#OT# an example of spondulick creation for a loss-loan reserve

Spondulicks created while you watch, for use as banking capital.

----------- Citigroup May Book $10 Billion Gain From Morgan Stanley Deal

By Bradley Keoun and Christine Harper

Jan. 12 (Bloomberg) -- Citigroup Inc. may book a gain of as much as $10 billion by forming a brokerage venture with Morgan Stanley, helping to replenish capital depleted by the biggest losses in the bank?s 197-year history, a person familiar with the talks said.

N.B. ==>The pretax gain would result from writing up the value of Citigroup?s Smith Barney brokerage unit to the new price set by the deal, said the person, who declined to be identified because the talks are confidential. The gain [!!!!!] of $5 billion to $6 billion after taxes would flow into Citigroup?s capital, a loan-loss cushion so eroded that the bank had to get $45 billion of rescue funds last year from the U.S. government.

Reply to
F. George McDuffee
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LOL I alluded to this sort of thing in an earlier post George. Once again, I'm shocked that you are "shocked".

Reply to
John R. Carroll

=============

I was well aware this was SOP.

What shocked me was how easy it was [a few strokes of a pen] and how overt/open they have been about reporting the creation of 6 billion$ of the mandated loan-loss reserves from nothing.

And this is the capital and organizations that are going to lead us into a glorious economic recovery?

I think they all should be made to pee in a bottle for drug testing (including the regulators)....

Unka' George [George McDuffee]

------------------------------------------- He that will not apply new remedies, must expect new evils: for Time is the greatest innovator: and if Time, of course, alter things to the worse, and wisdom and counsel shall not alter them to the better, what shall be the end?

Francis Bacon (1561-1626), English philosopher, essayist, statesman. Essays, "Of Innovations" (1597-1625).

Reply to
F. George McDuffee

Maybe they will "buy" something else at inflated prices from Morgan Stanley, to help BS "bolster" its reserves.

i

Reply to
Ignoramus8841

Apparently this gem is going to be merged and "spun" off - so not either bought or sold. Just jettisoned. LOL Man Overboard! The result will have 20,000 investment "advisors" servicing ( LOL ) clients. The funniest part of this is that since Citi/Morgan Stanley is now a bank, they have to divest. It's the law. You couldn't make this shit up. Really...

JC

Reply to
John R. Carroll

IF only all these creative minds could be put to something that has tangable value, this country would survive and prosper rather than coming up with new ways to cover their corrupt deslings.

Enron deja vou.

John

Reply to
john

They used to be when we valued creation. When was the last time you heard a parent proudly proclaim that their kid was an apprentice tool and die maker? Fifty years ago that was a big F'ing deal and worthy of mentioning. America will be back in the saddle when you see that again.

JC

Reply to
John R. Carroll

I am highly doubtful that these minds can be useful for creating anything tangible of substantial value. Maybe they can be used as forklift drivers. My best guess is that they will find great jobs, dispensing bailout funds.

Reply to
Ignoramus26200

FWIW, I don't think so. If you've had any involvement with top-notch college lately you know that many, if not most, of the best student minds have been entranced by the big bucks in finance. My son's small university has been a serious feeder for Wall Street for a generation now. I'm looking forward to seeing what happens to their attitudes as the finance industry goes through this chaos. So far, he tells me, it seems to be making those bright kids even more determined to be the ones who win the competition and get into the industry.

I would really like to see those minds applied to something else.

-- Ed Huntress

Reply to
Ed Huntress

Me too. There has been enough real talent diverted already. My reading list for the last month has included the following authors Ed. Charles P. Kindleberger, Hyman Minsky , Nikolai Kondratieff and Joseph A. Schumpeter. Economists always take a book to say what would otherwise fit on a page or two, which I have always focussed of finance. An analyst could put a good sumation of todays world together in ten pages. Trouble is there isn't any money in that so it's not what analysts are tasked to do.

JC

Reply to
John R. Carroll

Ed Huntress wrote: If you've had any involvement with top-notch college

Ahem.

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One could put forward the thesis that the _best_ minds, by definition, would not be entranced by the big bucks in finance.

Kevin Gallimore

Reply to
axolotl

Yes? Those are three highly-rated engineering colleges. I don't see your point, Kevin.

One could make the assertion, but one would have an awkward point making it a thesis, because engineering isn't even among the ten most popular college majors in the US. The most popular is business administration, and in the most selective universities, the hot specialty for the past decade or two has been finance.

