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FLASH: POWERFUL CONGRESSMAN BARNEY FRANK TO RETIRE

FULL STORY HERE 

Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.) will announce Monday that he is not seeking re-election, ending a 32-year career in the House.

Frank, 71, is the top Democrat on the Financial Services Committee and the architect, with former Sen. Chris Dodd (D-Conn.), of the sweeping Wall Street regulatory reform law enacted in 2010.

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Convicted Wall Street Trader Wants to Find Love from Behind Bars

Ladies, take note: His scheduled release date is Dec. 11, 2013.

An imprisoned Wall Street trader who has admitted to running one of the biggest mob-linked stock frauds in US history is searching for a lady willing to overlook his sleazy past.

Although currently housed in a federal prison, former millionaire fallen trader Roy Ageloff has posted a smarmy online dating profile promoting himself as an aristocrat of finance and announcing his quest to find a woman with “an honest heart.”

“What good is it to be king if you have no queen?” Ageloff, a Brooklyn native, asks on the Web site Prison Inmates Online.
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Flash: NBA Will Play (If You Happen to Care…)

Early this morning, NBA fans received their first Christmas gift: a tentative agreement to end the 149-day lockout.

One final, 15-hour marathon negotiating session brought together the final elements of a new collective bargaining agreement that fans have been yearning for since owners locked out the players July 1.

The deal will allow the league to begin its season on Christmas Day, with the season’s first tipoff to take place at Madison Square Garden, where the Knicks will play the Celtics at noon.

That game is part of a cross-country tripleheader that will include Miami at Dallas in an NBA Finals rematch before MVP Derrick Rose and Chicago close the day by facing off against Kobe Bryant and the Los Angeles Lakers.

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State of the Nation: Are We Going Mad ?

Some say yes while others say no. Then there are those who say gmdgsdkghnsfgkjdfnblbkndlkgnmdslkvmro-5tk4tmgo5kigm499y04967609$T%#$@ ER R Y% H^^Y%UIUUWYT$WYEU^IU^&I.

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Young Workers Experience a Long Trip to the Real World

Earlier this fall, Steve Ferdman celebrated getting a job offer from Credit Suisse in the usual Wall Street fashion. Over expensive oysters and dark rum cocktails at a trendy Manhattan restaurant with his parents, he toasted landing the full-time position after working six months as a consultant without benefits.

A week later, Mr. Ferdman, 28, sat alone at the same place and ordered a gin and tonic to lament getting laid off by the bank, for the second time since 2008. When he told the bartender about his misfortune, his next round was on the house.

“I did everything right. I came into work every day, I put in long hours, and I still got punched in the face,” Mr. Ferdman said. “People shouldn’t want to work in this industry anymore.”

Being young on Wall Street once meant having it all: style, smarts and too much money to spend wisely. Now, twenty-somethings in the finance industry are losing both cash and cachet.

Sam Meek, 27, of Greenwich, Conn., was laid off from his job at a hedge fund. "I'm scraping by right now," he said.Andrew Sullivan for The New York TimesSam Meek, 27, of Greenwich, Conn., was laid off from his job at a hedge fund. “I’m scraping by right now,” he said.

Three years after the global financial crisis nearly brought Wall Street firms to the brink, the nation’s largest banks are again struggling. As profits wane, layoffs have claimed thousands of jobs and those still employed have watched their compensation shrink. These problems are set against the morale-crushing backdrop of the Occupy Wall Street movement, which has made a villain of a once-lionized industry.

Much of the burden of Wall Street’s latest retrenchment has fallen on young financiers. The number of investment bank and brokerage firm employees between the ages 20 and 34 fell by 25 percent from the third quarter of 2008 to the same period of 2011, a loss of 110,000 jobs from layoffs, attrition and voluntary departures.

By comparison, industry headcount dropped by 17 percent in the same period, according to an analysis by The New York Times of data for New York City provided by the Bureau of Labor Statistics. The number of staff members over the age of 55 decreased by only 11 percent.

Young financiers have experienced setbacks in the past. Bankers and traders who rushed wide-eyed to Wall Street in the halcyon days of the 1980s were waylaid by the stock market crash of Oct. 19, 1987, known as Black Monday. Then they got pummeled in 2000 by the dot-com collapse and the recession that followed.

