$$$ Judge Approves Payout to MF Global Customers $$$ Dell Buyout Deal Could Come as Soon as Monday [Reuters] $$$ US banks squeezed as mortgage profits hit [FT] $$$ High Drama at CFTC: The Battle Over Swaps and Futures [BBW] $$$ UBS Set to Classify Bond-Buying Clients as 'Aggressive' Investors [FBN] $$$ "We were served water, at exactly the right cool temperature, yet without ice cubes"; also Bill Gates was there [MR] $$$ Aston Martin in Barn With Mouse Nest May Fetch $300,000 [Bloomberg] $$$ A highly respected bank is looking for a senior associate and a VP/director to originate, structure, and market credit-based structured products in New York [DBCC] $$$ SNS Nationalized in Netherlands After Real Estate Losses [Bloomberg] $$$ Swap mis-sellingand the dark heart of the City [Telegraph] $$$ Banks slow crisis money repayment to ECB [Reuters] $$$ Twitter nears $10 billion valuation [Fortune] $$$ Sociology of the evolution of electronic trading [Jayanth R. Varma] $$$ Half of students in Harvard cheating scandal required to withdraw from the college [Boston.com]

$$$ Facebook Earnings Beat; Profit Margin Falls Sharply [CNBC] $$$ U.S. Economy Unexpectedly Contracts in Fourth Quarter [WSJ] $$$ Is Renaissance Technologies Falling off the Mark? [II Alpha] $$$ Draghi Bank of Italy Knew of Monte Paschi Missteps in ’10 [Bloomberg] $$$ New BlackBerry won't have BrickBreaker [DealBook] $$$ Deutsche Bank is looking for a sales officer for trade finance solutions in New York [DBCC] $$$ Venezuela's bonds have had a 14.7% annual return [Bloomberg] $$$ Goldman Sachs braces for bond market blow up [Fortune] $$$ Treasury Posts Losses on TARP Auctions [WSJ] $$$ "What is the problem with Internet trolls? Why do people dislike them so much? Is it just an example of following-the-herd mentality? Some kind of deeper prejudice? A love of bridges? What is the source of this animosity? Why does it perpetuate itself? Where did this prejudice come from?" [The Awl]

$$$ ECB Seen Favoring Bond Buying Over Bank Loans [Bloomberg] $$$ 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]

$$$ Mortgage Lenders See Tighter Credit Under New U.S. Rules [Bloomberg] $$$ Draghi Defends Bond Buying Program [WSJ] $$$ Buffett looksfor big-ticket acquisition [FT] $$$ "European sovereign CDS tends to be priced in dollars, for instance, but CSAs might allow counterparties to post less valuable currencies (such as euros) to one another. This should theoretically alter the price of the contract materially – not least because of the correlation between the value of the euro and European sovereigns – but it appears few banks fully price in these risks." [IFR] $$$ Frank Lloyd Wright designed a doghouse; the dog hated it [Letters of Note] $$$ New Forests is looking for a senior financial analyst in San Francisco [DBCC] $$$ The Germans want to inspect the gold they store in the Fed's vaults, but John Carney has some MMT to lay on them [NetNet] $$$ "What do prefunded bank deposit guarantee schemes invest in? ... [T]hey buy the bonds of, or make deposits at, banks they guarantee. In one case it is rumoured that a scheme was reluctant to take over a bank because their own assets were deposited at it and they did not want to take losses." [DEM] $$$ Donald Trump is "very honored to have gotten President Obama to release his long form birth certificate, or whatever it was that he released," has moved on to another stunt [@realDonaldTrump] $$$ Superman quit his job to become a blogger [Mashable via MR]

$$$ Manufacturing Slowdown Reaches U.S. [WSJ] $$$ Eurozone unemployment hits record high [FT] $$$ The Fishing Guide Who Hooked Hedge-Fund Titan Bill Ackman [Forbes] $$$ Finns, Dutch cast first doubt on euro zone deal [Reuters] $$$ Old Mitt’s Investment in a Fetus-Disposal Company Is Not a Great Thing for New Mitt [DI] $$$ Morgan Stanley is looking for an executive director to manage its Latam FX options market-making book [DBCC] $$$ JPMorgan Tightens Bond Grip As Whale Loss Weighs [Bloomberg] $$$ Esma probes agencies’ views on banks [FT] $$$ Physicists Inch Closer to Proof of Higgs Boson [NYT] $$$ Justin Bieber Graduates High School [NYT]

$$$ Spain's Unemployment Jumps, Deepening Crisis [WSJ] $$$ "... the McClendon-[X] deal raises a number of concerns, some analysts said," for any X [Reuters, earlier] $$$ "Being violation-free alone does not guarantee that a public company or registered entity will not face the wrath of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission Division of Enforcement, its director, Robert Khuzami, told Thomson Reuters Tuesday." Good to keep 'em guessing. [Reuters] $$$ How to Leak to Gawker Without (Hopefully) Getting Caught, usefulness not limited to Gawker [Gawker] $$$ Who Was the Third Person in Bret Easton Ellis and Rielle Hunter’s (Aborted) Cocaine-Induced Threesome? [NYO] $$$ BNP Paribas would like to find an emerging markets equities analyst for its Boston office, if you know anyone [DBCC] $$$ Forget Bailouts, European Banks Needs Bail-Ins: Fitch [CNBC] $$$ After Quiet Years, British Regulator Gets Tough on Abuses [DealBook] $$$ Lazard profit drops on costs, but still beats Street [Reuters] $$$ Kyle Bass' Japan short gets the B-school case study treatment [AR-Alpha] $$$ Banks to Meet With Fed on Derivatives Rule [WSJ] $$$ Paul Ryan Suddenly Decides He Hates Ayn Rand [DI]

$$$ Santander, BBVA Among Spanish Banks Downgraded By Moody’s [Bloomberg] $$$ 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]

$$$ Mitt Romney overpays his taxes, is rich [WaPo] $$$ Goldman Sachs is rolling out a hedge fund investing platform [Reuters] $$$ The ECB's pretend-you're-a-central-banker online game has a single mandate [Economist] $$$ SEC Said to Scrutinize Private Equity on Share of Payout [Bloomberg] $$$ Kato Kaelin Has a 'Gut Feeling' O.J. Simpson Was Guilty of Double Murder [ABC] $$$ BoNY Mellon is looking for a wealth management senior sales director in Greenwich [DBCC] $$$ EU in talks over Spanish rescue plan [FT] $$$ California found some more debt that it owes [NYT] $$$ Behind the Scenes, Some Lawmakers Lobby to Change the Volcker Rule [DealBook] $$$ Bank of America Is Now Stealing From Child Actors, Allegedly [Gawker]