Cheap Blogging Crutch 11.05

Goldman One-Ups Gordon Gekko, Says Jesus Embraced Greed
God bless Goldman-Sachs. At the very least they're going around claiming that He does bless them. Yes, America's favorite pillagers and looters are sending spokesman to churches around the world to speak on how Jesus would have loved the latest round of massive bonuses that they handed out. Tell me about it. What was it Jesus said? "Sure it's easy for a rich man to enter the Kingdom of God, it's like trying to get a camel through the eye of a needle the size of the camel. It's fucking simple, now tell me how my stocks did." If there was any difficulty getting into Heaven it's probably because there'd be all these poor assholes standing at the gates (Jesus was a sucker for those destitute SOB's) asking the rich guy for spare change and he'd have a hard time knocking those peasant swine out of the way to get in.

Another View At Goldman's Trading Perfection And Statistical Improbabilities
It's Goldman-Sachs day on the Crutch, so we'll also point you to the Zero Hedge blog where a look at G-S figures finds they make $100 million in profit 3 out of every 5 days, their numbers challenge "not only all preconceptions of realistic trading, but also of statistical distributions", and those same figures are essentially comparable to a Ponzi scheme. I'm sure someone from the SEC will get right on it. Fuck it, why does God need to approve of Goldman-Sachs bonuses? God is obsolete. Goldman-Sachs is God; Money God. Let's worship them now.

The global climate change lobby: inside the battle to influence the most important environmental treaty of our lifetime
The Center for Public Integrity, crooked fuckers that they are, released a report today slandering innocent companies like Exxon Mobil, Peabody Coal and other energy and agriculture interests, for allegedly spreading fear and misinformation about the impact of emissions regulations in their attempts to neuter any proposed treaties that come out of the UN Climate Talks in Copenhagen. Just because they have numerous examples of energy companies in multiple countries using lies to drum up fear of any attempt to address climate change destroying everyone's job, doesn't mean it's true. They must be taking hundreds of events, the 5 lobbyists to every 1 member of Congress ratio, hundreds of millions of dollars spent fighting this, and a coordinated strategy out of context.

When antiscience kills: dowsing edition
The Bad Astronomy blog looks into dowsers, the completely bullshit practice of using Y-shaped sticks to divine water or gold, and how Iraq is spending millions, $85 million to be specific, on a "high-tech" version....as a way to detect bombs. To the point where they're phasing out bomb-sniffing dogs. Unsurprisingly the magic wands failed to detect two tons of explosives that ended up killing 155 people, yet the head of the Ministry of the Interior’s General Directorate for Combating Explosives refuses to switch to a different or more effective method citing his extensive knowledge of bombs. I.....you see.....uh.....WHAT THE FUCK? Good Lord, can we get the fuck out of Iraq already?

Broken News: Solemn memorial marks tragic anniversary in New York

NEW YORK--Hundreds of well-heeled mourners gathered yesterday on the one-year anniversary of perhaps the city's greatest tragedy in a generation: the collapse of Lehman Brothers. A steady drizzle covered the ceremony, held at the now vacant 7th Ave headquarters, from start to finish.

Attendees fought back tears as the names of several hundred investment bankers lost in the collapse were read aloud. A single trading bell rang out at the precise minute when employees of the global financial services giant were herded into the building's main conference room and summarily dismissed.

A small pile of monogrammed gym bags, famous for being used to smuggle out personal affects and pilfered office supplies last year, was arranged on the sidewalk as an impromptu tribute to the fallen. A small fire, fueled by $100 Monopoly bills, burned unwaveringly throughout the affair. Off in the corner a novelty desktop drinking bird comically bobbed and dipped it's beak into a glass full of Veuve Clicquot, in solemn remembrance of the fallen.

The ceremony was not exclusively somber, however. The crowd was not without light-hearted quips about grabbing dinner at Per Se and planning a weekend jaunt to the Hamptons. One mourner was heard to sarcastically complain about being unable to fold his wallet due to "All of these fucking Franklins."

The organizers had hoped to announce the preliminary plans for a monument to honor those that had sacrificed their jobs so bravely and unwillingly. The installation, a $1.2 billion dollar Frank Gehry deconstructivist representation of a desk nameplate with the names of the fallen and their net worth, both pre and post Lehman, inscribed on the front, was scrapped when the memorial fund money was mistakenly invested into a mortgage backed security. Those on the monument building committee had noted that they hoped the government would step in "as the free market intended," to provide funding for such an important memorial to what was certainly New York's most tragic day in over a decade.

After the ceremony had concluded, several former employees, all of whom are now in law school, gathered and revived "Sodomize the Pensioner," one of their favorite drinking games from the heady days of unchecked global financial greed.

"I don't think anyone will ever forget where they were when this happened," said former investment banker Todd Llewelyn III, who was let go by Lehman one year ago yesterday. "The magnitude of this tragedy will define an entire Harvard and Yale graduating class. Maybe even a few people from Brown. We will forever remember this as 'The Day In Which We Were All Minorly Inconvenienced Just Because We Collapsed the World Economy'."

