Perhaps, some of you thought, that as he pushes 90, former Bear Stearns Chairman and CEO Alan “Ace” Greenberg would slow down a bit, as people his age tend to do. Retiring from his job at JPMorgan seemed unlikely– he’s only 85, after all– but maybe he’d dial back his time on the magic circuit. Perform old tricks for colleagues, strangers, and friends, rather than new. Just generally not stay up to date on the latest trends in magicianry. Luckily, these baseless assumptions could not be further from the truth. In fact, Ace is sharper than ever, routinely humiliating those half (and even one-sixth) his age while teaching them the ropes in an alley behind JPM HQ. How does he do it? By keeping himself engaged with the upper echelons of the magic community, for whom he hosts a regular salon d’enchantment each month. Read more »
Ace Greenberg
Former Bear Stearns Chairman Ace Greenberg Came Up With The Idea For The New Yorker Pickpocket Profile, Holds Monthly “Gatherings” For The World’s Foremost Magicians
By Bess LevinAce Greenberg Suggests Everyone Who Thinks Increasing Taxes On The Rich Will Hurt America Check Into The Mayo Clinic
By Bess LevinWhile they’re there they ought to “get a reality transplant.” Greenberg, like WB, wants to pay more. Read more »
Ace Greenberg Doesn’t Take Any Of The Adminstration’s Anti-Wall Street Sentiment Personally, Thinks Everyone Should Chill About Europe, Has His Reasons For Not Meeting With Jimmy Cayne
By Bess Levin
Why wouldn’t the magician, philosopher, former Chairman of Bear Stearns and former friend o’ Jimmy not want to see his old pal, who he hasn’t spoken to since Bear was sold to JPMorgan (where Greenberg took a gig, while JC chose to spend his time perfecting the perfect panini to eat whilst baked)? According to a new interview with AG, it involves a desire to avoid stepping in shit. Also, Cayne impugned on the dignity of magicians.
IDD: If you ran into [Cayne], what would you say to him?
Greenberg: I would not like to step in horses—. So why would I stand around him? He’s a lying f—. Some of those lies in “House of Cards.” Lies about my wife — how could he bring my wife in that? How could he do that? He’s just a miserable, unhappy person…He said in the book, I understand, that when it came time for bonuses, I called the key men in and threw their bonuses on the floor and made them get on the floor and pick up their bonuses. Does that sound like me, really? Is that how you build a firm? A guy doing magic tricks, would he do that? Read more »
It comes via his new book, The Rise And Fall Of Bear Stearns, and whether you’re a young whippersnapper who doesn’t know shit or an octogenarian who’s lost his way, you’d be wise to to listen to the guy.
It was sixty-one years ago that I left Oklahoma City. But it seems like yesterday that my father called me aside at the train station and said, “I’ll give you three pieces of advice: never make fun of a millionaire, never hit a cripple, and never have sex with an idiot.” The best of my knowledge I’ve remembered all three.
Hint: the one he hasn’t been trading emails with is the guy who tried to sell you some schwag in the alley behind 383 yesterday during lunch. Also, for the animal lovers in the group.
Ace “I give away Viagra” Greenberg came out of his silence today to support Lloyd & Co. (well, mostly Lloyd) who have been unfairly attacked for no valid reasons. People just don’t understand that the banking world needs superstars that need to be very well compensated and that the industry (GS) has been doing a very fine job, thank you very much, so stop harassing them.
“You don’t win the World Series and not have A-Rod” he said in a CNBC interview.
Ace also argued that banks were forced to take the TARP money and that Obama’s proposed bank tax is just “unfair, unwarranted and unprecedented.”
On the potential Glass-Steagall resurrection, Ace had just one thing to say: “The egg has been scrambled and I don’t think they can put it back in the shell.”
Namely, did Ace Greenberg’s million dollar donation in 1998 to New York City hospitals, which paid for Viagra prescriptions for homeless men, reflect poorly or favorably on Bear Stearns? JC ponders this and other questions on the subject of the down on their luck getting it up via spokesman Charlie Gasparino, an expert on the sex habits of the destitute, in The Sell-Out:
Ace would always be the guy who marched to his own drumbeat. It’s what made him a media darling; the press loved his mannerisms, from the magic tricks he performed on the trading desk to the fact that he answered his own telephone calls. Cayne saw the dark side of Greenberg’s personality; it’s why he never doubted the sexual harassment story.
As crazy as Cayne seemed, Greeberg could match him in being off the wall. It was, after all, Greeberg who had once donated $1 million to a hospital so homeless men could enjoy sex by having access to free Viagra. He had made a splash of it, making the announcement in the New York Times without alerting Cayne, who first heard it when he picked up the paper in the morning and nearly hit the ceiling.
“Are you fucking kidding?” Cayne screamed at Greenberg after reading the story.
But this time it’s serious. ‘Member those sweet limited edition BSC playing cards we told you about the other day? Commemorating Ace Greenberg’s March 8, 1999 50th anniversary with the firm? Bearing his face and money shot of the trademark bowtie? Ringing any bells? Anyway, it was the absolute best piece of Bear memorabilia on the auction block, second only to the wiccan CEO’s Little Book Of Magic. Which is why some twerp (who outbid us) put up $61 in exchange for the deck. Now, however, said twerp informs us that the seller “is MIA, and hence we can’t complete the deal. He/she was also selling a Bear Stearns football, which we also bid on and won. Needless to say we are more than mildly annoyed at not having our hands on these.”
Earlier: Highest Bidder Will Also Receive 2 20-Minute Magic Lessons, On The House
A little book of magic from our wiccan CEO.
Yesterday we said a Christmas card signed by alpha-generator extraordinaire Ralph Cioffi was the best item being auctioned off on eBay. Like Goldman Sachs, which self-flagellated Monday over a May 5 recommendation for investors to add to U.S. financial and consumer stocks, we just want to tell you how clearly, deeply, almost catastrophically wrong we were. The BEST item up for grabs, which we will have no qualms fighting dirty for, is a sealed deck of limited edition Bear Stearns playing cards, commemorating Ace Greenberg’s March 8, 1999 50th anniversary, bearing his face and a money shot of the trademark bowtie.
Related: Hey Kids, You Wanna See A Card Trick?
Barbara Walters Does Not Want To Talk About The Sex She Had With Alan Greenspan, Ace Greenberg 40 Years Ago
By John Carney
Here’s a pretty hideous injustice, the broader economic implications of which are yet unknown, though they most certainly will be dire: Barbara Walters, whose autobiography Audition details, among other things, her sometimes simultaneous doing of Alan Greenspan and Ace Greenberg, has left out any mention of the former Fed chair and the former Bear chair in the book’s audio version. That’s right, the (best!) chapter, entitled “Special Men in My Life,” is skipped over completely. According to BaWa’s publisher, Random House, the omission is due to time constraints, though that strikes as us a bold-faced lie. While one gets the sense that Greenberg is staving off the tears by keeping busy with his new job at JPMorgan, magic tricks and dog shows, Greenspan, whose retirement gig consists of feeding his own ego [8:00 am scan the papers for mentions, 8:45 am Google self, including nicknames, 9:30 am preserve legacy by making sure no one listens to Bernanke**], is clearly not taking the slap in the face in stride. Will he invoke the Law of Return and bring it back to Walters three-fold (“You leave me out of the audio component? I release the sex tape in high-def”)? We’ll just have to wait and see.
Earlier: Barbara Walters Has Done 80 Percent Of Wall Street’s Living Dinosaurs
Barbara Walters’ Memoir: The No-Sex Edition [Time]
**all performed from bathtub
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