You'll find that a lot of the top-scoring students have been attracted to it for quite a while now. One thing that my son told me over Christmas vacation shocked me a bit. He attends a highly selective, highly rated, but very small private university. He's an economics major. The university has an engineering department, but it's small.

Anyway, he's taken three semesters of calculus and is now studying linear algebra, all of which are required for an econ major. They take the classes with the engineering students, and he tells me that the best math students, by far, are the econ majors.

I suspect it's different at MIT or at those engineering schools you listed, but maybe not. I'm very curious about it. And it doesn't require a thesis or definition to recognize that most engineering students are not of MIT quality.

-- Ed Huntress

Reply to
Ed Huntress

The point not communicated well, apparently, is that we have had different experiences. In the past couple of years, I have had occasion to speak with a fair number of very bright new graduates. I usually ask them what they want to be when they grow up. Almost without exception, they give me a variation of "I want to save the world". The only concern about money that I can remember was from a new Cornell graduate, who wanted to make a lot of money as soon as she could, in order to pay off her school loans. Then she wanted to save the world.

In short: Best Student Minds and entrancement by Big Bucks in Finance are not necessarily related. I, for one, hope that some of the best minds write symphonies and discover cures for baldness. In my experience, that has been the case.

Best != Popular

As long as we are giving anecdotes from our kids, I'll give you one from mine. Business courses are required at the engineering college from which my son graduated, and those courses are taken at the prestigous (to some) New England business college next door. He and his engineering buddies are in the class being lectured to, with the textbook open to the explanation of a formula, written in babytalk, just plain offensive to an engineering major. My kid mutters under his breath- "What kind of moron reads these books?" His friend whispers back: "The kind of moron that's going to be your boss."

Kevin Gallimore

Reply to
axolotl

That was my exact experience at the University of Michigan. There isn't anything special about calculus and when you exclude cultural issues you have psuedo science.

What is special is knowing what curves you choose to calculate the area of intersection. That and having some idea about what the population concerned will do.

Absent that consideration, you have little more that nonsense.

JC

Reply to
John R. Carroll

It isn't my experience. It's the report from many colleges, as well as from companies trying to hire smart people.

This really isn't much of a question, Kevin, despite our anecdotes. For example, from an article:

=================================================== Rich Karlgaard, the technology entrepreneur who is publisher of Forbes, tells the story of a trip he took with Microsoft's Bill Gates in the early

1990s. On the flight, he asked Gates, "Who is your chief competitor?"

"Goldman Sachs" was Gates's surprising reply.

Gates went on to explain that he was in the "IQ business." Microsoft needed the best brains available to make top-shelf software. His primary rivals for the smartest kids in America were elite investment banks such as Goldman or Morgan Stanley.

"Microsoft must win the IQ war," Gates said, "or we won't have a future."

If trends hold, then Microsoft's future in the war for IQ looks bleak. The brightest students these days are headed into finance, but Microsoft is fighting back...

...First, what do the trends say?

Gates says he's in the 'IQ business,' and his rivals for the brainiest students in America are the elite Wall Street Investment banks.Recent enrollment figures are ominous. The number of smart kids studying computer science peaked a few years ago and has dropped dramatically since. The number of new computer science majors today has fallen by half since 2000, according to the Higher Education Research Institute at UCLA. Merrilea Mayo, director of the Government-University-Industry Research Roundtable at the National Academies, says the drop-off was particularly pronounced among women.

Meanwhile, elite schools are reporting that the number of economics majors is exploding. For the 2003-2004 academic year, the number of economics degrees granted by U.S. colleges and universities increased 40 percent from five years previously. Economics is seen by bright undergraduates as the path to a high-paying job on Wall Street or at a major corporation.

=====================================================

That was written 18 months ago. It's about more than popularity. Those obscene salaries paid by the top investment banks have been drawing the intellectual cream off for around two decades now, Kevin. It's often remarked upon in academic circles, where they keep track of the numbers. Not only is it where the money has been, but it's where the action is -- and action is exciting, and sexy, and very attractive to ambitious young people.

Now, IIRC, your son went to Olin, correct? It's a unique school, but the graduating class size is something like 1/5 the size of my high school graduating class. No doubt it produces elite engineers but in terms of where the brains are going in our economy, that's a drop in the bucket.

As John and I have said, and I think you and most others here agree, here's hoping that it turns around, and soon. I'm hoping that finance loses its charm like engineering did with the Vietnam War.

