Unstructured Finance

Becoming comfortably numb to income inequality

By Matthew Goldstein and Jennifer Ablan

About a year ago, Nobel Prize-winning liberal economist Joseph Stiglitz made a surprise appearance at the Occupy Wall Street camp site in Zuccotti Park, giving a speech to rally the protestors and support their causes of bringing attention to the economic divide between the 1 percent and everyone else in the U.S.

Today, the protestors in lower Manhattan have all but disappeared with the attention on Occupy Wall Street gone along with it.

Stiglitz said the effort wasn’t for nothing, however.

“I think Occupy Wall Street served a function in that it brought to the attention of the American public two things…the distortion of our economy and inequality,” Stiglitz told Reuters TV this week in a wide ranging interview (led by Jenn) at Columbia University, where his a professor. Stiglitz said the protests helped serve notice that while a small group of Americans are doing far better than the other 99 percent, “we all have to get together” for the country to truly prosper.

The thing is, it makes you wonder if one reason OWS couldn’t keep up the momentum is that people know what the problem is but just aren’t sure much can be done about it. In other words, it’s hard to keep protesting something—in this case, inequality—if you’ve come to accept it as the way things are just going to be.

Most overvalued asset in the rich world is?

The following is a contribution from our chief Federal Reserve reporter, who is out in the field  at The Economist magazine’s annual economics conference:

By Jonathan Spicer

What is the most overvalued asset across the world’s advanced economies? Vincent Reinhart, the chief U.S. economist at Morgan Stanley, posed that rhetorical question on Thursday at one of New York’s signature economics conferences. After a pause: “The answer is, voters’ expectation of the net present value of the entitlements they … are expecting. Why? Because they by and large don’t have a tax system to support that,” Reinhart said.

Greg Smith says Goldman’s response confirms his criticisms: Q&A

Greg Smith, the ex-Goldman Sachs salesman who stunned the investment bank with a scathing public resignation in March, is now on the defense.

Smith, whose book, “Why I Left Goldman Sachs” hits bookstores today, has been facing the wrath of Goldman, media critics, and online commenters since last week, when bits and pieces of his book began to leak out and Goldman quickly jumped at the chance to characterize him as an undistinguished ex-employee with an ax to grind.

Goldman said Smith quit because he didn’t get the raise or position he wanted. It has also tried to cast doubt on the veracity of his claims by making other current and ex-Goldman employees available for media interviews to dispute Smith’s characterization of events in his book anecdotes.

Wall Street pay: Headed up or down?

It was a good third quarter for Wall Street profits and an even better one for employees: Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley set aside another $7.6 billion in compensation during the period, with year-to-date pay for the average employee up 15 percent at Goldman and 3 percent at Morgan Stanley.

Total comp accruals for both firms so far this year are up to $23 billion, 2 percent higher than the amount set aside a year ago. That equates to or 47 percent of adjusted net revenue, down from 50 percent for the first nine months of 2011, but still much higher than the pay levels some shareholders are demanding.

The data are a little befuddling, since New York State Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli recently said he expects Wall Street to lose jobs this year, and for pay to drop. Recruiters and Wall Street pay consultants have also said they expect pay to either decline or remain relatively flat for many kinds of traders and bankers this year. And JPMorgan’s investment bank has already started chopping down banker pay.

Some Hedge Funds Throwing in Keys as “Landlords”

By Matthew Goldstein and Jennifer Ablan

All year the big money has been talking up one of the more intriguing trades to emerge from the housing crisis: buying up foreclosed homes in large scale and rent those out for several years and then unload them when the price is right. But questions about the so-called rent-to-own trade are being raised now that an early mover in the space, hedge fund giant Och-Ziff Capital, is looking to cash in its chips now and is abandoning the idea of operating foreclosed homes as rental properties for years to come.

Now we’re not quite ready to declare the foreclosed home rent-to-own trade is dead as the tireless, prolific financial bloggers at ZeroHedge did in a good riff on our exclusive story on Och-Ziff’s decision. But Daniel Och’s concern that the income to be generated from renting out foreclosed homes may not be as high as originally anticipated bears close scrutiny because it could spell trouble for other hedge funds, private equity firms and smaller money managers counting on rental income to generate an annual 8 pct or greater return on investment.

UF Weekend Reads

By Sam Forgione

This week’s Weekend Reads may drive you back to the big news of the week: The Debates.

Just as the candidates’ tone and tenor seemed to drive judgments as to who won and lost, some stories were written about sparring between politicians and bankers, billionaires on whether a bankrupt Mexican company should be let off the hook, the banks and the foreclosed-upon, and the more milder subject of volatility investing. In the case of the Foreign Policy and DealBook links, the attitudes of the parties involved seem more important than their logic. And a winner and a loser probably won’t come to you. At least here, unlike in the voting booths, you can stay undecided.

UF Weekend Reads

Fall really arrives in NYC this weekend. What better time then for Sam Forgione’s weekend reads. Have a whale of a time.

From The New York Times:

Susan Dominus long read about Ina Drew, the “natural” risk manager, who oversaw JP Morgan’s $6 billion trading loss.

Hedge funds love affair with leverage still on hiatus, for now

By Katya Wachtel

Last year was a sorry one for the $2 trillion hedge fund industry, when funds lost 5 percent on average. This year managers are doing better, up more than 5 percent for the year, according to the latest tracking data.

But those returns are a far cry from the 16.4 percent rise achieved by the S&P 500 this year, so what will hedge fund managers – who are supposed to be the smartest, savviest market players on the Street – do to juice returns?

Former stock market ‘scalpers’ are vocal HFT critics

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By Emily Flitter

While the Securities and Exchange Commission maintains it does not need to do much to reign in the high frequency trading machines that have taken over Wall Street, a group of traders who understand how HFT firms make money—because it’s similar to the method they used to use themselves—have become vocal HFT critics. Yes, they may complain because they don’t make as much money as they used to, but they also think the machines are destabilizing the market.

Meet Dennis Dick, a prop trader in Detroit and a member of a league of stock market participants who have had to change their trading strategies now that they are no longer the fastest guns on the Street.

Gundlach doesn’t whine over his stolen wine

By Jennifer Ablan and Matthew Goldstein

Who said bonds are boring? In recent days, Jeffrey Gundlach, the new king of the fixed-income world, has been dominating headlines with his lengthy CNBC interview on everything from counterparty risk to the market’s love affair with Apple stock to talk in the blogosphere about Gundlach’s pricey Santa Monica, Calif. residence being burglarized of more than $10 million in assets.

Against this backdrop, Gundlach’s firm, DoubleLine, hit a huge milestone this week as well, hitting $45 billion in assets under management.

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