6 Free Financial Modeling Lessons...and More.

Ok, so you couldn’t dodge the pink slip. Now what? Before you fall into a bon bon induced coma on the couch, why not try your hand at winning a dream vacation? What the hell, you’ve got nothing but time these days anyway, right?

Wyndham Worldwide’s Endless Vacation Rentals is gunning for you. They’re giving away a free vacation to the best jobless sob story in 100 words or less. The catch is, it has to be funny. The winner gets a one week vacation rental valued at $2,500 and a $1,500 Visa gift card to spend. Runner up gets a $1,500 trip. Readers vote their favorites and the winners are set to be selected in May.

I guess going begging in a corporate jet leaves a lasting impression. General Motors CEO Rick Wagoner was forced to resign by the Obama administration today, as part of the massive amount of strings attached to automaker bailout money.

http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0309/20625.html

While I think Wagoner's resignation is long overdue, it is a little troubling that it had to come at the behest of the government. This is taking the executive compensation issue to a whole new level.

Does Obama really believe that the U.S. auto industry, with its bloated pension requirements, deeply-entrenched unions, and blatant inability to compete on a global scale is actually worth saving? Can't we just let anything die anymore?

Here is an article about yet another tax that is likely to have a disproportionate impact on the high-earning financial set, in NY no less:
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/29/nyregion/29tax.h...

I wasn't (that) worried by the toxic assets, the massive job losses, etc. I always assumed high finance would recover. However, the continually increasing taxes and regulation (on PE and HFs in particular) might actually be capable of keeping us down for the long-term.

I don't believe the taxes are too unreasonable yet, but I fear we might be giving way to a tyranny of the majority where those on the lower rungs of the payscale use their voting clout to arbitrarily clober those at the top.

Executives in AIG's European branches who received retention bonuses couldn't care less what the American public thinks about it, and most of them consider demands for repayment to be nothing short of blackmail:

http://www.reuters.com/article/wtUSInvestingNews/i...

"Roubini Says Stocks Will Drop as Banks Go ‘Belly Up’ (Update2)

By Michael Patterson and Maithreyi Seetharaman

March 26 (Bloomberg) -- U.S. stocks will fall and the government will nationalize more banks as the economy contracts through the end of 2009, said Nouriel Roubini, the New York University professor who predicted last year’s economic crisis.

“The stock market is a bit ahead of the real macroeconomic and financial news,” Roubini, a professor at NYU’s Stern School of Business and the chairman of consulting firm Roubini Global Economics, said in an interview with Bloomberg Television in London today. “We’ll have some major banks going belly up that will need to be taken over.” "

Looks like France isn’t the place to be if you want to move up the corporate ladder to management. Employees at a 3M factory found out that a bunch of jobs were being cut so they are fighting back. Peaceful protest? Not so much. They decided to hold their boss hostage, barricading him in his office overnight until he agrees to better terms. It appears he’s still hole up in there even as I type.