Everything You Need to Know About Wall Street, in One Brief Tale

 

POSTED: January 13, 9:15 AM ET

If there was ever a news story that crystalized the moral dementia of modern Wall Street in one little vignette, this is it.

Newspapers in Colorado today are reporting that the elegant Hotel Jerome in Aspen, Colorado, will be closed to the public from today through Monday at noon.

Why? Because a local squire has apparently decided to rent out all 94 rooms of the hotel for three-plus days for his daughter’s Bat Mitzvah.

The hotel’s general manager, Tony DiLucia, would say only that the party was being thrown by a "nice family," but newspapers are now reporting that the Daddy of the lucky little gal is one Jeffrey Verschleiser, currently an executive with Goldman, Sachs.

At first, I couldn't remember how I knew that name. But then I looked it up and saw an explosive Atlantic magazine story, published last year, called, "E-mails Suggest Bear Stearns Cheated Clients Out Of Millions." And then I remembered that piece, and it hit me: Jeffrey Verschleiser is one of the biggest assholes in the entire world!

Swiss central bank chief quits over wife's currency deal

By Catherine Bosley and Caroline Copley

BERNE | Mon Jan 9, 2012 2:12pm EST

(Reuters) - Swiss National Bank Chairman Philipp Hildebrand resigned with immediate effect on Monday, saying he could not prove he had been unaware of a currency trade made by his wife and wanted to protect the integrity of the central bank.

Hildebrand's decision to relinquish one of the world's top central banking jobs after just two years came as Swiss parliamentarians met to discuss the scandal, which erupted last week after Sarasin bank sacked an employee who leaked details of the trade to a political opponent of the central banker.

Hildebrand's wife Kashya, a former hedge fund trader who now runs a Zurich art gallery, bought 400,000 Swiss francs ($418,000) worth of dollars on August 15, three weeks before her husband oversaw steps to cap the rise of the safe-haven franc. She later sold the dollars at a higher rate.

At a news conference four days ago, Hildebrand had resisted calls to step down, saying he only learned of his wife's trade the day after she made it and rejecting claims that he had personally authorized the currency deal.

But he told reporters on Monday he could not provide final evidence that he had been unaware of the trade and had decided to step down as he realized the intense public scrutiny over the affair was compromising his credibility.

"I have come to the conclusion that it is not possible to provide conclusive and final evidence that my wife did indeed initiate the foreign exchange transaction on the 15th August without my knowledge," he said.

DYLAN RATIGAN: How We Can Stop Corporate Communists, Banksters And Other Vampires From Sucking America Dry

This is an excerpt from Dylan Ratigan's 'Greedy Bastards, How We Can Stop Corporate Communists, Banksters and Other Vampires from Sucking America Dry.'

Chapter 1: Trillion Dollar Vampires

Imagine an ordinary man so desperate that he decides to rob a bank. For years, he’s worked a steady job, but when he loses that job, the only work he can find is as a part-time clerk in a convenience store.

Still, he makes do. He cuts his expenses and relies on a little help from his family, though he hates to do so. Then he starts to develop health troubles. He’s nearly sixty years old, and he needs foot surgery. He develops crippling back pain and a frightening bone protrusion sticking out of his chest. He can no longer lift the stock he is supposed to load onto the shelves at the store. Although he could move in with his sister, he doesn’t want to be a burden, and he knows that she can’t afford to pay for his health care out of pocket any better than he can. So what choices does he have? He goes into the local bank and slips the teller a note. It demands $1—and health care.

This is not a fantasy, and the man wasn’t crazy. He was thinking clearly about a crazy situation. Jail, he realized, was the one place where he could get health care without bankrupting himself and his family. “Because he only asked for $1,” Yahoo! News reported, “he was charged with larceny, not bank robbery. But he said that if his punishment isn’t severe enough, he plans to tell the judge that he’ll do it again. His $100,000 bond has been reduced to $2,000, but he says he doesn’t plan to pay it.” Jail, he said, was the best of his bad options.

Venezuela will not recognize World Bank ruling in Exxon case

By Daniel Wallis

CARACAS | Sun Jan 8, 2012 8:00pm EST 

(Reuters) - Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez said on Sunday that his country would not recognize any ruling by a World Bank tribunal in a multibillion-dollar arbitration case with Exxon Mobil Corp.

Exxon took Venezuela to the World Bank's International Center for Settlement of Investment Disputes, or ICSID, seeking as much as $12 billion in compensation after Chavez ordered the nationalization of the Cerro Negro oil project in 2007.

"I tell you now: we will not recognize any decision by ICSID," Chavez said during a televised speech. He has repeatedly accused the U.S. oil major of using unfair deals in the past to "rob" the South American OPEC member of its resources.

