$$$ Great news for white collar criminals: breaking out of prison has never been easier. [Cityfile]

$$$ The Wall Street Draft [American Madness]

$$$ Melissa Francis’s vote for the Name Jamie Dimon’s Bar ‘n Grill contest. [Twitter]

$$$ Bank of America’s Enemies List [The Deal]

Being indoctrinated into the $4 million crab claw club? Your guess is as good as mine. Wildly speculate away.

Apparently he was not told security would see him out but is leaving on his own terms. No word on his plans for the future but something along these lines would make sense, with John Thain bussing tables.

Update: Andrew Cuomo has chimed in an attempt to ruin the happiest day of Ken Lewis’s life and say that the news of the resignation will not stop his investigation, in case you thought anyone was going to get off easy.

If you believe the CEOs of the most distinguished members of the bank bailout club were all playing along with the short-term profit focused bonus bonanza and want to see Ken Feinberg extract a pound of flesh, keep waiting. Whether it was a result of his compensation model crashing when trying to incorporate across-the-board clawbacks or fear certain Facebook users might delete him as a friend, Feinberg is going to let bygones be bygones.

“I’m wary of exercising that authority in too many cases,” Feinberg said during remarks to the Chicago Bar Association’s executive compensation institute. “I’m not sure it’s a good ides for the Department of the Treasury to seek to recover … money from individuals.”

As the guy in charge of evaluating whether or not bank CEOs achieved the goals their compensation seems to justify, KF also shared a little insight into what his own goals are for the government determined compensation scheme.

A quick word of thanks to this week’s advertisers on Dealbreaker.

[Shia LaBeouf on the Money Never Sleeps Set, in his role as a trader. This is how Oliver Stone perceives you people.]

They’re ex-investment bankers too!

It looks the UK really means business. They are not going to allow some small tax haven whose government is on the verge of not being able to pay its employees to dictate terms. The Queen has the leverage and the cash and she is letting the Caymans know it. The month long bickering focused around the conditions for giving the Cayman Islands a £38m emergency bailout has finally come to a head. Painful cuts and sacrifices are going to be required to avoid paying government employees in high fives and compliments. An agreement has almost been reached and the Caymans may never be the same because of it.

No and unclear! A bunch of you have been wondering where Jarvis has been lately, fearing a Margaret Brennan-like abandonment. For now, be easy— she’s on vacation this week. However, and I only say this so you can emotionally steel yourself, there are rumors that she’s planning to leave the network once her contract is up (no word on where she’s headed, though speculation is encouraged). This is of course very disappointing, as we like our CNBC with at least one Apprentice runner-up at all times. The only upside we could possibly come up with? A hole in on-air talent that would necessitate bringing back Macke.

Not the market, not Ken Griffin and not some sheisty moving company. One and two learned that the hard way and now the fools at Auer’s Moving & Rigging are getting a crash course in what happens when you try and pull a fast one on this vegan surfer-cum-triathlete. Perhaps thinking the Third Point founder would simply roll over and take it, the company filed suit earlier this year against Loeb and his wife Margaret, demanding $98,689.07 it claimed to be owed for moving the couple into their $45 million apartment at 15CPW. Well roll over he will not.

The whole ‘new normal’ concept is really only for the developed world to digest. With an increasing focus on emerging markets, developed countries are going to have to get used to business the EM way. So how exactly do you prepare yourself to deal with the three pillars of emerging economies: bribery, relentless bureaucracy, and imperfect laws? You get an MBA right at the source. You go to Russia and the Moscow School of Management Skolkovo.

China and Japan have had their problems over the millennia and gone in completely opposite directions when it comes to certain issues. This is good news for Vikula. For the first time in what has seemed like millennia, somebody out there wants more Citigroup- and not just as a short-term equity holding. While Japan has been sanctioning Citi for lack of fraud oversight, China wants Vik & Co. to show the billion-plus would be customers why the government’s stake in C was an investment, not a bailout.

The Oracle of Omaha. He’s not just good for marrying folksy business wisdom with aberrant sex fetish. He can also be counted on to bring up the pink elephant in the room (it helps if said elephant has huge cans) when no one else will. According to Andrew Ross Sorkin’s new book on the weeks following Lehman biting the big one, everybody was ready to sign off on a merger between Goldman and Wachovia until Buffett knocked his cane against some foreheads while asking, “Who does Hank Paulson work for? Think, McFly, think!”

Sorkin reports that the deal, which was nearly consummated, would have merged Goldman Sachs and Wachovia. Henry M. Paulson, the Treasury secretary and former C.E.O. of Goldman, was deeply involved in the process, contacting both Lloyd Blankfein, Goldman’s current C.E.O., and a Wachovia board member, and strongly urged both to consider it. Wachovia’s C.E.O., Robert Steel, was a former vice-chairman at Goldman Sachs and Paulson’s former number two at the Treasury Department.

Sorkin reports that Warren Buffett was also contacted about investing in the merged company, but told a banker at Goldman that it would never happen. “By tonight the government will realize they can’t provide capital to a deal that’s being done by the former firm of the Treasury secretary with the company of a former vice-chairman of Goldman Sachs and former deputy Treasury secretary,” Buffett said.

I missed this from yesterday’s account of why Marc Dreier chose to get into the Ponzi business (9/11 and a house on the beach, mostly). It clearly deserves flagging:

One of the firm’s Christmas parties was held at the Waldorf-Astoria, where Dreier danced wildly to the song “Shout,” from Animal House. At a firm party at his Quogue beach house a plane flew overhead trailing a banner that said, DREIER LAWYERS ROCK.

Yesterday’s announcement out of JPMorgan re: who will potentially take over in the event Jamie Dimon “unexpectedly departs or is incapacitated” has those who track such things attempting to figure out what all this means for our favorite Boy Toy CEO’s future. Is he planning on leaving tomorrow or will he stay the course of being buried in the building? Is he headed to DC to relieve Tim Geithner of his duties or to open Nickels and Dimons, a dive bar on the ground floor of 383 Madison, where all shots are $2? We’re on board with the latter scenario, but Dick Bové is thinking otherwise.

The government’s stimulus cheerleading sign approach to economic prosperity may be tough to justify from an efficient use of funds perspective, but it does require people to make the signs and then place them every 150 feet. So at least it’s not a complete fraud from an employment perspective. For that, Minneapolis based Arthur Group has got you covered.

As one of the pioneers in the job fraud market, Arthur Group capitalized on the near double digit unemployment to convince desperate job seekers that their investment of several thousand per month would pay off in the end. By leveraging their one-of-a-kind Rolodex, the headhunting firm promised access to the “hidden job market” which, shockingly enough never materialized. With Minnesota Attorney General’s Office filing suit against Arthur Group, it appears the prospects for those looking to hide the hidden job market aren’t looking so good as well.

Minnesota Charges Headhunter With Fraud [NYT]

John Mack Proposes Single Global Regulator (Bloomberg)
“A better system would be one uber-regulator,” Mack said in an interview in New York with Bloomberg TV. “We do need an overall systemic-risk management that everyone buys into. It’s not a U.S. systemic boundary — it’s a global systemic risk manager.”

CIT Said To Weigh Financing From Citigroup, Barclays (Bloomberg)
Diamond and Pandit to Liz Peek’s rescue?

CIT In Last Ditch Rescue Bid (WSJ)
Dick Fuld always wins: “If CIT does file, it would be the fifth-largest bankruptcy filing, by assets, in U.S. history, trailing only Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc., Washington Mutual Inc., WorldCom Inc. and General Motors Corp.”

FDIC Fund To Be In The Red For Years (WSJ)
At least ‘til 2012.

Ex-Moody’s Employee Warned SEC About Muni Issues (AP)
Scott McCleskey, who was a senior vice president for compliance at Moody’s until he left a year ago, wrote a letter to an official at the SEC alleging a ”lack of meaningful surveillance of municipal securities, contrary to statements by Moody’s to the public and to Congress,” but no one thought much of it.

Hedge Funds Find Sweet Spot (NYP)
Sugar. They’re lovin’ it.

Microsoft CEO Takes Paycut After Rough Year (Reuters)
Steve Ballmer, CEO since 2000 earned a total of $1,276,627 for fiscal year 2009, which ended June 30, according to a filing with securities regulators on Tuesday, down 5.5 percent from the previous fiscal year’s total of $1,350,834. Say what you want about executive pay anything that puts less of this in our lives is not a good thing.

$$$ French Rogue Trader Takes to Riviera Stage [AP]

$$$ BofA’s Krawcheck Sets Her Team: The Memo [Deal Journal]

$$$ Hank Greenberg’s I-Firm Takes 120K Feet in Zuckerman’s 399 Park [NYO]

$$$ The SEC’s 58-Step Program [BI]

$$$ Bonita Bay Brawl [implode-o-meter]

$$$ This is a sculpture of a bull impaling Bernie Madoff. [BBC]

So UBS has yet to say definitively whether or not they’ve got an outbreak on their hands but they have informed the new associate and analyst classes to enjoy themselves a four day weekend, ‘cause there’s no need to come in for training tomorrow (again). Additionally, only those wearing hazmat suits should get close to the area. Again, no conclusions should be jumped to, as this could mean anything from a surprise party to chlamydia. Regardless, do not fear. The Swiss have this thing under control.

Chris Dodd may believe in the power of one, but not Vladimir Putin. While he was actually addressing the role he sees for the Russian state going forward, he might as well have been addressing Dodd’s continued enthusiasm for a single banking regulator.

“We understand how deceptive blind faith in an omnipotent state is, how illusory are the hopes that total intervention in economic life might fix everything and put everything in its place,” Mr. Putin said.

To the extent that the situation stabilizes, that the effects of the crisis are overcome, we plan to consistently and purposefully reduce state intervention in the economy,” he said.

Putin Sounds More Welcoming Tone to Foreign Investors [NYT]

Having stumbled a bit dealing with the handicapped and fallen Marines, Bank of America is now getting an earful from its credit card customers. A 14-year customer of BAC, Ann Minch had seen and heard enough from Bank of America and CEO Ken Lay. Yes, she was steaming mad at Ken Lay for raising the interest rate on her credit card to 30%. While the real Ken in question must have breathed a sigh of relief she gave him an out, her four minute tribute to Bank of America gave the firm a pretty good read of where it stands with some of their customers.

Headphones should probably used for the video that follows after the jump

From the mailbag:

Maybe those who were told at UBS not to come in for the day were part of Robert Wolf’s coterie— hearing confirmation that he’s been fired, which would jive with Gasparino’s story last week that Bob McCann would be taking over as head of UBS Americas.

Or maybe he just has swine flu-like symptons, too and thought it best to take a personal day? Let us know.

Rolling Stone’s chief Wall St. correspondent Matt Taibbi has a missive coming out soon on the fall of Bear and Lehman. But before he reveals the solution to those riddles, he took some time to return to the conspiracy/blame game theorists’ version of Old Faithful, Goldman Sachs. This time around, the target is three pages ripped out of a presentation Goldman was apparently using to advance their cause in Washington in connection with the ongoing debate on naked short selling. But chances are MT was not on the original distribution list. So how exactly did he come upon the word according to GS?

Many of you have spent countless nights fantasizing about what it would be like getting drunk with Jamie Dimon. But it was just that— a fantasy that you never imagined would come true. Well, peasants, today comes the thrilling news that if we can get JD to quit his gig on Park, this thing could actually happen. It’s on the tip of his tongue and all we have to do is coax it out. Courtesy of Mrs. Judy Dimon, the lowdown on JD’s plans for the future:

There may be hope yet for the new General Motors and anybody looking to see auto bailout money complete the round trip. It took just six weeks for GM to learn that eBay may work well for buying artifacts from failed investment banks or California’s liquidation but when it comes to autos, consumers want a bit more than the standard pitch of ‘can’t you just see yourself in that car’. The lack of demand for visualization-based car and truck purchases has led GM to cancel their online program. Showing its ability to make subtle refinements, the automaker will shift its focus from trying to get people to take a test drive in their head to giving them a risk-free two months to mull over their purchase decision. Given their performance over the past couple of decades, a one step forward, one step back model is, literally, a step in the right direction.

Not a day goes by that I don’t curse Bernie Madoff, for robbing Marc Dreier of the insane media attention he deserved for a scam maybe not as big as but exponentially more creative and ridiculous than what the simpletons over at the Lipstick building had going on. Today we have a bittersweet glimpse of what that would’ve been like, courtesy of Bryan Burrough’s interview with MD. Let’s just start with the images above. Would Bernie, or any financial services hack for that matter, agree to such a photo shoot? No! Meanwhile you’ve got Dreier mugging it up for the camera. Is that his “sexy face” you see in the bottom right corner? Yeah it is! Whereas some people have turned down multiple offers for a tasteful centerfold spread in Bloomberg Markets Magazine, you’ve got this guy setting the room on fire with minimal direction from the photographer to “WORK IT, OWN IT.” And the outtakes, my god, the outtakes. Don’t even hesitate to dream they involve something along the lines of this:

Maybe Adair Turner was really onto something when he made a plea for banks to focus on socially useful endeavors. While CEO after CEO was coming forward to advertise their decision to work for $1/yr until their respective institution returned to non-government supported profitability, some of their counterparts in the nonprofit world were enjoying record paydays free of Congressional and Ken Feinberg scrutiny. While the median comp number for nonprofit CEOs was at a Chinese bank like $361,538, healthcare CEOs showed that working for a nonprofit doesn’t necessarily mean taking a vow of poverty.

