Jerome Kerviel Sentenced To Three Years In Jail (Reuters)
And he has to repay 4.9 bln euros to Societe Generale, which will take 170,000 years according to his current salary as a technology consultant.
How Does Kerviel Feel About The Verdict? (WSJ)
“Jérôme is disgusted,” Olivier Metzner, Mr. Kerviel’s lawyer, told reporters. “This ruling says the bank is responsible of nothing and that Jérôme Kerviel is responsible for the excesses of the banking system.”
Moody’s Warns Of Ireland Rating (WSJ)
Moody’s might cut Ireland’s debt rating again, or it might not. We’ll just have to see how Moody’s is feeling.
Eliot Spitzer: ‘Recovering’ Politician, Aspiring … ? (NYT)
Spitzer didn’t even look self-conscious when, in the final segment [of his new show], a “political party” where younger bloggers and journalists join the hosts at a table and festively trade quips, Ms. Parker asked him to identify his secret “guilty pleasure.” He smiled and nodded, as she supplied the answer, “Nascar.”
Breaking Even On AIG (NYT)
“I really didn’t know what I was walking into,” Jim Millstein says about taking one the biggest jobs of his life: unraveling the taxpayers’ bailout — er, investment — in the American International Group.
And the worst payers this year will be….BarCap and Nomura? (eF)
“Regardless of the miraculous retrospective increase in last year’s bonuses, this year’s will clearly be disappointing. And people at BarCap and Nomura may stand to be disappointed the most.”
America Needs Stimulus Not Virtue (FT)
George Soros: “The simple truth is that the private sector does not employ available resources. Mr Obama has in fact been very friendly to business, and corporations are operating profitably. But instead of investing, they are building up liquidity. Perhaps a Republican victory will boost their confidence but, in the meantime, investment and employment require fiscal stimulus (monetary stimulus, by contrast, would be more likely to stimulate corporations to devour each other than to hire workers).”
Sheila Bair: There’s “A Bit Of A Bond Bubble Right Now” (CNBC)
“Longer term, I do worry about interest rate risk and the ramifications of this very long, protracted period of very low interest rates,” Bair said. “Eventually they’re going to start going up, and what happens? A bit of a bond bubble now, it appears, and so how do we deal with that?”
Feathers Fly Over Goose “Kill Zones” (NYP)
Expanded “kill zones” for the eradication of geese around Kennedy and La Guardia airports are so large that they cover nearly all of the Big Apple — and critics say it’s literally a case of overkill. “It reminds me of the old saying, ‘Kill them all and let God sort it out,’ ” said former Parks Commissioner Henry Stern.
Henry Kravis Pledges $100 Million For Columbia’s B-School Campus (Bloomberg)
“We’re not just constructing a building, we’re building a community of entrepreneurs,” Kravis said in an interview. “If we don’t get our education system right, we’re going to be going backwards. I want to make sure this campus gets built. I think it will be phenomenal.”
Citigroup: Too Big To Manage (HP)
Charlie Gasparino: “I’m not saying that Citigroup is about to fail anytime soon, but make no mistake about it, Citi is a fucked up place. Despite efforts to downsize, it’s still way too big, and its management way too feeble to be running a bank of its size, particularly given the competitive pressure Pandit, the CEO since 2007, and his team will face from investors who are pretty tired of holding onto a $4 stock (it closed Monday at $4.03)…It’s not that I have anything against Pandit; I’ve met him exactly once in my career and he seems like a nice enough fellow. He’s supposed to be smart. He has a PhD., taught finance, and is said to understand complex investments, like the ones he inherited and which led to Citi’s near demise in 2008. But for all Pandit’s smarts, he never quite got the reality that the business model of Citigroup — known as the universal banking model where individuals and institutions can find all their financial needs taken care of at one place — could never work.
Citi reminds me of the old Soviet Union, a massive bureaucracy run by people who thought they were smarter than the free markets. Citigroup imploded in 2008; but for years it was failing, unable to meet even the barest definition of a integrated universal bank, and falling behind in profit margins. But like the Soviet Union, Citi was doomed for failure. For the bank to have succeeded, former CEO Chuck Prince and later Pandit and his team would have had to become experts in commercial banking, investment banking, ATMs, and mortgage lending, to name just a few businesses.”
Where’s Matt when you need him the most…
Killing Geese is the new slaying it.
i call my johnson “jimmy”
“Perhaps a Republican victory will boost their confidence but, in the meantime, investment and employment require fiscal stimulus.”
This is fascinating. It suggests that during Republican adminstrations, free-market economics are true and that during Democratic adminstrations Keynesianism is correct. Basically Soros is arguing that the wave-particle duality also applies in enconomics.
It’s not a big deal. That’s only 938,000 months crabbin’ on the Time Bandit.
Jerome:
Could I recommend the French Foreign Legion?
Beau
Given that the wave-particle duality applies to every fucking atom in the universe at every fucking point in time, is there some reason why it would then suddenly and magically fail to apply to the field of economics?
-guy who hates retarded analogies
Given my disgust for avian life, I don’t mind the notion of “geese kill zones.” Sounds like a good plan to me, but I can see it becoming somewhat of a PR issue.
So, here’s what I’m proposing: after the geese are killed, they are shipped to a food processing plant, made into delicious geese burgers (“gerbers”) and distributed to soup kitchens throughout the city. Safer skies, delicious geese pies for the homeless. Win-Win
Clearly you are immmune to sarcasm. Congratualtions.
I like the idea. Although there is a danger that if any of the meat has gone bad, you could be accused of killing multiple stoners with one bird . . .
170,000 years? Sheesh. And here I was upset about my grandchildren having to pay for TARP.
We all know the city is broke…let’s open up Goose Hunting Grounds…don’t spend money to kill the Geese, let me get my redneck ass out there with a shotgun and I’ll pay to do it…two birds one stone (see what I did there)
Spitzer didn’t even look self-conscious when, in the final segment [of his new show], a “political party” where younger bloggers and journalists join the hosts at a table and festively trade quips, Ms. Parker asked him to identify his secret “guilty pleasure.” He smiled and nodded, as she supplied the answer, “Cut Glass Anal Beads.”
Perhaps if you’re mixing sarcasm, economics, soros, and quantum mechanics all in the same sentence, you should try a little harder.
Ummm— I always thought you weren’t allowed to join the Legion if you were actually *French*– hence the “Foreign” bit…
Soylent Green, anyone?
In Soviet Union, Citigroup kills it?
Who else thinks Jerome looks like Shia doing Jake Moore in WS2?
No, the restriction is foreigners have to join the Foreign Legion, not that citizens can’t.
How many times will Kiervel need to sell his ass in prison to collect enough to pay the $6.69 Billion fine?
Well the Legion would probably just post him to Guyana anyway.
Jerome Kerviel = Papillon?
I’m down with Papillon but I’ve always been rather partial to Jean Valjean.
I’ve identified your IP address and sent my men to find you.
I didn’t think the analogy was so bad
- Guy who understood the analogy