A potential silver lining to finally being arrested Saturday in Florence, if Florian Homm is trying to look on the bright side. Read more »
dogs
Most individuals working on Wall Street are good, honest people. But, as with every industry, you will always have your bad seeds. And should you perhaps wake up one morning to find the Feds outside your door, because your best friend sold you out by recording your explicit instructions re: how to dispose of evidence you committed securities fraud, or you were (allegedly) part of a “criminal club” that met regularly to share material non-public information with each other, or you bribed people with lobsters to do your bidding for you, and prison life is not the life for you and you need to come up with a hiding place they’ll never find you, STAT, sand and a cardboard box are a good place to start. Read more »
Ben Bernanke gave another Augustinian give-us-QEn-but-not-yet* speech at Jackson Hole today and you could go read it but honestly why would you, you know what it says, which is “everything is bad, but not as bad as it could be, and we want to make it a bit better, but only once it’s gotten a bit worse.” Moving right along.
To Andrew Haldane’s speech, which is a treat! It is here and its title is “The dog and the frisbee,” so obviously he had Dealbreaker on his side right there. Haldane, the Bank of England’s financial-stability guy, basically argues that while the financial system is complex, it should be regulated simply – “As you do not fight fire with fire, you do not fight complexity with complexity” – just as a dog uses only elementary trigonometry and differential calculus to solve the complex and multivariate problem of catching a frisbee.**
Haldane’s main example of overcomplexity in regulation is risk-based capital regulation, in which the Basel accords have moved from simple leverage tests – common equity divided by total assets – to complicated tests where the numerator is made up of different tiers of capital and the denominator uses risk-weights that are largely driven by the bank’s own models of riskiness. One thing you could do is compare the performance of those measures in the recent crisis, so he did. Here is how Basel risk-based capital did:
That looks bad and also is bad, with no statistically significant difference between banks that blew up and banks that did not. This is just boring leverage: Read more »
Yes, you might get fired next year. Yes, your only hope of not closing down 50% may be based on how charitable a fat guy and his reindeer are feeling. Yes, you might have career-hindering pores. But here’s a little reality check: you don’t know from problems. You want to talk about problems? About stress? About getting your face ripped off? Then talk to this guy. Read more »
There were also a wife, kids, and dog on board. Read more »
Hey, look, we’re down over 400 points. Think we’ll hit 1,000 or will a shirtless and face-painted Bob Pisani spark a rally? Read more »
Back in June, the lawyer for Winifred Jiau, expert network empress and accused insider trader, made a simple plea: “Put an end to this misguided prosecution,” Joanna Hendon said. “Send Ms. Jiau back to California, and to her dog.”
While the request might’ve played well with golden retriever lovers, the presiding judge didn’t care. He dragged things out another month, finding Jiau guilty over the summer and later on denying a request for acquittal or a new trial. Was Winifred the person you wanted to work with if you held an elastic view of securities laws and most certainly guilty of insider trading? Unquestionably: yes. Was she an individual who commanded sympathy, leniency or to whom you’d want to throw a bone? Those who benefited from her tips would be the first to tell you hell no.
In fact, she was bossy, she would cancel meetings at the last second, she would demand $300 gift certificates to the Cheesecake factory in one breath and a dozen Thanksgiving lobsters in the next, she would meet you for a pass off of material non-public information and tell you the shellfish you sent were Maine lobsters and she’d specifically request South African lobsters (even though she hadn’t) and then spit in your face and walk away and yes, sometimes you’d sit at your desk after she’d reamed you out over the phone for not giving her “the sugar” and fantasize about various ways you could kill her and make it look like an accident but having said all that: there’s a dog waiting for this lady and judge? She knows people who can make certain that these will be the first words you hear when you wake up and the last one’s you hear before you go to bed, for the rest of your life: Read more »
Expert Network Empress Winifred Jiau Didn’t Give Up Any Of Her ‘Recipes’ Without The ‘Sugar’
By Bess Levin
One major focus of the Feds’ insider trading cases du jour is the use of expert networks by hedge fund managers, and whether or not the information is “too” good (the government is of the opinion that it is). While a whole bunch of employees with various expert networks have been charged, one stands out as the leader in the field- Primary Global’s Winifred Jiau, who is the woman you wanted to get in good with if you were looking to (allegedly) trade on material non-public information. Jiau seems to have worked with everyone who’s been accused of insider trading (Donald Longueuil, Noah Freeman, the Goffer brothers and so on and so forth) and presumably had a waiting list for her tips. According to Assistant US Attorney David Leibowitz’s opening statement yesterday, Jiau’s information was “precise to the decimal point,” and even created her own code to discuss such info so that no one would ever catch on to what she and her clients were discussing, should their conversations be tapped.