Oh joy, another book is out about Bernie Madoff. This one is by ABC’s Brian Ross and despite presumably never having slept with Ponzi Boy, manages to (sort of) get into dick size as well, though not is as harrowing detail as Sheryl Weinstein. Sitting down with Diane Sawyer, Ross informs us that:

1. During those dark days of house arrest? “Bernie and Ruth walked around naked.” (Yes.)

2. Ruth thinks “the Gentiles are responsible for this.”

Page Six reports that a 14-acre Southampton spread, which sat on the market for two years at an asking price of $59 million, is in contract for $45 mill. Whose ass should you start kissing now in order to ensure an invite for next summer? Unclear. The buyer is unidentified but Post did offer up the (vaguely oxymoronic?) hint that he is a “recession-proof financier” as a jumping off point. Right off the top of our heads we’ve got:

After two and a half months and $9.5 million, the world’s most expensive online map is ready to go. As promised, the government has completed its extreme makeover of the Recovery.gov website to help you track every last taxpayer stimulus dollar headed out the door to pay for one of those really useful $1200 signs. Given the outbreak of vanishing money over the past year, there is no way the government would want to take credit for burning $10 million on little more than a font change. The initial results are in.

Possibly, according to some of our favorite tax evaders in town, who were told not to come in for the day. Of course, they may be jumping to conclusions, and it could have nothing to do with a pig disease outbreak at all. It could very well be that UBS is shutting down. Or it could be herpes.

Banker-Pay Guidelines May Put Citigroup, Bank of America at Disadvantage (Bloomberg)
Not so says BAC! “We are focused on paying competitively in a way that aligns associate, shareholder and taxpayer interests,” said Scott Silvestri, a spokesman for Charlotte, North Carolina- based Bank of America.

Allen Stanford Granted Transfer After Jail Fight (NYT)
Federal District Judge David Hittner signed the order transferring Mr. Stanford to the federal jail in Houston without “the incident,” saying only that the big man needed to be moved ASAP or someone’s gonna get punched in the mouth: “Because of the unique circumstances present in this case, it is appropriate to order Stanford” be moved “no later than Thursday, Oct. 1,” the judge said in the order.

Paulson’s Plan (NYP)
JP is mulling over the idea of saving CIT Group through a merger with IndyMac.

FDIC Is Expected To Ask Banks To Pre-Pay $36 Bilion In Fees (NYT)
Sheila Bair’s gonna need that money now, thanks. Make it out to “SheBair.”

Cassano Is Back In US (NYP)
Joe and the wife have been staying at their home in Westport, which is more convenient than London for when he has to appear for questioning re: some shit that went down at his old job, and will provide the former AIGFP head with new bike routes.

JPMorgan Chase Announces Management Changes (JPM)
Bill Winters out, Steve Black named Executive Chairman of the Investment Bank, and Jes Staley named CEO of the Investment Bank, reporting to Steve.

SEC Weighs New Rules for Lending of Securities (WSJ)
Mary Schapiro said she wants to shine a light on the “opaque market” and will do so by holding a public round table discussion on the matter today. Come on down.

UBS Aims to Cut State Ties, Targets Recovery (Reuters)
CEO Oswald Gruebel is guessing the bank will make its triumphant return within the year.

$$$ Hedge Fund COO Vellanti Dies in Fall From Escalator [Bloomberg]

$$$ Is there anybody that handled the financial crisis well? The IMF says yes, they did. [WSJ]

$$$ Some states believe choice still has a place in insurance. [NYT]

$$$ Former Enron cheerleader headed for 16 months behind bars. [Bloomberg]

$$$ Lehman prepares for the Australian invasion [Reuters]

In the current environment where every institution and individual allegedly involved in some sort of wrongdoing neither admits nor denies that they committed crimes, Ralph Cioffi may signal the end of an era. After finding sworn testimony doubles as Kabuki Theater, US prosecutors believe they may finally have a smoking gun when it comes to what Cioffi classifies as being truthful regarding obtaining a line of credit for a Florida condo project.

“The government asserts that the proffered evidence is direct proof of the charged crimes,” prosecutors said Sept. 25 in court papers. “This proof will demonstrate that Cioffi and Tannin used Cioffi’s investment in the High Grade Structured Credit Strategies Enhanced Leverage Master Fund Ltd. to lie to Busey Bank to secure a $4.25 million line of credit,” they said

Unfortunately, given that Cioffi doesn’t go on trial until next month, the head start they just gave him is direct proof the government still has a lot to learn when it comes to putting people behind bars.

U.S. Says It Has ‘Proof’ of Cioffi’s Insider Trading [Bloomberg]

The relevant question for tax increases around the world was really a matter of when and not if. Now we know when. Faced with few alternatives, Spain plans to raise €11 billion from a combination of new tax initiatives and repealing existing rebates. In addition to joining the growing bandwagon of European economies increasing their VAT taxes, top income earners in Spain will be kicking in a bit more to help right the ship.

“We are aware of the collective effort we are asking for, but we are sure that the budget is the one this economy requires” to recover from the crisis, Vice President María Teresa Fernández de la Vega said Saturday, after the cabinet’s approval of the 2010 budget proposal.

But things on this side of the Atlantic operate a bit differently. We don’t tax out of desperation. We only tax when somebody in a position of power has given the signal that the recession is over and highly sought tax increases can be better justified. That move to reappoint the Beard 3 weeks before he gave the thumbs up seems to be working out really well for all involved.

Zapatero Unveils Budget Plan With Tax Increases [NYT]

Ken Lewis will likely not be invited to dot the ‘i’ at Ohio Stadium anytime soon. As the Bank of America lawsuit phenomenon starts to head west, Ohio Attorney General Richard Cordray is getting the Buckeye State involved by suing BAC and MER for billions on behalf of five pension funds. Evidently believing that sworn testimony at the hands of Andrew Cuomo isn’t quite the truth telling solution one might hope for, the Ohio AG plans to have heart-to-hearts with Kenny boy and John Thain about the whole losses-bonuses misunderstanding. But this is actually a step in the right direction for KL & Co. Compared to shelling out $1,784 billion trillion, a paltry 10 figure lawsuit is a huge upgrade.

After a flurry of startling hypotheses erupted at the end of last week regarding derivatives and bank bashing, policymakers in the UK had the weekend to catch their breath and evaluate the relative merits of the arguments. Maybe this was the moment to consider that there might be at least some truth to the idea that there’s a downside to the constant vilification of anything even tangentially related to banks and bank compensation plans. Alistair Darling, please show us the middle ground we need to get to.

Chancellor of the Exchequer Alistair Darling, targeting what he calls “greed and recklessness” in Britain’s financial system, asked banks to curtail bonus pay and said the rich will pay more in tax.

“It is right that those who earn the most should shoulder the biggest burden,” the finance minister told the ruling Labour Party’s annual conference today in Brighton, England. “We will introduce legislation to end the reckless culture that puts short-term profits over long term success. It will mean an end to automatic bank bonuses year after year.”

And back to the new normal we go.

Darling Targets Bank Bonuses, Says U.K. Rich Will Pay More Tax [Bloomberg]

At some point, the war of words and early drafts of legislation are going to give way to politicians making real choices about the degree of new financial regulation in this country. The financial industry is increasingly fighting two uphill battles: defending itself from what happened and, increasingly, defending itself from defending itself. The newest outrage is centered on banks trying to make sure the regulatory pendulum doesn’t swing so far the other way that we don’t create a nation of banks in a catatonic state. The reports of multi-million dollar lobbying expenditures by the usual suspects have the regulatory crusaders back out on the front line and proving why some degree of legislative restraint is in order.

“They still retain an enormous amount of influence,” said Travis Plunkett, who lobbies for the Consumer Federation of America and said he has seen firsthand the influence of large banks. “What is surprising to me is that some members of Congress are letting them get away with flimsy arguments. They are using many of the same arguments that they were using before the financial crisis” - such as saying that new legislation would inhibit competition and consumer choice.

There are, undoubtedly, some activities that need to be curbed. But five years from now there are probably few out there who will want to recount the ways the economic recovery did not take place the way it could have while watching Populism: A Disaster Movie.

Bailed-out banks lobby hard to stave off limits [Boston Globe]

With the conclusion of the G20 summit, it’s time for the participating leaders to take a bow, high-five one another and bask in the glow of all that can be accomplished in a two day summit. We’ve got the whole bonus thing under control now. We all agree that we’re in this battle together. And then there was Tim Geithner’s revelation that some of the culprits for the past few years’ worth of pleasantness are now are on the straight and narrow.

After “a long period of time living beyond our means, you see people already changing behavior,” the Treasury chief said in Pittsburgh. “That’s one reason why we can stand here today and express some measured optimism about our capacity to put in place a more sustainable recovery.”

Indeed, this is nothing short of miraculous. Faced with an endless supply of federally created programs designed to get people to buy something, anything regardless of their current financial situation, the fact that an unemployment rate of (almost) 10% has scared a few more people into saving is a landmark victory.

G-20 Plans to End ‘Financial Balance of Terror’ After Summit [Bloomberg]

It’s clear that King Ponz’s use of the subtle, sadistic smile in all situations has cemented his reputation as the old guy people don’t mess with because he’s just a bit off and has that look that says ‘come after me, I dare you.’ Allen Stanford on the other hand, has some work to do. Standing 6’4”, Sir Allen got into it with an inmate either trying to administer a little payback on behalf of his ex-wife or one of his investors or simply doing a routine evaluation of where AS stands in the prison pecking order. After reports put the Ponzier in the ICU after getting a thorough beat down, his lawyer cleared up the confusion for those in the big house curious to know if they’d broken Stanford.

His lawyer Kent Schaffer added: “Mr Stanford is fine. Contrary to reports, he is not in intensive care at the hospital.

“I understand his injuries are not serious enough to keep him in the hospital.”

It look’s like $600/hr still buys you a lot even when it’s going for $110/hr.

Sir Allen Stanford attacked in jail [Telegraph.co.uk]

Banks Pull Back From Acorn Work (Reuters)
Apparently Bank of America doesn’t want to be associated with a group that gives prostitutes and their pimp boyfriends loan advice.

The Madoff Scam: Meet The Liquidator (CBS)
Irving Picard on Andy and Mark Madoff: “Whether or not they have a criminal problem, we will pursue them as far as we can pursue them. And if that leads to bankrupting them, then that’s what will happen.”

Phone Calls Add To Din Over Loans (WSJ)
Countrywide recorded phone conversations “in a controversial mortgage program that included public officials” and then destroyed the tapes. Is that a crime?

Goldman Sachs Launches Recruiting Drive (FT)
Hiring up to 200 in asset management and “moving back on the offensive,” according to Marc Spilker.

Zoellick Favors Power For Treasury, Not Fed (WSJ)
“It will be difficult to vest the independent and powerful technocrats at the Federal Reserve with more authority,” the World Bank President said. “My reading of recent crisis management is that the Treasury Department needed greater authority to pull together a bevy of different regulators. Moreover, the Treasury is an executive department, and therefore Congress and the public can more directly oversee how it uses any added authority.”

Is Jeff Macke Broke? (WCV)
This guys says yes.

Citi may not forgive debt by EMI (NYP)
All you need to know about the story is that it was the basis for this graphic:

$$$ Feds Eye Cassano [NYP]

$$$ Another UBS Client Pleads Guilty To Tax Evasion [NYT]

$$$ BofA responds to SEC complaint over bonuses [BW]

$$$ Job of the Week: Morgan Stanley needs a VP of investment banking. You. [DBCC]

$$$ AIG’s Plight: Too Big to Fail, but Shrinking [WSJ]

I’ve lately been searching for a one stop shop of advice on investing, drugs and hos. Currently I have to tap three different experts (Ron Isana, Larry Kudlow, Warren Buffett, respectively) when I want an expert’s take and I really don’t have that kind of time. So I was thrilled to see that Warren G recently spoke to Vanity Fair in a wide-reaching interview that hit my trifecta of need. As long I can unsubscribe from Ron Isana’s Market Movers without getting screwed on cancellation charges, I’m going with Mr. G’s services as of Monday.

Alan Greenspan recently said that “we’ve already seen the bottom” of this recession. Do you agree, or do you think we have further to fall?

I definitely think there’s hope. We at the bottom right now. We can’t do nothin’ but go up. Just as long as the plans that Obama put together get a chance to work, then hopefully we’ll be back on track.

In this financial climate, does it make more sense to invest in Citigroup or the Crips?

