From the Loony Bin: Internet Drug Dealers Go Legit, Etc.

Posted on January 28, 2015 by Canada Bill Jones

Internet drug dealers rejoice! Coinbase opens first Bitcoin exchange in US.

Models are dumb: Late Monday afternoon, the National Weather Service was still calling for 20 to 30 inches of snow in NYC. The actual high was 12.1 inches in Queens.

Bud’s Round-up of Daily Drivel:

McDonald’s CEO calls it quits. (Wall Street Journal)
The Fed speaks. (Reuters)
The ongoing saga of GAAP vs non-GAAP: Facebook’s GAAP earnings are “unched.” (zerohedge.com)
Go Greek: Econ Nobel Prize winner Robert Shiller says it’s time to invest in Greece. (greekcrisis.net)
In Saudi Arabia, the First Lady forgoes headscarf. (Telegraph)
“I” got it: Obama’s gives 33-minute speech and refers to himself 118 times. (Investor’s Business Daily)
Last quarter, Apple sold 34,000 iPhones per hour. (NY Post)
The Peter Principle at work (or “Those Who Can’t Do, Teach”): New York Mets owner Fred Wilpon named chairman of MLB’s finance committee. (NY Times)
Unused boxing gloves for sale: From Ali-Liston “Phantom Punch” bout. (SFGate)
Photographer sues Nike over iconic Jordan “Jumpman” photo. (NY Times)
You might be too late to buy that giant fake rock: Skymall files for Chapter 11. (LA Times)

Marshawn Lynch to Establish Sign Language School for Deaf Children

Posted on January 27, 2015 by Canada Bill Jones

Students at Marshawn Academy will be taught the founder’s signature crotch-grabbing signal, which means “I have to go to the bathroom.”

At Marshawn Academy, students like this young man will learn the new way to signal for a bathroom break.

Marshawn Lynch has announced that he will establish Marshawn Academy, a state-of-the-art sign language school for deaf children. “The Marshawn Academy will break new ground in the education of deaf students. The crotch-grabbing hand signal that I demonstrated recently against the Packers really just covers the tip of the toothpick,” said Lynch at a press conference this morning where he announced that he will endow the school with 12 monthly contributions of $131,050 for a total of $1,572,600. Not without a sense of humor, Lynch said he chose that installment figure because it’s how much he’s been fined by the NFL since the start of the 2014 season. Of the figure Lynch said, “My accountant and I couldn’t figure out my total career fines and forfeited salary, so I just went with this year.”

Lynch has hired Honor B. Lowd, currently chief administrator of the Auditory Oral School of Trenton, to be his institute’s first principal. When reached for comment, Ms Lowd told Bud Fox News, “Whenever Marshawn is forced to speak with the press, his fans get to see that he is a master of non-verbal communication. That’s why I’m so excited to be involved with this project. The Marshawn Academy will use cutting edge pedagogic techniques with respect to deaf education. For example, our instructors will develop lesson plans around things that have actually happened in Marshawn’s life. And Marshawn will be involved in coursework development. After all, he is a Cal Berkeley man.” Although still a work in progress, the curriculum will include the following: Continue reading →

“Delta”: Financial Expression of the Day

Posted on January 26, 2015 by Canada Bill Jones

Leave “delta” alone unless you’re discussing Greek like, referring to alluvial deposits, or sitting in math class or on the derivatives desk. (Photo: John Belushi in movie “Animal House”)

Delta, noun, a change in a variable. Usage note: Once you’re out of math class or off the derivatives desk, don’t use this word unless you’re either talking about Greek life, eg, “I heard the pledges were forced to drink cow urine at Delta Tau Delta” or alluvial deposits at the mouth of a river, eg, “It was the number of Sazeracs I drank at the Carousel Bar not New Orleans’ location in the cloven-footed Mississippi Delta that caused my blackout and delirium tremens.” Unfortunately, pompous financial types often use this one when discussing a difference of almost any sort. Examples range from the sordid, “The massage parlor charged me ten dollars more this go-round. I can’t account for the delta,” to the mundane, “Gross margin dropped dramatically because of mark-downs. It was a delta of more than 200 basis points year-over-year.”

According to Iva Cocke, Professor of Rhetoric & Communications at Northern Southwestern Indiana Normal School and Business Institute, who has written extensively on Wall Street patois, the reason why financiers have adopted an abhorrent term like “delta” is somewhat complicated. Says Professor Cocke: Continue reading →

Missing Nixon Audio Tapes Recaptured: Tricky Dicky Speaking with Young Belichick

Posted on January 23, 2015 by Canada Bill Jones

bill-belichick-yearbook-high-school-young-1970-photo-GC

Bill Belichick as he appeared in his 1970 high school yearbook, two years before his fateful conversation with…

…avid football fan Richard Milhouse Nixon. (AP Photo)

The discovery is all the more amazing for its timing. The 18 1/2-minute gap in one of President Nixon’s White House tapes, which has been a source of fascination for presidential scholars and Watergate conspiracy buffs for decades (especially among those skeptical of the controversial “Rose Mary Stretch,” which supposedly accounted for the erasure), has been recaptured thanks to recent advances in the field of forensic audio technology. Working with a team of acoustic experts, presidential scholar Charles Faux-Pas Bidet, Professor of History at Staten Island’s Dyke College and author of Clinton: Statesman or Swinger?, confirmed his findings earlier today. He told Bud Fox News‘ Silence Bellows:

Given what’s happening in the NFL this week, this discovery is such a chilling coincidence that I almost fainted. The date is June 20, 1972, three days after the Watergate break-in. The recaptured audio tapes reveal a jovial President Nixon and his chief of staff H.R. Haldeman chatting with a young Bill Belichick, who was at the White House on a tour. Nixon, an avid football fan, had apparently learned that one of the White House visitors was a college football player and had him pulled out of the group to speak with him.

