the finance industry / wall street

many great things in that nymag article

this one sticks out: “We used to rely on the public making dumb investing decisions,” one well-known Manhattan hedge-fund manager told me. “but with the advent of the public leaving the market, it’s just hedge funds trading against hedge funds. At the end of the day, it’s a zero-sum game.” Based on these numbers—too many funds with fewer dollars chasing too few trades—many have predicted a hedge-fund shakeout, and it seems to have started. Over 1,000 funds have closed in the past year and a half.

it's not about the 'too few trades' it's about the fact that hedge funds haven't really proven to be particularly market-beating investment machines regardless

That article is cute, but basically just a vehicle for bank PR. Bove is seriously a joke at this point. Attributing the economic pain that banks are feeling at the moment to Dodd-Frank is beyond silly. More prop positions in the last year would probably have just meant more losses. Either they're just really selectively quoting Dimon, or somebody convinced him that he shouldn't necessarily insult everyone all the time (cf. http://blogs.wsj.com/marketbeat/2011/09/12/jamie-dimon-declares-basel-bank-capital-rules-anti-american/)

oh yeah, this too" http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/blogs/taibblog/why-wall-street-should-stop-whining-20120208

well i think there's a middle ground between 'dodd-frank changed everything, the glory days are over' and 'dodd-frank will change nothing, wallstreet is exactly the same'. 'don't like your bonus? quit' is a genuine change of tone, even if it's on some level a pr stunt, at the very least it's the *right* pr stunt. the industry is going to employ fewer people and increased regulations can't have *no* effect. and I think the american public, esp the younger generation, has soured on finance to an extent that might itself affect things. this is gonna continue, esp if romney gets the nomination. that said, I don't like the 'well, that's the end of that story' tone of the article.

kudos to dayo btw for starting this thread when he did

lol I was kind of mad that the OWS threads were hijacking all the wall street discussions

dayo works for goldman sachs fwiw

he is the guy who counts the money

my fingers hurt

sux 4 u, new batch just arrived

http://i.imgur.com/Wbu5w.jpg

the inner dimon won't be caged:

http://dealbreaker.com/2012/02/jamie-dimon-doesnt-care-how-bad-paul-volcker-wants-it-he-will-not-have-his-employees-balls-examine-every-time-they-want-to-make-a-trade/

Doug Henwood on, well, everything:

So in return for hundreds of billions of dollars in public funds used to keep the financial system from going under, the banks will emerge from this crisis largely unscathed. One reason for this is Wall Street’s skill at lobbying, and its ability to spread huge amounts of cash around Washington. As Public Citizen documented, between 1998 and 2008, Wall Street spent $5 billion in campaign contributions and deployed 3,000 lobbyists across Capitol Hill to get its way. While $5 billion sounds like a lot, it was less than a third of the Goldman Sachs bonus pool for 2009, and spread out over a decade. Wall Street has a lot of money, and Congress can be bought on the cheap.

But, as I argued earlier, Wall Street also represents the commanding heights of the economy, the central mechanism by which ruling class economic power is formed and exercised. It’s only surprising to people who don’t understand this that Washington dances so faithfully to the bankers’ tunes.

...Thanks to a small band of people who moved into a private park near Wall Street last September 17, political discourse and activism have taken the most hopeful turn that I can remember. I have my reservations about the ideological orientation of a lot of the Occupiers. And it’s hard to know whether this spirit will survive the winter—or the banalizing tendencies of presidential election campaigns. But I’m going to bracket that for now and admit to more than a shred of hope that things are turning in a seriously better direction. Finally.

http://lbo-news.com/2012/01/29/reflections-on-the-current-disorder/

https://twitter.com/gselevator

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-02-28/jpmorgan-chief-dimon-assails-pay-practices-at-newspapers-in-bank-s-defense.html

a+ trolling but I can imagine that pr-wise pissing off every single journalist in america is prob not in his long-term interests

“Newspapers -- I went and got this one day just for fun -- 42 percent payout ratio, which I just think is just damned outrageous.”

“Worse than that, you don’t even make any money!” Dimon said, directing his comments to those in the media covering the company’s investor day and drawing laughter from his audience. “We pay 35 percent. We make a lot of money.” JPMorgan posted $19 billion in profit last year.

fucking bond villain i swear to god

http://dealbook.nytimes.com/2012/02/29/as-bank-profits-plunge-wall-street-bonuses-fall-modestly/?hp

Despite the difficult environment, New York firms paid roughly $20 billion in year-end cash compensation to their employees. The average bonus was $121,150, down just 13 percent from the year before as the head count shrank. In 2006, the year before the financial crisis, the average investment bank employee took home a bonus of $191,360.

