•
More on this later (when I get a minute to breath), but I think we can fairly say that New York Magazine’s recent fawning article notwithstanding, Jamie Dimon may have made a big mistake purchasing Bear at any price. Other than some potentially hard-to-unload midtown real estate, Bear’s real assets (as they say in marking brochures) are its people, and the firm is losing employees (and their client relationships) very rapidly. If you don’t have the people, you don’t have a business. And despite Dimon’s pleas that other banks not hire his staff, prime brokerage executives I’ve spoken to say they haven’t gotten any word from the tops of their firms prohibiting them from hiring out of Bear.
•
Apparently, even though New York is the Big Apple, that isn’t an official nickname of the city. In fact, New York City doesn’t have any official nicknames.
While this may seem rather shocking that no nickname was ever attached to the city, Queens City Councilman Hiram Monserrate is looking to fix this by officially linking up New York as Gotham City. Monserrate feels that with this summer’s release of Batman : The Dark Knight, the city would be able to launch into an all-out campaign with “Come visit the real Gotham City.”
Of course the Gotham City depicted in Batman’s world is dark, gritty and filled with crime and supervillians, which, to some extent is actually kind of fitting for New York (sans the Supervillians). Not exactly the right message to be sending about New York, is it? Especially when you ate trying to lure in tourists. Read more »
•
Earlier this week you may have heard that the merger deal to unify Sirius Radio and XM Radio was approved. The only question that was holding the approval back is that it seemingly turns satellite radio into a monopoly held by one company.
Well, since the approval there has been some other news relating to the merger, let’s just say that communication companies broadcasting on regular radio are not happy:
Howie Carr (Boston’s WRKO) was reading the news on the air about the Department of Justice approving the merger and was bleeped over by his producer* when he said the names of the merging companies. WRKO is owned by Entercom Communications.
Clear Channel Communications, one of Entercom’s competitors, has gone a step further and has asked the FCC to impose a list of conditions on to the newly formed Sirius/XM alliance. Read more »
•
This is incredibly amusing, buy also very sad.
NEW YORK (Reuters) - About 60 protesters opposed to the U.S. Federal Reserve’s help in bailing out Bear Stearns entered the lobby of the investment bank’s Manhattan headquarters on Wednesday, demanding assistance for struggling homeowners.
This is the state of populist protest in our country: homeowners are kinda sorta aware that the Federal Reserve just spent taxpayer money to bail out a bank (well, really, to bail out it’s counterparties…the bank’s employees were not saved), but they don’t really know whom to blame!
See, folks, the Fed did the bailing, not Bear Stearns. So it doesn’t make much sense for protesters to hang out in Bear Stearns’ lobby when there’s a perfectly good NY Fed building downtown that you can march on.
(And, yes, I realize that they got press, so the stunt worked, and it probably would not have worked as well downtown where they would have been less significant standing on the crowded street.)