Recession 2016; Lacker not worried about China in US; Busted Michigan "Sex Toy Bandits" Make Crowdfunding Pitch For Wedding Funds; and more.

$$$ EU could rewrite eurozone budgets [FT] $$$ Moody's Cuts Ratings on 28 Spanish Banks [WSJ] $$$ Do-it-yourself currency devaluation [NetNet / John Carney] $$$ Greek Finance Minister Quits Days Into The Job [Bloomberg] $$$ RBS computer failure condemns man to spend weekend in jail [Telegraph] $$$ Feeding your pet rabbit carrots could be bad for him [NYP] $$$ A leading tech focused M&A boutique investment bank would like to hire a senior associate or VP - could it be you? [DBCC] $$$ Mapping and Sizing the U.S. Repo Market [Liberty Street Economics] $$$ Downgrade of Funds to Have Broad Effects [WSJ] $$$ Banks fight Fed's push to make them less entwined [Reuters] $$$ "Breastaurants" Experiencing a Mini-Boom [AP] $$$ A Jew-Hating Elmo In Central Park [Gawker]

Goldman's $5.1 billion settlement; Fed probably staying steady this month; "Fox News Host Worried About Commies On Sesame Street"; and more.

$$$ Eurozone demands six-day week for Greece [Guardian] $$$ Hedge funds perplexed by negative Bund yield conundrum [Reuters] $$$ Money market funds want to buy negative-yielding securities, pass the savings on to you [FT] $$$ Moody's: U.S Banking Outlook Negative Despite Stronger Banks [WSJ] $$$ Matt Taibbi says a lot of wrong things about private equity, which is surprising for some reason [Term Sheet] $$$ Jim Cramer's Mad Money is more popular at 3am [NYP] $$$ Sands Capital Management is looking for a senior associate in Virginia for public and private equity, focusing on life sciences [DBCC] $$$ Andrew Ross Sorkin doesn't think you appreciate that Facebook has lost $50 billion in market cap. Let him say that again for emphasis: fifty billion. Fifty billion! [DealBook] $$$ Barclays fired some people for manipulating Libor [Reuters] $$$ "IPhone Price Cuts Send Bond Inflation Bets To 11-Year Low" [Bloomberg] $$$ Felix Salmon's friends spend $410mm a year on wine [Reuters] $$$ Judge Orders Sex-Change Operation for Federal Prisoner [Law Blog] $$$ Fifty billion!

CME Group to close NY trading floor by end of 2016; Argentina v Hedge funds may soon be over; New York man watches 94 hours of TV for Guinness record; and more.

$$$ You can still drink big sodas [NYP] $$$ Bank compensation up in 2012 despite cutback efforts [Reuters] $$$ Morgan Stanley Set to Name Kaminsky Brokerage Vice Chair [FBN] $$$ Mary Schapiro Is Nominated to G.E. Board [DealBook] $$$ The life cycle of the investment banker [TED] $$$ City high-flier 'was called crazy Miss Cokehead by work bullies after she blew whistle on insider dealing' [DM] $$$ Brookfield Investment Management is looking for a global infrastructure securities analyst in Chicago [DBCC] $$$ Europe trading tax would kill repo market -industry official [Reuters] $$$ SAC Capital Manager’s Tipper Deserves Prison, U.S. Says [Bloomberg] $$$ "Long term shareholders are well served by activism" [Aswath Damodaran] $$$ "Callan hardly needs advice from me but I'll offer it anyway. She may want to consider that her lack of satisfaction with her life's direction is not a product of the choices she made. Instead, her choices may have been a product of her lack of satisfaction. In my experience, the kind of people who can rise to the level she did at a relatively early age tend to be filling a hole in their psyche, an indistinguishable yearning for something more that is experienced as a kind of pain." [NetNet / John Carney] $$$ Corey Robin went to school with Bill[y] Ackman [Corey Robin]

$$$ Citigroup Said to Cut Investment Bankers’ Bonuses by 20% [Bloomberg] $$$ 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]

Vindication for David Einhorn; Staley joins Barclays 12/1; Fed may still lift rates this year; Icahn wants to bust up AIG; "Speech expert: Australian accent influenced by drunken forefathers"; and more.