Plus, a panda doing the Macarena. Continue reading »
Archive for November 2010
This Is A Rap Video About The US-Sino Currency Beef, Featuring Tim Geithner Shooting A Machine Gun
By Bess Levin“Did Ben Bernanke see the crisis?” Nassim Taleb asked on Bloomberg TV today. “No,” Taleb answered himself, “He was flying the plane and he crashed the plane…[Bernanke] reminds me of the LTCM people. They had brilliant people with great academic records and they blew up the fund and almost blew up Wall Street…Bernanke is someone who talks about returns without talking about risk. It’s identical to a pilot who is talking about speed — not talking about safety. The measures he is using, this quantitative easing, may work but should it fail the risks are humongous.” Continue reading »
While we’re on the subject of prepping for interviews, if you find yourself applying for a gig in China, please be advised that according to the South China Morning Post, “mainland job-seekers are increasingly required to exhibit ‘grey skills’ – binge drinking, playing mahjong and even ballroom dancing – to provide them with an edge in the market.” Several individuals took this advice to heart recently, resulting in the following scene.
Government officials often avoid conflicts between professional obligations and personal finances by divesting company stocks from their portfolios. So it comes as a surprise that, along with the standard mutual funds, Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner owns a small amount of stock in yoga clothing retailer Lululemon…Turns out, he purchased less than $1,000 worth of shares a few years ago to teach his two children about the stock market, press aide Steve Adamske says. Geithner picked the company partly because of his now college-age daughter’s interest in yoga—and as a hedge against her frequent Lululemon purchases, Adamske says. Additionally, Geithner owns $1,000 to $15,000 worth of IBM (IBM) stock, which he inherited. [BusinessWeek]
Say what you want about them but they knew their Harry Potter references. And shouldn’t that count for something? Continue reading »
As a firm with one of the most daunting interview processes on Wall Street, in which candidates may be asked to come in 30 to 100 times, Goldman Sachs is uniquely qualified to offer tips to job seekers with regard to acing the meet and greet. Which is why one might find the video “Interview Skills” video they’ve posted on their site somewhat odd. Continue reading »
FSA To Require Firms To Record Employees’ Phone Calls Despite It Being A Waste Of Money That Enterprising Insider Traders Will Undoubtedly Work Around
By Bess LevinThe Financial Services Authority announced today that “relevant communications made with, sent from or received on mobile phones and other handheld devices must be recorded and stored for six months.” The new rule is expected to cost banks at least 10,000 pounds ($16,000) per phone, per year, which they are none too pleased about, especially given the pointlessness of the exercise. Is the UK regulator aware of the fact that if someone wants to insider trade, they’re gonna find a way, regardless of their work phone being tapped (like, for instance, using a personal phone or meeting in person to trade hot tips) and that the only thing they’re going to determine from these calls is which banks employ the highest number of bondage and clown fetishists? Yes, and they don’t care. Continue reading »
Harbinger Capital Has An Interesting Alternative Theory For Why Goldman Sachs Pulled Its Money From The Fund
By Bess Levin
Yesterday Bloomberg reported that Goldman Sachs had pulled its entire $120 million investment from Harbinger Capital’s flagship fund, citing two reasons: 1) the returns were poor and 2) Phil Falcone had “loaned” himself $113 from one of the firm’s smaller funds (at a time when redemptions were suspended) in order to pay personal taxes, which didn’t sit well with some people. Now, someone inside Harbinger is claiming that Goldman was totally cool with the fund’s performance and could care less about Falcone helping himself to a li’l cash. The real reason is that they’re just jealous. Continue reading »
Here in the United States, David Hasselhoff is seen as the guy who gets drunk and eats cheeseburgers off the floor. To put it mildly, he doesn’t get much respect. Over in Germany, however, he’s the second coming of Christ and is treated like a prince. Until recently, Vikram Pandit never knew what it felt like to be loved and hated in equal measure, and didn’t really understand how hard The Hoff had it. Yesterday, at the G20 Summit, however, he hinted that he’s starting to relate. Continue reading »
Post Writer Finally Figures Out How To Work Longstanding Fantasy About Punching Lloyd Blankfein, Childhood Hangups Into Column
By Bess Levin“I’ve been investigating Goldman and Blankfein for years,” Post columnist John Crudele says this morning, “and — yes — I think he should get a smack or two.” But he couldn’t just come out and write that because, you know, it would be slightly awkward and not befitting this consummate professional and probably not make it to print. Oh, but he wanted to, so bad! But how? Think, damn it, think! [snaps fingers] GOT IT– a charity boxing event. Write a column promoting the thing and then you can let LB have it! Continue reading »
Fed Easing Seen As Ineffective By 75% In Global Poll Favoring ECB (Bloomberg)
Global investors doubt the Federal Reserve’s plan to buy more Treasury securities will boost the U.S. economy or bring down unemployment and say they believe the government is pursuing a weak-dollar policy, a poll shows. Three-quarters of those surveyed say the central bank’s securities purchases — or quantitative easing — will have little or no effect on joblessness, according to the latest quarterly Bloomberg Global Poll of 1,030 investors, analysts and traders who are Bloomberg subscribers. More than half say the Fed’s action won’t increase U.S. growth over the next year. Lower unemployment “is a long way off,” Jonathan Mackay, a poll participant and senior fixed-income strategist for Morgan Stanley Smith Barney LLC in New York, said in an e-mail. Global investors do think the Fed will have some success in lifting inflation, another goal. Half expect inflation to rise modestly as a result of the central bank’s actions. One in five say the Fed will get more than it’s hoping for and that inflation will increase to dangerous levels.
EU ‘Ready To Help’ Amid Bond Sell-Off (WSJ)
“We have all the necessary instruments,” European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso told reporters in South Korea, where he was attending the summit of the Group of 20 industrialized and emerging nations. “The EU is ready to support Ireland.” He declined to speculate on whether the EU’s new €440 billion sovereign rescue fund would be needed.
Jeremy Grantham: Be In Cash, Wait For Stocks To Fall (CNBC)
“Cash has a virtue that people don’t appreciate fully, and that is its ‘optionality,’ ” said Grantham, who is chairman of Grantham Mayo Van Otterloo, a Boston-based asset management firm, and a respected voice in the financial world. “If anything crashes and burns in value—say the US stock market—if you have no resources, it doesn’t help you,” he explained. “If the bond market crashes, and you have not resources, it doesn’t help you. What cash is is an available resource.”
Talks With Banks Begin for Troubled Assets (NYT)
“You’re going to see over the next five years, more financial asset liquidations than you’ve seen in the sum total of the last 100 years,” said Peter L. Briger Jr., who oversees $12.7 billion of credit-related private equity and hedge fund investments as co-chairman of the Fortress Investment Group. “If you’re in the market for financial services garbage collection, there’s plenty to do right now.”
Geithner: We Won’t Weaken The Dollar To Spur Growth (Reuters)
“The U.S. will never do that,” Geithner said in response to a suggestion by former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan that Washington was pursuing a policy of weakening the dollar. “We will never seek to weaken our currency as a tool to gain competitive advantage or to grow the economy,” he said, adding that it was “not an effective strategy” for any country. Continue reading »
