The Volcker Rule was at the core of many fights last week at Davos. As we wrote, bankers couldn’t agree with each other, lawmakers couldn’t agree either, but still decided to band up against bankers, blah, blah.
Anyway, seems like there wasn’t a lack of booze, as we initially thought, and on the last day of the WEF conference, everybody decided to give it a rest and just find somewhat of an agreement while getting trashed. The fighting was getting old, they were too hungover to continue this BS and they all had come to party after all.
Archive for February 2010
HP and the wife, during his first year at HBS, from his new memoir. On the next page is a photo of him and “one of several raccoons” raised by the Paulson family which I won’t include, lest any of you sickos get too overheated.
The Washington Post has a story today on “OMB chief and sex symbol” Peter Orszag, who’s apparently “the geeky guy with the hidden fire you want to unleash.” Obviously whether or not the vast majority of the population wants to get third degree burns from Pedro is debatable but here’s something that’s not: how hot bird fetishist Hank Paulson used to be! We first noticed HP’s do-ability back when he released some prints from his swimsuit calendar but it bears repeating over and over and over again. Those are some lucky falcons.
$$$ Giant Squid Attack California Coast [TRB]
$$$ 94 Minutes With Neil Barofksy [NYM]
$$$ A Short History of Goldman Spokesman Lucas Van Praag’s Most Withering Rebuttals [DI]
$$$ Treasury Department Is Already Saying Volcker Rule Won’t Change Goldman Sachs [BI]
As I said earlier, much more time will be devoted to Hank Paulson’s memoir, The Day I Threatened To Break Ken Lewis’s Legs, later (with the possibility of a book club). But just an FYI to Jimmy Cayne and everyone one else who contributed to the financial crisis? You’re on HP’s To Kill List. If one were to scan the index of HP’s book, you’d notice that whereas David Einhorn is mentioned on two pages (136, 246), Erin Callan on one (137) and Warren Buffett on six (13, 124-125, 284, 355-356), Paulson’s precious birds? They get 9 mentions (22, 37, 44, 81, 105-106, 331, 381, 419). Like this:
That evening Wendy and I went to the National Geographic Society to see The Lord God Bird, a terrific documentary on the ivory-billed woodpecker, a bird so spectacular it made people say Lord God!! Normally, I would have enjoyed this immensely, but I was preoccupied with Bear Stearns. Every time one of our friends from the environmental community came over, I would look right through them. Wendy got really upset with me.
Nobel Prize laureate and CDOs squared-social-value-seeker extraordinaire Joseph Stiglitz doesn’t know how to use his cell’s voicemail. And if Obama ever wants to reach him to say, offer him a (Geither’s) job, he can always email him. ‘Cause that’s the way Joe rolls. Voicemails are for losers.
A copy of Hank Paulson’s memoir just arrived at our office. It is huge and requires more attention than I can give it now. I have, however, skimmed it a bit and so far I can say there’s some stuff that did not surprise me in the least to read about, such as HP’s determination, on display from an early age:
As a boy, I was very goal oriented. It’s what [my wife] Wendy calls my “gold-star mentality.” I no sooner became a boy scout that I made up my mind to be come an eagle scout, which I did, at 14.
And some stuff I was surprised (and thrilled) to hear about, like the former Treasury Secretary rubbing one out:
Guess what? Congress is starting to worry about commercial real estate being the next shoe to drop. Again. Still. And no one is doing anything about it. Enters a group of valiant House members, who took the matter into their own hands. They wrote a letter to Timmy G. and Ben B. begging them to take some action. Because, yeah, they will.
In writing about hedge fund managers and other celebs in the world of finance, sometimes I find myself wondering what these men were like as children, before the billions, and the bitches, and the fleece. I’m pretty sure Ken Griffin carried a briefcase to school starting at the age of 5, and the 12 year-old Jim Simons was a lot like the 72 year–old one we know today– bearded and chain smoking a pack of Pall Malls. Stevie didn’t develop a taste for the finer things in life (fleece) until college, preferring until then to swath himself exclusively in silk. And so on and so forth. But what of Biff Basness? I’ve had some difficulty getting a good picture of the AQR founder in my head. Luckily, a new book by Wall Street Journal reporter Scott Patterson, The Quants, sheds a little light.
As a child, Clifford Scott Asness gave no sign of his future as a Wall Street tycoon. He was born in October 1966 in Queens, New York. When he was four, his family moved to the leafy suburban environs of Roslyn Heights on Long Island. In school Asness received good grades, but his interest in Wall Street didn’t extend beyond the dark towers of Gotham in the pages of Batman. Obsessed with little besides girls and comic books, Asness was a listless teenager, without direction and somewhat overweight. At times he showed signs of a violent temper that would erupt years later when he sat at the helm of his own hedge fund. Once a chess team rival taunted him in the school’s parking lot about a recent match.
That’s when things got real.
The Fed has a Web site that provides online training for bank directors, because “the only thing that may be missing is a basic knowledge of banking and what to consider in overseeing a bank.” Really. And, while a director’s job is “important and carries responsibility, it may not be as daunting as it first appears.” So here’s an outline of what you will learn, based on the thinking of “The legendary Green Bay Packers football coach, Vince Lombardi, who recognized the importance of teaching basics to his players.”
So, here we go. Lesson 1: What Is a Bank?
“The word “bank” evokes different mental pictures for different individuals. Some will think of the quintessential bank building with big stone columns and a large vault. Others will envision a balance sheet showing a bank’s assets, liabilities, and capital. Still others will fall back on the regulatory definition of a bank: generally, an organization that is chartered by either a state or the federal government for the purpose of accepting deposits.”