Oh, hell no! Invest in the Crips? That’s crazy, man!

So you think the Bloods are a better investment?

Neither one of them! You don’t wanna get involved in any of that!

You’re not seriously suggesting buying Citigroup stock, are you?

None of that shit, man. I think this recession was all caused by these humongous corporations. Those motherfuckers got money. Even with the recession, those motherfuckers got money. But everybody use the recession as an excuse. Everybody in the music industry, they be like, “We can’t pay you. It’s the recession, it’s the recession.” Recession my ass, motherfuckers. People got to get paid for what they’re worth. You know what I’m saying? You making a hundred thousand on a show and you only be giving me some crumbs. That shit gonna run out.

There is a decent chance that Ken Feinberg’s model results will be enough to drive some people to the brink of seriously considering other ways to make a living. But life at the top of a large financial services company can be pretty good and the perks can go a long way towards cushioning the blow from substandard paydays. So if you’re going to make a move, you better make sure the perks can justify the potential hit to income.
Academia has its high points: flexible schedules, casual dress, no annoying regulators. And one more thing.

Dr Terence Kealey from Buckingham University, for instance, finds curvy female students an attractive element of his total reward package.

In a light-hearted, albeit rather frank, article penned for the Times Higher Education magazine, Dr Kealey said female students who flaunt their curves are a perk of the job and should be enjoyed.

The article read: “Most male lecturers know that, most years, there will be a girl in class who flashes her admiration and who asks for advice on essays. What to do? Enjoy her! She’s a perk.”

So eye candy should be included in total comp calculation. Interesting theory professor. Anything else you care to add on what to do with the curves being thrown in your face?

“Which you should admire daily to spice up your sex, nightly, with the wife. As in Stringfellows, you should look but not touch.”

The battle at Bonita Bay Club, an exclusive luxury community on Florida’s west coast, is turning into an all out war.

Yesterday a Wall Street Journal article highlighted a tale of dysfunctional management by David Lucas, CEO of Bonita Bay Group, the club’s management company. As such, homeowners and golf club members have attempted a coup to try to save their club assets from disarray and possible loss of their entire investment. But Dealbreaker has learned that according to club members involved in the negotiations, the Bonita Bay Turnover Committee also voted to pursue KeyBank as an accomplice to defrauding investors just this past Wednesday.

Probably still a bit irritated that invitees to the party currently taking place in Pittsburgh require a valid membership ID to the G-20 and not the G-200, the Cayman Islands and Bermuda sounded off on the recent round of persecution against them.

“It’s not fair,” said McKeeva Bush, political leader and Minister of Financial Services of the Cayman Islands…It’s the fault of the onshore centers who taxed their own people … money is running away from them now,” Bush said.

That may be, but we’re way past playing the blame game for indiscretions in the past. The world is in recovery mode now and the last thing we want to do is bicker about who was right and who was wrong. We’re moving forward and we want everybody’s input- regardless of size.

Bermuda’s finance minister, Paula Cox, also suspects the world’s richest states may be seeking “extra-territorial solutions to their economic, fiscal and financial challenges.”

“There is now a strong suspicion that the G20 has an undisclosed agenda item to drive forward a global corporate tax policy, which may fly in the face of a nation’s sovereign right to set down its own tax policy,” she said.

On the other hand, the more things change, the more they stay the same.

Tax havens talk back against G20 “finger pointing” [Reuters]

1. He won’t be releasing anyone’s names when he makes bonus rulings, so don’t worry about being harassed (or pitied). 2. No comp caps!

But Feinberg ruled out capping pay, saying he is building “models” which he believes will set a precedent for government agencies and companies tackling the controversial issue of executive compensation.

The model he is building, Feinberg said, is complicated by the fact that “avoiding excessive risk means different things to different people in different situations.”

Sign up for the Brian Hunter 3000 model and we are good to go.

US pay czar Feinberg using forumals, not caps [Reuters]

If they thought guy demanding to be paid 1,784 billion, trillion dollars was an amateur, they thought wrong! Turns out he’s got experience holding up people for ridiculous sums of money. Last March he sued his landlord for “892 million billion dollars,” on the grounds that the apartment management has vandalized his bathroom and venetian blinds. I’m not saying he’s been successful thus far, but he’s got the fire inside him. Sooner or later he’s gotta win one of these things. Ken Lewis, you have been warned.

Dalton Chiscolm v. Landlord [PDF]

Based on Rep. Alan Grayson’s line of questioning for Federal Reserve General Counsel Scott Alvarez, you’d think the Beard and his troops were using their powers to turn the equity markets into their personal plaything. The game of cat and mouse starts with the question “Has the Federal Reserve Ever Tried to Manipulate the Stock Market?”, which leaves Alvarez a bit flat footed. He quickly goes to the ‘it’s too broad a question’ play which is met with an emphatic “I think not”. The 4 minutes that follow are highly reminiscent of the Stanford Band Play with Grayson sensing victory multiple times until Alvarez slips right by him, the clock runs out, and Alvarez is in the end zone.

[via ZH]

Have you heard the news about Goldman Sachs’s struggle to figure out how it can a) make it rain ridiculously huge bonuses on employees’ faces this year while b) not giving certain pissant journalists at publications like, I don’t know, Rolling Stone, opportunity to smirk knowingly while implying that though it’s difficult to prove definitively the money came from the proceeds of organ trafficking, that certainly seems to be the case? Citi analysts have. They (for some reason) detailed the PR problem in a note to investors yesterday, writing that the firm will pay its people more this year than ever due to “phenomenal results.” But please, do not get the impression that just because bonuses will be dispensed in a DuckTails-esque scene on the trading floor that Goldman is somehow tone deaf to the shit that’s gone down over the last year. This could not be further from the truth, says Citi. Citi knows this because its analysts had a sit-down with senior management at the bank to discuss the matter, and were assured Goldman gets it.

Goldman Sachs management has to “walk a fine line” between paying enough money to employees to discourage them from leaving and paying so much that it elicits “excessive ire” from the government and public, the note said.

“According to management, Goldman’s main compensation principles have not changed and are widely in-line with the spirit of regulatory proposals,” the analysts wrote after meetings with Goldman Sachs Chief Financial Officer David Viniar, President Gary Cohn and other executives.

Not really clear as to what the motivation was for opining on the situation (and feeling the need to get out Goldman’s side of the story) but presumably the thinking was that was that it’d give the Big C an opening to suggest that if things get really bad, GS ought just give them the money to hold on to until things blow over, which would be a win-win for all.

Something odd seems to be happening on the other side of the Atlantic. It’s almost as though people are looking into the crystal ball at the new world order as described by politicians and getting a bit worried about what they see. And without full confidence that they’ll have a working flux capacitor in a few year’s time to get the DeLorean up to 88 mph to undo today’s damage, they’re starting to speak up.

First there was the proclamation that derivatives did not single-handedly bring the world to its knees. Now the CEO of the British Bankers Association, Angela Knight, is bringing some truly revolutionary thinking to the table in light of Adair Turner’s social usefulness campaign.

“If we continue to demonize our own banking industry, there is no shortage of other jurisdictions which will leap at the chance of taking the business,” Knight, who heads the U.K. banking industry’s main lobby group, said in remarks prepared for a speech in London yesterday. “Those who have the opportunity for public platforms also have a duty to use that opportunity advisedly.”

“The manner of our criticism is not helping our negotiating position,” Knight said. “If the price of gaining headlines and column inches in the short term is the cost of jobs, and our country’s economic prospects in the long term, then their price is simply too high,” she said.

It’s good to see the winds of change are starting to blow in the UK. Unfortunately for the US, the wind tends to blow from west to east in this part of the world.

U.K. Banks Risk Losing Business After FSA’s Criticism, BBA Says [Bloomberg]

Sorry, Ness actually didn’t say the ‘crazy’ part, that was just me. What the noted hooker fucker did tell the Post is that Hank’s attempts this week to get a state judge to throw out a lawsuit Spitzer filed against him in 2005 are “an outright denial of fact and history by Mr. Greenberg and his lawyers” and that “it is time for Mr. Greenberg to acknowledge the errors that occurred on his watch.” Other words I’ll put into Spitz’s mouth are “Let it go, old man. Get yourself a nice prostie and ride off into the night. I’ve got some names I can send you.” For his part, and here’s where the nutcase allegation comes into play, Greenberg is claiming that Spitzer went after him not just as a means of political gain but because Warren Buffett told him to:

Greenberg threw the first punch in their new showdown with legal papers Wednesday claiming that Spitzer concocted his prosecution of Greenberg using a gift-wrapped case offered up by an outsider trying to avoid his own prosecution — in this case, billionaire Warren Buffett.

I don’t know what you people do when you realize you’ve been had (roll over and take it, probably) but Dalton Chiscolm is saying enough! While it’s unclear exactly what he’s upset about, the gist is that earlier this summer DC tried to deposit a bunch of checks with Bank of America, which he claims were rejected due to incomplete routing numbers. Then he got on the horn in an attempt to get some answers, and received “inconsistent information from a Spanish woman.” Obviously, the only left to do was demand Ken Lewis personally place a series of unmarked bills in however many trash bags it takes to hold $1,784 billion, trillion (plus $200,164,000) and nobody gets hurt. Chiscolm filed this request with the Southern District of New York back in August, and now that Judge Denny Chin has finally gotten off his ass and to read and respond to the thing, it sounds like this all might actually pan out.* (If Lewis can’t come up with the scratch, Chiscolm will take the 23 quadrillion he knows they’ve got on hand.)

*If someone can get past what seems to be the impression that Chis is insane.

The former Mrs. Sir Allen is trying to extract a pound of flesh, but not from who you might think. Before he moved on to bouncing the wives of English cricket players on his knee, Stanford had been ordered to pay $100,000/mo plus all expenses associated with his wife’s $2.4 million pad in Houston. While $100k/mo might seem like a decent settlement for time served with Sir Allen, apparently there was a much better deal on the table. Susan Stanford’s attorney received a verbal offer of $200 million from AS to put an end to the divorce proceedings once and for all. That small detail somehow escaped her attorney’s mind, who now, in turn, faces a $200 million dollar lawsuit.

“If the plaintiff had been made aware of the substantial sum offered as settlement in her divorce proceedings, she would have readily accepted,” Susan Stanford’s current attorney, Michael P. Mallia, said in the complaint. By the time his client learned of the offer, “the substantial community property assets at issue in her divorce proceedings” had been seized or frozen,” he said.

Does Ann Coulter show up to the SEC with her “information” and demand “just two minutes” of Mary Schapiro’s time to prove Bank of America is a Ponzi scheme? No! (She’s otherwise occupied with more important endeavors.)

Earlier: Is The SEC Not Willing To Listen To Reason?

Lehman Asks To Unseal Documents From Barclays Probe (Reuters)
Some people (Joe Gregory) still thinking the Brits got “an improper $8.2 billion windfall profit,” and would like that money back.

Accused Perot Staffer Led ‘79 Hostage Rescue (WSJ)
Inside trading, hostage negotiations— is there nothing Reza Saleh can’t do? This is a true Renaissance Man.

Morgan Stanley Tops M&A League Tables (NYP)
But Goldman is ahead in fees: “$334 million or 9 percent of the market — well above Bank of America Merrill Lynch with a 5.7 percent market share, and Morgan Stanley with 5.4 percent.”

HSBC To Shift CEO To Hong Kong (WSJ)
“We want to be at the gateway to China. Being in China itself is a logical goal and the place to work on it is Hong Kong,” Michael Geoghegan said at a news briefing Friday in Hong Kong. “You must expect Asian businesses to grow, and logically we are going to be here.”

National Lampoon CEO Pleads Guilty To Fraud (AP)
Federal prosecutors in Philadelphia say CEO Daniel Laikin was part of a plot to artificially inflate the company’s stock price by paying people to buy shares. The 47-year-old man, who lives in Indianapolis and Los Angeles, pleaded guilty to conspiracy Wednesday. Prosecutors dropped a count of securities fraud in exchange. Prosecutors say Laikin and others hoped to push the price of the shares from $2 to $5 to boost its attractiveness in a strategic partnership or acquisition.

Marc Faber: The G20 is a “complete and total waste of time” (CNBC)

$$$ Paul Volcker: Obama Plans To Maintain ‘To Big To Fail’ [HP]

$$$ Mafia boss used crocodile to extort money [CNN Money]

$$$ Goldman Sachs Helped Michael Moore Make His Anti-Capitalist Film [BI]

$$$ Court to Decide Fate of Madoff Claims in February [Dealbook]

$$$ Prosecuting Paupers Over Princes [WSJ]

The Reserve Bank of Australia says the land down under simply has higher standards and that is what set its apart from the US. While you might think the RBA was talking about how Amanda Drury measures up to some of her in-house competition, the topic at hand was actually lending standards and the country’s ability to avoid the full brunt of the economic crisis. But the US is not a country that takes kindly to being told it has no standards. We set the standard- the global standard. So your reasons for believing you’ve got superior benchmarks had better be good.

