Signed in Blood

A friend emailed to tell me he was out last night and heard someone yell “TED!” outside a bar, restaurant, and adult bookstore.¹ He spun around and looked, then had a good laugh.

I told him he could pretty much count on it that whenever and wherever “TED!” is shouted outside a bar or adult bookstore,² I’ll be there in spirit.

It’s in my contract.


¹ He did not explain, but hopefully this was not all one establishment. Drinking at an adult bookstore I can understand; eating there would only give me indigestion.
² Of course, if it is a strip club, you can be pretty certain I'll be there in the flesh, too.

© 2011 The Epicurean Dealmaker. All rights reserved.

Tie Me to the Mast, Lads

Browsing the public twitter pages of old friends and acquaintances this morning has reminded me of whom I miss and why.

It has also reminded me why I am delighted to continue missing them.

Back to the hermit cave…


© 2011 The Epicurean Dealmaker. All rights reserved.

Top Ten Things I Have Heard in an Investment Bank Elevator

1) "Good morning."
2) "Good night."
3) "How's it going?"
4) "How's the family?"
5) "Going anywhere this summer/weekend/over the holidays?"
6) "Call me when you get a chance."
7) [indifferent silence]
8) [awkward silence]
9) [smiling silence]
10) [clicking of Blackberry keys]

Seriously, folks, the mere notion that you can hear anything remotely interesting for which you are not the explicitly intended audience in a public setting—much less a small enclosed space like an elevator—in an investment bank is just ludicrous.

First, there is the issue of confidentiality. Notwithstanding the unshakeable belief of the great unwashed and their axe-grinding bloviators, we "banksters" do not make a habit of trading insider trading tips, confidential client information, or techniques for running Ponzi schemes every time two or more of us congregate over coffee or fried baby seal. Believe it or not, virtually all of us take the civil, criminal, and contractual prohibitions against such behavior extremely seriously, and if we do not our internal compliance departments do. In addition to the letter of the law, most investment banks worthy of the name even prohibit bankers in the same department (like mergers & acquisitions) from sharing information about the very existence of clients or status of deals with colleagues who do not have a "need to know."

This prohibition gains even greater force when you talk about personnel on different sides of the various "Chinese Walls" within an investment bank, like corporate finance/M&A versus sales and trading or industry coverage bankers versus equity research. Separate areas like these which are not supposed to share information are usually physically isolated from each other, with separate elevator banks, mutually incompatible security access cards, and even telecommunications and e-mail blocks. For example, not only do many banks prohibit investment bankers and equity research analysts from talking on the phone or being in the same room with each other without legal or compliance chaperones present, some prevent direct communication altogether. At some firms, a banker can't even call or email a research analyst directly using the firm's own phone and email systems.

Second, this regulatory and business compulsion for secrecy spills over into the working culture of any investment bank. People who work for the same firm keep secrets from each other even when they do not have to because information is power and currency in my business. Information is used to negotiate with superiors, horse trade with peers, and undermine enemies. Any banker worth his or her salt would never squander any tidbit of information or gossip which could possibly be worth something in front of uninvolved bystanders. Gossip and character assassination are exchanged in private, sub rosa, where they can be put to the most effective and destructive use, not trotted out in front of summer interns in the Conde Nast elevator bank where it can accrue to the social or organizational status of the speaker.

This may explain in part why most investment bankers who operate outside the professional braggadocio environs of sales and trading come across as exciting as moldy toast. There may be a lot of really heart-pounding, pulse-racing secrets seething beneath the placid surface of that drab M&A banker holding forth in the corner of your cocktail party. Secrets he or she wouldn't dream of disclosing, even to his or her spouse or lover, because they're just too juicy to waste.

But then again, you never know when the big secret your friendly investment banker is really hiding is the fact that he or she is worried frantic because they have no gossip or deal information to keep secret. This is anathema to investment bankers, because a lack of secrets means a lack of currency, and a lack of currency means you've got a target on your back. So while absence of evidence is not evidence of absence, neither is it evidence of evidence. It may just be strategic silence.

