$$$ Morgan Stanley wants all of Citi venture [Reuters] $$$ NYSE CEO Duncan Niederauer is not above gloating about BATS [CNBC via BI] $$$ Fannie and Freddie: Slashing Mortgages Is Good Business [ProPublica] $$$ Proposed names for Disney's Seven Dwarfs included Burpy, Hotsy, Shifty, Wistful, Doleful, Woeful, and Biggo-Ego [Lists of Note] $$$ JPMorgan is looking for a credit risk manager to cover banks and broker-dealers [DBCC] $$$ SEC demands Wells Fargo comply with subpoenas [Reuters] $$$ Lehman Ex-Broker Sentenced in Insider Case [WSJ] $$$ Ex-NBA Player Indicted on Ponzi Charges [WSJ] $$$ About forty people got out of their cars along Interstate 270 in Maryland and helped themselves to $5,795 in cash that fell out of an unsecured armored truck. ... Police are offering amnesty to anyone who returns the cash, but only $100 has been handed over so far. Heather Kelly described the scene on 270 to the AP: “It was in the traffic lanes and on the shoulders and just generally kind of like a snow globe of cash." [DI] $$$ Lacrosse players say the sport rewards the kind of determination required to do well on Wall Street. “By and large, lacrosse players aren’t necessarily the best athletes in the country,” says Joe Lizzio, a former Cornell player and co-founder of CapRok Capital. “We don’t have huge vertical leaps or run the 40 [meter dash] in 4.4 seconds.” The best lacrosse players “are smart kids that put in the long hours,” adds Cummings. “The same goes for finance, where you’re going to do well if you can outwork the other guy.” Another common attribute of lacrosse players is the kind of privileged upbringing that might have led them to banking careers even if they had never touched a stick. [BW]

$$$ Slow U.S. Hiring May Spur Fed [WSJ] $$$ Germany faces ECB backlash [FT] $$$ Dealer inventories of corporate bonds are at a ten-year low [FTAV] $$$ New York AG Eric Schneiderman's investigation into whether private equity firms illegally converted ordinary income into capital gains is complicated by the fact that ordinary income and capital gains are taxed at the same rate in New York [Reuters] $$$ "From 1971 to the present, money market funds without defaulted securities would have a shadow NAV below 0.995 15.4% of the time" due to interest rate movements [Aleph Blog] $$$ Wells Fargo broke into a house, took all the owners' stuff, destroyed it, found out that it was the wrong house [CBS] $$$ Peregrine Financial is missing its SpongeBob SquarePants silver coins [NYO] $$$ Citi is looking for an audit manager - mortgages in New York [DBCC] $$$ "Xstrata is indicating it thinks that retaining its management in the top positions may be worth more than that $4.5 billion. Now that is a valuable management." [WSJ / Dealpolitik] $$$ ICP Asset Management paid $23 million to settle its SEC suit over mismanaging its CDOs [SEC] $$$ Jim O'Neill hits out at 'weird world of benchmarking [Citywire] $$$ Rajaratnam's insider-trading appeal set for Oct. 25 [Reuters] $$$ World's Best Internship—Interviewing Porn Stars [CNBC] $$$ Restaurant Owner Creates Fake Sex Site Profile for Patron Who Posted Negative Review Online [Gawker]

$$$ Greek left attacks ‘barbarous’ austerity [FT] $$$ Facebook Facebook Facebook Facebook [WSJ/FT/CNBC/Reuters] $$$ Freddie Mac Chooses CEO [WSJ] $$$ After McClendon's trades, Chesapeake board gave blessing [Reuters] $$$ Tim Sykes is still doing things [BetaBeat, earlier] $$$ "A bank robbery, in our imagination, provides the robber with a one-off high-risk opportunity to become incredibly wealthy, in comparatively guilt-free fashion: No one but the corporation loses any money, so, what the fuck? That used to be the case, but due to inflation — as well as a host of other factors — it no longer is." [The Billfold] $$$ CIBC Global Asset Management is looking for a high yield VP in Toronto [DBCC] $$$ House Republicans are complaining that the Fed is helping the economy too much, causing House Republicans not to want to help the economy [Real Time Economics] $$$ Could a Stock ETF Cloak Its Portfolio? [WSJ] $$$ Green Mountain Chairman Replaced After Stock Sales [WSJ] $$$ Nomura is growing headcount [Bloomberg] $$$ “It lived alongside our ancestors, and it probably ate them,” said Christopher Brochu, an associate professor of geoscience at the University of Iowa and a study author. “We don’t actually have fossil human remains with croc bites, but the crocs were bigger than today’s crocodiles, and we were smaller, so there probably wasn’t much biting involved.” [Bloomberg]

$$$ Boehner, Obama Exchange New Cliff Proposals [WSJ] $$$ Greece's lenders left to plug 450 mln euro hole after buyback [Reuters] $$$ Dragon Systems Founders Take Goldman to Trial Over Advice [Bloomberg] $$$ For employees of Bloomberg LP, a megabonus deferred [CapitalNY] $$$ Cayman Island Police Arrest Premier Over Credit Card Use [Bloomberg] $$$ An institutional equity research, sales and trading firm is looking to hire a senior biotech equity research analyst in Greenwich [DBCC] $$$ "Traders wanting to place bets on the U.S. Consumer Demand Index — a monthly reading of household spending sentiment — can now pay to get the data before anyone else." [MarketBeat] $$$ Not All Companies Would Welcome a Lower Tax Rate [DealBook] $$$ Argentina debt case weakens incentives to settle [Reuters] $$$ There's a dinosaur named after President Obama v [Fox]

