Bonus Bananas February 15, 2013

1) Gangster Bankers: Too Big to Jail (Rolling Stone) - Taibbi's hit piece on the travesty that is the HSBC settlement. We had a lively debate on the site over this. I wonder if this piece will change anyone's mind.

2) RIM’s old CEO is so impressed with BB10 that he dumped all of his 26.8M shares in the company (Venture Beat) - LULZ. When the founder of a company completely divests himself of that company's stock, that's a buy. Right?

3) Ackman: Herbalife Could Be FTC's Madoff (FIN Alternatives) - I can't decide if this is genuine concern for the FTC's reputation or just Bill talking his book. I think he's gonna be sorely disappointed, because the FTC is gonna do even less about HLF than the SEC did about Madoff.

4) Layoffs continue as Wall St. retools (LA Times) - When I first saw a headline about retooling Wall Street I thought B of A rehired Ken Lewis. The good news is, profitability is back. The bad news is it's largely because of the "rightsizing" Wall Street has been doing (and continues to do) since 2008.

5) Startups Shake Up the Sleepy Vibrator Market (BusinessWeek) - Well played, BusinessWeek. I especially like the part about vibrators becoming so mainstream women are leaving them lying around the house (ewww...).

6) With Amazon minting currency, Fed at risk (MarketWatch) - Amazon is absolutely brilliant at manipulating government policy to their own ends, even moreso than Google. So I won't be the least bit surprised when their new currency overtakes the greenback.

7) Gaming the System (NY Times) - So some Johns Hopkins kids Game Theoried the shit out of their professor by all skipping their final exam, thereby guaranteeing the entire class an A because the exam was graded on the curve. Cool idea, but I'm pretty sure it only works once.

8) I Want My Kids to Be Drug Addicts (Altucher Confidential) - This is the feel good story of the week, told as only James can. If you're in need of some motivation to overcome adversity, or you're just in the mood for a great story with a happy ending, check it out.

9) Heart Attack Grill spokesman dies from heart attack (Las Vegas Sun) - You can't buy this kind of press. And this guy was the second Heart Attack Grill spokesman to die of a heart attack. They're definitely doing something right over there.

10) ‘Who’s On the Rebound’: New Facebook App Helps You Prey On Chicks Who Are Recently Single (BroBible) - WARNING: NSFW. Ok, these new Facebook apps are starting to get really good. First there was Bang With Friends (self-explanatory) and now this one trolls your friends list to find all the wounded does who've just been dumped. Then it lists them for you, and lays out a game plan for slaying them based on their relationship history and status updates. The founder of the service had this (among many other hysterical things) to say:

As for how the website works, ok, maybe it's a little creepy. We built a program that goes through ALL of your single friends' entire Facebook history and finds every time they enter into a relationship. From there we plot how many relationships they've had, how long they last, and how long they've been single. From there we use the info we gathered from the experts to give a pretty good explanation on their availability depending on their gender, age, and some other factors as well.

Video of the Week:

I really want to like this movie. Wedding Crashers was so solid that I think the Owen Wilson-Vince Vaughn combo can be unstoppable. I'm a little hesitant based on the following trailer, but the idea behind the movie (old guys landing an internship at Google) has potential. So I'll obviously withhold judgment until I see it, but I'm interested to hear what you guys think. Comedy gold, or meh?

That's it for this week, gentlemen. Let me know what you think of this week's Bananas in the comments and enjoy the long weekend (yeah, right!).