"Christ," he reminisced, tears welling up in his eyes. "I still remember one of my fellow junior level execs having to go ask his father for a $250,000 loan just to tide him over the final two weeks of September, after which he would begin his new job at Barclay's. It still haunts me to this day. I faced my own shame, having to slink back to my father's private London investment firm to humbly accept a CFO position. But it's made me a stronger, better person. Well, a stronger person. Actually, let's just say I am still recognizable as a person using standard societal definitions and leave it at that."

As the sun dipped behind a rain cloud, casting the scene in a gray pallor, representatives from New York City stepped forward to commemorate the day and comfort those who are still forced to live solely on their trust funds, one year after the fact.

Speaking to the assembled unemployed, Mayor Michael Bloomberg declared, "These are a resilient people. And while the pain of this tremendous loss still lingers, so too does the resolve of the entitled, over-educated, greedy pricks who fucked the global economy. Never let the tragic events of a year ago dissuade you from creating the new arcane financial instruments and investment bubbles in other exploitable areas. Go forth with the knowledge that this couldn't possibly ever happen again."

As the assembled masses broke out into applause, several drivers and personal assistants were instructed to light and raise their lighters in solidarity. One man was thought to have said "never again", but after he was confronted by several former bankers, he explained that he meant "never again would he allow himself to be scapegoated for problems he caused" and not "never again would he dangerously leverage securities and credit default swaps in a reckless manner."

After this clarification was made, a roar went up from the crowd before they all dispersed to attend Fashion Week after-parties.

Life in our horrific financial apocalypse: Day 1 (New York City)

Sick evil fuck that I am, I decided to swing by Lehman Bros. headquarters yesterday evening for a little rubbernecking. Broadway between 50th & 49th was flooded with news vans, reporters and photographers. Three NYPD officers patrolled the building's entrance alongside six uniformed private security guards. Even the tourists knew what was going on as they waddled by in thick packs stinking of bemused horror coupled with a deeper unease, snapping photos and smiling as, well, tourists do.

A good friend of mine, who also happens to be a financial journalist, claims the shitshow was much worse earlier in the day, when the first wave of newly unemployed began emerging from the revolving doors at the base of the three-story jumbotron fronting the Lehman building. Another reporter with a New York paper, whom I promised not to identify, speculated that The Axe must have been working its way from floor to floor, department to department, as the sad suits tended to hit the street in groups every half-hour or so.

It was hard to miss the smug satisfaction with which We, the observers, greeted Them, the freshly untethered greedhounds. We seemed to be in agreement that the investment banking industry is best defined as an enterprise whose price of admission is a combination of meager intelligence and the kind of moral flexibility that urges one to never look too deeply or for too long at the collateral damage inflicted by its undertaking.

The Fucked were easily marked -- apart from the pink ties in tight Double Windsor knots and the haircuts that cost more than my last loan payment -- by their gym bags, uniform green duffels with the Lehman Brothers logo stitched on one side, the Nike logo on the ass-end. On any other day these bags are mostly empty, containing a pair of running shoes, a shower kit, probably a ball of sweaty clothing inside a plastic bag. Maybe a water bottle or a Clif bar or a three-pack of flavored Trojans. Yesterday they bulged at the seams with framed pictures, odd office acoutrements, back-up dress shirts, and, I wager, stacks of revised resumes printed on the best stock still laying around the supply closets.

There were piles of those bags in every corner of Emmett O'Lenney's, the bar to which we repaired for eavesdropping. Emmett's is one of the roughly 2 million upscale pubs dotting the midtown terrain like disconcerting blots on a chest x-ray. To my right drank a group of freshly shitcanned that grew to 16 at its peak. The bartender tells me this is their usual haunt. None of them could have been much older than 30. The men, clean-shaven, close cropped hair, wore high-priced suits in various degrees of disarray; the women form-fitting tops over tight black pants or knee-length skirts. These are the alpha males and the prom queens, the Type-A's at the gym every single morning, the New Greed. The scene looked more like a J. Crew catalog than a group of people employing alcohol to brunt the cold, hard truth that they can suddenly no longer afford the lifestyle to which they had grown accustomed.

I had made the mistake of arriving while they were on round one or two. So I drank, waited, rooted for some sort of substance-fueled collapse of the social order that was bound to happen around that fifth martini. I wanted fear and panic and repressed sexual aggression to rear their heads all at once. I wanted a violent, bloody orgy with tattered Banana Republic blazers used as crude pillows and high-end lingerie lodged in the ceiling fans. A young man about my age who looks like the kind of guy to keep a tub of Builder Protein in his desk drawer, ordered a round of Kamikaze shots and the group toasted, "To the future..."

And nothing happens in the two hours I'm there. Fair amount of drink, very little sulking, seeds sewn for the evening's sexual transgressions. No violence, crying, gnashing of teeth. Just a lot of talk about law school or which MBA program makes the most sense. After all, this is America. Even in a world where top-shelf vodka and $200/gram cocaine are the preferred narcotics, the one drug nobody can kick is Hope. Making $300 thousand per year in your mid-twenties will do that to you, I suppose. Even after the Invisible Hand bitch slaps them across the face, these people, having never been given good reason to suspect otherwise, go on assuming everything will just work itself out.