And on an even more serious note, for which you should brace yourselves, Taleb has announced he will not be going to Davos this year. Why? Because he’s sick of the name dropping fame whores in attendance who don’t know anything about debt, like he does. Black Swan will be making better use of his time “at home with my fireplace and notebook and library,” where he will fix our economy while less serious people– NT hates to name names but “Rouriel Noubini” he mouths– will be in Switzerland banging economist groupies.

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Earlier today, Fitch downgraded Ireland three notches to a triple-B plus rating, citing “weaker prospects and greater uncertainty regarding the economy as a result of the intensification of the financial crisis,” noting that Ireland’s sovereign credit profile is no longer consistent with a high investment grade rating.” According to the Emerald Isle, this is bull shit.

A source close to the government contradicted Fitch. “Contrary to the Fitch analysis,” the person said, “the exchequer deficit has not deteriorated further in the past year but has stabilized.”

Fitch Downgrades Ireland [WSJ]

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New Players, Ties Surface In Insider Trading Probe (WSJ)
An independent analyst, John Kinnucan, has said he refused a Federal Bureau of Investigation request in October to record conversations with a client, whom he has declined to identify. That client is Michael Steinberg, a technology-fund manager at SAC division Sigma Capital Management, according to a person familiar with the matter.

Package Would Give Obama Stealthy Stimulus (WSJ)
Apart from extending Bush-era tax cuts, which were set to expire at year’s end, the agreement includes other components pegged at about $200 billion, including a payroll-tax cut for workers and an extension of unemployment benefits, which are likely to boost growth in 2011. The total package could amount to $900 billion worth of spending and tax cuts over two years. Most economic forecasts had already assumed the Obama administration would win support for extending at least the middle-class portion of the Bush tax cuts. Without that, the economy would likely be closer to stalling instead of growing a projected 2.5% to 3.5% next year. “This gave us a chance to do what most people thought wasn’t going to be possible in this environment, which is to provide a real forward lift to the economy relatively quickly,” National Economic Council Director Lawrence Summers said.

Roubini: Bond Vigilantes Could Target US (CNBC)
Dr. Doom tweeted: “Obama-GOP tax deal costs $900 billion over two years. US kicking the can further down the road. Are bond vigilantes starting to wake up?”

Bankers Fail to Win Concessions on EU Bonus Rules, Lawyers Say (Bloomberg)
Bankers failed to soften European rules on bonuses that will limit cash payouts and impose minimum share retention periods, lawyers said. The rules, to be approved by European Union regulators at a two-day meeting in London starting tomorrow, are likely to be similar to those proposed earlier this year, which limited bankers to receiving a maximum of a quarter of their bonuses in immediate cash payouts.

BoA Deal In Muni Case May Be Tip Of Iceberg (Bloomberg)
Bank of America Corp.’s agreement to pay $137 million in restitution for taking part in a nationwide bid-rigging conspiracy for municipal-investment contracts may soon be followed by more settlements to repay the scheme’s victims, the Justice Department’s Antitrust Division head said. “Stay tuned to this channel — I think you will see a lot more activity in the coming weeks and months,” Christine Varney, the antitrust chief, told reporters yesterday. “We are committed to getting restitution, full restitution, to all the municipalities that were victims of this scheme.”

Boston Businessman Giving Up $625 Million (AP)
A 97-year-old Boston-area apparel entrepreneur agreed Tuesday to forfeit $625 million to be distributed to cheated investors in jailed Bernard Madoff’s historic Ponzi scheme, authorities revealed, as a court trustee said negotiations are under way to recover money as well from the owners of the New York Mets.

Two Large Banks Tied to Gerson, Big Network Firm (WSJ)
Two large Wall Street firms formed alliances with the nation’s largest “expert-network” firm in recent years, giving them a vested interest in the outcome of a big insider-trading investigation. One of those Wall Street firms, Credit Suisse Group, recently received a subpoena seeking information and documents related to its use of experts at Gerson Lehrman Group, a large expert-network firm, by the banks’ researchers and clients, people familiar with the matter says. Credit Suisse declined to comment.

