You've heard of Webcasts and Podcasts...welcome to Cubecasts. From our cubicle to yours, here is Issue #7 of The Weekly Oasis, a newsletter in which Bankerella shares her views on market events, financial news, and things of interest to everyone from gorillas to prospective monkeys.
A quick exit for Jimmy Cayne.
Passionate bridge player, reputed toker and ex-Bear CEO James Cayne was able to stop playing cards long enough to attend a ten-minute press conference yesterday at Bear Stearns headquarters at which he apologized for Bear's downfall, saying: "We just ran into our own hurricane." Not surprisingly, he just couldn't spare enough time for a question and answer session afterwards, leaving Bear employees no choice but to vent their feelings on a painted caricature outside the front door of the building. Classy. Even classier was the way he offloaded his shares in the middle of the takeover. Of course, he may have lost more money on Bear stock than anyone -- his stake, which was once worth nearly a billion dollars, ultimately sold for $61m. Now that's not a lot of bread for a Wall Street CEO, but it's enough to subsidize a decent retirement lifestyle of bridge and smokes... which is more than a lot of his employees are getting. Cry me a river, Jim.
The sky is falling... or is it?
Yesterday, reports on the narrowing US trade deficit cast further doubt on the existence of a current recession and intensified economic analysts' debates over how bad things actually are. However, the Financial Times isn't mincing words with today's doom-and-gloom front page remarks from the FDIC: "US Banks Likely to Fail as Bad Loans Soar". Thanks, FT; that's very helpful. If there wasn't a run on banks before, there will be now.
Nickel and dimed.
Far more important to WSO readers, however, will be the fact that cost-cutting moves at Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley (among others) have taken a big bite out of the little analyst perks that make all those late nights possible. Black car and cab bills are now covered by the firms at 10 PM rather than 9 PM. Goldman has gotten rid of free soda and bottled water. Analysts are being forced to print double-sided and even delete files on the network to save space on the servers. And rumors are that SeamlessWeb/meal allowances will dip back below $25 soon. Don't these banks realize that, like an army, analysts march on their stomachs? And you can barely get fried rice delivered in Manhattan for $20, so our advice is to stock up on extra Fiji while you can. What's next: paying our own Blackberry bills?
Get Schooled.
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Questions? Comments? Send an e-mail to Bankerella@WallStreetOasis.com or send a private message to her at WallStreetOasis.com. To read previous issues of The Weekly Oasis please click here: http://www.wallstreetoasis.com/xtracker/type/simplenews
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