Products for Successful Banking

I have lots of post ideas lined up, but I took some time off last week and am too busy this week to write anything down.
Meanwhile check out this site chock-full of wonderful products (aside from actual cocaine) to keep all you bankers pulling all nighters: http://www.wakeyz.com/

Persian Valley Girls at Carlyle

It's amazing how some people manage to squeeze through the cracks (or have rich daddies who hook them up). NY Mag just profiled Natasha Mitra who is an associate at Carlyle (after a stint at the Dirty Bear).

A couple points:
1. That bag is so hideous that any socialite can just look at it to induce vomiting when she needs to purge. Your personal shopper was clearly trying to pawn you a shitty sample from last-last season's collection. Big was in maybe 3 years ago? And this thing is big enough to fit your nose (well, almost).
2. Clearly you spent all that money on the bag and wound up with no cash to get your nappy ass (it's OK to say because she's only brown) hair done so it didn't look like a used mop.
3. Your choice of Brands - for someone who works for a consumer group you clearly have no class and still go for the big logo names. Here's a hint, sweetheart - a real quality piece doesn't need to advertise its price with a big label because it's self-evident. Jigga said it best: "My chick burn it down Bergdorf's/Comin' back with Birkin bags/Your chick is like, "What type of purse is that?"".
4. Your sunglasses, to quote South Park are those "only Persians would like." Which I guess does make them "wild and crazy and different" - sort of like a rabid monkey in a clown suit.

clipped from nymag.com How old are you? I’m 26. What do you do for a living? I work in private equity. I love the sector that I work in, which is the consumer and retail group. It’s an area that I’m passionate about. I love to consume. Consuming is my specialty. Such big accessories! My bag was a really special purchase. I work with this woman at Louis Vuitton—she picks things out for me, sends pictures, and tells me to pick what I like. She called one day and was like, “I picked a bag for you, and I’m sending it to your house because I know you’re going to love it.” I think it’s called the Stratus. Was the bag expensive? Yes—about $3,500. I guess a lot of craftsmanship goes into it. Accessories for me are the key. I have about twenty bags, and I don’t know how many shoes. But they’re Vuitton, they’re Versace, they’re Gucci, and they’re Dior. And your sunglasses? They’re D&G. I was really excited to find them. They’re wild and crazy and different.

Russia doesn't get the irony...

Suing one of America's oldest banks for money laundering by the nation that pioneered money laundering as a reliable income stream for a financial institution after the fall of the Soviet regime. In all honesty Russia does have a point: BoNY did allow a little faux-pas to transpire and never formally paid Russia back (or bribed their lawyers with vodka, fresh chickens and potatoes which is an offer no longer on the table I am told) when this all happened. Of course the timing is not exactly a coincidence (as nothing in Russia ever is), but I'll leave that to the readers to guess.
Also - Ms. Edwards mentions how only "some" of the customers were carrying machine guns. Those are the legitimate clients who are concerned about losing their capital en route. It's the ones who sent their deposits without an armored escort that you need to worry about - they have enough notoriety that they don't even need to guard their wealth. Nobody is stupid enough to touch it. Incidentally, how is that Lucy and Peter Berlin are still alive and in good health?

clipped from www.bloomberg.com Russia Sues Bank of New York for alleged money laundering in the 1990s. Russia's Federal Customs Service is seeking $22.5 billion in damages from the Bank of New York Co., the world's second-largest custodian of investor assets, for alleged money laundering in the 1990s. A former Bank of New York vice president based in London, Lucy Edwards, and her husband Peter Berlin, who ran companies with accounts at the bank, admitted in 2000 to conspiring to use the bank to launder more than $7 billion from Russia. more than $7 billion moved from Russia through the bank, some on behalf of ``customers with machine guns,'' Edwards said in a statement accompanying her guilty plea in February 2000. A Russian court can as much as triple the amount laundered by the Bank of New York to calculate damages incurred by the Russian Government Shares of Bank of New York fell 75 cents, or 1.8 percent,

Eat the Rich!

EquityPrivate has a superb post that, with great wit, highlights the fallacies and sheer irrationality of those who consider it damn near [if not outright] criminal that Private Equity firms and its partners don't pay full income tax on their fees. About the only thing she didn't touch on is a jab at the Islamic Banks. Actually if she would do a post on a Private Equity firm/Risk Arb hedge fund that abides by Shariah I just might cry.
I highly recommend that you read the whole post and not just my clip, even if you're a pinko tree hugger. Of course true liberals will have no choice but to consider EquityPrivate's Swift-esque proposals as potentially good policy in their Utopian society where imprisoning free markets results in economic prosperity and world peace.

clipped from equityprivate.typepad.com Let us instead consider the many ways that people earn money with "other people's money." Obviously, all of these should be closed as "loopholes." Housing Loans I mean really. A home owner puts down a paltry 20% of the purchase price, borrows the rest from big and stupid banks that don't know they are being taken advantage of and then pockets the gain for themselves. Car Loans This is exactly the same thing. Anything this car trades for or sells for over the Blue Book value should be taxed at double ordinary income rates. Margin Purchases of Stock I don't care if you held that stock for 4 years and paid margin on it the entire time. This should be taxed at ordinary income rates. We'd hate to encourage participation in the capital markets, after all. Employee Stock Options Plans why are we letting the company get away with promising stock that hasn't been paid for yet anyhow? That looks like a loan. This needs to be taxed. Any true, red-blooded American firm should work hard to maximize taxes.