Perhaps you would be wiser to consider us as dull as dishwater, after all. That's certainly how most of us come across anyway.


© 2011 The Epicurean Dealmaker. All rights reserved.

School for Scandal

"Give up, just quit, because in this life, you can't win. Yeah, you can try, but in the end you're just gonna lose, big time, because the world is run by the Man. The Man... Oh, you don't know the Man? He's everywhere. In the White House... down the hall... Ms Mullins, she's the Man. And the Man ruined the ozone, he's burning down the Amazon, and he kidnapped Shamu and put her in a chlorine tank! And there used to be a way to stick it to the Man. It was called rock 'n roll, but guess what, oh no, the Man ruined that, too, with a little thing called MTV! So don't waste your time trying to make anything cool or pure or awesome 'cause the Man is just gonna call you a fat washed up loser and crush your soul. So do yourselves a favor and just GIVE UP!"

— The School of Rock

Dartmouth College senior Andrew Lohse kicked up a bit of a stink earlier this week, with a column in the school rag bemoaning the pervasiveness and corrupting influence of corporate and financial recruiting on his campus. I will not quibble with Mr. Lohse's characterization of my industry, although based on this aperçu—

what is essentially a vulgar and extortionate system of lending and predatory capitalism which is increasingly underwritten by what remains of the public’s coffers, as large banks and investment groups fail left and right

—his perception strikes me in equal parts as supercilious ("vulgar"? Really?), fact-free ("extortionate"), and dated. Really, I cannot be too harsh, because one should not expect a mere 21- or 22-year-old whose sheltered perception of the global finance industry has probably been limited to jeremiads in Rolling Stone and The New York Times to know what the hell he is talking about. Nevertheless, this incident only confirms my conviction that Intellectual Humility and Defense Against the Hubristic Arts remain firmly off the core curriculum at Hogwart's Ivy League Schools of Arrogance and Sophistry.

No, more to the point, I was brought up short reading his tirade when I encountered this:

We came to this school to probe big questions about why the world is the way it is — not to conform to a withering ideal of wealth and virtual power that we have been manufactured to hold dear.

There are a few paradoxes about Dartmouth culture that I have always found deeply troubling, chief among them the cognitive dissonance between the brilliance of my peers and their complete lack of intellectual curiosity. Most of them are ambivalent at best, and at worst antagonistic, to the very concept of posing the hard questions about power, equality and history that we should be examining as undergraduates of a liberal arts college. They seem aware that doing so will not help them land a prestigious 16-hour-a-day job at some faceless hedge fund, where they’ll learn about manipulating capital instead of imagining a freer and more just world. To think about inequalities would be a distraction from their manufactured task of perpetuating, rather than questioning, class-based systems of power and dominance. Is this what it means to be ambitious in our culture? Should this be the goal of the valedictorians of Ivy League institutions? No matter how hard I try, I cannot think of more pathetic ambitions.

There are so many things wrong with this statement, that I hesitate to even know where to begin.

* * *

I know. Let me propose my own mini-curriculum for the edification and clarification of Mr. Lohse and his fellow discontents in the rapidly waning days of their academic sinecures. You may call it a Minor in Disillusionment, or perhaps a Certificate in Learning How the World Really Works. Grading will be pass-fail, and these cross-disciplinary courses will show up on your résumé. (In the interest of not prejudicing future non-professional graduate school applications, however, you may elect to exclude them from your undergraduate transcript.)

