sutton038

Hiss... In 2010 Rolling Stone's  Matt Taibbi infamously referred to Goldman Sachs as a  Vampire Squid , a term that has since then become something of an overused meme (even Taibbi has expressed ambivalence about it). He's but one individual who's tapped into disturbing imagery to describe Goldman though: For example, the other day I picked up  Money and Power: How Goldman Sachs came to Rule the World   by Steven Cohan, repleat with a golden snake on the cover, poised to strike. The sentiment was echoed by Alesio Rastani , the trader who upset everyone by saying Goldman rules the world. I have no doubt that Goldman is a powerful company, and yes, they've been involved in some corrupt-as-hell deals (check out Senator Carl Levin's scathing report about them), but I sometimes suspect that the public hype around the company merely helps to reinforce it's existing self-image - presented in sanitised form in their graduate recruitment videos - as a reposit...

I know what you're thinking: How on earth would I be able to read, let alone rank, 100 blogs? The answer is simple: I have a METHODOLOGY!... and it's about as scientific as a model used to work out the value of a junk-bond backed CLO. Yes, I've taken something completely subjective and added a spurious quantitative element to it. Given that this is standard practice in the financial industry, there should be no problem. The Methodology A category like 'financial blogs' is somewhat loose: I've included blogs that focus on analysis of financial news, blogs that waffle about trading and investment strategies, and more general economics blogs that provide analysis relevant to financial markets. Personal finance sites though, are excluded, so no Mint.com. The methodology is based on 3 voting rounds, during which points are scored. Let me explain... Voting round 1: The List-Makers As a starting point, I sought to identify four pre-existing 'best of' lists that...

BEAR STEARNS (2008) DIMON: "A PIECE OF ART CLOSE TO MY HEART" I have many artists in my family - for example, my mother creates psychedelic textile art , and my uncle  Stidy is a political cartoonist  - but I feel over the last few years that I've been giving too little attention to the dark arts of art. So, welcome to my first exhibition. It all started when I was messing around with one of those demotivational poster generators . I was reflecting on the sad greatness of the now departed Bear Stearns, and Shakespeare came to mind with the speech of Mark Antony , when he says "Friends, Romans, Countrymen, lend me your ears, so that I can sell them to an investment bank that wants to securitise them". One thing led to another, and I created my first masterwork. I called it simply,  Bear Stears , but it is now known amongst collectors as  'ear 'ear . When I first put it out for auction on Ebay, the piece wasn't well understood, it's meaning opaque ...