$$$ Fed Maintains $85 Billion Pace of Monthly Asset Purchases [Bloomberg] $$$ Lenders Balk at New Cyprus Aid Plan [WSJ] $$$ Medvedev lambasts EU over Cyprus levy [FT] $$$ "A redesigned package may well go “the full Iceland”; look after the locals and shaft the foreigners." [Paweł Morski] $$$ SAC Capital up 4 percent this year as probe continues [Reuters] $$$ "So in the battle of the scumbags, who should we be rooting for? It's kind of like the Russians fighting the Germans during World War II because you want them both to lose." - Charlie Gasparino on Bill Ackman and Carl Icahn [HuffPo] $$$ "Nine top Barclays executives including Chief Executive Antony Jenkins and investment banking head Rich Ricci received £40.3 million ($60.8 million) in shares Wednesday from earlier-year incentive plans, a month after the bank said it would take a stricter line on pay." [WSJ] $$$ Bondholders withdraw claim Penney was in default on bond terms [Reuters] $$$ Synthetic CDOs Making Comeback as Yields Juiced [Bloomberg] $$$ UK-based cannabinoid therapeutics developer GW Pharmaceuticals files for US IPO [Renaissance Capital] $$$ "America's corporate boards could use a Martin Lipton 2.0." [Breakingviews] $$$ Hamptons Landlords Suing Over Reality-Show Semen Stains [DI]

$$$ ECB Seen Favoring Bond Buying Over Bank Loans [Bloomberg] $$$ Swiss overhaul unsettles asset managers [FT] $$$ Homeowners give boost to US banks [FT] $$$ Treasury: Taxpayers Likely to Profit From Financial Rescue Programs [WSJ] $$$ Independent traders staged a walkout in one of CME Group Inc.'s CME busiest interest-rate futures pits, protesting a large, privately negotiated trade a day earlier that they claimed was unfair. The action by several dozen floor traders, which lasted about an hour, made prices harder to come by for some contracts used by banks and hedge funds to protect against shifts in some interest rates and threatened to deplete volumes in the market. ... Thursday's trade "was sort of the straw that broke the camel's back" for the protesters, said David Stein, an independent trader who was standing outside the pit Friday and who helped organize the protest. Mr. Stein said allowing privately negotiated block trades was "anticompetitive" and "un-American." [WSJ] $$$ A broker-dealer is looking for someone to trade equities in Dallas [DBCC] $$$ Obama likely paid higher tax rate than Romney in 2011 [Reuters] $$$ "The Securities and Exchange Commission is reviewing a proposal to create the first diamond-backed exchange-traded fund." [NYT] $$$ Facebook Acquires Mobile Marketer Tagtile [CNBC] $$$ Analysts Worry Gucci Will ‘Underperform’ Luxury Peers as PPR’s Stock Falls [Fashionista] $$$ Bloomberg unveils Muppets as NYC ambassadors [AP] $$$ “Hardcore Porn” Mistakenly Interrupts “Good Morning America” Broadcast In Two Towns [The JaneDough]

$$$ Bernanke Says Fiscal Cliff Fix May Bring ‘Very Good’ Year [Bloomberg] $$$ The Feds Are Closing In on Steve Cohen [DI / Kevin Roose] $$$ How gaming Libor became business as usual [Reuters] $$$ Xstrata Shareholders Back Deal Without Retention Packages [WSJ] $$$ "Is it possible to build a jetpack using downward firing machine guns?” [What If?] $$$ An elite boutique M&A firm is looking for an analyst with 1-2 years of investment banking experience [DBCC] $$$ US banks warn on money transfer rule [FT] $$$ Here you will find smart people attempting to understand Nassim Nicholas Taleb without reading him [Deus Ex Macchiato] $$$ Map: Where the Emotionally Challenged Live [BBW] $$$ Mitt Romney Is at Disneyland, Doing His Thing [Gawker]

$$$ Paul Singer wants Mitt Romney to regulate banks more [FT] $$$ JPMorgan, UBS Said Among Banks Queried In Libor Probe [Bloomberg] $$$ Apollo Said To Seek Up To $12 Billion For Flagship Fund [Bloomberg] $$$ Consider taking trading advice from a 23-year-old who day-trades equities in Dallas for his own account and talks about it with Business Insider [BI] $$$ Police Seize Pimping Rules During Raid [TSG] $$$ Shitterton named most unfortunate place name in UK [Scotsman] $$$ Legg Mason is looking for a US product strategist in Baltimore [DBCC] $$$ Standard Chartered eyes joint deal after backing down in U.S. [Reuters] $$$ Jana Disappointed With Agrium Talks [WSJ] $$$ The Harvard Business Review is pro-reading [HBR] $$$ Locals faced with medieval tax to pay for castle renovations [DutchNews] $$$ Lifeboats kill more people than they save [Brendan Koerner]