Citi's Just Not That Into You

I don't doubt this guy's (or gal's) math cred, but his grammar and business writing skills could use a little polishing. A rejected Citi Summer Analyst applicant responds to the indignity:

From: [redacted]
Sent: Monday, February 14, 2011 11:55am
To: [redacted at Citi]
Subject: Re: Citi Sales, Trading & Quantitative Analysis Summer Analyst Program

Hi [redacted]:

Thank you so much for replying to my email!!!

Ah, what a pity I missed one of the most prestigious bank in the world, and what a pity citi-group missed a mathematics genius like me, the smartest student ever in the engineering department, the one who beaten math majors in the most difficult competition in the world like idiots, and the one who astutely points out the mars existing in the Gaussian Copula and made proper corrections on it!! [Redacted]'s stupidity can surely not appreciate my conspicuously superior intellectuality. Woe to the fatuous decision, yet I humbly accpet!

Best of luck with citi-bank, and I sincerely hope the trading can still flourish with those incompetent workers, with those preposterous foreclosures and ludicrous CDO's, with those avaricious vampires drying the blood of tens of thousands of poor languishing in loans and poverty! Woe!

Woe indeed. How could Citi have missed the smartest student evah in the engineering department? Just ask his mother!

As my son approaches his teenage years, and prepares to confront the ultimate mystery of the cosmos - women - I hope to impart the following advice that has eluded so many well-intentioned fellows (including his father). That is, never, EVER pour your heart out in writing. If you need to say it - say it - in as few words as possible. You can always deny it later or claim you were misinterpreted. The "oh yeah, you didn't dump me, I dumped you!" letter is just bad form. And besides, it can now be reproduced in a blog so the world can see what a blathering idiot you are.

Wall Street Traders Are Coming For Your Job!

From The Corner on National Review Online. I repeat it all here, as it is wonderful stuff:

We are Wall Street. It's our job to make money. Whether it's a commodity, stock, bond, or some hypothetical piece of fake paper, it doesn't matter. We would trade baseball cards if it were profitable. I didn't hear America complaining when the market was roaring to 14,000 and everyone's 401k doubled every 3 years. Just like gambling, its not a problem until you lose. I've never heard of anyone going to Gamblers Anonymous because they won too much in Vegas.

Well now the market crapped out, & even though it has come back somewhat, the government and the average Joes are still looking for a scapegoat. God knows there has to be one for everything. Well, here we are.

Go ahead and continue to take us down, but you're only going to hurt yourselves. What's going to happen when we can't find jobs on the Street anymore? Guess what: We're going to take yours. We get up at 5am & work till 10pm or later. We're used to not getting up to pee when we have a position. We don't take an hour or more for a lunch break. We don't demand a union. We don't retire at 50 with a pension. We eat what we kill, and when the only thing left to eat is on your dinner plates, we'll eat that.

For years teachers and other unionized labor have had us fooled. We were too busy working to notice. Do you really think that we are incapable of teaching 3rd graders and doing landscaping? We're going to take your cushy jobs with tenure and 4 months off a year and whine just like you that we are so-o-o-o underpaid for building the youth of America. Say goodbye to your overtime and double time and a half. I'll be hitting grounders to the high school baseball team for $5k extra a summer, thank you very much.

So now that we're going to be making $85k a year without upside, Joe Mainstreet is going to have his revenge, right? Wrong! Guess what: we're going to stop buying the new 80k car, we aren't going to leave the 35 percent tip at our business dinners anymore. No more free rides on our backs. We're going to landscape our own back yards, wash our cars with a garden hose in our driveways. Our money was your money. You spent it. When our money dries up, so does yours.

The difference is, you lived off of it, we rejoiced in it. The Obama administration and the Democratic National Committee might get their way and knock us off the top of the pyramid, but it's really going to hurt like hell for them when our fat a**es land directly on the middle class of America and knock them to the bottom.

We aren't dinosaurs. We are smarter and more vicious than that, and we are going to survive. The question is, now that Obama & his administration are making Joe Mainstreet our food supply…will he? and will they?

More News Of Wall Street's Bad Call On Obama

Yet another story here of Wall Street's buyer's remorse with Barack Obama. I'm not a big fan of demonizing entire industries--especially an industry as important as the financial industry--but the move to the left (in a big way) by these guys in 2008 always struck me as ridiculous. More evidence of the "I've got so much money I can afford to be a liberal" mentality.

Schadenfreude, Wall Street Style

Schadenfreude, the German word which loosely translated means "joy in another's misfortune" applies this morning to my thoughts as I read this NYT front page story, "Irked, Wall St. Hedges Its Bet on Democrats". Readers know I am the last person to advocate a populist line, and I've never been much for the "grab your pitchforks, we're going to Wall Street" meme. That said, I think it is WONDERFUL to see the Wall Street crowd begin to experience true buyer's remorse with the Obama Administration.