But experts say that today’s doldrums, unlike previous downturns, are here to stay.

“A lot of the positions that are being cut right now aren’t coming back,” said Leslie K. Hild, a vice president with the recruiting firm Right Management. “It’s an emotional roller coaster for almost everyone.”

The industry’s woes have also affected the plans of undergraduate and graduate students at the nation’s top colleges.

At Harvard Business School, where a relatively high 39 percent of this year’s graduates went into finance, compared to 34 percent last year, there has been a “heck of a lot more anxiety” about next year’s hiring season, according to William A. Sahlman, a professor of business administration.

“People used to think of some of these organizations, like a Morgan Stanley or aGoldman Sachs, as safe career bets,” Professor Sahlman said. “Those firms are not going away, but they’re going to hire half the people they hired before.”

Several large firms are not recruiting new entry-level analysts for their investment banking divisions this fall, having filled their entire incoming class with last summer’s interns. At the University of Pennsylvania, whose Wharton School is the closest thing that exists to a Wall Street farm team, Goldman Sachs canceled its informational session.

The mood is even darker outside the Ivy League. Matthew Slotnick, a senior economics major at Boston College, said that he had sent more than 100 résumés to contacts on Wall Street and received several interviews. But he has not gotten any offers. Mr. Slotnick, who has wanted to work at an investment bank since entering college, is now applying to smaller banks and firms outside of New York.

“People are saying it’s sort of a 2007, 2008-type hiring climate,” he said. “I haven’t given up, but it’s a bit depressing.”

Any sympathy for Wall Street’s huddled masses yearning to get rich should be tempered by the fact that financial sector recessions often deal a soft blow. Laid-off financial workers typically get large severance packages, including the use of outplacement services. During their job hunt, many can draw on substantial savings built off past bonuses, on top of collecting unemployment.

But for those laid-off Wall Street workers whose golden tickets have vanished, the disillusionment is real.

Sam Meek, 27, who was laid off in September when his Connecticut hedge fund decided to downsize, used to spend $500 on charity dinners and lavish golf outings. Now, it’s home-cooked meals and beer on the sofa. Recently, Mr. Meek and his roommate, another unemployed banker who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he did not want to jeopardize his job search, sat together in the kitchen filing for unemployment and drinking a bottle of Champagne.

“I’m scraping by right now,” he said.

Mr. Meek, a former Marine, says he is pursuing several job options, including an opportunity to help develop a social network for the military. But he remains reluctant to commit to a new company.

“I’m doing full due diligence,” he said.

Older financiers are having problems, too. Ian C. Horowitz, 40, a former equity researcher at Rafferty Capital Markets, was laid off in June when his firm decided to outsource its research division. Mr. Horowitz currently collects $400 a week in unemployment benefits and has been mowing lawns and doing odd jobs around his New Jersey town to support his wife and two children.

Mr. Horowitz, who lived through the downturn of 2001, said that the latest cuts felt different.

“There have been economic moments where things were bad, but you knew the pendulum would swing the other direction,” he said. “This is structural. The playing field has changed.”

Wall Street’s social scene has also changed, thanks to Occupy Wall Street and the fear of reproach from industry outsiders. Today’s young bankers no longer brag about their jobs, especially in public. One twenty-something Goldman Sachs employee, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he was not allowed to speak on the record, said he now told new acquaintances he worked at a consulting firm.

The mood has darkened so much that even the young Wall Street workers who still have prestigious jobs are considering letting go of the brass ring.

“It’s lost its luster,” said a former Goldman analyst who left the financial sector this year. The former analyst, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he signed a confidentiality agreement with the firm, said that in addition to losing some of the monetary benefits of their jobs, his friends who remained in finance were suffering from peer envy. “The new status jobs aren’t at Goldman Sachs. They’re at GoogleApple and Facebook.”

For many of the high-achieving, type-A young professionals who end up on Wall Street, being tossed around by an industry in tumult can amount to the first real failure of their lives. Even if the industry recovers, some may not stick around long enough to see their fortunes improve.

“I’m still scratching my head,” said a former employee of Nomura, the large Japanese bank, who was laid off on Oct. 1. “I went to the right schools, I know the right people and I’m very good at what I do. But when you have to cut costs, you have to cut costs.”

