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.)

The Daily Show: Jon Stewart interviews William Cohan and says to buy his book on Bear Stearns

Buy 'House of Cards' says Jon Stewart....

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	M - Th 11p / 10c
Intro - Buy Bear Stearns Book
thedailyshow.com
Daily Show Full Episodes Economic Crisis Political Humor

Sibling cat fight over soon to be released novel "Hedge Fund Wives"

A cat fight between two sisters over who should get credit for writing "Hedge Fund Wives", a new novel expected to be out in May 2009, has one sister suing the other.  Tatiana Boncompagni Hoover filed suit against her sibling Natasha Boncompagni for copyright infringement:

Jerome Kerviel: Comic book hero

The legend of accused Societe Generale rogue trader Jerome Kerviel keeps getting bigger.  He's turned into quite the folk hero in France where 77% of French people responding to an Optionway poll consider him to be a "victim".  Already the subject of several books, now Kerviel is further immortalized in his own comic book: ``Le Journal de Jerome Kerviel,'' or "The Diary of Jerome Kerviel".  According to le Bloomberg:

After inspiring at least five books, a ``Save Kerviel'' club and fan t-shirts, Thomas Editions, a children's book publisher, yesterday released ``Le Journal de Jerome Kerviel,'' a fictional, illustrated ``bande dessinee'' memoir of the trader's rise and fall at France's second-largest bank.

John Paulson's hugely profitable housing bet to be immortalized in a book called "The Greatest Trade Ever"

Wall Street Journal reporter Greg Zuckerman is spinning the story of John Paulson's massively profitable housing market bet into gold of his own.  He's sold a book to Doubleday, netting an estimated $250K range advance, that's based on an early interview that he did with the Paulson & Co's CEO.  The book is being called "The Greatest Trade Ever" and could be on the shelves in early 2010.  According to the NY Post:

Bear Stearns chief vs Fed chief: Barbara Walters seems to have never met an Alan she didn't like

According to Page Six, Barbara Walters, who recently published her kiss and tell memoirs, may be stinging from some of the criticisms over her affair with then-married Senator Edward Brooke.  But more interestingly is what a playa she was, also carrying on simultaneously with Bear Stearns CEO Alan "Ace" Greenberg, and then-future Fed chief Alan Greenpan. And her housekeeper couldn't tell the two Alans apart:

"Audition" also reveals that after breaking up with Brooke, Walters continued seeing Greenberg while also dating Alan Greenspan, the future Federal Reserve chairman.

Her Latina housekeeper couldn't keep the two Alans straight. "When they gave me the message, I could only ask, which one talked louder?" Walters wrote. "Alan Greenberg . . . talked in a normal tone of voice. Alan Greenspan was very soft-spoken. He almost whispered. And that's how I would know whether it was Greenspan or Greenberg."

Barbara Starts To Feel Heat - Page Six NY Post

CNBC's Charlie Gasparino profits from Bear Stearns fall by inking a $400K book deal

One of the winners in the demise of Bear Stearns would seem to be CNBC's Charlie Gasparino.  According to the NY Post, he got a book deal with an estimated $400K advance from publisher HarperCollins (owned by NY Post parent News Corp).  That'll buy at least a few lunches at his fave hang, San Pietro.... 

Gasparino's book, "The Sellout," tells how Bear Stearns tossed out its tradition of hard-nosed, conservative trading skills and plunged head first into risky debt that's been drowning Wall Street investment banks.

Gasparino, the on-air editor at CNBC and a former Wall Street Journal reporter, lamented that smart veterans who'd been running Wall Street banks were "some of the most conservative traders in the world, so why did they sell out these principles and begin to roll the dice so recklessly?"

"Greed," Gasparino reckoned. 

$400G For Book On Bear's Fall - NY Post

Alan Greenspan's new book is flying off the shelves

All of those hours spent shriveling up like a prune in the bathtub where he's said to have penned most of his new tome seem to have paid off: Alan Greenspan's  "The Age of Turbulence: Adventures in a New World.", is flying off of bookshelves. 

The book sold 129,000 copies in its first week on bookstore shelves, according to Nielsen BookScan, which tracks an estimated 75% of retail book sales in the U.S. While that is far short of first-week sales of the memoir of another high-profile Washington figure, former President Bill Clinton -- whose "My Life" sold 606,000 copies in its first week in June 2004, according to BookScan -- it is still strong enough to put the book on top of best-seller lists for both Amazon.com and Barnes & Noble's hardcover nonfiction.

Greenspan's Memoir Racks Up Sales - Wall Street Journal

 

Page Six asks: "Is the main character of Doug Stumpf's "Confessions of a Wall Street Shoeshine Boy" a thinly disguised tale based on accused pervy billionaire Jeffrey Epstein?"

Doug Stumpf's new novel, "Confessions of a Wall Street Shoeshine Boy" is getting lots of favorable press.  We've pointed to reviews, and now Page Six wonders if the main character is based upon Bear Stearns alum / billionalre / alleged perv Jeffrey Epstein, although the author says that all of the characters are composites of many people:

The novel, which centers around rogue trader "Jeff Steed" and an insider-trading scandal at the fictitious firm of Medved, Morningstar & Bigelow, reminds some readers of Epstein and his departure from Bear Stearns in the early 1980s.

In the book, Steed, like Epstein, has a penchant for sexy, young model types, goes out of his way to avoid boozing, and lives in a vast Manhattan mansion with gaudy and monstrous furniture as well as a huge spread in Palm Beach. Steed abruptly leaves Medved (Russian for "bear") with a hefty bonus in his back pocket amid accusations of illegal activity. Later, when he learns a magazine is writing a story on him, he manages to bypass security, corner the editor-in-chief in his office, and threaten his career.

Vanity Fair review / CNBC interview: Confessions of a Wall Street Shoeshine Boy

In early July we highlighted a Barron's review of  Doug Stumpf's new novel, Confessions of a Wall Street Shoeshine Boy.  It sounded like a fun read, and we're happy to say, after reading it, that it didn't disappoint. Earlier today, the author was interviewed on CNBC along with Michael Wolf of Vanity Fair.  Here's the video as well as Vanity Fair's recent review.