“It was not the banks that created the mortgage crisis,” the mayor said. “It was, plain and simple, Congress who forced everybody to go and to give mortgages to people who were on the cusp.” It was Congress, he continued, that “pushed Fannie and Freddie to make a bunch of loans that were imprudent; they were the ones that pushed the banks to loan to everybody.”…Mr. Koch, a Democrat, praised Mr. Bloomberg’s business acumen but said he differed with him on the question of the financial crisis and the protests. “I’m Jewish, not Catholic, but I believe in punishment,” he said. Referring to the settlements paid by Goldman Sachs and Citigroup to resolve claims by the Securities and Exchange Commission, Mr. Koch said they were just “the cost of doing business” in the view of the banks. “What do you think they got fined for — schmutz on the sidewalk?” Mr. Koch said. “They got fined because they abused their relationship with their clientele. And I want to see somebody — I want to see one of them, of a major corporation, punished criminally.” [NYT]
Jews
As some of you may know, in the post-crisis world, raising capital can be a tricky business, even for hedge funds with impeccable track records. Even more difficult? Getting people to sign on to fund of funds, whose due diligence processes were called into question following the Madoff scandal. Fortunately, there’s still one guy who knows how to get the job done. His name? Anthony Scaramucci AKA The Mooch, who is the topic of a Bloomberg Markets Magazine profile next month. If you want to raise some real money, whether you’re running a FoF or just need some cash for the weekend, we suggest following his system. A fool-proof system for getting any investors you want to open up their wallets for life. What are we talking about? M.O.O.C.H. It’s a comprehensive approach for the seduction of potential investors that Scaramucci’s been developing for years. And now, he’s sharing it with you. Continue reading »
The French will simply not be outdone on matters of making Europe the most inhospitable place on earth to be a banker. Fresh from declaring victory over the wicked Anglo-Saxons and their lasseiz-faire banking cabal, France now says it, too, will impose a huge one-time tax on banking bonuses, just like the British said they’d do last week.
French Finance Minister Christine Lagarde said that they, too, would take half of what the banks pay their employees this Christmas, thank you. The move is no surprise, given the Wall Street Journal op-ed from a few weeks ago where British Prime Minister Gordon Brown and le Petit Napoleon, French President Nicolas Sarkozy, called a one-off tax on banking bonuses “a priority, due to the fact that bonuses for 2009 have arisen partly because of government support for the banking system.”
Earlier this morning an absolutely flummoxed Dealbreaker wondered aloud how SAC Capital founder Steve Cohen could have possibly been placed in the completely demeaning slot of 99 (out of 100) on Vanity Fair‘s annual ranking of the most ‘Influential’ people in the world. It seems we’ve discovered the answer: Vanity Fair has no idea who Steve Cohen is. And I don’t mean on a philosophical, ‘nobody gets him like we do’ level but on a molecular, who the fuck is that guy level.
As you know, Blackstone CEO Steve Schwarzman recently donated $100 million to the New York Public Library and as a gesture of thanks, the institution is renaming the place after him. And that’s making some people very angry, or as angry as people who don’t raise their voices in private, whose body temperatures hover around 73.5 degrees Fahrenheit, and who remain contained within their personal Cheeveresque hells will allow themselves to get.
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