Lending standards were higher here, with the banks largely avoiding the subprime borrowers that lit the fuse of the financial crisis in the US.

Interest rates, as well, did not reach the low levels that put home ownership within reach for many people offshore who had limited repayment capacity. Australian mortgages are also full recourse to the borrower, and the legal environment puts a stronger obligation on local banks to make responsible lending decisions.

Finally, the prudential regulator stress-tested mortgage portfolios and required more capital to be put aside for high-risk housing loans.

Congratulations. You’re now 2-for-2.

Higher standards saved us, says RBA [The Australian]

The chair of the European Parliament’s Economic and Monetary Affairs Committee spoke at a derivatives conference in London today and, as you’d expect, anybody who is head gatekeeper for derivatives legislation in Europe added more fuel to the derivatives vilification campaign.

“They [OTC derivatives] were not a major factor in the crisis although, of course, a lot of politicians had worried they might be a cause of a crisis for quite a long time,” said Sharon Bowles, whose committee is responsible for passing any new European Union rules on derivatives.

Wait a second! OTC derivatives were not a major factor in the crisis?! Maybe it’s just a case of British sarcasm not coming through very well on paper. Did she not tune into the Congressional panels filled with experts who explained once and for all that derivatives do nothing but cause destruction? Ask the Oracle. He’ll tell you what bespoke derivatives can do. But maybe that was just a slip up on her part. Please continue Sharon.

“Where bespoke OTC products are retained and needed then it seems there should be proper analysis to see what risk those pose rather than make a blanket assumption concerning their risk and penalize them all,” she said.

In the words of Al Michaels, “Do you believe in miracles? YES!”

EU Econ Committee: Derivatives Not Big Factor In Crisis [WSJ]

What has this world come to when you can’t drop your World Series rings off at a pawn shop without having some Japanese film crew up your ass? While it’s true that yeah, we track Nails’ every move, we do so out of love/fascination/admiration for the guy, not in order to humiliate him/make something out of nothing. He just needed a little money to cover the costs of dip and Twizzlers for a while, and this makes it seem like he’s a homeless dude on his last legs, so desperate for a hit he’d rip the fixtures out of his foreclosed house and hock them for cash (longer clip here).

Julian Roberston: It’s almost Armageddon if the Japanese and Chinese don’t buy our debt. I don’t know where we could get the money. I think we’ve let ourselves get in a terrible situation and I think we ought to try and get out of it.

Erin Burnett: Ok, Mr. Roberston, but let’s say we don’t get out of it and it actually is Armageddon. What’s it gonna be like around here?

JR: 200 degrees in the sunlight, minus 200 in the shade, canyons of razor-sharp rock, unpredictable gravitational conditions, unexpected eruptions, things like that.

EB: Okay, so the scariest environment imaginable. Thanks. That’s all you gotta say, scariest environment imaginable.

The ‘Dick Fuld owes me’ line runs over 16,000 deep and seeks over $1 trillion for the wide range of inconveniences experienced resulting from Lehman’s rendering of Titanic last September. It started out with Joseph Gregory showing up looking for a quarter of a billion in deferred comp. Now Lehman alumnus and New Jersey Devils owner Jeffrey Vanderbeek is coming forward with his tale of horror and hardship whereby the firm is about $60 million light on his 2004 separation agreement.

Clearly time does not heal all wounds when it comes to former Lehman executives going after their old employer. If everybody from the Giants to the Abu Dhabi Investment Authority to the guys who helped Lehman make it the success it is today wants a piece of the carcass, there’s virtually nobody left other than the firm itself without a pending claim.

Administrators representing Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc.’s main European unit have made the first of several claims they plan to make against the U.S. parent company that are expected to total about $150 billion.

WSJ: European Lehman Administrators To Claim $150B Vs US Parent [WSJ]

One half of this hedge fund couple has been named the 19th most powerful woman in finance (making the list for the third year in a row). And the other is still on track to meet the $1 billion dollars in redemptions he had last year, so that’s exciting, too!

Also, if given the opportunity to have a sit-down with Hank Paulson, MM would really nail that guy to the wall on this thing, in addition to asking him, point blank, did you or did you not have a hand in 9/11? He’s resisted all requests so far and I’m pretty sure we know why.

You’ve said you started filming “Capitalism: A Love story” a year and a half ago. Did the film change after Lehman went bankrupt and the stock market crashed?

I started out wanting to explore the premise of capitalism being anti-American, and anti-Jesus, meaning it’s not a Democratic economy. And it’s not run with a moral or ethical code. But when the crash happened, it added a third plot line: not only is capitalism anti-American and anti-Jesus, it doesn’t work.

You tried to get Hank Paulson on the phone in the film, but weren’t successful. If you got him on the phone today, what would you ask?

If I had a chance to talk to him, I’d want him to come clean and tell me the truth about how he rigged this whole thing.

Michael Moore: Capitalism Is Anti-Jesus [Fortune]

Earlier: Michael Moore: Capitalism Is A Ponzi Scheme

White House economist Austan Goolsbee is calling for a little decorum from AIG CEO Bobby Benmosche after the wine aficionado’s less than complementary remarks about the people in Washington who removed the company from death row last year. While a simple ‘don’t bite the hand that feeds’ warning probably would have been sufficient, when you refer to the folks in DC as “crazies”, a more detailed dressing down is in order.

“I don’t know what the new CEO [Robert Benmosche] is referring to when he’s saying the government people are ‘crazies,’ but I would just caution them not to be too cheeky because, the government ‑‑ the American people saved the day and they didn’t do it because they liked AIG or they thought they were really great guys who deserve hundreds of billions of dollars,” Goolsbee said in the interview, posted online today.

“I mean, they did it to prevent the economy from melting down, and I think people ought to be a little more circumspect in their pronouncements about the government,” Goolsbee said.

Your reply Mr. Benmosche? In as much detail as possible please.

Ugh, Goldman. This probably seems silly to those of you who don’t work there, but it’s really hard being a Master of the Universe sometimes. Particularly on payday and especially when you know the ridiculous success of the last few quarters is going to mean ka-ching! on your face. Sure, it should be a cause for celebration but because certain jerkoff writers— no names necessary: Tatt Maibbi— have turned the public against you, what with his anecdotal evidence of sucking people’s blood (one time!), you can’t do anything that might draw attention to the jingle jangle of coinage in your pants. You can’t even dance. And when you can’t do that, is there even a point to this thing?

Goldman’s bonus pool is expected to swell to an estimated $16 billion after what’s expected to be another stellar quarter, and Blankfein is struggling to figure out how to pay his employees in a way that keeps them happy while avoiding another round of populist and political outrage like the bank experienced over the summer.

And while a typical CEO would be cheering such news, for Blankfein another gold-plated quarter represents a huge headache, as the firm’s success has been greeted with intense scorn on both Wall Street and Main Street.

Swiss private banks will probably observe a moment of silence today as the government rushes to sign the final tax treaty separating the country from removal from the OECD’s grey list. With the battle for airtight secrecy lost, Konrad Hummler, managing partner at the oldest private bank in Switzerland, Wegelin & Co, signaled the war is far from over. With the pay-to-play withholding tax proposal from the Swiss Bankers Association gaining momentum, the next phase of the struggle may be determined by testing the degree to which European governments are willing to walk the walk.

“Do they want to see cash, or are they ideologists who just want to be right?” he said. “Looking at their treasuries, I have the feeling that the cash argument is a good one.”

Given Europe’s penchant for royalty, there’s a pretty good chance cash is still king.

Swiss Secrecy Onslaught May ‘Criminalize’ Elites, Hummler Says [Bloomberg]

Credit Suisse Bankers Poised For Pay-Out (FT)
About 300 employs could split an estimated $1.85 billion in March for promising not to leave the Swiss bank five years ago. Alternatively, they could get nothing, which is probably less exciting.

Ex-AIG Chief Greenberg Asks Court to Dismiss 2005 Spitzer Suit (Bloomberg)
Hank is somehow under the impression Spitzer used the case to promote his career: “At that time, Spitzer was planning to run for governor of the state of New York, and he has since admitted that his high- profile pursuit of Greenberg achieved its intended objective of enhancing his reputation as he pursued higher office,” Gravante wrote in the filing. “AIG was, at the time, one of the world’s most successful companies and Greenberg was the one of the world’s most successful business leaders.”

Insider Charged In Perot Deal (WSJ)
The SEC filed a civil lawsuit against Reza Saleh, an employee of Parkcentral Capital Management LP in Plano, Texas, and accused him of making $8.6 million in profit from trading stock options on Perot Systems ahead of Dell’s announcement Monday that it was buying the technology services firm.

Adair Turner, Top British Regulator, Takes On Banks (NYT)
Banks “need to be willing, like the regulator, to recognize that there are some profitable activities so unlikely to have a social benefit, direct or indirect, that they should voluntarily walk away from them,” Mr. Turner told the group of City financiers.

Swiss Secrecy Onslaught May ‘Criminalize’ Elites, Hummler Says (Bloomberg)
“If there is really a desire to criminalize part of the elite in European countries, then it would be a bigger problem for these countries than for Switzerland,” Konrad Hummler said in an interview at the offices of Wegelin & Co. in Zurich. The “majority of European clients were not criminals but just diversifying away from their home country.”

Hedge Funds Still Aren’t Reducing Their Fees (WSJ)
Everyone can now breathe easy.

$$$ The Most Powerful Women In Banking [AB]

$$$ Bank of America shareholder says Ken Lewis should resign [The Deal]

$$$ Move to Greenwich [WSJ]

$$$ The John Thain office chronicles are still going on [BI]

$$$ Hassan Nemazee Pleads Not Guilty in Style [Daily Intel]

$$$ Experts’ Perspectives on Systemic Risk and Resolution Issues, With Barney Frank, Starring John Cochrane, AQR Capital Management Professor of Finance [House]

Ralph Cioffi is starting to play with fire. While he’s currently walking around a free man, Federal prosecutors want a judge to reconsider the terms of his bail after RC decided to make a quick trip down to Florida to pick up the originals of some documents the government was already after in connection with a Sarasota condo fiasco.

With his freedom in potential jeopardy, and having close ties to south Florida, Ralph might just make a run for it from the Sunshine State. But he needs to do it the right way. Faking his own death or hopping the next plane to anywhere without a US extradition treaty have been done before. He needs something unique, something truly him. Maybe a boat. There are undoubtedly hundreds of people in that part of the state burned by one Ponzier or another looking for some cash from selling their yacht. But it has to be the right one. It has to be a yacht worthy of a guy looking to make up for losing two Ferraris. Where is he going to find a former master of the universe trying to get rid of his prized marine possession?

The hideous eyesore you see above isn’t just a bed, it’s a sleeping experience. It’s called the “Sphere” and it will run you about $50,000. I know, sounds kind of steep to pay for a mattress that doesn’t spontaneously blow you the moment you get in but guess what, this baby also comes bunch of other shit you probably already own, like an iPod dock and flat screen TV, and having it all in the bed will make you feel like a man (as will the cooler for drinks and the sweat-wicking system). The Journal reports manufacturers are hoping there’s a market out there for guys looking to throw down a bunch of money for sleep stations like the Sphere, which are centered around the idea of “macho mattresses” containing “muscle-recovery properties” and cooling technology (based on the theory that men are more likely to feel hot in bed than women) and then fully-loaded with special add-ons like a safe to hold your gun and other manly stuff. To that end, there’s this:

Luxury auto brand Lamborghini, which is owned by Volkswagen AG, has teamed up with Italian mattress maker Magniflex SpA to design a mattress aimed at men who love sports cars.

God, is there anything that makes you feel more like a man than laying down at night and dreaming about (sucking) tailpipe? One thing I’m troubled by is that the “Lamborghini bed” is really just this:

At some point down the road, the US and Italy may want to compare notes about the level of interest in their respective tax amnesty programs. The IRS has made it clear that even if you decide to atone for your tax sins, your future is still a function of what side of the bed the respective tax investigator wakes up on. Then there is the Silvio Berlusconi plan. The rules are pretty simple- divulge what you’re hiding abroad, pay a fine of 5% of that amount, and your record is wiped clean. End of story. As you might guess, not everybody is fully on board with the 5% stay out of jail (almost) free plan.

“Shameful,” centrist Senator Gianpiero D’Alia told the Senate, “With this, Mafiosi and terrorists can repatriate illegally gained capital without any control by the state.”

“This is nothing less than a gift to the white-collar class and an insult to the principles of ethics and fairness,” said Giuliano Barbolini, a parliamentarian of the opposition Democratic Party.

True as that may or may not be, with Italians hiding an estimated €600 billion in the shrinking list of tax havens, the government stands to gain a decent chunk of change with the introduction of its offshore tax rate program. It appears the country still hasn’t decided whether or not to embrace the work of another famous Italian politician: Machiavelli.

Berlusconi government under fire over fraud amnesty plan [Retuers]

A quick word of thanks to this week’s advertisers on Dealbreaker.

