Former Governor of New York Eliot Spitzer was recently interviewed by Times magazine. On the topic of patronizing prostitutes, which led to his resignation from office, reporter Andrew Goldman asked Ness if he was ready to laugh about the whole thing. Spitzer said that while, personally, he’s not yet at the ha-ha stage, he totally gets that his hooker banging days are something other people often bust a gut over and he wants them to know it’s okay to do so in his presence. Continue reading »
jokes
Eliot Spitzer Wants You To Feel Comfortable Making Jokes About The Time He Got Caught Paying For Hookers
By Bess Levin[Madoff] sees himself at this stage as a kind of truth-teller. He has disdain not only for the industry but for the regulators. “The SEC,” he says, “looks terrible in this thing.” And he doesn’t see himself as the only guilty party on Wall Street. “It’s unbelievable, Goldman … no one has any criminal convictions. The whole new regulatory reform is a joke. The whole government is a Ponzi scheme.” [NYM, earlier]
AIG executives, in their first conference call with Wall Street analysts in two years, sounded a cautiously optimistic tone as they mapped out the company’s future and explained its weak fourth-quarter operating results…When asked about the market position of AIG’s property and casualty business, now known as Chartis, which a Goldman Sachs analyst described on the call as being “the 800-pound gorilla” of the industry before the financial crisis, Mr. Benmosche quipped: “I would say we are about 780 pounds, and on our way back.” [WSJ]
That was a joke people took out of context. But he was serious about bribing the guy. Continue reading »
Passing on the torch.
A few years back, a hedge fund in Greenwich went out of business. Perhaps you’ve heard of it. Was called Amaranth Advisors. Was run by a guy named Nick Maounis. Had this lovable goof of a Canuck named Brian Hunter making natural-gas trades. Brian was always up for a good laugh and one day, on a lark, put on some trades that resulted in the firm losing, I don’t know, like $6.6 billion. It’s was hilarious! Maybe you had to be there, but I’m telling you, it was pant-pissingly funny. Definitely one of the best things to happen to the hedge fund community in a while. Anyway, some people who didn’t find it so funny, because they’re humorless stiffs, were AA’s investors. And apparently, they’re still not over it, which would explain why they are RUINING the best news ev-ar, which is that the guy who brought you Bri-Hunt is starting a new shop!
Maounis’s efforts come as some clients from his original Amaranth fund are fuming that they still haven’t received all their cash back. More than $250 million remains tied up in that firm. Some investors aren’t placated by the fact that Mr. Maounis faces constraints in returning cash amid lawsuits. Some Amaranth investors have lost patience. “It’s outrageous. The fund supposedly was liquidated four years ago, and I just want to be done with it,” said Donald Shapiro, a Boston-area investor who put $1 million of his family’s savings into Amaranth in 2001.
Without question, it’s been a difficult year and a half for Lloyd Blankfein and Jamie Dimon. While they may not have had to deal with the abysmal failures of some of their peers, they’ve had to grapple with something perhaps even more difficult: being punished for their manifold success. Peasants with pitchforks, deranged Rolling Stone writers, college-coeds, Washington– they’ve all dished the hate and dished it hard. It’s been pretty tough to take but rather than commiserate, rather than stroke each others’ hair/shining pate, consoling one another with the fact that people will always try to tear down those who are richer and better looking than them, the two have displayed some signs turning on the other. Jamie has expressed to those close to him that nothing has grinded his gears more these last few months than being compared to that guy, who’s demonstrated what some believe to be a deaf ear to the populist, anti-Wall Street sentiment, which James has never done. And Lloyd, while it’s yet to show up in the papers, has surely spent many an evening bitching to Gary Cohn about the fact that Mr. Dimon could clown-face the a homeless guy and receive a standing ovation for his seed-spreading generosity and commitment to the arts. And while an anecdote from this week’s New York cover story could be interpreted as further signs of tension, of animosity between the two, all we see is progress. Continue reading »
Jamie and The (Booty) Hunter
Last night at the Robin Hood Foundation’s annual gala, Jimmy Fallon appeared on stage wearing a cowboy hat, and in a Southern accent, sang an original song entitled “Cougar Huntin’.” Apparently it was funny and references to the group of 40+ year old women who seek out younger men to use as their sex toys then became the go-to joke for the rest of the night.
Even JPMorgan Chase & Co. Chief Executive Officer Jamie Dimon, the gala’s co-chair, went with the flow before speaking to the audience about the need to support Robin Hood. “Jimmy Fallon, I know you’re hunting for a cougar, but I’m going home with one tonight — my wife who’s out there somewhere. So good luck in your hunting,” Dimon said.
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