1) JPMorgan To Pay More Than $1 Billion In Madoff Deal (FIN Alternatives) - JPM is going to pay somewhere between $1-2 BILLION in fines to duck a criminal prosecution for their role in Madoff's fraud, and the bank will have to admit that they knew what Madoff was doing and did nothing to stop it. There is clearly no end to shareholder tolerance for bank management fuckery. Complicity in the largest financial fraud in human history isn't even enough to get you fired.
2) Here's Why The Macro hedge fund industry Has Become So Pathetic (Business Insider) - Do you even Sharpe, bro?
3) Snapchat Creators Really Wish Their Ousted Cofounder Would Disappear After 10 Seconds (Time Magazine) - The ongoing saga of spoiled frat bros getting rich on bad decisions continues. The latest salvo is a restraining order taken out against gadfly co-founder Reggie Brown who, for his part, is determined to either get a hefty payout or burn the company to the ground by leaking information to the press. Bros before T.R.O.s?
4) Edward Snowden voted Guardian person of the year 2013 (The Guardian) - Clear winner here, and it's a travesty that Time Magazine opted for a cult leader in a funny hat instead of a guy who actually had an impact on the world this year. The Guardian got it right, and I hope they continue their crusade to get more information out.
5) Microsoft: US government is an 'advanced persistent threat' (ZDNet) - Thanks in no small part to disclosures by Snowden, Microsoft has stepped up and classified the US Government in the same category of cyber criminals as the most sophisticated Chinese and Eastern European hacking collectives. I didn't link to this article, but Ars Technica had a piece this week that the government may have forced Intel into building back doors into their chip sets, so the very hardware in your computer probably isn't even safe.
6) DEBT-COLLECTING MACHINE. (Washtington Post) - Foreclosing on a borrower who refuses to pay his mortgage is one thing; actively buying up penny-ante code violations and then extorting thousands of dollars from home owners is another thing entirely. That appears to be this company's business model, and it's nothing short of predatory. Scary stuff if you own your own home.
7) ‘I Cooked Hot Pockets on Irons’: A Post-Acquisition Entrepreneur Shares 3 Bootstrapping Tips (Clarity.fm) - Inspirational story here about what it takes to bootstrap your company to an exit. Nobody is going to argue that raising money doesn't make everything easier, but imagine the satisfaction you'd feel knowing you built your company without any help from anyone and then were able to sell it all. Pretty cool.
8) 4chan's fake Xbox One instructions convince users to brick their systems (The Daily Dot) - I honestly couldn't stop laughing when I read this. Easily the funniest thing I read this week. Reminds me of an old gag you could pull at a bank. You go in to make a deposit, but you grab two deposit slips. On the back of one you write, "This is a robbery. Keep quiet and put all your money in a bag and hand it to me." and then stick that deposit slip back into the pile of blank deposit slips. You then fill out the other deposit slip and make your deposit, knowing that a week or two down the line some poor bastard is going to use the doctored slip for his own deposit, and when the teller flips it over all hell is gonna break loose. There's just a sadistic side of my personality that loves seeing random heinous shit done to perfect strangers, and showing some dipshit how to destroy something he just paid $800 for has to be pretty close to the top of the list this week.
9) Smarter People Stay Up Later, Do More Drugs and Have More Sex (Esquire) - Yes, yes, and yes.
10) Andre The Giant – The Baddest Ass Drunk Of All Time (Beer Mumbo) - This is some pretty heroic consumption here. Astounding.
Video of the Week:
The following trailer is pretty NSFW, so make sure your speakers are turned down if you're in the office. This looks like The Ringer meets Billy Madison, and it has tons of potential. Jason Bateman is just the guy to pull off dead-pan mean to kids, so I'll definitely be seeing this one. Enjoy:
That's it for this week, primates. Have a tremendous weekend, and let me know what you think about this week's Bananas in the comments!
4 When is the last time that Time has gotten anything right?
5 Anyone who was even remotely skeptical could have told you that all governments spy on their own people.
6 This business practice while technically legal will raise the ire of many a judges. I wouldn't be surprised if some kind of sweeping judgement is made against them.
8 Makes you wonder what kind of idiot would go to 4chan for anything that any rational person would consider legit. One of the shadiest websites on the lightweb.