• History 324 / Sociology 339: The Role of Higher Education in Society – Mr. Lohse mentions twice how he and his peers have been "manufactured" to "perpetuate" and "hold dear" wealth- and "class-based systems of power and dominance." This course will evaluate the history of higher education in America, with a special emphasis on how this system has been designed at its core to justify, perpetuate, and staff the dominant existing power structures of a society which both supports it financially and fetishizes it as the pinnacle of socioeconomic achievement. If time permits, the class will review the peculiar features of secondary education systems and supporting social and economic structures which have been designed for no other purpose than to get students such as Mr. Lohse and his classmates accepted at elite institutions of higher learning such as Dartmouth, no matter the cost.
• Psychology 201: Other Minds – Mr. Lohse expresses surprise and dismay that so many of his brilliant classmates display i) a lack of intellectual curiosity about and ii) a hostility toward the issues and ideals of socioeconomic justice which he holds dear. The class will discuss, in roundtable seminar form, how and why seemingly smart, articulate, and well-meaning individuals who come from similar or even identical socioeconomic backgrounds can reasonably and intelligently disagree on fundamental issues of fairness, efficiency, and equality in society, and demonstrate by example that it is a fool who thinks anyone who disagrees with him or her is a fool. Part two of the course will investigate the varied motivations of students for undertaking a rigorous undergraduate education at a prestigious university, using the example of the students enrolled in the course. Special attention will be paid to analyzing in an even-handed and non-judgmental manner the opinions of students who consciously view and value such an undertaking as advanced vocational training (q.v., History 324 / Sociology 339, above).
• Political Science 278 / History 499 / Ethics 202: The Tyranny of Ideologues – The class will study the tyranny and authoritarian behavior of true believers when they attain a position of power, with particular focus on numerous examples from revolutionary periods in history, as well as the pedagogical program proposed by Mr. Lohse, who believes "the hard questions about power, equality and history" should be the principal focus of a university. For their required term paper, students are free to argue either for or against Mr. Lohse's implied premise that his program is superior—morally? intellectually? aesthetically?—to any of Anthropology, Comparative Literature, Biophysics, Applied Mathematics, Classical Philosophy, or Remedial Basketweaving. If time permits, the class will evaluate the utopian claim that "imagining a freer and more just world" constitutes a valid and self-supporting alternative to gainful employment.
• Independent Study – Each student is encouraged to develop an individually tailored program, in conjunction with a faculty advisor and registered therapist, which is designed to counteract psychological, intellectual, and emotional shortcomings which will prove to be deleterious to his or her productive insertion into society post graduation. Popular programs of study include How Not to Be a Hubristic Ass, How to Respect the Opinions and Choices of Others, and How Not to Bite the Hand that Feeds You. In the case of Mr. Lohse, the faculty would like to draw special attention to a newly-offered course, No-one Wants to Hear My Poorly-Thought-Out, Half-Assed Opinions Over a Beer at the Student Union on Saturday Night. It has been recommended for him by a number of his classmates and peers.

* * *

I mean really, Andrew, I remember being appalled by the staggering disinterest most of my classmates displayed toward the issues and ideas nearest and dearest to my heart, too, when I first got to college. But eventually I got over it, in part because I developed enough maturity to accept the well-reasoned choices of others even if I disagreed with them, and in part because I developed enough empathy to understand that I didn't give a shit about what most of them cared about, either. Chacun à son goût, you know.

Look, if you don't like how powerful the evil forces of finance have become in our society—and you are not alone in this regard; I think my industry has become too big, too—I might suggest a fruitful line of inquiry for your admirable reformist energies would be to discover exactly how this situation came about. I don't think anyone has done full justice to the problem, and I agree with many that it is a problem worth understanding (and solving, if we can). Surely there is no oversupply of intelligent minds working on the problem to make it difficult for you to find a position.

And that's another thing. How can you, a product of one of the most competitive secondary and higher education systems on the planet, be unhappy that your competitors and presumed equals in brilliance are being siphoned off to dead-end, 16-hour-a-day jobs typing Powerpoint presentations and pushing electronic ledger entries around the globe? Doesn't it occur to you that that leaves the field of social and economic justice wide open to you and those few noble souls who choose to join you? It will be much easier for you to make a mark, a real contribution there, without hundreds of brilliant Darmouth and Princeton grads all jostling for a slice of social reformist glory.

