Sunday, November 25, 2007

Throwing Bush under the bus

Wow.

Joseph Stiglitz buried Bush in Vanity Fair. It's stuff we all know, but it's a succinct, super-brutal rehashing of the ruin wrought by Bush over 7 years. I haven't been following political news closely of late, so maybe I had some Bushenfreude withdrawl.

(Speaking of which how dated does this article seem? "As an economic strategy, the tax cuts have plainly worked." Really? More than negative real interest rates of the time?)

Anyway, read on - The Economic Consequences of Mr. Bush.

Tuesday, November 20, 2007

Fox Business Channel: "Oh, The Arabs. OK."

I'm home sick, so I get to blog a little. But I'll just post about this awesome flub by the Fox Business Channel.

Run with the story first, then change course as needed. Brilliant.

http://valleywag.com/tech/clips/fox-business-newss-apple+amd-flub-323889.php

Thursday, November 1, 2007

Bear Stearns: Up In Smoke



"Bear Stearns announces stock spliff" - I wish I'd seen it while it was up on Bloomberg still. I guess something has to get you through the day when your stock is getting smoked. I kill me.

Title and screenshot taken from Minyanville. h/t to, who else, Dealbreaker.

Update: funnier because of a WSJ article today, that talks about the CEO smoking pot.
After a day of bridge at a Doubletree hotel in Memphis, in 2004, Mr. Cayne [CEO of Bear] invited a fellow player and a woman to smoke pot with him, according to someone who was there, and led the two to a lobby men's room where he intended to light up. The other player declined, says the person who was there, but the woman followed Mr. Cayne inside and shared a joint, to the amusement of a passerby.

Is this Murdoch's WSJ or what?

Wednesday, October 17, 2007

They could have just hired me

Apologies that I didn't blog about this the MINUTE I heard about it, but if you haven't heard of the SAC Capital scandal, let me fill you in.

A senior trader, Andrew Tong, thought that junior traders were too aggressive. But where there is a problem, there is a solution - I'll let DealBreaker explain:
For those of you who don’t have Google alerts set up for “some pretty fucked up shit,” Andrew Tong, who was fired last year from the hedge fund, has accused Ping Jiang of sexual harassment that had Tong taking female hormones (which he bought on the black market) in order to reduce aggressiveness and make him more effeminate, and, in turn, a better trader. Additionally, there’s been talk of “sexual relations between two men.” Tong has also stated that the hormones caused him significant emotional and physical distress, as well as impotence.

You can also watch the video on CNBC about the story. Pretty screwed up, right?
Up in Stamford, SAC employees are flummoxed. Not by the accusations, per se, but the rationale behind them. "If taking female hormones actually helped you do your job, they would simply hire women here," one said. "But they don't.”

Umm, yes, because the senior guy was having sex with the junior one...

Anyway, I was a complete wuss when I was trading, I had no idea that style was in demand.