Vladimir Putin is not one to engage in irrational exuberance. He knows Russia is a volatile place and things can get out of hand quickly. So before the current guard in Moscow gets too comfortable with the recent economic recovery, Putin had some words of warning about “ungrounded optimism”.

‘A money hunger can trigger a new downfall,’ Putin said, asking ministers to improve the efficiency of budget spending instead of making ‘mechanical’ cuts that would reduce a stimulus package for the economy.

But Putin shouldn’t have to fight this battle alone. This is the age of one world fighting global problems together as one. Nobody heads out there alone. We’re on the buddy system now. So who is going to be there to help Putin pull through?

At his annual meeting with academics, think-tankers, and journalists, Putin barely mentioned Obama but “repeatedly expressed fondness for his friend ‘George,’ ” says Cliff Kupchan, a Russia analyst at the Eurasia Group consultancy. “He clearly has a personal softness for George Bush,” says Kupchan, who attended the meeting

And by the transitive property, you’re all Bernie Madoffs.*

Bernie is representative of the scheme of capitalism itself. [Capitalism] is a pyramid where the richest 1% have as much financial wealth as the combined 95%. It’s a pyramid only a few people can be at the top of, and everyone else is made to believe that they can get to the top,” he explains. “It’s a bit of a ruse, and a ruse that’s not unsimilar to Mr. Madoff’s.”

Bernie Madoff’s prison a target venue for Michael Moore and ‘Capitalism: A Love Story’ [NYDN via NYM]

*Specific anatomical similarities will explored in Moore’s next film, his first in a series of finance-related pornos. Still needs a title, though, so if you’ve got any ideas don’t be shy.

Well this is sad. Bernie Madoff’s longtime administrative assistant, Eleanor Squillari, is selling the above portrait of the boss, photographed by artist Yousuf Karsh. It once hung over her bed (Berns’ suggestion), but those were in better times, when Squillari thought of Bernie fondly as the guy whose hand job appointments she’d book, and whose mistresses she talk trash about out of jealousy. Before she found out that the mitts that grabbed her ass were those of a criminal. Now she wants nothing to do with him or his likeness and is pimping the headshot to the highest bidder. Opening bid is $2,500 and she’s hoping for about 5 large. Personally, I’m holding out for a life-sized cut out of this.

The mere thought of it is enough to induce euphoria among the compensation lawmakers of the world, and make Stan O’Neal spontaneously combust. You finally make it to the top of the corporate ladder at one of the biggest financial services organizations on the planet and for all your rainmaking efforts, your career justifying payday comes in at the handsome sum of a bit over $200k. China may have the world’s two largest banks by market cap but they are light years behind the competition when it comes to embarrassing pay packages at the top.

China, for example, boasts three of the world’s four biggest banks, yet the leaders of those banks — Industrial and Commercial Bank of China, China Construction Bank Corp and Bank of China — are among the lowest paid of those surveyed by Reuters. The chairman and the president of each of the banks are paid roughly $230,000 per year.

So that’s it then. The Chinese have found the executive compensation reform holy grail. What clever model should the US rush to embrace to simultaneously end the public outcry and create a legion of capable, responsible, humble bank heads?

The Chinese banks, which are state-controlled, are typically led by bureaucrats appointed by the central government, and executive pay is capped.

On second thought, maybe $19 mil or so for Jamie Dimon isn’t such a bad deal.

Study shows U.S. bank CEO pay dwarfs rest of world [Reuters]

The Times has an exposé today on Mayor Bloomberg’s eating disorder, the fallout from which the city of New York is suffering. Basically Hizzoner binge and purges constantly and on really bad days looks in the mirror and thinks “you don’t deserve a third term because you’re a fat fat fattie fat.” The crescendo of the piece is the accompanying slideshow, entitled “The Mayor In Snack Mode,” in which the Gray Lady presents us with close ups of Mikey Boy literally shoving food in his mouth (chicken wings? pizza? don’t mind if I do!), after noting that just the sight of an unflattering picture can trigger foul moods and episodes of gluttonous ecstasy, followed by starvation, practically ensuring the guy’s going to knock over a 7-11 tonight after work. It’s pretty uncool of the paper, of course, and not very sensitive, but obviously our minds immediately turned to how we could exploit the Bloomie’s skills for sport. Has Oyster Boy met his match? Pretty confident Mike would’ve actually had the Munchkins swallowed and digested by the buzzer. No special ruling necessary.

If you want to work for an organization that is squarely focused on making profits, don’t work for a UK bank. That was the most recent message from FSA Chairman Adair Turner. The age of profit as the primary motive of financial institutions should be replaced by “social usefulness”. In fact, there may be some products out there so socially useless that they should be abandoned altogether, regardless of their ability to help repair roughed up British banks.

“Top management of banks — and in particular of any banks which are involved both in complex trading activities and in retail banking activities — need to operate within limits,” Turner told 300 financial-services executives and lawmakers late yesterday in London. “There are some profitable activities so unlikely to have a social benefit, direct or indirect, that they should voluntarily walk away from them.”

Welcome to the age of walking away from your problems solutions.

Banks Should Prioritize ‘Social Benefit,’ Turner Says [Bloomberg]

Of course they probably didn’t know he was a criminal at the time, but that’s besides the point. According to the complaint filed by everyone’s favorite moose fister, it was her colleagues at RBC who encouraged her to get involved with Westgate Capital founder (and noted con) James Nicholson, making the firm’s claim that her relationship with him was inappropriate (and a fireable offense) kind of bull shit (Boves also says that the allegation she helped her Ponzier bf raise money for his fund is a lie). With regard to the sexual harassment Lindy claims she was subjected to during her time in the New York office, she’s provided a few more examples of the pick-up lines used on her at work:

13. Robert McGuire incessantly commented on her appearance…On one occassion, Mr. McGuire told her to “keep [her] guns at bay,” referring to her breasts.

25. Brit Railston also harassed Ms. Boville by repeatedly referencing the ways in which he would hit on her when he was drunk. He said in a message, “I’m going to be in town next week. Make sure you hide. Don’t pick up the phone when I call after three drinks.”

Bernie and Sir Allen may need elaborate schemes to swindle people out of billions, but in the emerging markets, fraud tends to be a bit more direct. Take for example Kazakhstan. While some may look to bad loans as the primary culprit for the outbreak of restructurings, one bank was being victimized by the time honored tradition of theft.

Abylkasym Mamyrbekov, ex-deputy chief executive of Alliance Bank, is accused of using deceptive accounting practices to shift 1.1 billion dollars (744 million euros) into privately held offshore bank accounts.

How exactly could the #2 in charge of the fourth largest lender in Kazakhstan get away with a ten-figure heist? Surely the guy in charge must have been keeping a watchful eye over his empire to guide it through the crisis.

The company’s former chief executive, Zhomart Ertayev, was also arrested over the scheme in August.

Then again, you never leave your wing man.

He’s just trying to be honest, okay?

Blankfein: I think we all know that greed can drive behavior, but it tends to be short term and ultimately destructive. Our leadership team stands out because most of our people have built their whole career at the firm and stayed through many years and many changes in the market. When our people leave they tend to go on to other positions — whether in government or other forms of public service — that no one would do if their were motives were financial. Those characteristics don’t make me think of “greed.”

SPIEGEL: So only modest, good people work for Goldman Sachs? We hardly believe that.

Blankfein: I have stated my honest view of things.

Interview with Goldman Sachs CEO: ‘We Didn’t Realize How Bad Things Would Get’ [Spiegel]

Lehman Alums Eye Fund Launch (NYP)
Get in on this while you still can: ” A little over a year after Lehman’s demise, former top trader Alex Kirk is said to be joining with the former second-in-command, Bart McDade, to launch a fund called River Birch Capital. While details are scarce, sources said Kirk, a 25-year Lehman veteran, has been working the phones for months, with an eye toward getting the investment fund off the ground. River Birch could aim to purchase distressed assets and other fixed-income debt, including high-yield securities — areas in which Kirk has expertise. One source said some of the billions in mortgages and other esoteric securities still owned by the defunct Lehman might be on the radar.”

UKFI Sacks Headhunter Over RBS Appointment (NYT)
Apparently the group that oversees the UK government’s stakes in bailed-out banks was not cool with employing Johnny Cameron, RBS’s former head of investment banking (and “a close ally of tainted RBS boss Fred Goodwin”), as an adviser.

Review Says No Net Loss For Some In Madoff Scheme (AP)
Half Big B’s clients lost nothing due to unwittingly well-timed withdrawals of more money than they originally invested.

US, Accused Bear Managers Fight Over Evidence (Reuters)
A lawyer for Rich Tannin believes the “allegation” that her client erased an incriminating Gmail account is “an eleventh-hour smear.”

Hedge Funds Keep Watch On Washington (BW)
One client who runs a $4 billion hedge fund in San Francisco that employs 25 researchers recently told consulting firm GLG that while he never expected Washington to become “the financial capital of the world, now that it is, I have to understand.”

Harvard, NYU Law Students Left Hanging as Firms Slash Offers (Bloomberg)
It could be worse— you could’ve gone to law school and now been sitting by the phone waiting for a call that will never come while a sad trombone blows in the background.

$$$ Stumpf To Become Wells Chairman [WSJ]

$$$ John Thain might’ve lied about Stan O’Neal’s office gym [BI]

$$$ Josh Rosner on The Crisis [WSCS]

$$$ Goldman Bankers Seek Perfect Match [The Deal]

$$$ More from the ‘sensy’ files: “Boville, 33, further claimed her male colleagues regularly subjected her to sexually charged come-ons and rude comments [such as], “Do the curtains match the carpet?” Male colleagues, the suit said, constantly referred to her “guns” for breasts and “wheels” for legs while propositioning her non-stop.” [NYP]

A day after the Amaranth clawback campaign kicked off, their target, Touradji Capital explained to their investors that the $350 million lawsuit against them is nothing but a misguided attempt to partially right a $6 billion wrong.

Amaranth’s action “is merely an offshoot of the frivolous litigation brought against the firm by two disgruntled former employees and one of their family members,” (Touradji CEO Gil) Caffray wrote.

So what if they’ve got a couple guys who think they’re still owed $25 million (each) in back pay. Gentry Beach and Rob Vollero must have bigger things on their mind than what allegedly went down with Amaranth and how much they might get one day in exchange for remembering some timely details, right?

In an April 15 deposition for the district court of Harris County, Texas, for the Playa case, Gentry Beach, citing his unidentified colleagues, said Paul Touradji signed a non-trade agreement with Amaranth so he could review their metals positions when Amaranth was shutting its fund during September and October 2006.

“From what I heard, Mr. Touradji then aggressively pressed these positions against them,” Beach said in the deposition.

Touradji Rejects Amaranth Claim, Says It Acted ‘Professionally’ [Bloomberg]

$$$ Hassan Nemazee charged in $290 million fraud [Reuters]

$$$ “In addition, Mr. Cioffi was executive producer of two independent films, including a 2006 vehicle for Rosie Perez and a movie called Follow the Prophet, which isn’t about the pursuit of money but, rather, a teenager escaping marriage to the leader of a polygamist cult. [Crain’s]

$$$ Bank of America to Pay U.S. $425 Million to Remove Merrill Asset Guarantee [Bloomberg]

$$$ The Pandora’s Box of Wells Fargo and Commercial Real Estate [FT Alphaville]

$$$ 2 men charged with $80 million Ponzi scheme [AP]

‘Cause Chaz lost a boatload of it last night. If you want to go there, go there, but I’m just saying you do so at your own risk. We spoke to CG earlier today while he was sitting on a tarmac in Texas and apparently he was at the Giants/Cowboys game last night pulling for Dallas. This was pretty shocking to us because a) CG doesn’t come off as a football guy, period and b) Dallas? What’s that about? Obviously we pushed him on this one.

After a three year, SEC-administered cavity search, the fund that made Brian Hunter and natural gas futures famous was given the all clear last month. The years of going back and forth with the SEC about where the ethical and legal lines in the sand are drawn seems to have left quite an impression. Amaranth is now going after Paul Touradji and some of his deputies for at least $350 million in connection with Touradji Capital’s alleged repeated breach of contract and misuse of proprietary information.

Amaranth says Touradji breached two contracts agreed to in September 2008 regarding the transfer and purchase of Amaranth’s base-metals portfolio, according to a complaint filed Sept. 18 in New York State Supreme Court in Manhattan. Touradji and employees at Touradji Capital Management LP used the information “to recover profits obtained by defendants through improper trading practices and misuse of plaintiffs’ proprietary and confidential information,” according to the document.

So a major player in financial markets turns the table and goes on legal offense once the wolves get called off. If this is any guide, Bank of America is going to make Dick Bove look like the second coming of Nostradamus.