Leibowitz said Jiau spoke in code, demanding payments for the information, which she called “sugar,” and describing her sources as “cooks” and referring to tips as “recipes.”
For example, if you’d been reading over Jiau’s shoulder on June 3, 2008, you would’ve seen the following IM and while perhaps felt a pang of hunger, been none the wiser: Read more »
When Going Through A Divorce, 67.3% Of Bankers Put Up A Fight For The Dog, Kids Not So Much
By Bess Levin
Thinking about getting divorced (for a first, second or third time)? When it comes time to divide assets, which are you more willing to take your ex to court over- kids or dog? According to a new study- by the people who brought you the statistic that 87% of adulterous financial services employees cheat with colleagues- the majority of divorcing bankers could take the kids or leave them but really want that damn dog. Read more »
Once upon a time, there were two Brits named Gabriel Radzikowski and Sara Lilly living in flats in Bath. Lilly was a ‘local director’ at Barclays and Radzikowski…dabbled in various areas. At one point, Radzikowski could no longer afford to pay the rent and knowing his neighbor worked at a bank, figured he’d easily be able to secure a loan, no questions asked. Unfortunately and much to Gabe’s surprise, Lilly did not vouch for him and “use her position” to get him the money. Lacking the necessary funds the landlord required each month, Radzikowski was forced to move out of his flat and was “taken in by a local Polish couple.” And it’s while he was staying with Robert and Maria Jurczak that Gabe realized he had a choice to make. He could either a) take the bank’s rejection of his application for the loan, which probably had less to do with Ms. Lilly than it did his lack of a job in the traditional sense, in stride and move on or b) he could do what anyone else in such a position would do and say “Fuck this shit; you refuse my loan? I kidnap your dog and put him on ice, bitch.”
Radzikowski choose the latter and got to work with a plan that went something like this:
Step 1: Steal dog (a Yorkshire Terrier named Bilbo Baggins) in the middle of the night. Read more »
In September 2009, Deutsche Bank employee Victoria Huxter’s colleague, Ian Whittaker, asked her if she’d like to adopt his family’s dog, a lab named Bailey. Whittaker and his wife, an apparently irresponsible woman named Leslye, hadn’t realized having two dogs (plus a horse) would be a lot of work and wanted to get rid of one, like yesterday’s trash. Huxter accepted and immediately fell in love with the pup, who she renamed Bella, finding it “more suitable for a female.” About two seconds later, Mrs. Whittaker realized she’d made a terrible mistake in abandoning her fur baby and demanded the dog back, thinking things work that way. When the Huxter declined, Leslye called the cops, who told her she was crazy and the dog was no longer hers. Still pissed about the situation nearly two years later, the couple recently proceeded with a rationale course of action that involved hiring a pet detective, who lured Bella’s walker to a park, where he stole the dog and had a camera crew film the entire thing. Read more »
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You know what they say: You can’t choose your family, but you can choose your financial planner. Or something like that. One of the great things of being in charge of your money is choosing who (if anyone) will help you manage it. The choice isn’t always an easy one. How will you know that your planner is reputable and trustworthy?
These five red flags may be good indications of whether the financial planner sitting across from you is someone you should trust with your money. LearnVest Planning also provides an innovative 7-step program for your money where you work one-on-one with a financial planner. To see if this program is right for you, start with a free financial consultation.
1. She Isn’t Certified
“There are a lot of good planners out there who aren’t Certified Financial Panners™,” says Samantha Vient, CFP®, of LearnVest Planning Services. “However, CFPs® are required to adhere to the CFP® Board’s standards of professional conduct.We believe it’s always a good idea to work with someone who has the CFP® designation, which is issued after completing a CFP® Board-approved personal financial planning curriculum, passing a rigorous exam issued by the Certified Financial Planner Board of Standards, meeting experience requirements and passing an ethics and background check.
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SoFi Answers the Call to Refinance Student Loans and Provides Unique Community Benefits
This is a guest post written by SoFi’s CEO, Mike Cagney.
CLICK HERE TO READ THE FULL ARTICLE
Recently, there’s been a lot of talk amongst leaders in Washington about how to improve the painful process of repaying student loans. At SoFi, we feel your pain and work hard to offer more flexible, more affordable options for our borrowers. One idea that’s getting a lot of attention is increasing the options for refinancing debt after graduation. The only lender currently focused on refinancing private and federal student loans is SoFi.
We recognized early on that borrowers who have made timely payments on their loans, graduated from school, and have a job should be able to refinance their student loans at a lower interest rate. This may be why, after resuming lending by invitation, the media became increasingly interested in what we are doing.
In a recent article posted on MainStreet.com SoFi General Counsel Rob Lavet had this to say about SoFi’s ReFi products: Read more »
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