birds

  • 01 Feb 2010 at 5:20 PM

Collapse Of Bear Stearns Took Away From Hank Paulson’s Bird Time

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hankandhisbird.JPGAs I said earlier, much more time will be devoted to Hank Paulson’s memoir, The Day I Threatened To Break Ken Lewis’s Legs, later (with the possibility of a book club). But just an FYI to Jimmy Cayne and everyone one else who contributed to the financial crisis? You’re on HP’s To Kill List. If one were to scan the index of HP’s book, you’d notice that whereas David Einhorn is mentioned on two pages (136, 246), Erin Callan on one (137) and Warren Buffett on six (13, 124-125, 284, 355-356), Paulson’s precious birds? They get 9 mentions (22, 37, 44, 81, 105-106, 331, 381, 419). Like this:

That evening Wendy and I went to the National Geographic Society to see The Lord God Bird, a terrific documentary on the ivory-billed woodpecker, a bird so spectacular it made people say Lord God!! Normally, I would have enjoyed this immensely, but I was preoccupied with Bear Stearns. Every time one of our friends from the environmental community came over, I would look right through them. Wendy got really upset with me.

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  • 01 Jun 2009 at 9:45 AM

Swan Song

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Picture 1445.pngAs Tim Geithner embarks on his campaign for confidence in China, it seems not everybody is so sure that Timmy G and the boys back in Washington have this whole running up massive debt levels and record fiscal deficit thing quite under control. Former Chinese central bank advisor Yu Yongding wants to check Geithner’s homework to see if the numbers actually add up or if he is just looking at the answer key at the back of the book.
Among the objectives the Obama administration has claimed it will achieve is a reduction in the fiscal deficit from its current level of 12.9% of GDP to approximately 3%. In response to this laudable but lofty ambition, Yu wants to know if “Geithner can show us some arithmetic. We need to know how the U.S. government can achieve this objective.” Meanwhile, in a galaxy far, far away, the His Black Swaness, Nassim Taleb, appears to have already done the arithmetic and is not so convinced of the new math the Treasury and Fed are using.

Universa Investments LP, which has links to “Black Swan” author and New York University professor Nassim Nicholas Taleb, is starting a hedge fund to bet that efforts by governments and central banks to end the global recession will lead to hyperinflation, the Wall Street Journal reported, citing Taleb. The fund will invest in commodities and options on oil and gold stocks, the Journal said.

So let’s get ready to rumble- will defending champion Nassim Taleb (obviously wearing the black trunks) retain his title of being right at the expense of most of the free world or will up-and-comer Tim Geithner score an unexpected knockout blow? Only time will tell but conventional wisdom says always bet on black.

  • 05 Sep 2008 at 10:57 AM

Fire Up Your TiVos: This Is The One We’ve Been Waiting For

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Holy fucking hell I can barely type this as I am shaking in excitement and definitely suffering from a decrease in oxygen to the brain as a result of hyperventilating-inducing euphoria. Tonight, at 10 PM, Dateline will be airing “The Mystery of the Missing Millionaire,” a special about SAM ISRAEL! I’m truly beside myself. As it would be a fool’s mission to try and not get our hopes up, we expect tonight’s show to include the following:
- B-roll of the egret and interviewer walking down the street
- An interview with a sex therapist who specializes in interspecies intercourse
- A Dealbreaker shout-out!
- An interview with the trollop who outbid us for the b-card.
- An eyewitness account of the industry’s biggest M*A*S*H fan escaping the second time around.
- YOUR CALL
HOPEFULLY UNRELATED: Not Enough Cock, Coke or Money: The Few Things That Didn’t Suck about CNBC’s Seth Tobias Special
An all-new Dateline Friday 10 p.m./9 C [MSNBC]

  • 06 Aug 2008 at 12:32 PM

Sam Israel Pleads Guilty To Fleeing, Plans Escape No. 2?

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Former hedge fund manager-cum-performance artist Samuel Israel III who faked his own death this summer because he didn’t want to go to jail is set to plead guilty to bail-jumping this afternoon. The industry’s biggest M*A*S*H fan and only (known) egret lover waived an indictment on a charge of failure to surrender for his prison sentence before U.S. Magistrate Judge Lisa Margaret Smith this morning, but the formal plea must be entered before U.S. District Court Kenneth Karas later today. And I think we all know what that means but for the non-ambitious ones in the group, I’ll tell you what it means: there’s still time for him to make a run for it.
Ex-hedge fund manager to plead guilty to bail-jumping [Reuters]

  • 16 Jul 2008 at 11:22 AM

Samuel Israel: *Victim* Of Fraud

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This is fantastically rich(er than the now destitute Bayou Group investors Sam Israel screwed back in the day): in 2004, desperate to raise money to save his fund, the industry’s biggest M*A*S*H fan turned to a man named Robert Booth Nichols for help in the dollars and cents department, and was himself conned out of $10 million.
According to Bloomberg, Nichols cheated Israel in a “prime bank” fraud, promising Egret Boy “quick riches in secret markets” that did not in fact exist. Now a not yet on the lam Nichols is being sued. The original Con Man, who denies any wrongdoing, claims that he was helping Israel invest in a “legitimate, though unspecified ‘project’ involving U.S. government obligations,” and had “no reason to believe Israel was engaging in fraud.”
Not saying Nichols isn’t full of shit but, as you may recall, Sam Israel is said to have believed in time travel, and before the hours got crazy over at his Ponzi-scheme, spent nights and weekends building a Delorean in his basement, which he at one point claimed to have been working on for the government. Oh, and Nichols also says that his services, which “involved matters of national interest,” had been given the okay John P. Ellis, “a first cousin of President Bush.”
So anyway…if your brain hasn’t yet exploded, take some time this afternoon to try and dig up Nichols’s business card. It has got to be as least as valuable as Israel’s, and if the stories that Con Man #1 liked to get even friskier when it came to a love of plumage that dared not speak its name and their subsequent renderings on his b-card than #2, perhaps more so.
Bayou’s Israel Was Cheated in Scam, Investigator Says [Bloomberg]

  • 03 Jul 2008 at 9:48 AM

Caption Contest Thursday

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He grew the beard for the egret and the verdict? The egret likes. [NYT]

  • 02 Jul 2008 at 10:32 AM

Sam Israel Surrenders

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CNBC reports that Sam Israel III, the convicted former hedge fund manager who no one believed committed suicide after he failed to show up to start serving a 20-year sentence for defrauding clients of a bunch o’ money, has been taken into custody in Southwick, Massachusetts. The industry’s biggest M*A*S*H fan apparently surrendered himself to authorities at 9:30 this morning. Finally, we’re going to find out if the unknown tattoo on the Bayou Group founder’s hip is a. two egrets having sex b. two egrets having a type of sex that is illegal in 38 states or c. a depiction of interspecies sex between a human and a bird (participants: Sam Israel and egret). While we wait for more info to come out, someone riddle me this: do conjugal visits have to be between one human and another or are the rules flex enough to include feathered friends? Interested parties would like to know.