that when he does karaoke to ‘Mickey,’ he swaps your name in so the line goes, ‘Oh Jamie your so fine, your so fine you blow my mind hey Jamie, hey, hey, hey Jamie’?” and “Does it weird you out that he’ll fill your entire voicemail with one message after the other like ‘Hey Jamie just checkin’ in, give me a ring,’ ‘Hey Jamie, I’m at a pay phone…pick up pick up pick up,’ ‘Hey James, I was just blow drying my hair, thought I heard the phone ring. Ah…has that ever happened to you? Anyway… call me, we’ll talk about it,’ and ‘Hey man. It’s me again. I was just taking a whizz. Thought you might have called. Okay, later’?”
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Now that the Senate Ethics Committee has opined that Chris Dodd’s status as a VIP friend of A-Moz and associated discounts does not violate the moral high road, the Senate Banking Committee Chairman can get back to his bread and butter- playing Monday morning quarterback for the financial crisis. The Countrywide circle of trust member now wants to make it known that the Beard can expect a “thorough and comprehensive” renomination hearing during which Dodd will prominently display his ability to recount revisionist history.
I still have serious concerns about the Federal Reserve’s failure to protect consumers and I strongly believe these responsibilities should go to an independent consumer financial protection agency,” Dodd said in a statement…Dodd said reappointing Bernanke was “probably the right choice,” although he believed the Fed chairman had been too slow to act during the early stages of the financial crisis.
The Beard actually may have been a bit slow on the trigger. Had he been faster, BB might have been able to avert the likes of Countrywide from engaging in dubious lending and modification practices and force certain senators to go elsewhere for taxpayer funded freebies.
Mail-call:
I hear there is a SWAT team outside of the Barclays building 745 7th avenue. Unrelated but I also heard Phil Mickelson is in the building.
Update: A source confirms that while there was indeed a SWAT team outside the building, they were not called to the scene to deal with Dick Fuld in a ski mask. Apparently the NYPD periodically conducts a standard exercise called “Operation Hercules” (seriously) in order to “show potential terrorists that they are patrolling major areas throughout the city, and can get anywhere their services might be required on a moment’s notice.” Separately, Mickelson is indeed in the hizzous, “saying hi, shaking hands, workin’ hard for the money.”
For insurance companies looking to hedge their bets should billions of dollars worth of destruction not come to fruition by the end of hurricane season, a new way to benefit from pain and suffering is emerging. After Tom Brady went down last year, the natural reaction for most football fans wasn’t ‘I hope the injury isn’t serious’ or ‘I hope he makes it back soon’, it was ‘I am so happy he wasn’t on my fantasy team’. However, for those who had the top pick last year and got hosed by Tom’s leg, you can rest a bit easier this year. Several companies are now offering insurance for fantasy football picks.
If any of the stipulated top 50 players go down for a significant part of the season, and you’ve paid for their insurance, Fantasy Sports Insurance will pay your entry fee back. In order to collect, you have to select a player (one policy allows you to group three players), pay the insurance — roughly 10 percent of your entry fee — and watch that player miss roughly two-thirds of the games with an injury
Now when you see one of your picks writhing around in pain from some cheap shot to the knees, you can breathe a sigh of relief. His career may be over and he may never be able to walk right again, but you’ll get your entry fee back.
Except when it will, in which case it’s prettay, prettay, prettay easy to pull off. This guy knows what we’re talking about.
Hassan Nemazee, chairman of Nemazee Capital Corp. and a fundraiser for President Obama and Hillary Clinton, was arrested on charges that he tricked Citigroup Inc. into lending him as much as $74 million using phony documents.
Nemazee got the loan by telling Citibank that he held accounts with hundreds of millions of dollars which could serve as collateral, U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara said today in a statement. He used fake addresses and phone numbers to mislead the bank, prosecutors said.
The accounts “either never existed or had been closed years before Nemazee submitted the documents referencing those accounts,” Bharara said in the statement.
As the saying goes, Citi crime never sleeps. A former sales assistant at the loss powerhouse was barred from the securities industry after putting a new spin on liar loans. In this case, Tamara Lanz Moon didn’t so much borrow money from clients such as widows, a U.S. diplomat, and her father as flat out steal it.
Moon allegedly falsified accounts and forged signatures to steal about $55,000 from the diplomat, $30,000 from her father and more than $120,000 from at least three elderly widows
The former Pandito worker bee made off with over $850,000 for non-client approved ventures like remodeling her house before Citi gave her the boot. Being fired from Citi and barred from the securities industry by Finra, you’d think Moon would be fighting for her financial life- maybe even getting a little depressed these days. But in the current anything goes as long as it goes environment in mortgage modification world, it’s only a matter of time before she takes some perverse pleasure in going back to her former employer for a little help on the remodeled house that got her into this mess initially. Welcome to the new housing circle of life.
Finra Bars Ex-Citigroup Aide for Stealing From Widows [Bloomberg]
Peruvian police expecting to find a shipment of cocaine hidden in a crate holding two live turkeys were surprised to discover the drug surgically implanted inside the birds. Acting on a tip, officers stopped a Turismo Ejecutivo SRL bus outside the city of Tarapoto in the central jungle state of San Martin, officials said Monday.
Police were puzzled when they found the turkeys in the crate, but didn’t find the cocaine, Tarapoto’s anti-drug police chief, Otero Gonzalez, told the Associated Press. They then noticed that the two turkeys were bloated.
“Lifting up the feathers of the bird, in the chest area, police detected a handmade seam,” he said.
A veterinarian extracted 11 oval-shaped plastic capsules containing 1.9 kilograms (4.2 pounds) of cocaine from one turkey and 17 capsules with 2.9 kilograms (6.4 pounds) from the other, he said.
Both turkeys survived the removal.
Peru police seize cocaine sewn inside live turkeys [AP]
Earlier: What We Can Learn From The Mexicans
