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Speaking of Lewis, Janet Tavakoli had a few things to say about him and The Big Short this morning– the book gets the crisis all wrong, and Mike is a “girlie man” and a “eunuch.”

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Comments (58)

  1. Posted by Anonymous | March 15, 2010 at 12:13 PM

    Don’t be bitter because Tabitha won’t do anal Michael. It’s unbecoming.

  2. Posted by Student_Driver | March 15, 2010 at 12:17 PM

    No one on wall street think’s they are overpaid. Ipso Facto, no one on Wall Street is intelligent.

  3. Posted by Anonymous | March 15, 2010 at 12:21 PM

    working for a smaller b/d, non-bulge bracket, results in being underpaid…….

  4. Posted by Anonymous | March 15, 2010 at 12:23 PM

    Anal_yst, any thoughts on Mikey being sour about lack of buttsecks?

  5. Posted by Anonymous | March 15, 2010 at 12:25 PM

    @4 get a new shtick. this one never has and will never be funny.

  6. Posted by Anonymous | March 15, 2010 at 12:26 PM

    this tavakoli chick’s got panache.

  7. Posted by merkin capital partners | March 15, 2010 at 12:27 PM

    This from the author of such books as, “The New Thing”, which was followed by “The NEW New Thing”. Is this real life?

  8. Posted by Anonymous | March 15, 2010 at 12:31 PM

    @4 – Go kill yourself.

  9. Posted by Anonymous | March 15, 2010 at 12:31 PM

    @ 4- If you’re going to post, make sure its funny.

    Not 5

  10. Posted by guestapo | March 15, 2010 at 12:32 PM

    Where’s Tax-Cluzo-Chick? Now that it has been outed is it licking its wounds in a darkened room somewhere?

  11. Posted by Anonymous | March 15, 2010 at 12:34 PM

    #4: You should really go back to Houston.

  12. Posted by Anonymous | March 15, 2010 at 12:37 PM

    @ 10- whoa, what was the story with taxchick/cluzo? outed? seriously, what is the story.

  13. Posted by Anonymous | March 15, 2010 at 12:41 PM

    @4 > You are not an intelligent person.

    -UVA grad

  14. Posted by Lloyd B. | March 15, 2010 at 12:42 PM

    I love this site- all the WS ballers defending my firm. Thank you DB and Bess!!

  15. Posted by ExtraordinaryPopularDelusions | March 15, 2010 at 12:44 PM

    Anyone in this industry who believes that it’s based on anything more than borrowing at x% and lending at (x+3)% is a raving idiot. I know the “wealth creation” and “allocating capital” lines are fun and all but ultimiately 90% is just mind-numbing clerical work.

    Fortunately the numbers involved are so vast that paying ourselves a shitload ammounts to little more than a rounding error, so, yeah. Paper money FTW.

  16. Posted by Anonymous | March 15, 2010 at 12:48 PM

    Screw you, Brian Willaims!

  17. Posted by Anonymous | March 15, 2010 at 12:59 PM

    Bess, how big of a dropoff in hits/day since the new site?

  18. Posted by Anonymous | March 15, 2010 at 1:04 PM

    @15 Infidel. You are not welcome here. We *deserve* our pay dammit!

  19. Posted by Anonymous | March 15, 2010 at 1:12 PM

    his wife is hideous

  20. Posted by MD | March 15, 2010 at 1:13 PM

    Its no surprise that people who write books, do so for a reason.

    His speaking skills were a disaster in 2nd half of interview on compensation. He was rambling about ratings, CDS, etc.

    A simple ouline of pay (AG Cuomos tables), guarantees, and near-zero profits of IB franchises (v. trading) would have been fine

    ie,

    -2nd yr associates making $300+
    -VPs making more than 75-25 percentile of Fortune 1000 CFOs
    -5000 MDs making over $1 Million
    -1000 MDs making over $5 million
    -100 MDs making over $10 Million
    -50 MDs making $50-100 Million
    -3x5s for all
    -pay of Prince, O’Neil, Schwartz, Cruz, Thain, etc.

    His MTV wife had to be the plainest jane ever on that network!

  21. Posted by Anonymous | March 15, 2010 at 1:14 PM

    Anyone else see a hint of Moynihan in Lewis?

    I propose that M.Lewis is related to K.Lewis (by name) and since M.Lewis is cleary related to Moynihan (by face), ML pleaded with KL to “make room” for BM up top…Ipso Facto ML is the brains (and the balls) behind Bank of America.

  22. Posted by Anonymous | March 15, 2010 at 1:17 PM

    @6 Yep, he sure pwned because of that Bloomberg piece.

  23. Posted by Anonymous | March 15, 2010 at 1:21 PM

    Anal_yst, thoughts?

