The answer may surprise you.

Last month, a fight broke out at the New York Athletic Club that a witness described as a “nondiscriminatory ragematch” involving “young people, old people, girls, members, and nonmembers,” which started as a tiff over a woman and “escalated into a brawl involving three fighting wolfpacks,” wherein “tables were overturned or moved to the room’s periphery to crate a lion’s pit for the battle,” a “fat pudgy kid came out of nowhere, laid out a larger man with a blow to the head and was tackled by a crowd,” approximately two noses were broken, and the police made three arrests. The club's President was pretty, pretty embarrassed by the whole thing, as indicated in a letter to members in which he wrote, "I cannot state forcefully enough how abhorrent this even is to me...It is the responsibility of each and every member to protect and embellish the standing of the N.Y.A.C." And while Manhattan prosecutors' promise to go afterthe guy responsible for most of the damage ensures the shame NYAC officers are feeling won't die down any time soon, perhaps they can take some small solace in the fact that they were hitting each other only with their hands. [...] Piedmont Driving Club Letter [PDF]

As you may have heard, things are not going so well for New York City* of late. Lower Manhattan and parts of Brooklyn have been without power for days. A hundred or so houses that once stood in Queens are now rubble. Staten Island has been destroyed. Those living uptown and in other areas that emerged relatively unscathed are dealing with survivor's guilt. In spite of all that, Mayor Bloomberg has declared that the Marathon, scheduled for Sunday will go on, a decision that has been met with considerable outrage by people who believe the considerable resources that go toward putting on the race should be put to more critical use elsewhere, that the city does not need the strain of putting up an additional 40,000 people, that the supposed economic benefit would be a drop in the bucket of what NYC needs, that the generators sitting in Central Park right now could be helping those sitting in darkness, and that considering dead bodies are still being pulled of the water, it's generally "too soon." One guy who'd beg to differ? Ed Koch. Twenty-five years out of his mayorship, he still gets these people and while the media would have you believe holding the marathon has caused an enormously heated debate, that's bull. New Yorkers want this and if Koch were still King? He'd be throwing a god damn parade come Sunday. “I’m telling you — and I think I’ve got pretty good judgment in this matter —that the people of New York City want the marathon to be run, and I applaud what the mayor is doing,” Koch told CNBC. “I think the media is creating a fuss that doesn’t exist, and that the people of New York City want this marathon,” he said on “Fast Money.” “If I were mayor, I would be doing exactly the same thing.” Koch, who served as mayor from 1978 to 1989, said that he faced the same decision when the city was near bankruptcy and still threw a ticker-tape parade for the Yankees following their World Series win. The parade came despite opposition from the media. “I said, ‘New York Times, you have your head screwed on wrong.’ What the people of New York City need is a celebration, something that will lift their spirits, and there’s nothing comparable to the marathon with respects to lifting the spirits of this city,” he said. NYC Marathon Must Go On, Ex-Mayor Koch Says [CNBC] *And the East Coast in general, Haiti, Jamaica and Cuba.

So yeah...

1. Get over it. 2. Get over it. UK judges couldn't give less of a fuck. Fired bankers suing for unfair dismissal and unpaid bonuses have found little success at London’s specialty employment courts as continuing anger over the financial crisis has left judges unsympathetic. The adverse decisions from the U.K. Employment Tribunal come after London bankers had a run of legal successes with courts ruling they were entitled to large bonuses written into contracts before the economic downturn. The latest round of cases have largely been based instead on wrongful termination, where the banks have been able to make stronger arguments. A former JPMorgan Chase banker, fired for mispricing aluminum trades, discovered the new reality the hard way Oct. 17, when a London judge threw out his suit for not properly explaining how “a large number of errors” he made benefited his trading book by about $400,000. Other claims tossed this year involved securities manipulation and threats from colleagues. “In the current climate there is little sympathy for bankers,” said Andreas White, an employment lawyer at Kingsley Napley LLP in London. “Banking is the only industry where claimant employees are even less popular” than their bosses. Fired Bankers’ Lawsuits Fail as Judges Tire of Bonus Claims [Bloomberg]

The biggest mistake being trusting those sons of b*tches creditors to do the right thing, according to Varoufakis.

Later this week, Anthony Chiasson, a Level Global co-founder, and Todd Newman, a former Diamondback portfolio manager, will go to trial in Federal Court for allegedly making $67 million in ill-gotten gains, based on inside information they obtained about Nvidia Corp and Dell Inc. According to U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara, Chiasson and Newman, who've both pleaded not guilty, were able to rack up all their profits by teaming up with a bunch of friends and forming an insider trading club, which is a lot like a book club or fight club in that they took roll, traded canapé duties, and drank Pinot Grigio, but different in that instead of discussing The Art Of Fielding or punching each other in the face, they spent every Monday night from 7 to 9 sharing material non-public information with each other. “This case describes a tight-knit circle of greed on the part of professionals willing to traffic in confidential information,” Bharara said when the charges were announced in January. “It was a circle of friends who essentially formed a criminal club, whose purpose was profit and whose members regularly bartered inside information.” In the beginning, when the club was first formed, there was a spirit of camaraderie, as the club members happily traded tips for everyone's mutual benefit. Unfortunately, things started to break down when some people agreed to cooperate with the government by recording their friends admitting wrongdoing, in exchange for leniency. Former Diamondback analyst Jesse Tortora, for instance, gave fellow club member Danny Kuo a call at the direction of the FBI on December 1, 2010, a conversation that Chiasson and Newman's lawyers are trying to use as evidence that Tortora, who will be testifying against them, lacks credibility, based on the fact that when asked by Kuo if his phone was being tapped, Tortora didn't say "Yup! Helping the Feds build a case against you, actually." “What’s happening, man?” Tortora asked during the call, according to a transcript prosecutors submitted to the court. “Dude, is your phone tapped?” Kuo replied. “Wait, is the phone tapped?” Tortora asked, adding, “Why do you ask that?” Despite losing major points for repeating the question-- you never repeat the question!-- and the extremely unconvincing "Oh, why do you ask" attempt to act natural and not like he was working for the government, Tortora ultimately recovered. After Kuo and Tortora discussed defense strategy to explain their trades were made after legitimate research, Kuo concluded the call with a final warning to Tortora about making future calls from a personal telephone, according to the transcript. “I would seriously invest in some quarters, and start calling from 7-Elevens,” Kuo said. Hedge Fund Founder Faces Jury as FBI Raids Yield Trial [Bloomberg]