1) Morgan Stanley Unit Fined Over Trader’s $1.3 Billion Bet (Bloomberg) - Alright, this one is just baller. This 31-year old trader had a $116 million trading cap and he got a wild hair up his ass one night and ran up $1.3 billion in trades. When the dust settled, he'd only lost $15 million (oh yeah, and his job). Why not roll the dice every once in a while? I'm gonna see if I can get this guy to do an interview for WSO.
2) Goldman Non-Prosecution: AG Eric Holder Has No Balls (Rolling Stone) - No brains either, from the look of it. It seems the only way the DOJ will go after a major white collar crime is if the evidence is absolutely incontrovertible and the perp shows up on their doorstep screaming a confession. What the hell are we paying these guys for?
3) No Criminal Case Is Likely in Loss at MF Global, Corzine Mulling New Hedge Fund (Dealbook) - Oh, for fuck's sake...
4) Facebook Inc. (FB) Using State Law to Close Instagram Deal Without SEC (Insider Monkey) - Facebook is getting pretty desperate now that it's a public company and the stock is off 50% from IPO. All those highly-valued shares they promised Instagram are getting uglier by the day, and now the company is trying to do an end run around the SEC to get the deal closed before the stock is worth even less.
5) Stick a Fork In It: Dell Is Done (Pando Daily) - Sounds like Michael Dell has bigger problems than his teenage daughter's Twitter account. After all these years, is Dell finally going down for the count? It's hard to imagine one of the earliest major successes of the computer era taking the dirt nap, but anything's possible.
6) It Is Hard to Hide from the Web (AVC) - Romney choosing Paul Ryan as a running mate surprised a lot of people. You wanna know who it didn't surprise? Fred Wilson. Here's why, and why you're foolish to believe you can hide anything from the Internet.
7) Executive pay clawbacks: Just a shareholder pacifier? (Fortune) - Clawbacks might make the public feel a little better, but are they really effective? Probably not. But with prosecutors' utter unwillingness to go after any but the easiest slam-dunk criminal cases, maybe clawbacks are all shareholders can hope for.
8) Who's Behind the Anti-Islam Ads on MTA and Muni? (Mother Jones) - I'm posting this because I think it's a pretty interesting examination of what constitutes free speech. You NY monkeys have probably noticed these ads. They're pretty out there, but according to this judge they're protected speech.
9) Ecuador Grants Assange Asylum (Wall Street Journal) - It's gonna be interesting to see if he makes it out of Ecuador's London embassy where he's been holed up for the past couple months.
10) He should be dead! Drunk driver, 24, had 0.627 blood alcohol content--TWICE the lethal dose (Daily Mail) - Holy shit. Just...holy shit. I've had some pretty epic benders in my day, but this is just crazy.
Video of the Week:
We're definitely experiencing a dearth of halfway-intelligent comedies in this modern Judd Apatow era. Movies like In Bruges, Lock Stock, Snatch and other sophisticated dark comedies don't come around very often anymore, and that's why I'm looking so forward to this one. Seven Psychopaths is actually written by the same guy who wrote In Bruges, and the cast is dynamite. Check it out:
That's it for this week, monkeys. Let me know what you think about this week's bananas in the comments, and as always, have a tremendous weekend!
That drunk on a Wednesday ?! He's a hero
.6?! That's incredible
2 & 3 - da fuq?
If a single person invests money with Corzine, they should blow their brains out. Unbelievable.
Also, Taibbi's article depressed the shit out of me. What is even the point of the Justice Department. The Coburn-Levin Report even spelled all the evidence out for them. What a sham.
It is unbelievable, and shows me how naive I was to think corruption this obvious wouldn't go unpunished. WTF else do they need?
It's cool, though, the IRS is fucking with my in-laws over a few grand, so it all evens out.
Challenge accepted (On blowing a .6)....I've ordered a breathalizer
How does Corzine do it?!
"I SIMPLY DO NOT KNOW WHERE THE MONEY IS"
TheKing, you are so right with your first comment and some clowns will undoubtedly. He should not be allow to work in the industry.
10
His buddies: Haha, you drive a Yaris! Him: I will drink all your asses under the table.
TheKing, I know people who would invest money with Corzine - they are people he worked with while running NJ and we all know that a former failed governor managing NJ's money is what the state needs.
Eddie, on Nr. 1, a ~1% loss is insane when you're trading 1.3Bln. I mean, that just blows my mind how the hell he can pull something like that off. If I were running a Hedge Fund, I'd want to interview him and discuss hiring him full time. He's got some skills man... some serious skills.
Nr. 2 - yup. That's Eric Holder for ya. Then again, as long as Crony Capitalism is still around, no one gets punished.
Nr. 10 - Holy Shit. I think that's all that needs to be said.
Frieds,
This is a just a guess on my part, but I think the trade in #1 was working out for him at first, which is why he kept adding to it. But when it turned around on him, he had to trade out of it. Eventually the bank saw the spike in his volume and realized how far off the reservation he'd gone, so they shut him down. It really is kind of a miracle he only lost $15 million.
On the flip side, if the trade had worked out he could have gone on to be the next Jerome Kerviel. That's exactly how it started for him, Kerviel exceeded his trading curbs over and over but always produced winning trades (until he didn't), so his bosses ignored it and let it continue. To this day, Kerviel insists he could've traded out of the €5 billion loss if SocGen hadn't taken his terminal away.
I don't disagree with that assessment at all, but the fact that he walked out with 15MM in losses is astounding and, at least to me, indicates that this guy is smart enough to know when to cut and run.
I'm sure most of the poor saps who wind up waking up next to Bankerella are at the .62 bac level
Serious question: How much money do you think bloggers like Pamela Geller and Robert Spencer make?
It wouldn't surprise me if political commentators like Geller, Spencer, Limbaugh, Taibbi (how much money did Griftopia make?) and Dana Loesch do what they do more so for the money then for what they truly believe in. Getting people angry enough to buy your book, listen to your radio station or visit your blog sounds like it could be a lucrative and easy gig.
Seriously, I want to hear your opinion.
Enim ex deleniti reprehenderit est. Quis aut aut qui molestias.
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