Continue reading →

From the Loony Bin: Who said it? Belichick or Nixon? “Nobody is a friend of ours. Let’s face it.”

Posted on January 22, 2015 by Canada Bill Jones

The New England Dirty Tricks Committee doesn’t have much to say… (Photo: David L. Ryan/Boston Globe)

…but Crazy Uncle Joe does: “I like a softer ball. That’s all I can tell you.”

Bud’s Round-up of Daily Drivel:

VP Joe Biden tells CBS, “Having been a receiver, I like a softer ball.” (SI.com)
Amazon (ticker AMZN) scraps its crappy diapers. (Yahoo)
QE for ECB: European Central Bank opts for €1.1 trillion of quantitative easing. (Sky News)
PointState: Despite dumb name, hedge fund makes $1 billion on smart oil bet. (Huffington Post)
Canarsie Capital is “truly sorry” for having lost all of your money. (CNBC)
Finally! NY State Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver arrested on corruption charges. (Newsday)
C’mon, it’s just flaxseed oil: A-Rod turns to Barry Bonds for off-season help. (NY Post)

“Nit”: Financial Expression of the Day

Posted on January 20, 2015 by Canada Bill Jones

When your boss says, “I’ve just got a few nits,” get ready for an all-nighter.

Nit, noun, a supposedly small mistake that is highlighted for correction. Usage note: Merriam-Webster kindly points out that Brits use this word as an abbreviated form of “nitwit,” which, in turn, is a good name for anyone who’d use today’s FEotD with a straight face. There are a couple of ways that a more senior banker can alert his financial serf that he has editorial changes to a deck (the boring banker will choose “deck” instead of “presentation” because the former provides a thrill up his leg, à la Chris Matthews, as he imagines himself possibly cutting the deck while fitting right in at a celebrity poker tournament with Ben Affleck, Tobey Maguire, and Shannon Elizabeth, instead of proofreading a deck that no one will ever read). With a breezy inflection in his voice that belies the nature of the soul-sapping work he’s about to assign, he might phone his lackey and say, “Could you swing by my office? I’ve got a couple of nits.” The summons to his office is the banker’s preferred course of action because having usually worked his way up from the associate level cube-farm, he views his office as his hard earned sanctuary (complete with Lucite deal toys adorning the window sill), so he spends a strange amount of his time devising creative ways to make people come to him.

Continue reading →

Leon Cooperman’s Tough-Guy Wall Street Lingo: A Translation

Posted on January 20, 2015 by Canada Bill Jones

Like Marv from the movie “Wall Street”…

…Leon can really sling the Wall Street bullspit.

Let’s all learn from a real pro. Leon Cooperman, septuagenerian Chairman of Omega Advisors, could have retired a long time ago. But there he was last Friday, participating in Altisource Portfolio Solutions’ (ticker ASPS) conference call with investors. Often, big shots at hedge funds let their analyst-minions mix it up with the little people on such telephonic cluster shows. Not Leon, which might explain why he hasn’t stepped away and joined the board of the New York Public Library or whatever it is retired billionaires do these days. Stock picking and everything that goes with it are probably this guy’s raisons d’être. If he tried to retire, my bet is he’d wind up the Bret Favre of the hedge fund world. Then again, hanging it up would give him more time to shoot his mouth off like he did in 2011 when he likened Obama to Hitler (Neville Chamberlain or Jimmy Carter seems more apt).

Cooperman’s contribution to the Altisource call reveals a speaker of finance lingo at the top of his linguistic game. This is the stuff of Jordan 1988-89, Mantle 1956, Laver 1969. So Bud Fox News asked Hugh Sed, Professor of Linguistics and head of the William Clinton Oratorical Center at the Camden State Normal & Industrial School, to analyze Cooperman’s rhetoric. Below we’ve set forth the relevant quotes from the Altisource transcript and annotated with professor Sed’s comments in brackets (full transcript here): Continue reading →

From the Loony Bin

Posted on January 19, 2015 by Canada Bill Jones

Kerry and France’s Hollande: “You’ve Got a Friend” appears to be an understatement.

Bud’s Round-up of Weekend Drivel:

Uncapping the Swiss franc wipes out Everest Capital’s largest hedge fund. (Bloomberg)
He’s got no inside game: Steven A. Cohen passes on buying the Brooklyn Nets. (Bloomberg)
Poof…they’re gone: 50,000 Wall Street jobs disappear. (New York Post)
Not a huge surprise: Obama’s State of the Union will call for more taxes on wealthy. (Bloomberg)
Not the Islamic State…the Pathetic State of the US military training effort in Iraq. (Washington Post)
Caught in a tramp trap, basketball analyst Greg Anthony suspended by CBS and Turner. (ESPN)
Early Super Bowl XLIX (not IL) line: pick ’em (Las Vegas Sun)
“Do you know who my father is?” Mario Gabelli’s son tossed from NYC steakhouse. (New York Post)
Deflated balls: Yes, that’s the charge. NFL probes Patriots’ footballs. (NFL.com)
Max Scherzer inks seven-year deal with Nationals. (Forbes)
Bullish Herbalife (ticker HLF) analyst cuts her 2015 estimate by 28%. (Yahoo Finance)