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.
Archive for September 2009
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.
John Thain Was Forced To Renovate His Office At Merrill Lynch Because It Had Too Many Elliptical Machines And Not Enough Chairs
By Bess Levin
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.
Jeffrey Epstein Will Neither Confirm Nor Deny The Allegedly Bizarre Shape Of His Penis
By Bess Levin
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.