Amaranth Advisors Sues Touradji, Seeking at Least $350 Million [Bloomberg]
, ,

Or not willing to listen to the crazy whose most recent Twitters make him sound like an mentally unstable homeless person shouting about the mating rituals of cats at various passersby? I don’t know what to do here, it’s too hard. On the one hand, the SEC is always, without exception, wrong. On the other, Cody, rolling up to the building with his “information” and just asking for “two minutes, that’s all I need.” (Then I come back to the fact that he’s childhood friends with Neil Patrick Harris and I’m confused again. Damn you, Willard.)

Maybe! Former RBC Capital Markets trader Lindy Boville, pictured at left, claims her former employer fired her in March because she unwittingly dated a dude who turned out to be running a Ponzi scheme (James Nicholson, Westgate Capital). Not so says RBC! The Canadians counter the moose fister’s unfortunate taste in men had nothing to do with her termination, but rather that she showed “poor judgment” in not telling her bosses she was helping the bf raise money for his fund, leaving them to wonder what other “deals” she had going on the side. In a complaint filed today, Boville also says that before she was shown the door, she was (bizarrely) sexual harassed in a made up tongue.

She accused one co-worker of making comments about her legs, such as, “Did that dress shrink at the dry cleaners?” She accused another of using the made-up word “sensy” rather than “sexy” so that RBC’s monitoring system would not pick up his language.

RBC sued by trader who dated alleged Ponzi schemer [Reuters via BI]

With the addition of Edolphus Towns, there are now enough people waiting in line to take a crack at Ken Lewis about the Merrill merger that BAC’s directors are, reportedly, pulling out the binder with the contingency plan should Kenny be charged with civil fraud. They’ll have to decide how much and for how long they’re willing to resist the temptation to throw KL out the revolving doors that have found a permanent home in the Bank of America hierarchy. If things get dire, they may even have to consider who to turn to if Lewis goes. They’ll need somebody with a good sense of the organization. Somebody who knows how to handle the ongoing culture wars between BAC and Merrill Lynch. Somebody with a proven ability to get the absolute maximum for shareholders during a time of crisis. John Thain, you know anybody who sounds like that?

Report: BofA board considering options if CEO is charged with fraud [Jacksonville Business Journal]

Keeping pace with the growing legions who believe Wall St. firms are going to dodge the regulatory bullet and get back to their old ways, Moody’s evidently believes the end of the end-of-the-world panic is synonymous with sweeping the past couple of years under the rug. After the rating agency politely declined an invitation to appear at a panel put on by the National Association of Insurance Commissioners to answer a couple questions about their robust ratings process, the insurance community warned Moody’s that they plan to debate whether or not to formalize a movement many firms have already effectively embraced.

An official in the New York Insurance Department says insurance regulators from across the country are expected to discuss dropping Moody’s Investors Service from a list of acceptable rating organizations at a meeting later this week.

Hearing this, the Moody’s team decided it might be in their best interest to attend the session after all. That way there will really be no debate as to whether they’re an acceptable rating organization.

That being said, who knows if they’ll ever find it. Maybe they could be coaxed in the right direction if they had a little incentive to do so, know what I’m sayin? Missing the noon deadline was a hint. You’ve been warned.

Earlier: Bank of America: You Want Our Emails? You Got ‘Em!

Do people not just want a piece of your shit, monetarily speaking, but also a glimpse of somea that hot hedge fund ass of yours? Are you sick of the effort it takes to buy up the rights to all your photos? Take a cue from Roman Abramovich and install some extra security measures. But don’t just stop at protecting yourself from prying eyes while sunbathing topless on your yacht. Apply this fortress mentality to all forms of transportation and anywhere else you might consider yourself vulnerable to attack by camera.

In a move that could eventually be copied by all discerning billionaires, Abramovich has installed an anti-paparazzi shield on his newest vessel, the world’s biggest and most expensive private yacht. The high-tech system on Eclipse, a mega-yacht measuring up to 557ft, relies on lasers to block any digital camera lenses nearby.

Having already moved the bailout repayment bar down three times since it went up a year ago, the latest thorn in Bank of America’s side, Edolphus Towns, wants to do his part to see new AIG CEO Bobby Benmosche succeed by further lowering the degree of difficulty involved in paying back the US taxpayer. Armed with a plan from former AIG captain Hank Greenberg, Towns is currently debating whether or not to approach the Beard and Timmy G with the plea to trim the government’s stake in the Pink Ladies’ favorite firm while also rethinking the interest rate and amount of time the firm has to pay back its safety net.

According to Towns, the critical thing to remember is that time is not the essence here. The massive rally in asset values over the past six months, while nice and all, is not enough to convince the good representative that AIG should sell what they can before they place the fate of the company in the debate between a V or W shaped recovery.

Towns said regulators have pressured AIG to liquidate the company at “fire-sale” prices. “What’s the rush if we can get a better return on our money a few years down the road and save a major company and thousands of jobs?” he said.

It seems there’s still a place in this world for speculators after all.

As some of you may have observed, we’ve given Bank of America and Ken Lewis a lot of shit over the past year, most of it well-deserved. Since sometimes it’s hard to detect when we’re actually being sincere in our praise, let us just say that when we say Bank of America and its commander in chief are awesome right now, we absolutely mean it because holy case of Strawberry Hill have they outdone themselves. Here’s the response they elicited from Congressmen Edolphus Towns, after he subpoenaed their emails in an attempt to gain clarity re: why and how the Merrill Lynch deal went down. The best thing about Lewis and Co’s decision to send a fuck you message to the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform by deluging the team with everything that passed through their servers is that they, of all people, can most convincingly play the dumb card. “What? You said you wanted our emails, didn’t you?”

In addition, many of the documents produced so far are clearly irrelevant to the committee’s investigation. My August 6 letter requested records “created between September 1, 2008 and January 16, 2009 that relate to the financial losses at Merrill Lynch or to Bank of America’s receipt of financial assistance from the United States Government.” You responded to this request by providing hundreds of pages of unrelated, extraneous information.

For example, you sent copies of numerous emails you received from your own employees expressing admiration for your “awesome” performance on 60 Minutes. You also included copies of emails alerting Bank of America employees to discounts at Wal-Mart, Target, and Costco; an announcement of the “Annual Pecan sale,” featuring “This Year’s Crop of Mammoth Pecan Halves”; and an invitation to attend a conference on investment in East Asia, written in Chinese. There were numerous other pages of obviously irrelevant material.

Pretty incredible dinner news from the House of JPMorgan today. None of you will be dining by candlelight while gazing into the eyes of five o’clock shadow over here (you wish) but: that heartless cost-cutting initiative from back in May, that decreed Seamless web orders “shall not exceed $20”? Repealed! Oh, that’s right my little Dimonettes— for those of you eating at your desk tonight, feel free to go crazy ‘cause your meal allowance has been bumped back up to $25. You should count yourselves really, really lucky regardless, but especially compared to your counterparts elsewhere on the Street, such as Goldman, which we’re pretty sure has yet to throw an extra fiver at its employees after this insult last fall, and Citi, where employees who believe themselves too good to eat cat food go hungry.

Update: A Citi dweller takes issue with the above and would like me to pass on the following: “We are still at $25 and despite multiple inflows from the gov never cut back on food. Can we print in color? No. Can we get a cab at a reasonable hour? No. But damn it no cat food for us!”

Update II: Okay, this isn’t even funny. Guys, fuck the cat food jokes, they wish they were eating the wet stuff at RBS. The Queen’s biatches apparently had their allowance dropped to $8 including tax and tip after the UK gov took an active interest in business. Supposedly there was a recent unofficial announcement that the policy was changing to $20 but so far nothing in writing. Fingers crossed.

It may be becoming a lot clearer to both Fiat CEO Sergio Marchionne and the US taxpayer exactly how Chrysler wound up turning into a black hole for cash. You don’t have to go far from the top to get a taste of the conventional wisdom that helped turned the auto maker into the crown jewel of the Cerberus collection. Chrysler’s deputy CEO, James Press, is learning the hard way that living bonus check to bonus check has its potential pitfalls when your business model of making cars worthy of their own zip codes and writing loans to anybody demonstrating the ability to walk upright proves unwise.

Faced with the unfamiliar reality of life without a 7-figure bonus last year, Press is now being sued by Western Federal Credit Union in Michigan after missing two loan payments totaling around $200k. When not dodging calls from credit unions, he is likely trying to come up with a game plan to address the near $1 million lien the IRS has placed on his house in light of some missing tax payments. But help may be on the way for this member of the Chrysler elite who apparently sees either a recovery in the auto industry or the resumption of non-performance based bonuses.

“Due to the turmoil in the automobile industry and uncertainty surrounding our ownership, my request for bonus payment was denied,” Mr. Press said, after informing the Western Federal Credit Union that he would be unable to make two pending loan payments for $203,000, according to the lawsuit, portions of which were posted by The Detroit News on its Web page. “I am attempting to arrange for a loan against my future bonus with my employer, which would allow me to pay this loan off.”

Dick Fuld might be laying low when it comes to keeping up with his middle aged white men sports but not Stan O’Neal! The guy who (indirectly) forced Merrill Lynch into the arms of Ken Lewis enjoyed himself a round at the Bayonne Golf Club Sunday morning. Elliptical Boy, seen here sizing up hole 18, shot an 82, followed up by a couple of well-deserved* vodka tonics. According to an onlooker checking Big Stan out in the grill room, “he seemed totally calm, without a care in the world.” This may or may not have something to do with the fact that he’s literally spent the entire month on the golf course, having played 12 rounds as of Sunday. Jimmy Cayne hasn’t even gotten high that many times since 9/1.

Congress Presses For Details From Bank of America On Talks (NYT)
Bank of America has tried to keep legal conversations regarding what happened last year when it acquired a toxic dump hush hush through the excuse of attorney-client privilege. Representative Edolphus Towns told them Friday to fuck that noise: “In a sternly worded letter, Mr. Towns said the bank must divulge when it became aware of the enormous losses at Merrill last year, when it received a commitment from the federal government for a second round of bailout money and what legal advice its management received about whether it had to disclose those developments to the bank’s shareholders.

Mr. Towns gave the bank until noon on Monday to provide answers and relevant legal documents. He said it seemed that the bank was “hiding information.” The bank replied to Mr. Towns’s committee late on Saturday, asking him to delay that request until after Tuesday, when Mr. Towns meets with Anne Finucane, the bank’s chief strategy and marketing officer, who oversees public policy at the bank. But a spokesman for Mr. Towns said on Sunday that he was sticking to the deadline.”

Firms Back Plans To Change Pay Policies (WSJ)
A bunch of companies are going to voluntarily promise to be good re: compensation and hope the government will ixnay egulationray.

Recession Drives Women Back To Workforce (NYT)
Citi? Anna Bresnahan of Spokane, Wash., says she would not have returned to work if she and her husband had not started worrying that the bank where he worked might fail. “I decided I could start looking. He said, ‘That would be nice.’ “

Royal Bank of Scotland eyes share issue to limit London’s stake (FT)
RBS would really appreciate it if someone would stop the Queen from moving anymore of her stuff in, or if she could at least clean up the shit the Corgis leave in the lobby: the bank is considering a £3bn-£4bn share issue to reduce the stake it will hand to the government for joining its toxic assets insurance scheme. Plans are “tentative” and Stephen Hester, RBS chief executive, is still “putting out feelers” about a “modest-sized” issue, a person familiar with the situation said.

IRS Extends Amnesty Deadline (WSJ)
You now have until October 15 to come forward and tell the IRS you’re a tax cheat. After that there’s going to be serious hell to pay.

Limit EU Bank Bonuses Even if US Doesn’t (Reuters)
“It would be interesting, important, useful to have if possible the same rules in the world (…) to have the Americans at our side,” European Commission president Jose-Manuel Barroso said on Sunday. “But in this case of the bonuses, I am absolutely clear — it is such a scandal what is happening, it is really an ethical problem and I believe that, if necessary, we have to do it on our own,” he said.

$$$ Sandy Weill finally admits firing Jamie Dimon was the biggest mistake of his life. [Fortune]

$$$ “According to the person familiar with the deal, the suggestion that Lehman executives lined their own pockets at the expense of their former firm is “a joke” and “brutally offensive” to those who cobbled together the deal just days after the investment bank collapsed last September.” [WSJ]

$$$ The state of Melissa Francis’s uterus. [MF]

$$$ Wall Street’s $25,000 Matchmaker [CNN Money]

$$$ Job of the Week: Macquarie needs a media research associate. You. [DB Career Center]

$$$ From Wall Street Trader To Ice Cream Man [WSJ]

In theory, the road to redemption for the SEC was supposed to include making sure its foot soldiers were properly trained, supervised, and disciplined. They were going to install Full Metal Jacket caliber training to avoid having another one of their Private Pyles allow a second Bernie incident. There were hints the agency was at least heading the right way. They went out and found some compliance software to cut down on the frequency of insider trading investigators moonlighting as insider traders. Congress seems to have no problem making sure the money is there to provide every employee with a state of the art Commodore 64. Things were going well. Until this.

“Changing cultures doesn’t happen overnight, but we have to take away some of the shackles that have been placed on staff over the years,” Schapiro said at an event hosted by Georgetown University

Jelly donuts for everybody!