The ex-Nomura employee, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because a confidentiality clause is attached to her severance package, said she had recently come across a group of Occupy Wall Street protesters in Lower Manhattan. While she said she did not support all their ideals, she could now sympathize with their frustrations about high unemployment and a growing sense of economic hopelessness.

“I’m in the same boat as these guys,” she said of the protesters. “I just want to start working.”

SOURCE: THE NEW YORK TIMES DEALBOOK

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Intrinsic Capitalist Structure to Occupy Wall Street Members #OWS #Occupy

Hell no, we won’t go — unless we get goose down pillows.

A key Occupy Wall Street leader and another protester who leads a double life as a businessman ditched fetid tents and church basements for rooms at a luxurious hotel that promises guests can “unleash [their] inner Gordon Gekko,” The Post has learned.

The $700-per-night W Hotel Downtown last week hosted both Peter Dutro, one of a select few OWS members on the powerful finance committee, and Brad Spitzer, a California-based analyst who not only secretly took part in protests during a week-long business trip but offered shelter to protesters in his swanky platinum-card room.

NO PARK-ING: Instead of Zuccotti Park squalor a swanky room at the W Hotel Downtown was more comfy for Brad Spitzer (pictured) and other well-heeled protesters.

J.C. RICE
NO PARK-ING: Instead of Zuccotti Park squalor a swanky room at the W Hotel Downtown was more comfy for Brad Spitzer (pictured) and other well-heeled protesters.
A room at the W Hotel Downtown

J.C. RICE
A room at the W Hotel Downtown
Peter Dutro

Peter Dutro

“Tents are not for me,” he confessed, when confronted in the sleek black lobby of the Washington Street hotel where sources described him as a “repeat” guest.

Spitzer, 24, an associate at financial-services giant Deloitte, which netted $29 billion in revenue last year, admitted he joined the protest at Zuccotti Park several times.

“I’m staying here for work,” said Spitzer, dressed down in a company T-shirt and holding a backpack and his suitcase. “I do finance, but I support it still.”

During his stay, hotel sources said, he and other ragtag revolutionaries he brought into the hotel lived like 1 percenters. He would order up a roll-out bed to accommodate guests, they said.

“He’s here all the time,” a hotel source said. “We all see him at the protest.”

Spitzer denied sheltering Occupiers. He claimed he only invited in a blogger buddy living at the park to wash off his camp grime.

Meanwhile, Dutro, 35, one of only a handful of OWS leaders in charge of the movement’s $500,000 in donations, checked in on Wednesday, the night after police emptied Zuccotti Park.

While hundreds of his rebel brethren scrambled to find shelter in church basements, Dutro chose the five-star, 58-story hotel, with its lush rooms and 350-count Egyptian cotton sheets. He lives only a short taxi ride away in Carroll Gardens, Brooklyn.

“I knew everything was going to be a clusterf–k in the morning,” he told The Post, alluding to Occupy’s own disruption plans. “How would I get over the bridge when they were shutting it down?”

The tattoo artist-turned-Occupy money man took the elevator up to the fifth-floor welcome desk, where a disc jockey spins tunes and guests enjoy a vista of the growing freedom tower.

He said he spent $500 of his own money to get the room because he wanted a good night’s rest ahead of the cause’s two-month ceremony the next day and raucous post-raid protests.

“I knew . . . there was a high probability of getting arrested,” he said. “I wanted a nice room. That’s OK. Not everybody there is dirt poor.”

He paid for the palace with his American Express card.

“It is an expensive hotel. Whatever,” he said.

The rooms have 37-inch flat-screen TVs, window seats overlooking the city and iPod-dock alarm clocks. Visitors can order 12-year-old Glenlivet scotch for $375 a bottle, or an $18 pastrami sandwich, from room service. There’s even a menu for four-legged guests, including a $16 dog dish of Niman Ranch ground beef.

He claims he chose the W for its convenience, not its luxury.

“I’m not in the business of throwing money away,” he said. “It’s the only room I could find.”

And he claims he took care of comrades in less-comfortable digs.

“I took food to all those churches,” he said. “I got them cigarettes.”

Occupiers told The Post that they witnessed other General Assembly and group leaders stay in both the W Downtown and the Marriott Hotel — and said that key players were not present when cops stormed Zuccotti.
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