Fuck the compliance area – procedures, schmecedures.
Quote of the Day: Matt Taibbi
An unregulated derivatives market essentially gives Wall Street a way to place hidden taxes on everything in the world.
Chart of the Day: JP Morgan’s Derivatives Loss vs. Estimated Cost of Regulations
Quote of the Day: Matt Taibbi
You win the modern financial-regulation game by filing the most motions, attending the most hearings, giving the most money to the most politicians and, above all, by keeping at it, day after day, year after fiscal year, until stealing is legal again.
Do You Think That I’m a Crook?
by Norman Horowitz
About forty years ago, I returned to Screen Gems International Television (Columbia Pictures) following a three year hiatus at CBS and a nascent Viacom.
Since I had worked at Screen Gems before, I was well prepared to go to London and make a deal for a group of features because the company needed a few paltry millions in order to “make its quarter.”
I ended up making a five or six million dollar deal with the commercial broadcasters in the UK. In order to do this, I negotiated a price for each and every movie in the “package.”
I returned home and submitted the deal to the accounting department, as was the case with all deals that included the negotiated price for each title.
A few days later, one of the senior accounting executives arrived in my office and handed me a sheet of paper indicating the value of each picture in the UK deal and told me to resubmit his per-picture price. He told me that his prices would reduce our obligations to our producers by about $450,000.
I refused to do what he asked. He threatened to go to our president, who would order me to do what he asked. Continue reading “Do You Think That I’m a Crook?”