Harry Reid Tries To Add Online Poker In Tax Bill (POLITICO)
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid is trying to use the tax cut package President Barack Obama brokered with Republicans to legalize online poker, POLITICO has learned — a move that could further complicate the deal Obama announced Monday…“The House Republicans will go crazy if this is in the bill,” said one senior congressional aide, declaring it “a total, 100 percent payback” for the support Reid received from gambling interests. The aide asserted that lobbyists for the Las Vegas-based casino operator Harrah’s, now known as Caesars Entertainment Corp., even helped write the legislation. “You could call him ‘Harrah Reid’ at this point,” the aide quipped.

Queens woman plans to file suit after she says cops beat her because she didn’t curb her dog (NYDN)
Stanczyk, a married housewife from Rockaway Beach, was walking her terrier, Psotka – Polish for “prankster” – when she wound up in a confrontation with two uniformed officers from the 100th Precinct, Shaun Grossweiler and Richard DeMartino. “They saw my dog and they said I didn’t clean up,” said Stanczyk, fighting back tears as she spoke in halting English. “I said, ‘No, she only pee.’ They, of course, not agree with me and I say, ‘Show me. Where is it?’” The officers found dog feces nearby, she said. “Pick it up,” she said one cop ordered her. “I got scared. I pick up. I said, ‘It’s cold, not belong to my dog.’ When I smiled and said I didn’t do anything, that made them very upset.” At that point, Stanczyk was handcuffed and arrested. When she used her feet to try to prevent them from closing the patrol car door to secure her, she says, the beating began. “I get scared to death,” she said. “I started to scream, ‘My dog! My dog!’ They punch me in my face. They punch me in my breast. They punch me in my stomach.”

Citi Regains Some Market Mojo (WSJ)
Citigroup Inc. shares gained 3.8% after the U.S. sold the last of its stake in the bank, lifting the cloud of government ownership that had been hanging over the company and its stock price. In an internal memo, Citigroup Chief Executive Vikram Pandit, who has returned the bank to profitability this year after heavy losses brought the bank to the brink of collapse in 2009, expressed thanks to taxpayers and employees from Citi’s offices at Johannesburg, South Africa. “We remain deeply grateful to the American people for the assistance we received and are very pleased that we have provided a substantial return on their investment,” Mr. Pandit said in an email.

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Charles Gasparino is just going to cut right to the chase– he’s seen that YouTube clip. You know the one, with the bears talkin’ economics and calling the chairman of the Federal Reserve “The Ben Bernank”? Someone sent it to him the other day and not just some pissant from a bucket shop on Long Island but a real live BSD.

I should point out that I was told to download the YouTube video not by some dopey trader during a slow day in the markets, but by a CEO in New York City who runs one of the biggest financial firms in the world. Bernanke’s senior staff has seen it too, I’m told, though a spokesman wouldn’t say whether the chairman has. “This video is going fucking viral,” the CEO told me with a laugh.

You know who’s not laughing? Charles Gasparino. After he got the clip to work (there were a few false starts and he didn’t have the volume turned on) he became filled with rage at these furry little shits.

While it’s easy to blow off a YouTube video as nothing more than a cheap shot created by someone with too much time on his hands, the fact that Bernanke or any Fed chairman has gone from relative mainstream obscurity—fed chairman for all the power in navigating the economy through their control of the country’s money supply have never exactly been house hold names in the majority of American households—to an object of popular derision and scorn really says something about Bernanke’s ability to remain an effective Fed chairman…

To be sure, QE-2 will probably work as well as QE-1, which means it probably won’t do much to spark an incredibly weak economy staggering under the weight of 9.5 percent unemployment. But that doesn’t mean Bernanke deserves all the crap he’s getting. He doesn’t because attacking Bernanke obscures some of the big problems facing the American economy as we conclude the second year of President Obama’s hope and change agenda that clearly isn’t working.

So whoever is making these things, let’s get one shining a light on the real problem. Let Chaz know if you need ideas for dialogue, he came up with some good stuff last night.

Ben Bernanke: The Economy’s Fall Guy [TDB]

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In fact, James Woods isn’t sure the economy can be saved at all, an outlook with which his girlfriend silently agrees.

