That’s the bizarre conclusion drawn from the results of a recent survey by affair-facilitating website IllicitEncounters, despite the fact that none of the financial services hacks surveyed responded to the question, “Why are you cheating” with the answer “because the public just isn’t giving it to me like it used to.” Here’s what they did say:
* “Just want to feel loved”
* “For the thrill”
* “Unstable home life”
* “To escape the mundane”
* “To boost the ego”
* “To avoid costly divorces”
* “To lavish my hard earned money on someone”
* “I’m entitled to it”
* “Because I can”
* “Peer pressure”
Archive for December 2009
The salad days for CMBS are back!
Just a couple weeks after the first commercial mortgage-backed securities deal in a year went down, two more are on their way. It’s like 2007 all over again (and, in a related note, as if 2007 never happened).
Second to the market is Inland Western Retail Real Estate Trust won $625 million in fresh financing yesterday from JPMorgan Chase, which plans to turn the $500 million first-mortgage part into CMBS. Those who like to live on the wilder side can pick up some of the $125 million mezzanine debt in a private placement.
Deadlines come and deadlines go without a taker for the Worst Job on Wall Street. Bank of America’s board of directors is running through CEO candidates faster than Charlie Gasparino goes through creatine, but it doesn’t seem able to take a hint.
Already coming up with precious few names interested in succeeding the inimitable (and, according to the since-silenced Dick Bové, irreplaceable) Ken Lewis, the finely-honed machine that is the BofA board can’t help but drive away the ones it finds who don’t put out press releases making clear they don’t want the goddamned job. When two prospective told the board that Ken’s Kingdom needed to be cut down to size, the board broke out in hives, began sobbing collectively and had security remove the offending presence from the greater Charlotte area.
$$$ Fritz Henderson steps down. [WSJ]
$$$ Wall Street Journal Debunks Wall Street Journal on Recovery Act [White House blog via Heidi Moore]
$$$ Morgan Stanley Vice-Chairman Rob Kindler’s License Plate [Andrew Ross Sorkin]
$$$ Rent out Galleon’s office space– $70/foot [The Spread]
Prince Alwaleed bin Talal, the billionaire Saudi investor, said banks that made loans to Dubai World should have understood the risks they were taking and can’t claim to be victims of the emirate’s debt crisis. “These banks are very mature banks, and they have to differentiate between a corporate loan and a sovereign loan,” Alwaleed, 54, said today in an interview on Bloomberg Television. “When things go sour, you can’t have some banks in the West going to Dubai and saying ‘oops’ and crying wolf and saying, ‘You should have guaranteed those loans.’”
Alwaleed said confusion over whether the Dubai government would back Dubai World’s debt “was not helpful at all” and damaged investor confidence in the region. “However, you have to understand that other countries such as Saudi Arabia, Qatar and neighboring Abu Dhabi are countries to be reckoned with,” Alwaleed said. “With the price of oil where it is now, I don’t think their economies will be shaken at all.”
And just because:
Years after every other securities exchange that matters gave up on the quaint idea of mutual ownership, the Chicago Board Options Exchange will finally be able to join them.
After agreeing to pay the last seven Chicago Board of Trade holdouts $4.2 million to settle their ownership claims–the CBOE settled with the CBOT, now part of the CME Group, last year–the options exchange is free to list itself or find a buyer.
But can it ever get over the fact that even the American Stock Exchange beat it to the punch?
CBOE settlement could clear way for IPO or merger [Crain's Chicago]
Skanky as they may be! Having a lucid moment for perhaps the first time ever, Bank of America has decided that is it in no position to take a moral stand against (alleged) cheating or shitty driving.
Quantitative hedge funds, which really stunk up the joint two years ago, are getting some tough love from a guy who knows just how bad it can get.
Robert Litterman is head of quantitative resources at Goldman Sachs Asset Management, which in 2007 watched its Cadillac of hedge funds, Global Alpha, turn into a Yugo. And as he sees it, from his alternately lofty and lousy perch, and with his many years of experience in the field, quantitative hedge funds have to do a better job of making money for their clients. And in Litterman’s considered opinion, they need to find new ways of making money. New and non-quantitative, apparently.
We’re putting together data that’s not machine-readable.
Bernie Madoff scammed many, many people. And almost exactly a year later (next Thursday, mark your calendars), each one has attempted to heal the pain in his/her own unique way. Some have taken whacks at his head. Some have pissed on his face. Some have cried. Some have told the world his dick could fit in a thimble. Cabaret singer Cynthia Crane, who lost her piano (and house) when she and her playwright husband were screwed by the Ponz Master, is singing it out.
Her new one-woman show, John Denver, Bernie Madoff & Me, opened last night at Don’t Tell Mama on West 46th Street and runs through December 9. In it, Crane sings a medley of John Denver songs and cabaret standards, interspersed with patter about the Ponz. “Is there anyone out there who doesn’t know who Bernie Madoff is?” she asked the crowd last night, before launching into “The Spider and the Fly.”
The guy who put the P in Ponzi
The bull in Bull Market
And the scum in Scumdog Billionaire?
Yes Bernie Madoff was the spider, and John Denver and I were the flies. Madoff got a lot of
flies!
Getting Back at Bernie, Through Song [Daily Intel]
I am not a crookAccused hedge fund fraudster Helmut Kiener certainly has a knack for hitting it off with insignificant countries.
The K1 Group founder, last seen trying to bust out of a German jail by claiming to be an attaché of the embassy of Guinea-Bissau in The Netherlands, saw something in this pretty little thing, hiring her to sell his (allegedly) worthless products. Just nine months later, Aurelia Frick is serving as minister of justice, foreign affairs and cultural affairs for the august Principality of Liechtenstein, a country so small that a 34-year-old with no previous ministerial experience can be named minister of justice and foreign affairs, with time left over to handle cultural matters.
Here‘s the (collectively) bizarre list of people you have to choose from. Will it be the Iranian protesters who accomplished nothing? The Somali pirates from the story no one even remembers? The fastest man on earth? The chairman of the Federal Reserve? Don’t stress too much about picking the perfect candidate– Time‘s editors “reserves the right to disagree.”
1. Angela Merkel
2. Barack Obama
3. Ben Bernanke
4. Iran Protesters
5. Olympia Snowe
6. Somali Pirates
7. Stanley McChrystal
8. Steve Jobs
9. Tim Geithner
10. Usain Bolt
Who Will Be The Person Of The Year 2009? [TIME]
