How do you follow up a 1-2-3 punch of your piece de resistance, Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas, being pulled by retailers for offensive material, shitty 2007 fiscals, and a duo of guilty pleas by former employees for falsifying business records in connection with improper backdating of employee stock options? With a video game featuring one of America’s most famous and smugly “not-guilty guilty” killers, that’s how!
That’s right, Take-Two, those paragons of decency and good taste, have knocked it out of the park with their latest sports video game, All-Pro Football 2K8, which allows gamers to play as The Assassins’ O.J. Simpson. Oh, and when Juice scores a touchdown, a hooded mascot makes stabbing motions with a large knife, probably suitable for killing an adulterous ex-wife and her lover and then getting away with it. (That’s just a for instance. You could also use it to cut steak). Thestreet.com estimates that Take-Two paid Simpson "anywhere between $50,000 and $125,000," for his work.
Shares of Take-Two were recently down 0.6% (14 cents), to $20.29.
Take-Two Game Has O.J. Simpson -- and a Knife [thestreet .com]
Banks Were Asked If They Would Prefer To Make More Money Or Less Money, Chose More Money
One kind of obvious thing about financial markets is that you can't just call everyone into a room and tell them, "look, guys, just be honest about the price that you would pay / receive for Thing X." This is because financial industry traders are degenerate lying scumbags. No, wait, that's not right. This is because if everyone just told each other their reserve prices then it would be really hard for them to make any money trading and so we, like, wouldn't have a financial system. So you have things like anonymous execution on stock exchanges and dark pools and, um, lying scumbag traders. And that allows you to have profitable trading. Of course you have to put some limits on the lying scumbaggery: you can't tell people you're investing their money while really blowing it on hookers, and I guess now you can't sell someone synthetic CDOs without telling them who was on the other side. But a little fudging around the edges about the price you're willing to pay or receive - or the price you could pay or receive elsewhere - is kind of at the heart of what trading is. So in a sense the amazing thing about the Libor scandal is that people are amazed by it. A quick recap:
Deutsche Bank Investment Banking Chief Would Make More Than CEO, If Deutsche Bank Wasn't Capping Executive Pay
Let's talk about "theoretical" pay.