$$$ Citigroup Said to Cut Investment Bankers’ Bonuses by 20% [Bloomberg] $$$ HSBC to Pay $249 Million in Foreclosure Settlement [WSJ] $$$ "For most of its history, Dell appears to have followed advice from investment banks — advice that ill-served long-term shareholders to the benefit of corporate executives. The company paid out billions of dollars to buy back stock, and only last year began to distribute some of the money to shareholders who chose to stick with it rather than bail out. It has spent more money on share repurchases than it earned throughout its life as a public company. Most of those repurchases were at prices well above current levels." [NYT] $$$ Matt Yglesias on the Fed: "There's no solving for the desired result. There's just a presentation of a scenario and then a bunch of chit chat and discussion of operational details." [Slate] $$$ Vibrator With 3 Balls Can’t Win EU Trademark, Court Says [Bloomberg] $$$ Levin Report on JPMorgan Whale Said to Fault Regulator [Bloomberg] $$$ Assured Guaranty Cut by Moody’s on Muni Insurance Outlook [Bloomberg] $$$ All Dutch securities have been dematerialized [FTAV] $$$ Chinese labour pool begins to drain [FT] $$$ A sonnet version of the Diff'rent Strokes theme song [VC]

$$$ Santander, BBVA Among Spanish Banks Downgraded By Moody’s [Bloomberg] $$$ Spain denies bank run reports [FT] $$$ Big banks need extra $566bn, says Fitch [FT, FTAV] $$$ Icahn Takeover of CVR Gets Support From 55% of Holders [Bloomberg] $$$ JPMorgan's Dimon says will testify before Congress [Reuters] $$$ Occupy Wall Street is staging an intervention with Jamie Dimon [NC] $$$ BlackRock is looking for a performance analyst in Princeton [DBCC] $$$ At CME, an Uproar Over Trading Hours [WSJ] $$$ SEC Probes Role of Hedge Fund in CDOs [WSJ] $$$ Which Biglaw Firm Accidentally Released Embarrassing, Unredacted Documents About Goldman Sachs? [ATL] $$$ Floyd Norris: "For market makers, who may buy unwanted securities that customers want to sell, hedging may be wise and prudent. But it will also be short term, until the bank trades out of whatever position it took on in the course of making the market. But if banks hedge long-term investments, as JPMorgan evidently did, the hedge is also likely to be long term. It will consist of buying something that, in normal times, should move in the opposite direction of their investment. The result is that they will be making convergence trades that are indistinguishable from what Long Term Capital Management did. Given the size of the big banks, they will have to do so in huge volumes that can come back to haunt them if markets move the wrong way." [NYT] $$$ The Boldface Names on the Witness List for Gupta’s Trial includes Lloyd Blankfein, Gary Cohn, Ken Chenault, Raj Rajaratnam, James Barnacle, and Adam Smith [DealBook]

$$$ Moody's says more steps needed to save US credit rating [Reuters] $$$ Avis to Buy Car-Sharing Service Zipcar [WSJ] $$$ There's going to be a re-settlement of the mortgage settlement [NYT] $$$ BofA Could Join JPMorgan Selling Units to Boost Value, Mayo Says [Bloomberg] $$$ Greek Official Resigns Amid Bank Scandal [WSJ] $$$ The Great Canadian Maple Syrup Heist [BBW] $$$ A leading financial services firm in Chicago is looking for a corporate strategy & development associate or VP [DBCC] $$$ Up and Down for Einhorn's Greenlight in December [Alpha] $$$ Do Corporations Have Religious Rights? [Law Blog] $$$ You Disgust Me, Christie Tells Boehner in Storm Over Aid [CNBC] $$$ “If somebody had told me I was going to be a high school math teacher in Dallas, Texas, when I entered college, I’d be like, ‘No, there’s no chance of that being true,’ ” said Mr. Dearing, who has deferred an offer from McKinsey. The teaching skills easily translate to office environments, he said. “I’m effectively the leader, every day, for 46 minutes, in front of seven different groups,” Mr. Dearing said. [DealBook]

$$$ Spain's Recession to Linger as Austerity Bites [WSJ] $$$ Euro Bailout Bid Gets Vote Of No-Confidence [Bloomberg] $$$ As the Justice Department weighs the possibility of criminal charges in the unfolding Libor rate-setting scandal, it may want to consider the record of the Swiss banking giant UBS. At UBS, a series of immunity, nonprosecution and deferred prosecution agreements in recent years — evidently the government’s preferred approach to corporate crime — seems to have had scant, if any, deterrent effect. “It’s depressing,” Representative Peter Welch, Democrat of Vermont, a member of the House oversight committee, told me this week after we discussed UBS’s recent transgressions. “The Justice Department has to decide: Is the day of consent decrees and settlements, where you pay a fine, one passed on to shareholders, are those days over? Are the days of jail time here?” [NYT] $$$ Jamie Dimon Opens Wallet For JPMorgan Shares, Picks Up 500000‎ [Forbes] $$$ Someone stole hundreds of David Hasseloff life-sized cutouts [NYDN] $$$ Credit Suisse chair says board backs Dougan [Reuters] $$$ Ex-BofA Executive Indicted For Fraud In Municipal Bond Probe [Bloomberg] $$$ BMW ‘stolen’ from Hooters is found [WaPo]