We've talked here before about the super-rich, and their insulation from everyday pocketbook issues like inflation and taxes. When you're pulling in tens of millions of dollars a year, and income tax raise of two or three percent isn't that big a deal, nor is a rise of inflation of a couple of percentage points. Additionally, because one makes that kind of money, without the cares of the everyday, one has the luxury to become quite concerned for the lot of "everyone else". It is at this point that the super-rich become ardent environmentalists, humanitarians, and great social welfare advocates, both giving away portions of their own money AND advocating for greater confiscation of everyone else's (to pay for this largess. We refer to this as "taxation".).

But apparently, even Wall Street has a breaking point. The demonization of bankers by the administration has taken its toll, and there appears to be movement of Wall Streeters away from their adopted home in the Democratic Party toward a more capitalism friendly, business friendly embrace by the Republican Party.

Had I known that JP Morgan's CEO was such a big Dem--I'd probably have bought Goldman instead (I should have bought Goldman anyway). But as I do a little research into Lloyd Blankfein's contributions, I see he's a big D supporter anyway. Screw them. You get what you pay for, boys.

Paul Volcker On Financial Reform

Paul Volcker is an adult. He and Ronald Reagan tamed inflation and put the economy in a position to grow steadily (with a couple of small recessions) from 1983-2007.

He's got some thoughts on regulating the financial industry, and on their face, they don't necessarily bother me. These thoughts represent the core of the Obama bank reform proposal.

Vindictive tax schemes against banks and bankers just isn't the right way to go. That said, there may be some common sense restraints and regulations that could be implemented to deal with some of the systemic risk on Wall Street.

I think we should give Paul Volcker a good listen--much more of a good listen than we should give his boss.

UPDATE: Someone else thinks Volcker's ideas aren't too bad.

The President and The Fatcats

President Obama had the heads of the Five Famil...whoops, the heads of the largest banks over to the White House yesterday for a chat, a few hours after calling them "fatcats" in a 60 minutes interview. Ever the populist (puke), the President has firmly affixed blame for our fiscal crisis on these men, and then takes great pleasure in criticizing their bonus structure and other aspects of their compensation. A few thoughts.

Firstly, I suppose I wouldn't make a very good Fortune 500 CEO, because if this President ever hauled me in for a chat, I have a feeling that I might not actually be a very pliant guest. Over at Tigerhawk, there's a great post on what someone WISHED Jamie Dimon (of JP Morgan Chase--and by the way Jamie--how about getting that stock price up a bit?) had told the President. My favorite part:

"Also, you sent a clear, unspoken message today that you'll put a big surtax on my bonus if I resist your putting in a new federal bank consumer protection agency -- why don't you just call this new agency ACORN and be done with it? I spent years putting up with Sandy Weill. I already have my "fuck you" money. You may be President, but you aren't President for Life."

Next, it strikes me as impolitic to have call a bunch of people fatcats on one night and then try to persuade them to save your bacon domestically by loosening their loan practices to small business.

Moving on, I am struck by the moral dimension being applied here--which goes something like this. "You got the taxpayers into this mess and they bailed you out. Now you have a moral obligation to loosen your credit rules in order to fund small business loans and help get this economy out of dire straits." Where to begin, where to begin....

First of all, yes, Wall Street has blame in where we are. They saw an opportunity to make money, they failed to accurately and adequately assess risk, and they ignored for too long signals that now appear obvious that their business model was flawed. And secondly, yes, the Federal Government did intervene to shore up the nation's banking system in an effort to stave off systemic failure.

But where we are today is far more complicated than just "burn the bankers". How about John Q. Public's role? You know, the lady we covered here just yesterday, who blatantly speculated in real estate and then decided to simply walk away from their obligations? What about the politicians (on both sides, mind you!) who sought to curry favor with their constituencies by trumpeting "home-ownership" as if it were a human right, only to create a market of people who never should have been mortgage holders to begin with?

Furthermore, this suggestion that "the taxpayers" bailed out Wall Street is way overdone--especially when one remembers that four in ten workers PAY NO FEDERAL INCOME TAXES, and more to the point, it is far more likely that CHINESE TAXPAYERS ought to be thanked for the money, as it is they who bought our debt like it was coming back in style....

Finally, let's say for the sake of argument that everything the President says here is right. That STILL does not levy a moral mandate on the bankers to do anything except PAY THEIR OBLIGATION TO THE GOVERNMENT BACK. That is the most moral thing they could do, and it is to be honest--exactly what they are doing. Are we setting a new precedent here? Is there a suggestion that when someone obtains a $10,000 credit consolidation loan from a bank--that they are somehow MORALLY obligated to do business with that bank EVEN AFTER THE LOAN IS PAID BACK? Because at some level of abstraction, that's what we're saying to the bankers. Worse, the President is criticizing them primarily for failing to do exactly what it is that put us into the place we are--and that is make risky loans. Does anyone really think that these "fatcats" would avoid making a buck if there were a buck to make? Does the President have no sense that his business unfriendly policies are at least as responsible for small businesses not growing as any lack of capital there may be?