  24. Posted by Anonymous | March 15, 2010 at 1:35 PM

    @ 23- Do you really care or is it you couldn’t find anything intelligent to post and needed to ask someone for their thoughts?

  25. Posted by Anonymous | March 15, 2010 at 1:36 PM

    @15, what is “this industry”? Being a college student? Or are you pretending that you work in finance for the purpose of your post?

  26. Posted by Student_Driver | March 15, 2010 at 1:52 PM

    @15m, Love your name.. reference to MacKay’s book. One of the best books ever written and as alluded to by Lewis in the article.. it’s group think that allowed the whole CDO mess to become commonly believed when in retrospect the group think overpowered rational skepticism… much like AGW, but now I digress

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extraordinary_Popular_Delusions_and_the_Madness_of_Crowds

  27. Posted by Anonymous | March 15, 2010 at 2:04 PM

    @20..just because you are not a good public speaker, does not make your points incorrect.

    not defending lewis, just sayin’

  28. Posted by Anonymous | March 15, 2010 at 2:05 PM

    @20..just because you are not a good public speaker, does not make your points incorrect.

    not defending lewis, just sayin’

  29. Posted by Ken | March 15, 2010 at 2:06 PM

    Lewis is selling “massive delusion” in an attempt to make his book seem somehow more “complex” when the simple answer is greed.

  30. Posted by Anonymous | March 15, 2010 at 2:07 PM

    @15=Chase employeed who was rejected by JPM but still thinks they are in the same LOB.

    @26- “it’s group think that allowed the whole CDO mess to become commonly believed”….Wait, twat? Cum again? I cunt understand you.

  31. Posted by Anonymous | March 15, 2010 at 2:13 PM

    Lewis has got a point. No one enters IB, trading, etc. because they find it interesting or challenging. They go into finance because of the money. And even in relatively down years, WS still gets paid. So at some point, it’s expected, not thanked.

  32. Posted by ribby p | March 15, 2010 at 2:23 PM

    @7
    Is anything real in this world anymore?
    -the hammer

  33. Posted by Student_Driver | March 15, 2010 at 2:27 PM

    @30. Your correct. Very convoluted statement. Let me try again.

    Group think describes an environment where traders, rating’s agencies, investors, regulators, market risk managers and financial press are all happy with the assumptions and results of the gaussian copulas and the the default time correlations which suggest that large pools of mortgages from similar economic and regional sources will be sufficiently diversified to allow senior tranches to be default immune… or similar.. in retrospect, it’s comical.

    To be fair, most everyone with a high level of understanding of how CDOs worked and the amount of Super Senior on the bank’s balance sheets knew that it was a ticking time bomb. Except for those paid to produce and sell more CDOs. Michael Lewis is right that the way you compensate a person or a group defines largely what they think/believe and how they behave.

  34. Posted by Student_Driver | March 15, 2010 at 2:33 PM

    I am friends with a senior manger who was responsible for running structured credit at a very large bank. He did not want to grow the CDO business as fast as senior management wanted to grow it. He told me privately that the CDO business was a “Nuclear Bomb” waiting to explode.

    In 2005 they replaced him with someone (a ‘star’) from another flashy bank and that new guy did a splendid job of ramping up CDO issuance … so much so that the bank got loaded up with many many billions of dollars of Super Senior CDO tranches which went Kaboom in 2008.

    There are many similar stories….

  35. Posted by Anonymous | March 15, 2010 at 2:35 PM

    @33 Don’t even bother. Anyone who criticizes any aspect of “Wall St” has never worked there or is a reject.

    ~TheOneEyedDoctor

  36. Posted by Anonymous | March 15, 2010 at 2:38 PM

    @33/34 Don’t even bother. Anyone who criticizes any aspect of “Wall St” has never worked there or is a reject.

    ~TheOneEyedDoctor

  37. Posted by Student_Driver | March 15, 2010 at 2:47 PM

    @35/36

    You nailed it. Am a reject.

    But I’ve worked in rates and credit trading vol/correlation for many years.

  38. Posted by Anonymous | March 15, 2010 at 2:56 PM

    @33/34/all other Blue people: You can’t have it both ways. Push banks to embrace sub-prime lending “so e, then attack attempts to thwart that risk? CDO’s provide liquidity…However, too much of a good thing can be a bad thing

  39. Posted by guest | March 15, 2010 at 3:01 PM

    @31 I was motivated by the culture depicted in the movie Wall Street and the books Liar’s Poker.

  40. Posted by GuyWhoIsHidingUnderHisDesk | March 15, 2010 at 3:04 PM

    I know I am overpaid, does it make me an intelligent banker? Anyways, back to my desk…

  41. Posted by guest | March 15, 2010 at 3:15 PM

    Anal_yst,
    Any thoughts on the “any thoughts” line of posts? And on everyone being overpaid on WS?