$$$ JPMorgan Misled Investors, Dodged Regulators, Senate Report Says [Bloomberg] $$$ Regulators Question Goldman and JPMorgan’s Capital Plans [DealBook] $$$ E*Trade Loses Largest Shareholder as Citadel Sells Out [Deal Journal] $$$ Credit Suisse to pay $400 million to end U.S. bond lawsuits [Reuters] $$$ The Return of the Popped Collar [WSJ] $$$ Genworth financial is looking for a Director, Corporate Trading in Stamford [DBCC] $$$ Reuters editor indicted for helping Anonymous hack websites [AP] $$$ Bankruptcy Lawyer Is Named to Manage an Ailing Detroit [NYT] $$$ Almost there, S&P! [WSJ] $$$ Goldman Sachs is (probably) reminding people of how everyone forgot about Greg Smith [DI]

$$$ Nobel Peace Prize for European Union, Mired in Crisis [NYT] $$$ JPMorgan cuts banker pay, a sign of more frugal times on Wall St [Reuters] $$$ Goldman Ex-Programmer Asks Court to Throw Out Charges [WSJ] $$$ Workday Soars 74% in Debut [DealBook] $$$ My Employees 'Filled With Anxieties These Days': Wynn [CNBC] $$$ Secret Service agent arrested in Miami after passing out drunk on a sidewalk [NYDN] $$$ French towns launch debt strike over "toxic" Dexia loans [Reuters] $$$ Repealing Deductions Pays for 4% Tax Cuts, Study Says [Bloomberg] $$$ RBS Says Santander Drops 1.7 Billion-Pound Purchase [Bloomberg] $$$ Wyclef Jean's charity in Haiti allegedly isn't so great, though his watch collection is [NYT] $$$ Gawker gives (excellent) investing advice [Gawker]

$$$ Knight Weighs Offers [WSJ] $$$ US banks call for easing of Basel III [FT] $$$ US banks increase retention of mortgages [FT] $$$ Instagram's CEO maybe lied to the California Corporations Department about whether Twitter offered to buy Instagram [NYT, cf. Felix Salmon] $$$ Peter Madoff Says He Was a Victim of Brother’s Ponzi Scheme [Bloomberg] $$$ Silvio Berlusconi may or may not be engaged to a 27-year-old [Gawker] $$$ A leading buyside institution is looking for a senior investor relations specialist in New York [DBCC] $$$ Argentina got its boat back [Credit Slips] $$$ Aladdin Capital to pay $1.6 mln to resolve SEC charges [Reuters] $$$ U.S. agency sues JPMorgan over mortgage securities [Reuters] $$$ Calstrs Reviewing Cerberus Investment in Light of Newtown Shooting [Deal Journal] $$$ Elie Ayache, Author of the Black Swan [Wilmott]

$$$ Facebook Posts Loss, But Emphasizes Mobile Growth $$$ LightSquared Executives Get $6 Million in Bonuses Approved by Judge [Deal Journal] $$$ Bernanke QE3 Stocks Miss Greenspan Irrational Exuberance [Bloomberg] $$$ ‘I’m Quite Concerned About Fiscal Cliff’: Greenspan [CNBC] $$$ Argentina won't kneel down before 'vulture funds,' says Cabinet Chief [BA Herald] $$$ Gupta is no Rajaratnam. Gupta tipped inside information about one company to Rajaratnam, while Rajaratnam traded on confidential information collected from many sources. So you’d expect that Gupta would be treated differently when he appears for sentencing. Federal sentencing guidelines, however, suggest a prison term for him that’s similar in length to the 11 years Rajaratnam is serving. And prosecutors want a sentence within those guidelines, just as they want for the hundreds of defendants sentenced in federal courts nationwide every day. Because what Gupta and Rajaratnam did is so different, though, sentencing Gupta to anything like the time Rajaratnam is serving undermines the whole purpose of the sentencing scheme that prosecutors say they want to uphold. [Slate] $$$ For several years now, Marc Lasry, the co-founder of Avenue Capital, has decorated his mansion on East 74th Street with bloodied bodies hanging from the balcony, skeleton heads, a giant inflatable ghost, swinging bats and a life-size, clothed skeleton affixed to a tree on the sidewalk. One afternoon last week, tourists and children gathered to take pictures of a dancing skeleton beside the front door. It was singing “Super Freak.” (Perhaps in the spirit of competition, the hedge fund manager Philip A. Falcone and his wife, Lisa Maria, have lavishly decorated the exterior of their 27,525-square-foot house on East 67th Street even though it is currently a construction site.) [NYT via BI] $$$ Adveq, a leading asset manager investing in private equity and real asset funds globally, is looking for an investor relations and development representative for North America [DBCC] $$$ Former Soros CIO nears launch of Anderson Global Macro early next year [AR] $$$ Wall Street Is Rethinking Commodity-Trading Role [WSJ] $$$ This is a story about LBO companies getting equity financing from long-only investors to pay down debt to manageable levels before an IPO [Term Sheet] $$$ This is a story about a management consultant who is also a self-published poet [BBW] $$$ "My wife ... penetrated to the heart of the debate in a single sentence tonight when, only about 15 minutes into the exchange, she observed: 'Romney’s flag pin is much larger than Obama’s flag pin.'" [NR] $$$ Obama Takes Out Romney With Mid-Debate Drone Attack [The Onion] $$$ NYC-Based Soup Chain Offers Free Cup of Soup, Personal Service from a ‘Cunt’ Named Mary [Gawker]