-- Ed Huntress

Reply to
Ed Huntress

============== Proving again the correctness of Emerson's terse observation "what you do speaks so loud I can't hear what you say."

Why does corporate America keep ranting about a shortage of scientists, engineers, and technicians when treat them like crap from the wages paid, to the being the first category to be fired when things turn down? Quit complaining when the free market works and the people go where the money is. They didn't make the rules, but they are playing the game.

Unless you have a real drive to discover and/or create things [and most of us do in this newsgroup] why would anyone that has the IQ and skill set necessary to make it as a banker/broker/quant/arb get involved with research and/or manufacturing? Given the way the world is currently working, even if you have a real drive/flare for machining, you are most likely still better off getting a job in banking/finance and setting up one hell of a home/hobby shop.

In today's work place, most university engineering and technology programs have as much future as their home-economics programs did, and should be phased out. If you can't find work in your career field, why bother?

Unka' George [George McDuffee]

------------------------------------------- He that will not apply new remedies, must expect new evils: for Time is the greatest innovator: and if Time, of course, alter things to the worse, and wisdom and counsel shall not alter them to the better, what shall be the end?

Francis Bacon (1561-1626), English philosopher, essayist, statesman. Essays, "Of Innovations" (1597-1625).

Reply to
F. George McDuffee

Amen to that. And I've interviewed corporate execs who talk about it out of both sides of their mouths -- decrying the shortage of US engineers while simultaneously bragging about how much they save by having their engineering done in India. No wonder many bright kids are loathe to get involved in engineering now.

-- Ed Huntress

Reply to
Ed Huntress

Maybe not. The recent unpleasantness in the financial world may have re-balanced things.

And I have a nephew who is halfway through the process of getting a degree in mechanical engineering. His mother (my wife's sister) was an executive in the finance world, most recently State Street Bank. (She was laid off last week.) My wife is also in Finance.

The nephew is the first engineer from that family. We have no idea where he got the idea. (I doubt that I was the example, as he never asked me any questions.)

Nor is there a prayer that companies that hire engineers will attempt to emulate Wall Street pay scales. Engineering business models simply cannot support any such thing.

Compared to Wall Street, engineering is very steady work, with low unemployement.

Joe Gwinn

Reply to
Joseph Gwinn

Again, one does not want to confuse popular with best. I am going through the college selection mess with my daughter. The hot major amongst her classmates is "forensic science". There seems to be a TV show.....

But they are the brains that count :)

Amen.

Kevin Gallimore

Reply to
axolotl

Where some of the TARP funds went?

-------------- Thain Said to Pay $1.2 Million to Redecorate Merrill Office

By Peter S. Green

Jan. 22 (Bloomberg) -- John Thain, the former Merrill Lynch & Co. chief executive officer ousted today, spent $1.2 million redecorating his downtown Manhattan office last year as the company was firing employees, a person familiar with the project said.

Thain hired Los Angeles-based decorator Michael Smith, chosen by President Barack Obama and his wife Michelle to redecorate the White House, CNBC reported today. Thain paid Smith $837,000 and his purchases included $87,000 for area rugs, $25,000 for a pedestal table and $68,000 for a 19th century credenza, CNBC said.

?It is pretty surprising that John Thain would need to spend that much on a power office in this economy,? said Sheila Bridges, a New York interior designer who decorated former President Bill Clinton?s Harlem office. ?I do hope the designer?s fees were also included in that price tag.?

Thain, 53, oversaw the sale of Merrill Lynch to Bank of America Corp. last month, and took over the bank?s wealth management and corporate and investment banking divisions.

Merrill?s $15.4 billion fourth-quarter loss forced Bank of America to seek additional aid from the U.S. government, which last week agreed to provide $20 billion in capital and $118 billion in asset guarantees.

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Where your401k funds went?

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Worse still, the bank is facing a backlash from investors and analysts after reports that Thain rushed out billions in year-end bonuses for Merrill employees at a time when the firm was aware it would have $15 billion in fourth-quarter losses, and shortly before it officially sold itself to Bank of America.

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Unka' George [George McDuffee]

------------------------------------------- He that will not apply new remedies, must expect new evils: for Time is the greatest innovator: and if Time, of course, alter things to the worse, and wisdom and counsel shall not alter them to the better, what shall be the end?

Francis Bacon (1561-1626), English philosopher, essayist, statesman. Essays, "Of Innovations" (1597-1625).

Reply to
F. George McDuffee

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