  42. Posted by Student_Driver | March 15, 2010 at 3:18 PM

    @35, Are you the real ‘one eyed doctor’, if so kudos and praise.

    If you’re an imitator, at least your sock poppet identity is topical and amusing.

  43. Posted by Anonymous | March 15, 2010 at 3:48 PM

    WS is way over paid but thats supposed to be the way it goes. My question is how many of you WS assholes voted for and donated to Obama and now have to reap what you voted for.

    Schumer and many other Dems think doctors are over paid and want to regulate what they make too. They are using the medical bill to dictate compensation across many sectors.

    Do the WS ballers have the same feeling about regulating other industries as they do their own? You guys still throwing $10,000 a plate dinners for these guys who want to take your money and give it to the unions.

  44. Posted by Anonymous | March 15, 2010 at 4:08 PM

    Look… ask most people if they’d rather be dumb and rich.. or intelligent and poor.

    whoever picks the latter is real dumb one.

  45. Posted by StillNotNasser | March 15, 2010 at 4:24 PM

    I love Janet!

  46. Posted by Anonymous | March 15, 2010 at 4:30 PM

    The Dems have been regulating other industry comp for years. I love the fact that WS comp is suddenly and finally the target of the very people who’s campaigns they have financed. I never heard one complaint from WS until now. The hypocrisy is well…pleasing to say the least.

    WELCOME TO THE PARTY!!!

    Vote for your freedom and your wallet in November.

  47. Posted by Anonymous | March 15, 2010 at 5:47 PM

    Freedom isn’t free…it costs a hefty %%%in fee, and if you don’t put in your buck 05 who wiiiiiiiil?

  48. Posted by MTG | March 15, 2010 at 6:57 PM

    LEWIS: Howie Hubler.

    But no where else on Wall Street was there a single trader, I don’t think, making a directional bet on the subprime mortgage market who lost as much as Howie Hubler did at Morgan Stanley. He lost $9.4 billion.

    I don’t think anybody’s ever done that on Wall Street. And this guy had done it. And he was basically anonymous. It was amazing to me. This is another example of the way things that used to be scandalous became innocent. When I was at Salomon Brothers, we had a Howie, Howie Rubin, who went from Salomon Brothers to Merrill Lynch and lost a few hundred million dollars and ended up on the front page of the Wall Street Journal and became radioactive for awhile. And it was only $300 million.

    Howie Hubler loses almost $10 billion

  49. Posted by Student_Driver | March 15, 2010 at 10:37 PM

    @48, I was a college summer intern on the trading desk at ML and Howie screwed me to the wall on a mortgage bond trade that I was executing for private client. It was my first ‘error’ but the FC adjusted the trade price to the client and I was able to skate…. He is a scum bag. He was F*&King me for sport.

    Unless I’m wrong, he got a job at Bear Sterns almost immediately after hiding the discovery of the “IO” tranche trades that he’d been hiding were discovered.

    I think Brian Bearfoot took more of a career hit than Howie.

  50. Posted by Anonymous | March 15, 2010 at 10:49 PM

    @49 Wrong Howie dumbass. You are thinking of Howie Rubin.

  51. Posted by Anonymous | March 15, 2010 at 10:49 PM

    @49 Wrong Howie dumbass. You are thinking of Howie Rubin.

  52. Posted by Anonymous | March 15, 2010 at 10:50 PM

    @49 Wrong Howie dumbass. You are thinking of Howie Rubin.

  53. Posted by Student_Driver | March 16, 2010 at 11:06 AM

    50/51/52

    Obviously. I worked with him. I know his name.

    I was following up on @48 which mentions Rubin

  54. Posted by Anonymous | March 16, 2010 at 1:52 PM

    http://www.howiehubler.net/owner.htm

    Where he came from & where he may have gone. He is on the staff page and may be reached at info@howiehubler.net

    New Jersey RE. The new killing it.

  55. Posted by Anonymous | March 16, 2010 at 10:40 PM

    @30…we’ll finger it out later

  56. Posted by Anonymous | March 16, 2010 at 10:41 PM

    @30…we’ll finger it out later

  57. Posted by Shah | June 15, 2010 at 10:19 PM

    Just read Big Short…Michael Lewis does it again….its the best. And FOCK YOU HOWIE HUBLER….I wish we can list all these assholes who left wall street after the disaster with millions….just make a website with their names, addresses, phone numbers…make it a hell for them.

  58. Posted by Harrison Trippett | May 10, 2012 at 5:15 AM

    Sure, please email the details! Thanks!

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