October 2009

Happy Halloween from TRB

Editors Note: This post originally appeared on October 17th 2009. Have a Happy Halloween and Enjoy! Its that time of year again… As we speak, your neighborhood freak is busy shoving rusty screws into the Milky Way bars, teen boys are stocking up on eggs and toilet paper and teen girls are shopping for either…

Hot Links: Dimon and the Dollar

Hot Links for Weekend Reading… The Madoff prison interview.  (NYP) The Jamie Dimon book, Last Man Standing, reviewed in the Times.  (NYT) Strolling the Smart Phone Red Light District with Baruch.  (UltimiBarbarorum) Kedrosky on Creativity and Compression, a must read for writers/ bloggers.  (InfectiousGreed) Dollar got its swagger back this week.  (Bloomberg) Bored with the…

Goldman Sachs is the Yankees, Citigroup is the Mets

There’s a delicious irony about New York baseball and New York banks that I think is worth discussing in light of the imminent Yankees World Series victory. As baseball fans throughout the nation piss and moan about the fact that the Yankees have the wealth of NY to draw upon when pricing tickets, broadcast rates and payroll…

Hot Links: Smoke, Mirrors and Record Bonuses

Stuff I’m Reading this Morning… John Crudele: The recovery is all smoke and mirrors.  (NYP) Happy 50 millionth visitor to The Big Picture!  (TBP) Merrill Lynch and Wells Fargo strategists on what the Treasury‘s walking away will mean for interest rates.  (SmartMoney) 11 strangest deductions the IRS allows (yes, breast implants are on the list). …

Ayn Rand Eviscerated in GQ

I’ve not read anything by Andrew Corsello before, but his evisceration of Ayn Rand in GQ magazine is a thing of caustic, vicious and snark-filled beauty. I did my share of battle with the Rand Cult earlier this fall when I interviewed her Ghost to discuss capitalism’s share of blame for the credit crisis.  Corsello…

iPhone Halloween Costume

This is pretty cool, these guys strapped giant LCD TVs to themselves to become iPhones for Halloween.  Don’t trip, guys! [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xIjBqFMwM08] Hat Tip Eric Jackson (Ironfire Capital)

Dear Motley Fool: Please Stop Spamming Yahoo Finance

Dear Motley Fool, Please stop spamming Yahoo Finance.  For every 5 Motley Fool articles Yahoo links to in the Headlines section, I estimate 2 or 3 of them are a thinly veiled landing page for you to sell a newsletter subscription.  I don’t have a problem with the pitch, just the disguising of that pitch…

Q3 GDP and Jobless Claims First Look

Two big numbers out this morning, we’ll put up the initial take on both: GDP (from Bloomberg) The U.S. economy grew in the third quarter for the first time in more than a year, propelled by stimulus-driven gains in consumer spending and home building.  The world’s largest economy expanded at a 3.5 percent pace from…