Opening Bell: 07.17.12
Goldman Sachs Profit Falls 11%, Beating Estimates (Bloomberg)
Net income slid 11 percent to $962 million, or $1.78 a share, from $1.09 billion, or $1.85, a year earlier, the New York-based company said today in a statement. Earnings surpassed the highest estimate among 25 analysts surveyed by Bloomberg. Goldman Sachs’s second-quarter revenue from asset management rose 5 percent to $1.33 billion, exceeding the $1.18 billion average estimate of seven analysts. Chief Executive Officer Lloyd C. Blankfein, 57, who has run the company for six years, last month blamed a temporary reaction to the financial crisis for a slowdown that reduced Goldman Sachs’s first-half revenue to the lowest since 2005.
Goldman Builds Private Bank (WSJ)
The New York securities firm, known for its aggressive trading and big corporate deal-making, is ramping up its activities to become a private bank to serve wealthy customers around the world. The new unit will also lend more directly to corporations, some of whom already make investments and do business with Goldman. Executives have set a goal of $100 billion in loans, up from $12 billion at the end of March.
Gross Says U.S. Nearing Recession (Bloomberg)
The U.S. is “approaching recession when measured by employment, retail sales, investment, and corporate profits,” Gross, who manages the $263 billion Pimco’s Total Return Fund, wrote on Twitter yesterday.
Senate Probe Faults HSBC (WSJ)
Executives of HSBC ignored warnings for years that the bank's far-flung operations were being used by money-launderers and potential terrorist financiers, according to a Senate investigation.
King Defends BOE Libor Role After Scrutiny On Geithner Memo (Bloomberg)
King told Parliament’s Treasury Committee today in London that the e-mail sent by the then president of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York included recommendations rather than allegations at a time when global regulators were expressing concern on the quality of the borrowing benchmark. “Mr. Geithner was sending that to us as a suggestion for how these rules should be constructed and we agreed with him, but neither of us had evidence of wrongdoing,” King said. “The first I knew of any alleged wrongdoing was when the reports came out two weeks ago.”
Jonah Falcon, Man With World's Largest Penis, Frisked By TSA At California Airport (HP)
Jonah Falcon was stopped and frisked by the TSA at the San Francisco International Airport on July 9 because of a bulging package hidden in his pants. But the 41-year-old New Yorker wasn't packing a dirty bomb, drugs or a Costco-sized tube of toothpaste. The New Yorker has the world's largest recorded penis. "I had my 'stuff' strapped to the left. I wasn't erect at the time," said Falcon, whose penis is 9 inches flaccid, 13.5 inches erect. "One of the guards asked if my pockets were empty and I said, 'Yes.'" Falcon said he knew that his interview was about to get a lot more personal when he was led through one of the X-ray body scanners and passed a metal detector. "Another guard stopped me and asked me if I had some sort of growth," Falcon said, laughing. By the age of 18, Falcon knew he had something special when his manhood reached a whopping 12 inches. His family jewel was hailed as the world's largest on record after an HBO documentary featured him in 1999.
S&P 500 Nears ‘Ultimate’ Death Cross: SocGen (CNBC)
The S&P 500 index is on the verge of hitting an “ultimate” death cross, where the market’s 50-month moving average falls below the 200-month average, according to a research note by Societe Generale...In the Societe Generale note, published on Monday, strategist Albert Edwards said the last time the S&P 500 came close to a monthly death cross was in 1978, “towards the end of the 1965-82 secular bear market.”
CFTC's Gensler acknowledges failure in Peregrine's oversight (Reuters)
The U.S. futures regulator acknowledged on Tuesday that the regulatory system "failed" the customers of Peregrine Financial Group, which collapsed last week as its founder admitted he had committed a $100 million fraud that spanned two decades...The stunning downfall of Peregrine Financial Group, or PFGBest, and its founder Russell Wasendorf Sr is another blow to the futures industry after regulators estimated that roughly $200 million in customer money might be missing. It comes just months after MF Global Holdings Ltd's bankruptcy, which left customers with a $1.6 billion shortfall and which is still being investigated.
For Olympic Athletes, 45 Minute Bus Trip Turns Into Fiasco (NYT)
By the end of the day, organizers were struggling to explain how three buses carrying dozens of athletes, officials and journalists to the Olympic Village from Heathrow Airport lost their way in the maze of London’s streets, causing one American medal hopeful, the 400-meter hurdler Kerron Clement, to post a Twitter message in desperation after four hours aboard a bus that should have made the distance in 45 minutes. “Athletes are sleepy, hungry and need to pee. Could we get to the Olympic Village please,” Mr. Clement wrote as the driver, struggling to understand the route given by the bus’s GPS device, finally abandoned repeated forays up dead-end streets and pulled out a map. “Um, so we’ve been lost on the road for 4hrs. Not a good first impression London,” he added.