$$$ Japan Airlines can’t stop black market in stewardess uniforms. New Japan Airlines (JAL) uniforms have long been in demand in the local sex industry for customers keen on role-playing fantasies, while rare specimens that have actually been worn are hugely sought after by fetishists and are worth their weight in gold. [Boing Boing]
According to the Rochdale analyst, as Attorney General, one of Andy-boy’s goals has very clearly been to suck the financial industry’s workers dry, which is why she, Dick Bové, recommends Florida over New York, if you can bear the humidity. And for those of you saying Cuomo would change his ways once elected, Dick says wake up! Cuomo couldn’t do right by Wall Street even if he wanted to, because he’s too stupid. Oh, she went there.
Charlie Gasparino wears a lot of hats. Financial journalist. Former Golden Gloves hopeful. Son of an iron worker. Myoplex spokesman. First and foremost, though, he’s a New Yorker. And not just any New Yorker, but one with a taste for the finer things in life. As such, he’s better equipped that most to make restaurant, hotel, and shopping recommendations for anyone looking to impress their relatives in for a weekend in the big city. Chaz has a whole list of establishments, for every occasion (except for where to go if you’re looking to make the panties drop, which he claims he hasn’t done in years, and massages or similarly fruity-type shit).
FAVORITE RESTAURANT: San Pietro on 54th between Madison and Fifth. A very close second is Fresco by Scotto on 52nd between Madison and Park
BEST STEAKHOUSE: Sparks Steak House
BEST DESSERT: Sicilian cheesecake at Veniero’s Pasticceria and Caffe in the East Village
BEST PLACE FOR A ROMANTIC DATE: I’m married; can’t remember the last time I had one of those
[via BI]
Subprime? Banking crisis? Currency and sovereign debt crisis? Male pattern baldness? Shrinkage? Take a little responsibility or at least go bark up some other tree. Jim Chanos is no longer interested.
So! Caesars is putting on a poker tournament* Saturday, March 13 and they want you to be there! Most people need to sign up and pay their own way but one Dealbreaker reader will get his or her buy-in/room/after party access paid for, provided you answer simple question:
Who is responsible for Dealbreaker/Breaking Media’s recent technology woes? Feel free to answer below but in the event you actually want to win this thing, send your answer here, as well. We’ll be picking a winner this Friday. (For those of you who are losers but still want to go, sign up here).
*Stuff you could win: (part of a) $30,000 prize pool, a seat at the World Series of Poker 2010 Main Event, a $7,500 XO JET airfare credit.
Hank Paulson was recently interviewed for the latest issue of The DAM, Dartmouth’s alumni magazine, by fellow Dartmouth grad, Jake Tapper. The Kegs talk about a whole mess of topics, including but not limited to gal-pal Tim Geithner (the two have an “excellent” relationship), Paulson’s hippie daughter Amanda (her friends in college were people son Merritt would call “granolas,” if you know what HP means and I think you do), his nickname to SAE fraternity brothers (“The Phantom,” because no one ever saw the shady motherfucker), Christian Science (when Hank prayed during the crisis, it was “for humility, to take ego
out of it, for insight and judgment and wisdom”), and the worst kind of heave (sayeth Big P: “All my life, if I’m really exhausted—it doesn’t happen much—I will have dry heaves”). Then Tapper steers the conversation toward his subject’s death, like any seasoned pro is trained to do (my preference is to ask at the beginning of the conversation, as an ice breaker, but anywhere you can fit it in is fine). “What might be the headline of your obituary?” Jake wonders aloud. This is Paulson’s response. Continue reading »
The following post is by Dealbreaker reader and commenter Infinite Guest.
In his early experiments, Harry Harlow gave infant monkeys a choice between a chicken-wire “mother” who gave milk and a terrycloth “mother” who did not. Finding that the monkeys preferred the terrycloth mother, he concluded, contrary to conventional wisdom at the time, that the relationship of a primate infant with its mother rests more upon comfort than upon food. Dr. Harlow’s early experiments tested a clear hypothesis. They were controlled. They produced interesting results, useful to our understanding of human psychology. The early experiments influenced a generation of research psychologists and arguably changed the way we raise our children today. But Dr. Harlow didn’t stop there. For the next twenty years, he continued experimenting with monkeys. He tested their social development for progressively more abstract traits, under varying conditions of privation, progressively more severe. His later experiments comprised torturing monkeys as an end in itself. Continue reading »
Oliver Stone has said it before and he’ll say it again: nobody was supposed to see Wall Street and think “Hey! I wanna do that, too.” And yet, for the last twenty odd years, you people and the people you work with have never failed to approach Stone or Michael Douglas when they’re out to dinner to tell them you went to work on the Street after being inspired by the 1987 flick, ruining their evenings. Idiots! You were supposed to see movie and say Gekko, bad. Prosecution of “values underpinning American capitalism,” good. See? Simple little equation. And yet. And yet. That all kind of went over your heads, didn’t it? If it makes you feel any better, you’re not alone. A much loved and sorely missed hedge fund manager didn’t get it either.
SEC to Beef Up Its NYC Office In 2010 (NYT)
The agency plans to hire 18 people on the enforcement side, where it currently employs about 150 people in New York, and add 15 people to its examinations staff, which currently numbers about 210 in New York.
GMAC’s Carpenter Gets Pay Package Rivaling Blankfein (Bloomberg)
GMAC paid Carpenter about $1.2 million in salary and restricted stock for the month-and-a-half he was employed by the Detroit-based company last year, equivalent to full-year pay of $9.5 million.
U.S. Said to Tell Hedge Funds to Save Euro Records (Bloomberg)
The Department of Justice sent requests to save the records to at least some of the hedge funds whose executives attended a dinner hosted by New York-based research and brokerage firm Monness, Crespi, Hardt & Co. on Feb. 8.
General Growth Creditors, Simon Attack Ackman (Reuters)
“Ackman, therefore, now has a unique and personal interest in making sure that Brookfield is approved as General Growth’s stalking horse,” Simon said. “General Growth is gambling with creditor recoveries at the behest of its most risk-hungry shareholders.”
Bloomberg Aide’s Exit Fuels Talk of Presidential Run (WSJ)
Kevin Sheekey was recently offered a job at Citigroup, one person said, but he turned it down for a job that keeps him squarely in Mr. Bloomberg’s orbit.