Snowden has some balls
JPM is just getting screwed left and right.
@edmundo braverman here is the full Andre the Giant article http://www.drunkard.com/issues/10_06/10_06_andre_giant.html
Speaking of videos, I'm offering an SB to the first person that can find today a clip to the teaser trailer of Interstellar, the new Christopher Nolan film coming out next year...the trailer premiered with the new Hobbit film that came out today.
EDIT: trailer is now all over the web.
Whether or not JPM did something wrong, how the hell is the SEC not getting in trouble for this? JPM is being accused of not raising warnings that something with Madoff MAY be fishy; the SEC was handed PROOF 5 times and did NOTHING, when it is there job to investigate. What a joke
This is basically the SEC saying 'we clearly cant catch these people ourselves and, since you're smarter than we are, you should have told us. Fuck you, pay us money for that.'
So the SEC is going to fine themselves? I say we just make a fine of 100B, out of one pocket into the other.
@heister
The settlement is with the DOJ, not the SEC. I'm not going to hold my breath for the DOJ to turn their sights on the SEC next.
6 "Let's litigate, my pleasure." Hahahahaha.
2 - BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA Just this morning I heard a guy in the elevator say "Yeah my fund is doing well relative to its peer group". That's special, tell me more. Unless the hedge fund is being used as a financial instrument as part of a much larger strategy, they're headed the way of the stock broker.
4 - Time considered Assad? WTF? Guardian obviously did what Europeans do: run with the idea that makes them look good at America's expense, but I agree he should have been at least co-Time-personOTY. I don't buy in on the blind faith thing but I've started putting money in the collection plate again. With any luck he'll lay waste to the shit heads in the Curia and recognize women as human beings. His message of "charity and ethical capitalism" is really just a shot across the bow. If the pattern of consolidating capital [and by extension, power] into as few hands as possible continues, the result will be mutiny, war, and regression along the development timeline. Someone should give him a head's up that the underlying issue is the legal structures that force capitalism in its current self destructive direction. If my friend at the Church's UN observer post is correct, he's going to address the totalitarian morons in China, Russia, and the others: they're screwing up even worse. You can throw stones from the outside, but the Church is the most connected institution on earth, with a population the size of China. The Church now has a leader who, for the first time in my life, has a vision for the future that approaches resembling something Christ would approve of, and the technical savvy to do something about it.
Well said on #4 @UFOinsider
Why doesn't the DOJ attack the SEC? Even though cash penalties are pointless, they could force a restructuring.
Why not prosecute those individuals directly? I mean, if they want change....
@UFOinsider
They don't want change. They want $.
How is nobody commenting on #9? That basically sums up my life.
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-12-12/most-americans-don-t-know-bitc…
@ChiTown82
I was thinking the same thing. Although tomorrow at TBOX I'm gonna go for my best #10 impression on top of #9
Laughed out loud at the title for #3 and coworkers gave me a weird look.
8 reminds me of this http://www.dailydot.com/lol/4chan-hoax-ios-7-waterproof-iphone/ People are just dumb
I read about some Danish app developer that made a game where you'd throw your phone in the air and catch it. The highest toss earns the most points... absolutely brilliant.
LOL, people's lack of self worth and the resulting constant desire to appear better than others no matter how absurd the context never ceases to be amaze me.
@Going Concern ; Yeah, I think one of the companies actually banned the app because so many people were breaking their phones.
8 - 4chan is just trash. But I seriously LOL'ed when I read the bank deposit slip prank... But I don't see how it would work, wouldn't the victim need to write on the deposit slip? When they begin to fill the slip out they will see "THIS IS A ROBBERY" and probably throw it away...
Maybe, but maybe not. The beauty of the gag is how random it is. You'll never know if it actually worked, you can just content yourself with the knowledge that you may have royally fucked over a total stranger for no reason. Unless the guy is depositing a dozen checks or whatever, the guy has no reason to look on the back of the slip - but the teller has to as a matter of procedure. Hilarity ensues, and likely ends with some poor bastard laying in a puddle of his own piss after getting tazed by a bank security guard.
I'll bet you check both sides of the deposit slip from now on.
Just make sure you don't brag about it on facebook.
4chan needs to get punk'd
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