September 22, 2008
Walter Sobchak: Were you listening to The Dude's story, Donny? The Dude: Walter... Donny: What? Walter Sobchak: Were you listening to The Dude's story? Donny: I was bowling. Walter Sobchak: So you have no frame of reference here, Donny....
Am I the only one who was surprised more wasn't made of the following quote from a WSJ article today? It concerns the speedy transition of Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs to bank holding structures. Morgan Stanley officials have been...
What is truly disgraceful is that investment banks could only manage returns on equity of 15-25% with a balance sheet that was often leveraged to the sky. -- Niels Jensen and Jan Wilhelmsen, of Absolute Return Partners [via...
First in what I'd like to hope will be a regular series: Scene: A midtown Manhattan bar, around 1am on September 15/ 2008. Guy walks in dressed like a banker -- blue shirt, grey pants, etc. Has a few quick...
Here is the quote of the day: To paraphrase Oscar Wilde, the idea that Goldman Sachs' rogue tendencies can be adequately restrained by banking regulations strikes me as the triumph of hope over experience. -- Me, on Twitter today...
Provocative comments from mega-quant Cliff Asness of AQR on the current crisis: Let’s step back. Wall Street’s greed and short sightedness, and the consumers’ real-estate bacchanalia, was certainly a big part of recent events, but the biggest drivers in creating...
I know it's all the rage to ooh and aah at the market's implosion right now, but a momentary diversion isn't so bad. The folks over at the excellent Science of Sports have put together this video retrospective of some...
This was supposed to be an Inc 500 discussion on Friday with John McCain and Barack Obama's economic advisors, but Obama's guy was a no-show (which is more than a little strange). Anyway, worth watching, as my friend and colleague...
Okay, I never thought I'd say this, but I agree with John McCain: SEC Chair Chris Cox should be fired. Who would have thought he would stoop so low as to use the front page of the SEC site to...
There is a small silver lining in all the carnage out there: lots of MBAs are going to have to rethink their career choices. Finance and investment banking have been top of the pops for some time, and that grew...
My friend Nouriel Roubini in the weekend FT talking about then next stage in the current crisis: The next stage will be a run on thousands of highly leveraged hedge funds. After a brief lock-up period, investors in such funds...
I'm torn about the news this morning on Goldman and Morgan flipping to a bank holding structure. It's overdue that the two companies are shrinking their leverage and rethinking their approach to risk, and I don't care about the end...
I see that the Financial Times has signed U2 singer Bono on to do some blogging, and to get things started he answer a question on Wall Street's current troubles: AB: And finally – how much money have you personally...