"They are immoral ... How much could they steal in 50 years? Who would dare launch this madness without any foundation? They wanted $12 billion. From where, compadre?" he said.

"We are not going to bow before imperialism and its tentacles, understand that ... They are trying the impossible: to get us to pay them. We are not going to pay them anything."

Top Three Central Banks Account For Up To 25% Of Developed World GDP

EXCLUSIVE-Big banks may line up to block sale of LME

* Potential bidders CME, ICE would entail U.S. regulation

* Tough regulator could curb holdings of dominant positions

* Blocking stake of 25.1 pct seen achievable

By Melanie Burton and Susan Thomas

LONDON, Jan 3 (Reuters) - Top bank stakeholders of the London Metal Exchange are likely to amass enough support to block a sale they fear would bring a more heavily regulated owner and hurt their lucrative warehousing businesses, senior industry sources say.

The LME said in September that at least 10 parties had expressed interest in buying it, and analysts estimate it could be worth as much as $1 billion. As a member-owned organisation, the exchange requires approval from members holding 75 percent of outstanding ordinary or "A" shares for any sale.

Potential buyers are likely to include CME Group Inc , IntercontinentalExchange and SGX Singapore Exchange. The first two in particular have stricter U.S. regulators, which could threaten members' businesses.

Big banks such as J.P. Morgan and Goldman Sachs have invested heavily in physical metals business since the economic downturn began by buying warehouses and beefing up their trading teams and financing operations.

Shunting metal around has been a money spinner for them as slowing global growth pulls down commodity prices and leads to stockpiles of surplus material.

Exclusive: Italian banks tap 116 billion euros of ECB loans

A women walk past a Unicredit bank in Rome November 14, 2011.

Credit: Reuters/Stefano Rellandini

By Stefano Bernabei and Luca Trogni

ROME/MILAN | Wed Dec 21, 2011 1:39pm EST

(Reuters) - More than a dozen Italian banks, including top lenders UniCredit (CRDI.MI) and Intesa Sanpaolo (ISP.MI), tapped 116 billion euros ($143.52 billion) of new three-year loans offered by the European Central Bank, nearly a quarter of the total, three sources with direct knowledge of the matter told Reuters.
The ECB's first ever offer of three-year loans on Wednesday drew demand for a massive 489 billion euros from 523 banks, raising hopes a credit crunch can be avoided and that the money could be used to buy Italian and Spanish bonds.
"It's a 116 billion euros," one senior banking source told Reuters. Two other sources confirmed that amount.
The Italian figure includes 40.4 billion euros of state-backed bank bonds which were used as collateral for the loans. But banks could also offer other types of collateral for the ECB loans, such as government bonds for example.
A document from Italy's stock exchange Borsa Italiana showed 14 banks had listed state-guaranteed bank bonds on the MOT regulated bond market, a pre-requisite for those bonds to be accepted as collateral for the ECB new loans.
The biggest amount, 12 billion euros, of state-backed bonds was taken up by Intesa Sanpaolo (ISP.MI), which confirmed it had used them as collateral for the loans, and said that these would help it complete pre-funding for its wholesale medium and long term maturities for 2012.
The stock exchange document showed Banca Monte dei Paschi di Siena (BMPS.MI) has listed bonds for 10 billion euros, while UniCredit has floated 7.5 billion euros of bonds.
Among the other 14 banks are Banco Popolare (BAPO.MI) with bonds worth 3 billion euros, Banca Popolare di Sondrio (BPSI.MI), Banca Etruria (PEL.MI), Banca Popolare dell'Emilia Romagna (EMII.MI) and Credito Emiliano (EMBI.MI).

Fed Loads Up Balance Sheets, Begins Europe Bailout On Same Week It Promises Not To: Data

By Eleazar David Meléndez: Subscribe to Eleazar's RSS feed
December 20, 2011 2:17 PM EST
In spite of spending most of the last week reassuring the public that it would not use its resources to bail out European banks and having decided against engaging on another round of balance sheet expansion, data shows the U.S. Federal Reserve engaged in precisely those two actions that week.
On Tuesday, the top decision-making body of the U.S. Federal Reserve held a monthly meeting in which -- according to a statement released that day -- it ultimately decided against the new round of monetary easing that many market observers had anticipated. On Wednesday, Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke met with Republican lawmakers, telling them behind closed doors that no bailout of Europe was forthcoming.
On Thursday, however, data released by that central banking entity showed that, in spite of public pronouncements and private promises to the contrary, the U.S. central bank tacitly did those very things last week.
A particularly troublesome datapoint further suggests the Fed quietly bailed out a major financial institution midweek, something at least one bank strategist has already surmised.