Since our dear friends bess and ep have decided to take adavantage of the lull in activity in this holiday shortened week and we (hopefully) won’t have another sunday night special - would someone like to explain why ms priced its deal at tighter spread than gs? has golden slacks lost its mojo? or did the “first mover” advantage turn into a disadvantage? anyone know where the cds is trading on these two?

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122783187912562983.html?mod=testMod#articleTabs%3Darticle

hope everyone is having a happy turkey/tofu day.

nothing new here people, but interesting that one clown didn’t know what was going on. basically there is a disincentive to save when applying for financial aid. I’ve even heard that some people take a 25% - 35% hair-cut from their investments and convince themselves it’s not lying because of cap gains taxes. from today’s post:

http://www.nypost.com/seven/06292008/gossip/pagesix/harvard_can_drive_you_crazy_117625.htm

June 29, 2008 —

STUDENTS at Harvard Business School pull a cunning trick that allows them to drive luxury cars and get financial aid, an upcoming book claims. In “Ahead of the Curve,” journalist Philip Delves Broughton, recounting his two years at the Ivy League university, tells how he was stunned to find so many students tooling around in BMWs, Porsches, Lexuses, Mini Coopers and Lincoln Navigators, while he drove a $2,000 used Toyota. One knowledgeable student told him: “Once you get accepted into HBS, you want to clear out your bank account so that you can get more financial aid. When you list your assets in the financial-aid application, you don’t have to mention your car … You buy a car for $20,000, maybe you get an extra $20,000 in financial aid, so basically HBS buys you a BMW. If you hadn’t bought the car, you’d have to pay $20,000 out of your savings.” Broughton notes he was jolted by “the idea of these 25-year-old Wall Street jerks fiddling with their financial aid forms, with the connivance of their parents and the local BMW dealerships.” The school’s rep didn’t get back to us.

Microsoft Withdraws Yahoo Offer
After Sweetened Bid Is Rejected
By KEVIN J. DELANEY, MATTHEW KARNITSCHNIG and ROBERT A. GUTH
May 3, 2008 9:40 p.m.

Microsoft Corp. said it abandoned its offer for Yahoo Inc., as the two companies failed to bridge a gap between them on price.

Microsoft released a letter from Chief Executive Steve Ballmer to Yahoo CEO Jerry Yang saying that Microsoft had said it was willing to raise its offer to $33 a share for Yahoo, but Yahoo demanded at least $4 per share more.

looks like stevie is calling jerry out, this can’t be the final chapter of this book (can it?). will he go back after yhoo drops to pre bid levels as investors unload the truck?

on a sleepy friday when no one was at work (at least on the trading floors), S&P took a big leap and cut the “outlook”, but not the rating, (talk about going out on a limb) on golden slacks (thanks cramer) and the lehman sisters.

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=awvTfLGlyzws&refer=home

seriously, do any institutions still read their propaganda? take a gander at some of the riveting analysis they provide as rationale for the “downgrade”: “our current expectation is that net revenues could decline 20%-30% year-on-year…” (let me guess, they were on the earnings call too); but wait, there’s more: “…we see some possibility, were there to be persisting capital markets turmoil and sharply weakening economic conditions, that financial performance could deteriorate significantly.”

talk about a crystal balls and deep analysis. perhaps we should take this as a sign of a market bottom for financials (never mind the bounce they had on thursday despite CIT). are the “major agencies” still relevant? just askin’…