From a couch in the Soho Grand Hotel, James Woods foretells doom. “I think that the economy, and the political system, has literally become such a disaster I don’t know if it’s possible to save it,” he says. “I think we’re headed toward the worst double-dip recession ever in the history of this country. They say the recession is over. Tell that to all the people who are out of work.” He sounds like much of the America riled up with throw-out-the-bums fever this election season. Unlike many gloomy 63-year-olds, however, he’s seated next to a beautiful blonde 24-year-old who’s his girlfriend of five years, and who goes by the name of Ashley Madison.

She sits patiently by and lets him do the talking, as if she were quite used to patiently sitting by. Woods is in town to play Richard Fuld, the last CEO of Lehman Brothers, in the HBO movie of Andrew Ross Sorkin’s Too Big to Fail. The film, he says, opens with the camera zooming up a tower to find Woods as Fuld sitting all alone. “I mean, he was the guy who just completely did not see it coming,” he says, with certain glee. “He was Nero fiddling as Rome was burning.”

James Woods Is Pessimistic [NYM]

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“In the midst of debates on financial regulation and China’s currency in April,” Bloomberg reports today, “Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner sat down to discuss the U.S. economy– with comedian Jon Stewart.”

This was not for show (the Secretary did not appear on-air) but rather a serious, off the record brain picking session, held in Stewart’s New York office. “Jon Stewart is influential in America, so we took the opportunity for the two to meet and to discuss the economy,” Treasury spokesman Steve Adamske said. They hit on everything– the possibility of a housing foreclosure moratorium, Stewart’s views on China, and whether or not the TDS host thought Geithner should be advocating a weak dollar policy. Though it was almost strictly about business, Geithner did lob one personal request, namely that Stewart get off his ass about the not being able to sell his house thing.

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John Taylor, Chief Investment Officer of FX Concepts, has been doing a lot of thinking about the economy lately and he keeps coming back to one thing– how similar things are to Europe just prior to World War II and how Bernanke’s actions are eerily reminiscent to those of Adolf Hitler. Sure, the facial hair is slightly different but other than that, Taylor says, “the parallels are ominous.” Really, it’s uncanny! If you aren’t lucky enough to be one of Taylor’s clients, who received the history lesson this morning, please join us as we take a gander at the outside the box “insight” some people apparently pay money to read.

Not too many traders remember ‘the phoney war,’ or the Sitzkrieg, as it happened 71 years ago. After Hitler invaded Poland on the first day of September 1939, Poland’s European allies France and England declared war on Germany, but nothing significant happened on that front until the following May when the German Army rolled through Luxembourg, the Netherlands, and Belgium and into France. Although the horror started in Poland in the fall of 1939, for a few months, the rest of Europe was spared that horror, which eventually lasted through the next five years. Strangely, this past September (2010), the US equity market rose by about 8.8%, its best return for that month, since that same September (1939). To me the parallels are ominous. What were those people thinking back in 1939? Could a coming world war have that positive an impact on the economy and on markets? They must have been crazy – of course equities gave up their gains and were cratered in May 1940 when Germany invaded the west. But, what are we thinking of now? A war has just begun. Didn’t Bernanke and the Fed announce in late August at Jackson Hole (and multiple times since then) that the US was going to enter QE2 and debase its currency setting off a currency war. Bernanke, like Hitler seven decades ago, had been warning everyone who would listen for years.

Stay tuned for upcoming reports in which we learn that Bernanke and Kim Jong-il were actually separated at birth.

Market Insight Report [PDF]

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Nothing but love for the Oracle of O but whoa there big boy! Lloyd Blankfein doesn’t come into your Dairy Queen and trash talk the buxom milkmaids, AKA the Blizzard Babes, does he?

Buffett has called for greater accountability from bank executives whose risk-taking produces losses for shareholders and imperils the economy. The use of derivatives has allowed banks to add risk and “makes a mockery” of federal rules designed to limit losses, Buffett said. “You should go broke,” he said of chief executive officers whose firms require government bailouts to protect society. “And I think your wife should go broke, too,” he said.

Buffett Compares Wall Street To Church With Raffle [Bloomberg]

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Sure, he has his cats, but they can only provide so much.

