Wall Street Folly

It's Official: We've moved! Our new home is www.wallstreetfolly.com

Please join us over at our new Wall Street Folly site.  We're still working out some kinks, but it's up and running! (Note, if for some reason you're not directed to that site, keep trying.  It gonna take a bit for the redirection of our wallstreetfolly.com url to be propogated through the system.)

Madoff investor Jerome Fisher now not-so-quietly (since it's on Bloomberg) unloading a Picasso; NY Art shows gonna feel the pinch

Ken Griffin's feather ruffling won't make it easy for Citadel; Hedge funds facing massive extinction; Wall Street woes hitting art galas; Michael Lewis hedge funds commentary; Ax falls at Janus, Alliance Bernstein

Page Six: Henry Kravis spotted looking at hookers

At least the ones in paintings.  Page Six "Sightings" notes that the KKR boss was seen "intently studying" one of the paintings of a hooker at the Museum of Modern Art's "Kirchner and the Berlin Street" show of rare 1914 paintings from artist Ernst Ludwig Kirchner.  The painter focused on the street life in Berlin, and he liked to show ladies of the evening, who you could pick out of the crowd from their big plumed hats.  A far cry from what today's hookers look like.

Video: Kiss rocker Paul Stanley on Cavuto

The heavy metal rocker's got another gig as an artist and he's doing quite well with over $2 million in sales in 2007.  He spoke to Neil Cavuto on 2/1.....

Wanna see Steve Cohen's pickled shark up close and personal?

It's now on display at the Museum of Modern art where the Damian Hirst creation is on loan from SAC Capital's boss...   

A completely different sculptural experience awaits at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, where Damien Hirst's formaldehyde- preserved tiger shark has gone on display for a three-year term (loaned by SAC Capital's Steven A. Cohen, its owner).

For all its notoriety, the recently rebuilt 1991 work, titled ``The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living,'' is as startling a confrontation with mortality as one is likely to find this side of Hades. Floating in a glass tank whose blue-green liquid turns fluorescent in daylight, it doesn't actually look very real, but as a victim of human curiosity it elicits both sympathy and repugnance

Hirst's Dead Shark, Puryear's Stairway to Nowhere Liven Up N.Y. - Bloomberg

Did you catch VH-1's "The Fabulous Life of Billion Dollar Wall Street Ballers"?

If you didn't catch the show on Thursday evening, you really should catch one of the upcoming reruns.  It was a fun watch.  Some pictures from the show are below; we'll have lots more later....

How do ridiculously wealthy Wall Street BSDs spend their cash? Find out on VH-1's 'The Fabulous Life: Billion Dollar Wall Street Ballers'

What do billionaire Wall Street BSDs blow their ill-gotten gains on?   VH-1 aims to tell you, if you don't already know.  Over the weekend we saw a promo for an upcoming VH-1 show: "The Fabulous Life: Billion Dollar Wall Street Ballers".  It'll air on Thursday at 11am EDT and again that night at 9PM EDT with additional reruns on the VH-1 schedule.  According to VH-1's teaser/promo, the show features ESL / Sears' Eddie Lampert, and naturally SAC Capital's Steve Cohen. It also mentions the millions raised by the Robin Hood Foundation, so we'd guess that Paul Tudor Jones is probably in there too.  Surprisingly also featured are accused perv / billionaire Jeffrey Epstein as well as besieged-by-subprime-debt John Devaney (Maybe parting with his "Positive Carry" yacht might not be such a big deal after all --- VH-1 says he has 10!).

Think stars are having all of the fun? Think again. These days nobody's making more and spending more than the buttoned-down badasses of Wall Street. From their sprawling estates and tricked-out private yachts to exotic vacation homes and multi-million dollar art collections-- these guys are living larger than anyone else on the planet. Welcome to The Fabulous Life of Billion Dollar Wall Street Ballers.

Brian Hunter's energy trading competition -- as conceived in the mind of a former lady hedge fund manager turned artist

This hedge fund manager turned artist is looking for a New York gallery to represent her work, "optimally in Chelsea":

She is the pseudonymous Amanda Putty, who   says she has put her talent to work exposing the sexist behavior of her male   peers. Putty, who has worked in the HF industry for seven years but no longer   as a portfolio manager, has created about 20 works of art, which represent the   way men view women, such as baby dolls, mistresses, trophy wives, collectibles   and playthings. “My paintings depict quintessential fantasies of hedge fund   managers -- fantasies of money and power centered on women.,” she says. “I   am quite familiar with these fantasies.”

Steve Cohen's $8 million shark getting a new home

Now that his rotting $8 million shark has been replaced by its creator, Damien Hirst, SAC Capital's Steve Cohen has decided that his toothy pickled friend will get a new home: the Metropolitan Museum of Art:

This week the Met confirmed that the shark will go on view in its modern and contemporary art galleries by Labor Day weekend. It will be there for two to three years.

“When Steve Cohen acquired it, I sent him an e-mail asking if we could show it,” said Gary Tinterow, the Met’s curator in charge of 19th-century, modern and contemporary art.