I would think newspapers probably have a higher payout ratio BECAUSE they don't make as much money.

fuck this industry

#employee

http://www.fastcompany.com/1822449/scamming-seamless-how-big-banks-are-getting-taken-for-big-cash

no honor among thieves

http://billmoyers.com/segment/david-stockman-on-crony-capitalism/

http://billmoyers.com/segment/gretchen-morgenson-on-industry-influence/

JP Morgan Cheats:

http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/blogs/taibblog/j-p-morgan-chases-ugly-family-secrets-revealed-20120313

The ex-Goldmanite op-ed that's lighting up the blogosphere:

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/14/opinion/why-i-am-leaving-goldman-sachs.html?hp

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/mark-gongloff/greg-smith-goldman-sachs_b_1344716.html

this is not just a Goldman Sachs problem, but a Wall Street problem. Goldman was not alone in selling clients CDOs stuffed with shaky subprime mortgages, for which it paid the SEC $550 million a couple of years (and two Greg Smith bonuses) ago. Nor was it alone in pumping Russia full of debt in the late 1990s, nor was it alone in parachuting out of the market ahead of its clients in 1929.

Of course, this won't change the view of Republicans and the likes of Geithner and others.

http://www.thedailymash.co.uk/news/society/why-i-am-leaving-the-empire%252c-by-darth-vader-201203145007/

"We used to make things in this company. Like synthetic credit products. And the clients liked them!"

like i said in another thread, if you started at Goldman Sachs when Henry Paulson was running things and you're looking at that as some sort of golden era of ethics and integrity, then you've wearing some pretty strong blinders or have a strange definition of ethics and integrity.

I'm slightly sympathetic to him because he's from a foreign country - like I could maybe see him arriving here and buying everything about ~america~ without too much skepticism

it is good that someone who was on the inside is taking a few good kicks at an obvious villain in a relatively well-respected and well-read forum. also, i don't want to jump on him b/c i'm positive that as we speak there's an army of well-paid flunkies working overtime and at Goldman Sachs's behest to tear him down as we speak.

that said, there is a certain naivete to his column.

plus, i hope the he's got a nice stash of "fuck you" money tucked away somewhere ... or pictures of some Goldman Sachs bigwig doing something unspeakably vile (other than what they've done to their investors, the American taxpayers or the world-at-large).

discussion of his bronze medal in ping-pong is a nice touch -- suitably egomaniacal yet somehow naive-seeming as well

yeah, they have to show that they retain the common touch even though they're still smarter-and-more-accomplished-than-pathetic-little-you-will-ever-be.

http://deadspin.com/5893181/bronze-medal-ping-pong-god-bravely-resigns-from-goldman-sachs

dude was UK based, though I gather GS London culture was about the same as New York's.

only for the last two years of his career

Ah right, good catch.

this story reminded me of this bit from a a long Goldman article the Times (UK) did a couple years ago:

[Brian Griffiths] is one of the bank’s international advisers and also acts as company pastor. ‘I had one guy who came to see me — I thought about his career — but he wanted to talk about the morality of banking. That was a long conversation,’ Griffiths recalls.

lol The Church of Goldman Sachs

a long Goldman article the Times (UK) did a couple years ago

link?

oh right http://www.infiniteunknown.net/2009/11/08/goldman-sachs-ceo-lloyd-blankfein-im-doing-gods-work/

the author's a little fawning but there aren't many interviews with Blankfein & co. so it's a decent read

http://www.jackizehner.com/2012/03/16/why-i-left-goldman-sachs-version-two/

first woman partner at GS speaks about the nyt op-ed

strange how rosy the glasses get when reminiscing huh

A not-too-sentimental GS reminiscence:

http://www.financeasia.com/News/294239,goldman-sachs-is-unveiled.aspx

This one seems pretty balanced to me.

IDK I think maybe people have started to read Matt Taibbi a little too literally? It's possible that things actually seemed better at one time at GS, or that not every investment banker and trader and manager in every department had an alter to satan on his desk at which he promised to screw over clients in every way possible.

GS is the Duke basketball team of Wall Street sports.

xxp I worked as a bond salesman on Goldman’s London trading floor in the early 1990s.

according to michael lewis's liar's poker, bond traders are the worst of the worst right?

I feel like every book about every kind of trader makes that claim