For more than a year, the bearded man consuming a shrimp salad at an Upper West Side cafe has been a prophet of doom, warning that the economy could slide into a “third depression” unless our leaders come to their senses and follow his advice. “I felt like a really lonely voice,” says Paul Krugman, an unknotted blue tie draped around his neck. “It’s been really frustrating.” But he keeps hammering away, demanding action in one New York Times column after another, hoping “to establish a counter-narrative against what everyone else is saying.”…In person, Krugman is several shades warmer, grousing about jet lag and delays in renovating the $1.7 million co-op he recently bought on Riverside Drive. “He’s very sweet,” says fellow Times columnist Gail Collins. “I’ve never heard him yell or get teed off at somebody.”

Paul Krugman, Incensed And Insistent About Our Economic Ills [WaPo]

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Bill Gates Tops Forbes Ranking Of 400 Wealthiest Americans (Bloomberg)
With estimated assets of $54 billion. Warren Buffett ranks second in the U.S. with $45 billion, according to the list published yesterday. The number of list members whose wealth declined this year is 85 compared with 314 in 2009, while wealth increased for 217 members. The total worth of the 400 rose by 8 percent to $1.37 trillion, still below the 2008 total of $1.57 trillion.

Warren Buffett: We’re Still In A Recession (CNBC)
Warren Buffett tells CNBC that by his own “common sense” definition, the United States is “still in a recession. In a taped interview with Becky Quick, Buffett says, “I think we’re in a recession until real per capita GDP gets back to where it was before.” While Buffett continues to believe the U.S. will eventually emerge from its economic downturn, “We’re not gonna be out of it for awhile.”

SEC Blasted On Goldman Probe (WSJ)
At a Senate Banking Committee hearing Wednesday, Mr. Kotz was questioned about the timing of the Goldman suit. He responded: “It would strain credulity to think it was coincidental.” He added: “I can’t give you a conclusion right now, but it was suspicious.”

Boehner’s Business Ties Cut Both Ways (WSJ)
Mr. Boehner, a sharp dresser with a two-pack-a-day habit, sometimes gets referred to around Capitol Hill as Don Draper. “I’m still who I am. I’m a businessman. I can’t be something I’m not. No apologies. Zero,” Mr. Boehner said in the recent interview, smoothing his hair before heading to a political event…Addressing a perennial source of jokes, Mr. Boehner says his dark complexion is natural, similar to that of his mother and four (of 12) siblings. “I have never been in a tanning bed or used a tanning product,” Mr. Boehner said. His staff showed a high-school group photo where he has the darkest face in Moeller High’s all-male class.

Jack Welch: Obama Administration Is “Anti-Business” (CNBC)
The government should make it easier for companies to invest and expand but instead they are hampering business, according to Welch. “I still maintain that the economy’s been terrible and they have not done things to move the economy forward,” he said. “He’s there a month and he vilifies Las Vegas… he kills the hotel business,” Welch said.

Elizabeth Warren: No More “Fooling” People For Credit Firms (CNBC)
The intent of the new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau is not to make life tougher for banks but rather better for their customers, the organization’s czar, Elizabeth Warren, told CNBC. “The truth is I don’t care about the title. I want to get to work trying to get this agency going because that’s what middle class families need. We’ve got a broken market,” she said. “It’s a political assessment that I just have to say I don’t know and I don’t think much about it. The part I care about is getting the agency started.”

Katy Perry Kicked Off The Street (NYP)
On Monday, a clip from the November 3 episode of “Sesame Street” featuring Katy Perry singing a very vanilla version of her song “Hot N’ Cold” went viral and people went berserk.It seems that Katy’s cans were way too prominent for some parents. And now, TMZ is reporting that because of the influx of complaints (such as “my kid wants milk now”) “Sesame Street” producers have decided not to air the segment.

Lehman Sees Bankruptcy Plan Confirmation In Q1 (Reuters)
They’re “optimistic.”

Banks Value Social Responsibility More After Crisis (Reuters)
“The change is good on the financial side. The change that’s more important is on the cultural side,” Bob Diamond told the Clinton Global Initiative.

Friended For $100 Million (WSJ)
Mark Zuckerberg plans to announce a donation of up to $100 million to the Newark schools this week.

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