“Legacy Merrill Lynchers just received an email announcing the change of their email from at ml dot com to at baml dot com. They were not pleased.”

Stockholm syndrome has clearly not set in with Bob McCann. Faced with ongoing employment imprisonment courtesy of Bank of America, the former Merrill brokerage head is starting to bang his cup on the bars of his cell to get somebody to hear him out.

“I want to rejoin the industry,” McCann said today in an interview in Dublin with Bloomberg Television. “I am being kept from doing that in, I think, an unfair way.”

While a judge refused to rule on McCann’s petition to have his non-compete agreement lifted, his recommendation that the potential future head of wealth management for the Americas at UBS go back and talk it out with BAC pretty much sealed his fate. Ken Lewis’s prisoner said he had “good reason” to leave the firm when he did after receiving a “diminished role” in the new world order. Based on the fact the FBI and Justice Department have been investigating BAC for the past half year about the now infamous merger, it appears there was no shortage of good reasons to flee.

McCann Calls Bank of America ‘Unfair’ in Blocking His New Job [Bloomberg]

The Journal today explores the phenomenon of financial services hacks going into new fields either because they got laid off or did some soul searching over the last year and decided making it rain wasn’t adequately feeding their souls, now that it’s “no longer so sexy” to work in the money business. A lot of them are finding gigs like teaching and farming and starting their own businesses quite rewarding but it’s still tough work. First off, there’s the long hours and reduced pay. Then you have the fucking assholes who are like, “if you don’t work in finance anymore you might as well call yourself a janitor.” Generally these are people with whom you share DNA.

Wall Street refugees often discover that new jobs lack both the social status and the fat paycheck of their old careers. Gil Schor was a portfolio manager for French investment bank Natixis SA until July 2008, when Natixis shut down his department. Now he owns and operates Green World Taxi in New Rochelle, N.Y. Using his savings, he bought three Nissan Altima hybrids, billed his taxi and limo service as environmentally friendly and dreamed of expanding it throughout the New York metropolitan area.

Mr. Schor’s new routine can be grueling. With just one hired driver, he often must get up at 4:30 a.m. to drive someone to the airport himself. He has no paid vacation, perks or support staff, and is responsible for everything from printing marketing materials to pumping gas. He says his income has shrunk to about a quarter of the $200,000, “plus or minus,” that he earned at the investment bank. He is skipping a vacation this year. Instead of buying books, he often goes to the library.

At age 44, and after 14 years in finance, Mr. Schor sometimes struggles to come to terms with his new identity. “My daughter said, ‘You used to be a banker and now you’re a cab driver,’ ” he says. “I said, ‘No. I’m the owner of a transportation service.’ “

I actually can’t decide whose side to take here. Like, on the one hand, “owner of a transportation service”? Get over yourself. Kid’s definitely 7 or 8. On the other, why she gotta cut him down like that??

In addition to getting his esteemed opinion on rugs and lampshades last night, the organizers of John Thain’s talk at Wharton hit on some other subjects, mainly what he thinks of his peers. Unfortunately, the lady of the hour refused to talk some smack about the guy he’s uniquely positioned to dish on, responding to the innocent query, “What do you think of Ken Lewis?” with “You know, it’s tempting to answer that question but I’m not going to.” Honestly? No. I don’t accept this.

A hungry soul in equity derivatives at Tradition Financial Services will be taking the food eating challenge AYCE style. The contestant, rumored to be roughly 5’8” and weighing in at 180 pounds will have one hour (starting at 1pm) to put down as many Dunkin Donuts Munchkins as possible. Any sort of projectile vomiting during the consumption phase will result in immediate disqualification but no post-meal conditions have been disclosed so far. Levels were reported to be 65/67 with 100 on each side roughly 20 minutes ago, but most recent quote is 65/72.

Update I: Levels are 62/65

Update II: 20 down 9 minutes in

Update III: 30 down 20 minutes in

Update IV: With five minutes left to go, the contestant hit the wall at 59 Munchkins and puked- resulting in a mandatory DQ. Tragic.

Not that Iceland really needed another event to bring their economy closer to little more than subsistence level fishing, but they got one Thursday. Down about 94% since the July ‘07 highs, FTSE decided there was no longer a place for the Icelandic equity index in its universe of over 120,000 indices and gave it the boot. The formerly leverage loving island has seen the market cap of its index decline to just under $2 billion and folks at FTSE could not justify throwing it in any of their four general categories: developed, advanced emerging, secondary emerging and frontier.

Iceland was on FTSE’s so-called watch list to join either the developed equity market index or advanced emerging market index. However, FTSE decided against entering it on the frontier index as its stock market is more similar to that of other western nations and that could confuse investors.

Iceland’s foreign ministry declined to comment on the FTSE move but said that it remained committed to restructuring its banking system and repairing relations with international investors. “We’ve already taken a number of steps towards normalisation,” said a spokesman.

When Mohamed El-Erian was speaking about the “new normal”, being left on the sidelines with teammates like newly investor friendly Zimbabwe was probably not what Iceland was hoping for.

FTSE drops Iceland from equity benchmarks [FT]

Obviously not the harrowing part of this segment, which is Good Morning America’s proclamation that you are all married to the Dollar Dominatrix, who has been dubbed “Wall Street’s First Lady.” I don’t say this because she’s not a great girl who would make a damn fine wife— she is— but because I doubt many of you could survive in an environment in which failure to take out the trash results in the spreader and truss bar.

After all of the abuse UBS has taken for helping people hide their assets from tax authorities, in addition to the seemingly endless stream of losses, the Swiss should be giving the bank a round of applause. Although it’s utilizing unconventional methods, UBS is helping to improve the Swiss employment picture while also providing the catalyst for a new revenue stream for the government.

On the job creation side, the Swiss government intends to hire 5 temporary judges to handle the up to 500 appeals expected from UBS clients trying to argue their way out of not being fed to the IRS wolves. Dozens of tax experts and auditors will also be called on to guarantee that tax cavity searches will be performed only on the truly worthy

On the revenue front, the UBS case has led to a proposal from Urs Roth, CEO of the Swiss Bankers Association to charge a withholding tax on the earnings of foreign investors.

Mr. Roth said the tax system would cover dividends, income from collective investments and capital gains. It would apply to private individuals as well as legal entities, and be broader than a planned new European Union savings-tax directive. It eliminates the risk of criminal prosecution or civil sanctions, the banking association said.

So, really, what more do you want from these guys? Profits?! One step at a time.

Back in January, when CNBC’s Senior Interior Decorator Charlie Gasparino really put his investigative journalistic skills to work and reported to the world that John Thain had spruced up his office at Merrill Lynch to include, among other items, a $87,784 area rug, a $25,713 Mahogany pedestal table, and a $35,115 commode, JT issued this vague statement re: what was so wrong with Stan O’Neal’s office that it had to be completely redone:

Well— his office was very different— than— the— the general décor of— Merrill’s offices. It really would have been— very difficult— for— me to use it in the form that it was in. And— you know, I— it needed to be renovated no matter what. It would have been better for me to simply— I should have— simply paid for it myself

Obviously this forced our hand to come to the logical conclusion that O’Neal had outfitted the place with shag rugs, a disco ball and a huge blinking sign that read “Pussy Palace.” I don’t know why it took so long to get this out of him, but last night while speaking at Wharton, the Thainmeister finally cleared the air. Here’s what JT told the audience, according to a reader in attendance:

Pandit Says $100 Million Pay Is Too Much For Banker (WSJ)
Andrew Hall shot down! His name wasn’t actually uttered but Vikram did tell the audience at the 92nd Street Y last night that the bonus number requested by everyone’s favorite castle-dwelling Phibro trader is “excessive” and probably gave a knowing wink after that.

Financier Pang Allegedly Had Drugs In His System At Death (WSJ)
Some barbiturates and a little pot to (really) take the edge off things. David Schindler, the lawyer who represented Danny “I want you to know this is a Ponzi scheme” Pang maintains his former client had a heart attack and is “offended” by any suggestions of suicide so don’t even go there.

Wall Street On Notice (NYP)
“We need to find ways to bring down that trading-friction cost, we need to make sure we’re not being taken advantage of,” Larry Fink said on BloombergTV. “Hopefully our counterparties, our dealers, will make less money from us and our clients are going to make more return.”

SEC Rules Take Aim At Credit Rating Agencies (Reuters)
Scaring the absolute shit out of those in the cow tipping business.

Bankers Face Sweeping Curbs On Pay (WSJ)
The Fed may get involved in the biggest banks’ compensations decisions, reviewing packages, pushing for clawbacks, and “demanding more pay be offered through restricted stock to punish employees for taking excessive risks with their firms’ money.”

Swiss Bankers Back a Broad Withholding of Taxes (NYT)
That way they could just put an official end to all this crazy secrecy, which you should know is exhausting. Everybody wins.

$$$ Wells Fargo’s Commercial Portfolio Is A Ticking Time Bomb [Implode-o-Meter]

$$$ Pete Peterson Criticizes Bonus System [Dealbook]

$$$ SEC Votes 5-0 to Propose Banning Flash Orders [WSJ]

$$$ The Great Recession: September 19 [Black Out Film Festival]

$$$ Who is America’s Worst Investor? [hedgeable]

$$$ The Lehman Diaspora [WSJ]

$$$ Jamie Dimon v. Sandy Weill [Fortune]

Before things get really out of hand, Congress is considering putting together a database to keep tabs on the $700 billion or so that has headed out the door. With millions going to make sure the stimulus website, recovery.gov, shows you the precise location of each new congratulatory sign, some lawmakers believe it might be time to do a little IT work for the TARP.

U.S. Rep. Carolyn Maloney (D-N.Y.) , who introduced the legislation (HR 1242), has not offered a cost estimate but is adamant about the need to track the funds. Maloney said she wants a technology that’s capable of monitoring spending in near real time.

At a House Committee on Financial Services subcommittee hearing today, Maloney said the TARP data isn’t usable. “You have to go to 25 different agencies to put it together,” she told the committee

But stimulus is stimulus, TARP is TARP, and seemingly based on educated guesses, TARP’s checking account balance is getting pretty low these days. So between part of the auto bailout money likely not coming back and needing new TARP funds to accurately track the existing ones, the second coming of TARP already has a lot of work to do.

What I need you to do for me right now is to just watch this video. It’s massage enthusiast Jeffrey Epstein being deposed re: spending time sans pants with a 15 year-old and it only lasts two minutes* because apparently the guy who has no problem jerking off in a towel while guests are in the room and wearing a wig and lipstick during sex is suddenly made to feel uncomfortable and embarrassed by the lead off question “Is it true that you have an egg-shaped penis?” So much so that Mr. Sensitive has to storm out of the room in a huff, when what he should’ve done was dropped trou and said “You tell me.” Since he didn’t, we’ll just have to assume he’s got something to hide.

Jeffrey Epstein Will Not Discuss His Manhood [Cityfile]

*Like Epstein. Ohhhh— you like that? Count it.

Who needs a year and a half long inquiry involving 10 of the nation’s finest minds to answer the question of what went wrong over the past few years? Andrew Cuomo is cutting to the chase and believes he’s found the master key to unlock the secrets of the “economic debacle of a generation” not otherwise outlined in the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission’s Congressional mandate. The solution is simple: a little Q&A session with Bank of America’s directors. Apparently AC believes the BAC-MER soap opera doubled as the front line in the struggle between economic good and evil.

“We went through an economic debacle of a generation,” Cuomo said about his interest in probing bank-board actions. “What happened? How did it happen? What did we learn and how are sure it’s not going to happen again? That’s what I’m thinking about here.”

Who knows- assuming he’s not in intensive care from a Benmosche beat down and gets his couch time with the BAC elite, Cuomo may wind up exposing a real fraud here. Seeing $5 million in taxpayer funds is going to answer questions regulators believe they’ve already taken care of is truly a scandal.

And who should dog lady replace on the roster? (video to follow.)

This is a huge shipment so he’s going to need a couple of able bodied guys to come with and hijack the goods. For those of you trying to score some brownie points, meet in the parking lot in ten for further instructions and ski masks— van’s leaving promptly at 3.

The New York Aquarium is moving ahead with a $100 million plan to renovate its building in Coney Island and create two massive tanks for more than 30 sharks — about four times as many as now ply the aquarium’s waters.

Under the aquarium’s plan, the sharks, whose streamlined forms simultaneously scare and fascinate visitors, will have a lot more room to move. The aquarium’s single 90,000-gallon tank — where eight tiger, nurse and reef sharks now make their home — is to be replaced by two glass-walled tanks with a total capacity of 600,000 gallons.

Aquarium To Renovate With Giant Shark Tanks [NYT]

Greg and I couldn’t agree on our favorite questions from yesterday’s contest so whoever would like to go hear Vikram speak tonight at the 92nd Street Y should email us now for the tix. The first two people to do so will get them and be infinitely more likely to give Vik a squeeze than the plebes not in attendance. Also, the organizers of the event are apparently still mining our comments for good brain busters to lob Pandittle’s way during the Q&A, so if you’ve got something on your mind (has he ever ridden one of Prince Alwaleed’s ponies bareback?) you’d like answered, have at it.

