New York Times

The New York Times is reporting that, indeed, life does imitate art: On Wednesday, authorities arrested two dudes, one of whom is an I-banker at UBS, for masterminding a "moderately clever" insider trading scheme. Though the amount of money they "re-appropriated" is bush league compared to the work of top bananas like Uncle Bernie, the best part is that these guys were communicating using cryptic language, i.e. codewords -- a la Bud Fox in Wall Street.

Now, I've often entertained the idea in the privacy of my head that I am a spy working on behalf of the Fox News network, loudly identifying communists whenever I see them. And I think we've all employed coded jargon with our wingmen on blind dates and at girlfriends' office parties. For example: "Okay, if I say 'Eggo Waffles' twice, it means that I'm going with the 'I'm the heir to the Walmart fortune' approach, and if I say 'Swamp Thing' it means we need to plan a full retreat before being eaten alive by this horizontally-gifted she-bank-teller."

The New York Times excoriated Goldman Sachs in an editorial published in yesterday's paper and described Goldman's pledge to provide $500 million in funding to small businesses as "crumbs from its table". The article went on to say that Blankfein's mea culpa earlier in the week didn't "come close to an apology" and suggested Goldman should turn their massive 2009 bonus pool over to the taxpayers who funded their survival.

I'm not sure what moral high ground the Gray Lady thinks she's standing on, but it brings up some interesting points. There is an increasingly popular market myth that Goldman Sachs didn't need to be bailed out and that they were just taking one for the team when they accepted $10 billion in TARP money. It's a nice story, but it's patently false.

More evidence of this came out this week when John Mack addressed Wharton in this now famous video. While describing Morgan Stanley's precarious position in October of last year, Mack stated that he received numerous calls from a desperate Blankfein begging him to hang in there, "because I'm 20 minutes behind you".

I was reading the New York Times today, as I do when I’m feeling a little self-flagellatory, and I stumbled across an article by Andrew Ross Sorkin that painted a bleak picture of Obama’s address to Richard Parsons, Roger Altman, and other Wall Street honchos last week.