Who knows, if you hit on something really revolutionary, you might even drive the real wages for do-gooding up. After all, you're probably gonna have a mortgage and childrens' college tuition to pay one day, too.


© 2011 The Epicurean Dealmaker. All rights reserved.

I Think I've Said This Before

Ho-Fucking-Hum.

Let me tell you, Dearest and Most Patient Readers, that notwithstanding my admirable innate modesty, unstudied intellectual humility, and staggeringly handsome physical appearance, it is beyond boring to be proved right time and time again as often as I have been. Even if I were a lesser man—prone to having my head turned by the adulation and adoration of the admiring masses, which I am most certainly not—I might begin to find the repeated ruminations of slower and lesser minds than my own on subjects which I have definitively and decisively disposed of now and forever somewhat enervating and—dare I say it?—even dispiriting.

Even today we find Andrew Ross Sorkin, of the Liberal East Coast Establishment's Business and Finance Digest of Record, DealBook, revisiting well-trod ground. He worries at length, and finds the fact that government regulators of the financial sector of our economy and their supposed regulatees not only share bodily fluids and intimacies not to be named in a family newspaper with each other on frequent occasion but also, mirabile dictu, share paychecks and other commonalities normally associated with working for each other's organizations on a regular, rotational, and, dare we say it, even predictable basis to be of a disturbing and even alarming nature.

And I say: No fucking shit.

But I also say: What about it? Where would you propose we find adequately qualified people to staff the regulatory bodies of our fair if somewhat befuddled commonwealth?

Where do you think we will find people who: a) know what the fuck they are talking about; b) know how the fuck to talk to/yell at/kick in the gonads the assholes they need to talk to/yell at/kick without worrying whether they can make the current lease payment on their late-model Subaru in suburban New Jersey if said regulatee makes a stink up the lobbyist/Capitol Hill staffer/Congress(wo)man food chain about said regulator's "disrespectful" behavior; and c) can tell Lloyd Blankfein or his current equivalent on Wall Street to take a flying fuck in a rolling donut if he doesn't like the tone, content, or approach of said regulator's interactions with his overpriced legal flunkies on items of regulatory interest and concern?

The Legal Aid Society of NYU Law School? The Public Defender's office? Puh-fucking-leeze.

In order to properly regulate the Masters of the Universe (aka Big Swinging Dicks) of the financial sector, you simply must have a stable of ill-mannered, hyperintelligent, nail-eating, blood-spitting, old-lady-tripping, extremely bad-tempered mutated sea bass ex-investment bankers and private sector lawyers who can go toe-to-toe with these self-protecting, self-"regulating", self-pleasuring assholes on their own terms. I'm sorry, but the well-meaning corporate lawyers and career civil servants who currently staff the SEC and like regulators simply are not up to the task of telling Jamie Dimon and his General Counsel to go fuck a goat in the information hall of Grand Central Station if he doesn't like the settlement terms/discussion/cup of coffee they are offering. Give me 25 ex-bankers like me, and 10 ex-flesh-eating Wall Street lawyers like Economics of Contempt, and I will not only have Jamie Dimon and Lloyd Blankfein eating like kittens out of my horny, calloused hands, but I will also have them delivering flowers to your Great Aunt Petunia in Astoria on a weekly fucking basis.

It'll cost you. And it'll rattle the cages of bureaucratic precedent and protocol, but is that really such a bad thing? Nowadays?

It's just not that hard.

* * *

Go read this, right fucking now. Write a goddamn book report, and deliver me a nice, crisp memo on the topic in the morning.

Do I have to do everything for you people?

Related reading:
Poachers Turned Gamekeepers (March 16, 2010)


© 2011 The Epicurean Dealmaker. All rights reserved.