Whether it was the heat from global lawmakers, the angry mob at CalPERS, or divine intervention, S&P has done some soul searching and concluded that blind faith in a Monte Carlo model for CDOs may not have been the way to go.

The ratings firm will introduce tests — both quantitative and qualitative — to supplement its default-simulation model. S&P will also adjust its models to target AAA default rates it believes are commensurate with conditions of extreme macroeconomic stress, such as the Great Depression, as well as BBB default rates consistent with the highest actual coproate (sic) defaults over the past 28 years.

The result of all this good news? A cool half trillion spread across close to 5,000 CDO tranches is on downgrade watch. While super senior tranches may see a shoulder shrugging two to three notch downgrade, more junior AAAs could lose two As before the carnage is over. Given the level of potential damage, it almost provides credence to ‘better never than late’.

It’s not just wrestling moms who want to get in the ring with Senate Banking Committee Chairman Chris Dodd for his senate seat. A day after WWE matriarch Linda McMahon announced she wanted to compare records with Dodd, Euro Pacific Capital President Peter Schiff decided to add his name to list of people looking to go mano-a-mano with the Beard naysayer and wasted no time making his position clear.

Dodd “represents all that’s wrong with Congress,” Schiff said on the show. He called Dodd a “poster boy for the economic crisis.”

Even though Schiff has raised over $1 million for his campaign, the author of “Crash Proof 2.0: How to Profit From the Economic Collapse” already has a plan in place to demonstrate his ability to control unnecessary spending.

Schiff says the fact that the Republican field is crowded is a plus for him. He also predicted he would receive a boost from McMahon’s candidacy. “She’s going to be able to spend a lot of money criticizing (former U.S. Rep. Rob) Simmons, so I won’t have to do it,” he said. “What sells Linda McMahon sells me.”

Peter Schiff Launches Senate Run [Hartford Courant]

Cuts are said to going down in wealth management circa now.

ABCNews reports that the Grand Master of Ponz’s Montauk beach house has sold in an all cash deal for “over the asking price” (which was $8.75 million) to an unknown buyer (take your best guess) with a love of Formica countertops. This news should please US Marshall Roland Ubaldo greatly, who went to bat for the home insisting it is “really breathtaking, simple, stylish, with an understated elegance” after CNN Money went to town on the place and its “smallish bedrooms,” “unremarkable” layout, “lack of style,” proximity to the beach that will probably result in the new owner drowning, and general taint of scandal. This might also serve as a teachable moment to Tim Geithner, whose Larchmont home remains unsold, about what sells in this market. In related news, Berns’s Palm Beach pad and penthouse on East 64th are still available. You want a piece of this.

Are you a wealthy investor whose money is tied up with some hedge fund manager doing god knows what with it? Have the events of last year, when it turned out basically everyone was running a Ponzi scheme left you freaked the fuck out? Maybe a little bit scared shitless? No? Check out the picture at left….how about now? What if we told you that’s what your money manager’s doing when he claims to be on the desk? What if that is the desk, and entire operation they’ve got gone on up in CT is just one big drag show? Quaking in your boots, right? Thinking you need a little protection? Good. Excellent, even. Rudy Giuliani has your right where he wants you.

Capitalizing on the panic coursing through the ranks of the ultra-wealthy in the wake of the Bernard Madoff Ponzi scheme scandal, former New York City Mayor Rudolph Giuliani is joining forces with Nine Thirty Capital in a new venture to vet hedge fund managers for fraudulent activity, according to an announcement being released today.

“It’s no wonder that investors are extremely wary about where they should invest their money and are asking, ‘Who can we trust?’ ” Giuliani said. “More than ever before, investors need to be sure that the people and funds they entrust with their assets aren’t just saying all the right things, but are actually doing what has been promised.”

There are many reasons to consider keeping the stimulus program in place: reduce the risk of a double dip recession, put a couple more people to work temporarily, and, most importantly, allow the self-congratulatory sign party to continue. Apparently there are still not enough signs proudly proclaiming the triumphs attributable to the government stimulus program for a fair number of lawmakers. An amendment brought by Sen. Judd Gregg to end using stimulus money to pay for the value added signs was promptly shot down yesterday leaving the senator to ponder what sort of backward logic he used to come up with the proposal.

“Considering the questionable effectiveness of the stimulus bill, it is completely unreasonable that signs are being constructed at a price tag of hundreds to thousands of dollars apiece for lawmakers to pat themselves on the back about this legislation,” said Gregg, who voted against the stimulus bill.

“These signs are simply for political self-interest, and it’s high time we stop using stimulus dollars to fund them, and instead use these dollars for their intended purpose of creating economic activity,” he said in a written statement.

As you’ve probably figured by now, Citi’s niche in the finance world is ad campaigns. They absolutely love ‘em, the worse the better. Particularly when times are tough and people are questioning the bank’s ability to do anything but fuck up, the Big C knows the way turn things around is as simple as fantabulous new slogan plastered all over town. Last year it was the bold proclamation that everyone working there is an insomniac and the year before that it was copy written by Larry the Cable Guy. Things have been going pretty smoothly for a while, but now Citi’s starting to get the sense that once again, they’re being seconded guessed. That they’re getting a reputation. That it really wasn’t an “honest mistake” when Geithner referred to the place as “shittygroup” on the phone the other night. And they know what they have to do.

Citigroup, Wall Street’s poster child for bad banks, is about to launch an advertising campaign aimed at burnishing its badly tarnished image, sources tell The Post. According to people familiar with the matter, Citi as soon as next month could pull the wraps off an ad blitz that will highlight its virtues and looks to build public confidence for a management team that has been under fire ever since Citi took $45 billion in federal rescue cash.

Though details of the ad campaign are scant, the media push is expected to spell out the positive strides that Citi has made in using taxpayer money, such as helping consumers stay in their homes by modifying home mortgages, and defend the bank and CEO Vikram Pandit against those pressing for a change of leadership, sources said. It’s not clear if Pandit will be featured in any ads.

Obviously, first off, the ads must feature Pandito. But in what sort of scenarios? Helping a family of four move into their new home? Playing the role of a loan officer stamping “approved!”? As for defending his role at the top, it’d probably be smart to do a least a couple spots reminding people that even though he wanted it very badly, Vikula gave up his dream of a $10 million Zen Garden, because that’s just the kind of CEO he is. What else would inspire confidence? Vickles sitting soberly on the Gulfstream with the words, “You won’t see this guy catching a beej at 30,000 feet” at the bottom? A badly photoshopped image of VP spooning in bed with John Paulson and “If was willing to get behind this thing so should you, STFU” in huge letters? We’re told insiders are dying to do a shot of Vikram (jokingly) putting the Dollar Dominatrix in a choke-hold with the line, “We certainly showed this one, eh?” but it probably won’t fly. Let’s put our heads together here.

Citi to Pay Back U.S. When Recovery More Evident (Reuters)
“To us it’s really more about timing than capacity (to repay the $20 billion),” Vikram Pandit said, speaking at a conference at Barclays Capital in New York. “We’ve got the money, honey.”

Kerviel Says Proposals to Limit Pay Won’t Control `Addict’ Traders, Risks (Bloomberg)
“It’s a job that makes you a bit crazy, an addict,” Kerviel said in an interview on France2 television. “They push you to take risks.” JK also said proposals to limit pay won’t do a thing, and that he worked for 20 euros an hour, and didn’t take any of his scam profits for himself.

Ex-Brokerage Chief: Pressured to Forgo Bonus by Thain (WSJ)
In December, while in the midst of selecting the perfect rug for his new office, John Thain apparently gathered a group of top Merrill Lynch executives, including Bob McCann, and told them they had a “wonderful opportunity” to give up their bonuses, after he’d gotten shit for supposedly asking for a $10 million bonus for himself. According to McC, he said, “I guess I volunteer, John. Can I go back to work now?”

French banks say capital plans ‘unfair’ (FT)
“The origins of the crisis very clearly reside in America,” Baudouin Prot, the French Banking Federation’s chairman and chief executive of BNP Paribas told a French Senate finance committee. “It would be paradoxical if European banks were to be penalised in terms of competition against US banks, given that the crisis originated in the US.”

Sculpture missing from Madoff’s NY beach home (AP)
A 4-foot-tall sculpture, with an Aztec motif, valued at $300, was stolen from Bernie Madoff’s hideous Montauk house over the weekend. This is the second time one of his yards has been vandalized (last time it was the house in Palm Beach), and he’s starting to think people might harboring some sort of ill will towards him.

$$$ US Rep Frank bars Goldman Sachs lobbyist [Reuters]

$$$ Ashley Dupre is a model now [NYP]

$$$ Fiat CEO: Chrysler worse than we thought [CNN Money]

$$$ Day in the Life of an Accelerated M.B.A. Student [WSJ]

$$$ Charlie Gasparino on John Thain getting a new gig in PE (previously)

Robert Benmosche, chief executive officer of American International Group Inc., was rebuffed by the insurer’s board after saying he should be allowed personal use of the bailed-out company’s aircraft, according to two people familiar with the matter.

The board said flights will be limited to business purposes because creating an exception would require approaching the Treasury Department for approval, said one of the people, who asked not to be identified because the talks were private. AIG posted an expense guideline on its Web site this week saying that personal use of corporate jets is “strictly prohibited.”

Benmosche Said to Be Rebuffed by AIG Board on Corporate Jet [Bloomberg]

After almost a year of building up to the banking regulatory reform brawl, it looks like Mad Max may have more pressing things to attend to this fall.

The House ethics committee announced Wednesday that it is extending probes into two lawmakers — Democrat Maxine Waters of California and Republican Sam Graves of Missouri — in unrelated cases while it deferred investigation into a case involving Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr.

The Committee on Standards of Official Conduct did not say why it was extending the probes, but that they related to an unannounced question surrounding the conduct of Waters and an unspecified matter regarding Graves.

We can’t say for sure it’s going to happen but we can definitely get you one step closer to reaching out and giving the Vickle a tickle. Pandit will be at the 92nd Street Y tomorrow night in an interview with Businessweek’s Steven J. Adler on the topic of, among other things, whether or not the Citi CEO thinks the recession is over, and the organizers would like to throw some of your brain busters Pandito’s way. The two best questions left below will receive free tickets to the big show. Do your worst.

It took a bit longer than expected, and in another country, but the world may now get a glimpse at the wisdom of direct government purchases of toxic assets. Faced with the near Icelandic state of its banks, the Irish government is planning on going long the real estate market to the tune of €54bn to help get credit flowing again. The newly created National Asset Management Agency will receive a 30% discount on the €77bn loan portfolio coming off bank balance sheets and then call for nationwide prayer to help property prices rise the 10% over 10 years required for the government to break even. If there was ever a time for the luck of the Irish to come through, this is it.

Ireland to Pay EU54 Billion for Banks’ Risky Loans [Bloomberg]

We’re not yet finished with James Stewart’s New Yorker story, The Eight Days of the Financial Crisis, in which he takes us through the events of September 12 to September 19, 2008, but so far there’s lots of good stuff. Bernanke, who’s never yelled before, raises his voice to Hank Paulson, of all people, knowing exactly what the Hammer could do to him with just one hand. Jamie Dimon uses the word “pussyfoot” when telling AIG’s Willumstad to get his ass in gear. John Mack’s close personal friends call to tell him sorry, but they’re pulling their money from Morgan Stanley. An unnamed CEO cries while on the phone with Tim Geithner. And Lloyd Blankfein tells a Master of the Universe to quit being such a puss.

At 11AM, for the fourth consecutive day, investment bankers filed into the New York Fed. “I don’t think I can take another day of this, a Goldman banker told Lloyd Blankfein as they got out of the Goldman car.

“You’re getting out of a Mercedes to go to the New York Federal Reserve,” Blankfein responded. “You’re not getting out of a Higgins boat on Omaha Beach.”

Oh, and Hank Paulson smears some on some lipstick.

With the national credit card just about maxed out, Congress is looking to add some more wiggle room just in case spending cuts aren’t enough to offset the potential doubling down on the home buyer tax credit program. In the race to beat inflation, Congress appears set to do its best to force the residential real estate market to clear before the clock strikes midnight and interest rates start heading north. A proposal set forth by the National Association of Realtors asks Congress to increase the home buyer tax credit from $8,000 to $15,000 and open it up to everybody, not just first time buyers. While adding a meagre $50 to $100 billion to an existing $11.8 trillion tab seems like rounding error, there is a more disturbing undercurrent at work.

Should the government blink in its game of chicken with inflation and keep rates low too long in the name of housing, there’s a real problem when the inevitable happens. House prices will become artificially inflated, people will start to borrow against that inflated value and then hope their homes will appreciate even more to pay off their loans. This personal Ponzi scheme sounds vaguely familiar.