Portable Alpha

Here's a little diddy I wrote for my banker friend yesterday for his birthday. You may notice some similarities to a much parodied SNL sketch, but I assure it's pure coincidence.

Matt, I got something important to give you,
So mute that conference call and listen.

I know you’ve been jammin' such a long long time.
All the while your VP has been doing lines
But it's your birthday and my wallet's open wide.
Gonna give you something to forget the banker life.

Not gonna take you to a closing dinner,
You already know that you're a winner.
Not gonna get you a lucite toy,
That sorta gift is for little boys.
Not gonna put it in a pitch book,
Hitters like you don’t go for cheap hooks.
Won’t spread it out in a comp sheet,
You know those multiples don’t mean shit.
I want to get you something big and black,
Something that will give you a cataract.
Alpha in a box! My alpha in a box, Matt!

To all the traders out there with investors to impress
It's easy to do just follow these steps
1: Put some quants in a box
2: Put cash in that box
3: Never open the box
And that's the way you do it
Alpha in a box! My alpha in a box, bro!

Tenjune; alpha in a box
NYMEX Floor; alpha in a box
85 Broad; alpha in a box
Backstage at the SEC hearing - alpha in a box!

Greed Is Back! (and still Great)

One of Hollywood’s most lovable characters (from his starched collar down to his polished wingtips) will return for a Second Coming to save America, and as hedgie to boot!
Since the writers will obviously need some ideas, I’ve drawn up a few suitable strategies for Gekko’s fund:

• Gekko buys Iran CDS, and then lobbies the President to bomb the shit out that hole (bonus for crude leverage).
• Quietly acquires Russia’s grain and potato fields, then convinces the now vodka-less populace to give him Gazprom and makes Putin and Abramovich fight a tag team grudge match against Berezovsky and Khodorkovsky in a polonium plated cage.
• Buys out a Texas utility promising to replace all the dirty coal plants with those that run on rainbows and unicorn farts. After the deal is closed Gecko doubles coal production. I know it’s wishful thinking, Henry, but this is supposed to be an uplifting movie.
• Reemerges as an avid environmentalist and sets up a SRI (Socially Responsible Investment) fund that acquires stakes in companies that produce affordable American made hybrids (made by illegal immigrants for 50 cents an hour), biodiesel (with sugarcane harvested by 7 year old Brazilian slaves after they mow down enough rainforests to make room for the fields) and organic meats (from “rescued” animals).

I’m expecting full royalty payments.

clipped from www.nytimes.com as their boss, Rupert Murdoch, pursued an uninvited takeover bid for Dow Jones this week, Fox movie executives quietly sealed a deal to revive Gordon Gekko When last seen, the corrupt Gekko, an Oscar-winning role for Michael Douglas, was on the brink of surrendering his white cuffs for handcuffs, having been sold out by his protégé Bud Fox “He went to jail,” acknowledged Edward R. Pressman, who produced the original movie and reached an agreement with Fox this week to develop a sequel in which Mr. Douglas will resume his machinations on a global scale in the hedge-fund era. the title, he said, will be “Money Never Sleeps,” a restyled Gekko, he predicted, might start setting trends all over again. “If you weren’t wearing suspenders before ‘Wall Street,’ you were certainly wearing them after,” Speaking by telephone from Bermuda, Mr. Douglas said he wouldn’t mind if he never had “one more drunken Wall Street broker come up to me and say, ‘You’re the man!’ ” Mr. Stone will not direct the sequel

Sarkozy not making things cozy for hedgies

Ahh, the French. What other nationality is at once so seemingly cultured (but really pedantic) and boasts of its great philosophers while failing to see the practical errors of its ways? Now the French "conservative" white-horse riding "free-market" champion has declared war on what he calls "predatory hedge funds" although he is clearly describing a textbook private equity LBO in his interview.
Take heed of another famous French leader with a penchant for white stallions - when you attack a great power unprepared you perish. Might want to look at summer homes in Elba.

clipped from www.telegraph.co.uk If there is one thing that unites both candidates in France's presidential run-off this Sunday, it is a shared belief that Anglo Saxon hedge funds are the great villains of modern civilisation. "We can't tolerate hedge funds buying a company with debt, firing a quarter of the staff and then enriching themselves by selling it in pieces. We didn't create the euro to have capitalism without ethics or morals," he said. Mr Sarkozy is supposed to be the "free market" candidate. Sarkozy, the neo-Gaullist favourite, has vowed to "hit predators" with a tax on speculative investments "Of course, the French love to regulate and they believe in the supremacy of politics over reality, but it never works for all the hot rhetoric, France quietly hosts some 92 hedge funds - many of them on the cutting edge of arbitrage and structured products, and some linked to Mr Sarkozy's inner team of advisers.

Lord Browne is Putin's Gay Lover too!

So when I said BP is bending over for Putin, I was apparently a lot closer to the truth than I thought. Guess living in SF really makes your gaydar sharp.