Some say Wall Street still doesn’t get it:

NYT: “People come here because they want to work hard and get paid a lot for working hard,” one investment banker said Friday as he wended his way, lunch bag in hand, through the World Financial Center. “I think there’s a disconnect between Wall Street and Main Street.”

There’s definitely a disconnect.

But perhaps is it us bankers?

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The Russian may no longer be the wealthiest in the football world, but at least he has his hot girlfriend and their place on the moon.

CNN: Russian billionaire Abramovich has slipped to third place behind Manchester City’s new owner Sheikh Mansour bin Zayed Al Nahyan.

Sheikh Mansour, a member of the Abu Dhabi royal family, has a fortune of £15 billion ($22.04B), according to the Football Rich List, researched and published by FourFourTwo magazine.

Abramovich has …

Carlyle Group, the world’s second largest private equity fund, is laying off 10% of its worldwide workforce, or about 100 people. Carlyle has $91.5 billion in assets under management.

“In response to extraordinary market conditions, Carlyle has taken measured steps to balance its cost structure with the current investment climate,” the company said.

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File this one under “Unfortunate Ad Placements.” On a day that the Dow dropped 680 points (7.7 percent), MarketWatch ran the Jack Daniels banner ad in the screenshot above (sent to us by reader Scott Murff). The ad shows the “countdown to the close” of the market in minutes and seconds, suggesting that might be a good time for a drink. Juxtaposed with the headline “Bears Refusing To Hibernate,” it takes on additional meaning.

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The New York Times chronicles a now-familiar tale of incompetence and greed that led to the (all but) destruction of another legendary global financial services firm:

Oblivious CEO (Chuck Prince)
Idiot risk manager who assured oblivious CEO that everything was great until the day it wasn’t (David Bushnell)
Inadequate risk controls, wet-noodle risk managers pushed around by big swinging dicks who made 100X as much money
Trading boss incented …

From The Economist:

An important reason why the American economy has been so resilient and recessions so mild since 1982 is the energy of consumers. Their spending has been remarkably stable, not only because drops in employment and income have been less severe than of old, but also because they have been willing and able to borrow. The long rise in asset prices—first of stocks, then of houses—raised consumers’ net worth and made saving seem less necessary. And borrowing became easier, …

NBC News reports Obama will nominate: Tim Geithner.

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Most major global markets now point to deflation

- Consumers are not buying houses because they think that house prices will be lower

- Consumption has screeched to a halt

- 1% growth in online commerce

Paul Kedrosky points to a graph on Bloomberg that does seem to suggest that deflation may be more of a reality than widely expected.

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some more action from our pals at bankruptcybill

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Hello from Bankruptcybill

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We buy their cars, helping them to annual revenues of £5.2 billion, we give them the cache of the uber trendy and make them mystical in the eyes of the civilian populace, and this is how they treat us. You should be aware of Porsche’s recent moves to squeeze the short sellers on Volkswagen’s shares which came to light this week.

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An ad billboard has caused outrage in a Chinese city by featuring what appears to be a man hanging from a rope.

The advertisement, on top of the Yinji Shopping Mall in Zhengzhou, actually features a mannequin hanging from the top of the billboard.

In a reference to the global financial crisis, it reads: “It’s better to invest money here than put it into the stock market.”

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The boss of successful US hedge fund quit the industry with a rousing farewell letter dismissing his rivals as over-privileged “idiots” and thanking “stupid” traders for making him rich.

Andrew Lahde’s $80 million Los Angeles-based firm Lahde Capital Management return 1000% last year by betting against subprime mortgages.

The 37-year-old told his clients that he had hated the business and had only been in it for the money. And after declaring he would no longer manage money for …

If you dont like words…

check out some delicious chart porn, its a historical overview which explains why your going to get about 5% of your bonus this year.

source

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Flushed with the success of securing $40 billion of settlements from Merrill Lynch, UBS and Citigroup, US state regulators are about to turn the screw on banks accused of mis-selling auction rate securities (ARS).

If the almighty credit crunch wasn’t enough to obliterate bank stock prices, the recent wins in the US will.

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One year after the credit crunch began Fortune wrote an interesting article about those who saw trouble ahead and those who just ended up in trouble

- read article here

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Societe Generale disclosed last week that it had recorded a 45% drop in new accounts in a sign that customers are being scared away by the biggest rogue trading scandal in history. Jerome Kervial

Six months ago the junior trader, was accused of losing almost €5 billion, SoGen; France’s second largest bank said it registered 23k new French accounts in the second quarter. The figure for the same period last year was 45k;

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Across the pond, a Wall Street horror story continues to make waves.

Steven Rattner, Managing Director at Credit Suisse, resigned or got fired earlier this week after having an affair with a married woman whose nutbag husband later launched a global Internet smear campaign. (The contrite Mr. Rattner, who broke no laws and violated no corporate policy, shared his story with the NYT’s Andrew Ross Sorkin.)

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