Goldfellas!!!!

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------

*** ATTENTION ***

This is a candidate for the top-5 Balcony posts ever!!

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------

First this, then this…

Don’t say i didn’t warn ya there was more to come!!

First read this…

and now grab some pop-corn and a diet coke and enjoy the movie!!!!!

Eternal Party

-
What can you say about a story like this, especially on the day that good ol' Teddy joins the party at last.
-

Vertical Integration

-
In what appears to be the most efficiently synergistic, vertically integrated, criminal operation we have yet witnessed, a Brazilian state legislator is accused of trafficking drugs, while ordering killings to get rid of competitive drug dealers and boost the ratings of the TV show he was hosting.

If he could only manage to be the judge of his own trial we would have the perfect 4 in 1 concetration of powers (executive, legislative, judiciary, and of course the press)...
-

Things We Do for Love (of Money)

-
First we had the spicy secretary interview, now here comes the bitter mistress' book. It's so cliche', it would be almost boring if it were not for those little details that make you put this unique story into proper perspective.

Here is how Ms. Weinstein met Bernie in what she now considers "the unluckiest day of her life": "A secretive French donor gave $7 million to Hadassah" (the Women’s Zionist Organization of America, of which she was the CFO at the time), "on condition that it would remain with Bernard Madoff, where it was then invested" (you can't possibly make these things up).

The rest you can guess: "After a few months, Hadassah began to invest its own money with Madoff and it did very well" (how could it not?). "Over the next decade, Hadassah put in another $33 million, raising its total investment to $40 million by 1997, when it stopped adding principal" (I wonder why).

I guess, this is what love and money have in common. They both make you want to believe...
-

Desperate Housewives

-
We have endured the scorn and ridicule of every human being in possession of a keyboard, from famous writers, to political analysts, to lowly bloggers, just because our husbands happen to run the most formidable miracle machine of the past 2,000 years (let’s not be disrespectful here).

We have been forced to go almost a full year without our husbands’ bonuses causing indescribable pain and suffer to our personal trainers, decorators, shopping advisors etc.

We have been forced to participate in every excruciatingly boring charitable event that they can come up with, so that we can give back to those poor bastards a tiny fraction of the money our husbands have snatched (err, earned) by exploiting (err, investing) the markets’ stupidity (err, opportunity)…

And we have gone through all this with dignity and grace fully aware of our higher standing and purpose in life (as well as the fact that the 2009 bonuses will compensate for the 2008 losses).

BUT, HAVING TO WAIT IN LINE TO GET INTO YOUR PATHETIC LITTLE FUNDRAISERS IS SIMPLY TOO MUCH AND WE WILL NOT TOLETATE IT!!!

We hope we have made ourselves clear…

The third time’s the charm

So guess who is not drinking the kool aid at the green shoots party?

Yes, you guessed right. Fannie Mae. It seems the venerable institution, who we should remind our readers is as of lately under government conservatorship in order to find a way not suck badly, actually sucks pretty bad.

In an interesting twist on the whole green shoot scenarios, they lost 14,8 bil this quarter. Only slightly better than the 20 bil they lost last quarter. So most def that second derivative is looking good. But until they find a way to correct that first derivative, they are gonna have to hit that TARP bitch for something like 10 bil, in what will be the third Gov ATM withdrawal in the last year, bringing the total to 90 bil. Ouch. Hey at least they are not AIG right? Hit this and this for the details.

Ka-Chiiiing!!!

Harvard may have lost almost 30% of its endowment but its still keeping the faith. Specifically, its divesting some of it’s asset, Citi style. First up, the brand name Harvard Yard is licensed to someone to make an upscale preppy line of clothing presumably not to be sold to Harvard students but to the rest of us who could never afford to get into the actual school. ts ts ts. At least they went this way in order to close that budget gap, and not the California way.

Run Forrest Run

Ok so the title may not be the most representative but still the stupidity race is on, on who will sodomise the Lehman corpse. Here’s the story. Apparently New York city is claiming unpaid tax back up to 1996 from the Lehman liquidators to the tune of $627 mil. Yeah you read that correct. 1996. They just thought about those taxes today (2009 in case you fell in a time warp machine). Those poor guys are gonna have to start selling a lot more stress balls and umbrellas to pay that ticket…

Ponzi-nator

-
Impressed and alarmed by advances in artificial intelligence, a group of computer scientists is debating whether there should be limits on research that might lead to loss of human control over computer-based systems that carry a growing share of society’s workload, from waging war to chatting with customers on the phone.

Here is a novel idea: How about machine-run Ponzis??? Just think of the mouth-watering possibilities: from automated fictional statements generation, to empathy for the investors/victims (-I 've lost all my retirement money!! -Oh no, sorry to hear that")
-

After the Gold(man) Rush

It seems nowadays that everybody’s concern (including ours) is how Goldmans manages to dodge all market crises unscathed.

The latest piece dubbing Goldmans the Wall Street Bubble Mafia has generated controversy, with Goldmans firing back that Taibbi's piece is "an hysterical compilation of conspiracy theories" and a spokesman adding, "We reject the assertion that we are inflators of bubbles and profiteers in busts, and we are painfully conscious of the importance in being a force for good."

Taibbi shot back: "Goldman has its alumni pushing its views from the pulpit of the U.S. Treasury, the NYSE, the World Bank, and numerous other important posts; it also has former players fronting major TV shows. They have the ear of the president if they want it."

Rest assured my Dear Readers, that the Balcony will be watching this space closely, whilst looking for other Neil Young gold-related titles…

Blue Screen of Death

So basically this is it. Green shoots, brown shoots, whatever. California, no doubt about it…as Tupac used to say. Random photo from an ATM somewhere inside the 5th or 6th largest economy in the world, with a huge budget deficit of somewhere around 25 billion. And the ATM says i am so sorry but today’s special is cash only. Now, if i lived there i would be getting pretty scared by now.

PS maybe Arnie instead of IOUs can pay with signed autographs or something.

via boing boing

Heart of Gold(man)

The American economy remains in dire straits, with one worker in six unemployed or underemployed. Yet Goldman Sachs just reported record quarterly profits — and it’s preparing to hand out huge bonuses, comparable to what it was paying before the crisis. What’s wrong in this picture?

Paul Krugman explains why it is called Goldman Sachs instead of Goldman Sucks…