6 Free Financial Modeling Lessons...and More.

The jungle drums have started beating over the past week or so, and everyone seems to be trying to pinpoint Goldman's 4th quarter loss before it is announced. The Wall Street Urinal suggested a $2 billion loss, or about $5 per share. Earlier, Credit Suisse thought they were padding enough by raising their loss estimate from $2.50 a share to $4 a share. Now UBS is predicting a loss of $5.50 per share, well over $2 billion.

Any Goldman guys care to weigh in on the subject? (Anonymously, of course...)

Well, according to an article on CNN today, we might only have to worry about the tanking market and (surprise, surprise) "recession" for another five years, because, they claim, there is going to be a terrorist attack somewhere in the world by 2013. And, really, where do YOU think it will end up? East bumchuck? Probably not.

The weapon of mass destruction of choice? Experts are saying it will be biological rather than nuclear.

And, the experts are warning that the US government will need to be more aggressive in limiting the possible damages that the threat of bio warfare presents, but that it will be "costly".

Fellow Primates,

Now that we have the new logo selected I figured we could have an entertaining T-Shirt Slogan Contest.

Go ahead, throw out your best 1 (or 2) liners!

Let out all the weird, bitter, sarcastic, or just plain horrible things you've been wanting to scream to the world. Feel free to submit images and/or design ideas as well.

The contest ends on Sunday, Dec. 14 and the top 3 slogans will be made into beautiful new WSO T-Shirt (sold at cost in honor of the bear market!!). The winners will get theirs free, of course.

Good luck,

The contest ends on Sun Dec. 14. Get Creative Wall Street Nation!

The Thanksgiving holiday is over and, now it's time to get back to work. First order of business? Laying off all those WaMu employees who actually thought they would become a part of the JP Morgan Chase family.

LA Times has the full story - http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-wamu2-2008de...

9,200 jobs in total will be cut. 4,000 will be notified up front before the end of January, while the rest will be kept dangling and eventually axed before end of 2009.

If you had your choice, would you rather have the new Storm or the new Bold?

"WSJ: Official recession watchers at the NBER said today that the U.S. is recession, and it began in December 2007."

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122815252673269395...

So how long are we going to be in this?

It's got to suck to be a former UBS exec these days, but payback is a bitch. CNN reports that some $18.45 million that was paid out in bonuses to the executives that oversaw the hideous losses that the bank incurred is to be paid back. Yep, that's right. And that brings the total payback amount to $59 million over the past year.

Maybe some of the failing US banks and investment firms should follow UBS's lead and try to recoup some of the money that they pissed out to the CEO's and other higher ups while they were busy covering up the real numbers and running their companies into the ground. How about we let the executives fund the bailouts instead of the damn taxpayers.