$$$ Lawmakers told $2 trillion debt cap raise needed: sources (Reuters)

$$$ Obama will not release bin Laden photos, White House says (WaPo)

$$$ Value Investing Congress Summary: Marks, Romick, Tilson, Leonard & More (MarketFolly)

$$$ UBS Financial Services Inc. lost a jury verdict of almost $10.6 million in a case brought by a former sales assistant who said she was sexually harassed by a supervisor…[who] “repeatedly made inappropriate comments about Ingraham’s breast size,” called her into his office “to view sexually offensive e-mails on his computer,” and repeatedly talked about the size of his genitals,” she said. He also asked her about her sexual fantasies, she said in the lawsuit. (Bloomberg)

$$$ More Power Over Wall Street, but Little Chance to Discuss It (ProPublica)

$$$ Dems To Force Vote On Oil Subsidies (HuffPo)

$$$ Madoff trustee Irving Picard wants to start repaying victims (NYP)

$$$ PIMCO rolls out floating-rate fund ahead of rates (Reuters)

$$$ Carlos Slim Actively Selling Silver Futures (CNBC)

$$$ Bank Stocks Shunned by Money Managers Over Derivatives (Bloomberg)

$$$ LinkedIn Chooses NYSE Over Nasdaq, Following Renren and Pandora (Bloomberg)

$$$ NASA Gravity Probe Confirms Two Einstein Theories (Space)

Article courtesy of Dealbreaker

U.S. May Pursue More Lenders After Suing Deutsche Bank on Loans (Bloomberg)
“We go where the evidence takes us, and if it takes us to the larger players on Wall Street, so be it,” Kanovsky said. U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara said it wouldn’t be a “fantastical stretch” for prosecutors to scrutinize other lenders.

Steep Drop Tarnishes Big Bets On Silver (WSJ)
George Soros’s big hedge fund, a firm operated by high-profile investor John Burbank and some other leading firms have been selling gold and silver, according to people close to the matter, after furiously accumulating precious metals for much of the past two years…Some others with stellar records—including Mr. Burbank, of Passport Capital, and Alan Fournier, of Pennant Capital—also have been passionate about precious metals, giving encouragement to individual investors to follow. Now they are selling, in each case for distinct reasons…[John] Paulson told investors Tuesday morning that gold prices could go as high as $4,000 an ounce over the next three to five years, as the U.S. and U.K. flood the money supply…Andrew Hall, a former star trader at Citigroup who runs hedge fund Astenbeck Capital Management LLC and trades for Phibro, a unit of Occidental Petroleum Corp., told his clients last month that gold and silver will continue to “march higher” unless evidence emerges of “an imminent rise” in interest rates.

Official: Portugal bailout to be $115 billion‎ (BusinessWeek)
“The government got a good deal, one that safeguards Portugal,” Prime Minister Jose Socrates said in a televised address to the nation. He did not take questions.

Portugal aid terms likely to spark 2-year recession (Reuters)
An official source told Reuters the austerity measures to be included in the deal, such as higher taxes, point to a “contraction of 2 percent in gross domestic product in 2011 and in 2012″. That will make it yet more challenging for the heavily indebted country, which has had some of the lowest growth rates in Europe for a decade, to ride out its crisis and return to financial health. The source told Reuters taxes will rise on cars and property and there will be cuts in deductions on health, education and housing.

US Becomes Net Exporter of Fuel (FT)
The US has become a net exporter of fuel for the first time for nearly 20 years as drivers struggle with high petrol prices.

4 Billionaires at Glencore (BBC)
When Glencore publishes its full flotation prospectus later this morning, it will show that there are four billionaires working for the world’s leading commodities, minerals and energy trader. These are led by the chief executive Ivan Glasenberg, who will be shown to be worth around $10bn. But it is the quartet of billionaires, plus many others worth more than $100m each, and hundreds who are millionaires, that makes Glencore quite extraordinary.

U.S. Regulators Face Budget Pinch as Mandates Widen (NYT)
On a recent trip to New York to tour a trading floor, a group of employees from the commodities watchdog rode Mega Bus both ways, arriving late to their meeting despite a 5:30 a.m. departure. The bus, which cost $30 a person round trip, saved the agency roughly $1,000 over Amtrak…The money squeeze comes as Wall Street regulators take on added responsibilities in the wake of the financial crisis, including monitoring hedge funds, overseeing the $600 trillion derivatives market and other tasks mandated by the Dodd-Frank law.

Euro Approaches 18-Month High Versus Dollar Before ECB Decision (Bloomberg)
The 17-member common currency strengthened against all but one of its most actively traded peers as a report showed European services and manufacturing growth accelerated in April. The Dollar Index declined toward the lowest level since July 2008. New Zealand’s dollar dropped to a two-week low after a government report showed the nation had the biggest net outflow of residents in more than 10 years. The pound slumped to the weakest in more than a year against the euro.

Foreign Banks Get Scrutiny in Britain (WSJ)
The Financial Services Authority’s goal is to prevent certain companies from exploiting European rules to set up banking and brokerage operations that the agency views as potentially risky because they use a structure that doesn’t face tough local supervision. But the move by the FSA is controversial. Some observers said the pressure conflicts with Europe’s “passporting” rules, under which financial institutions from anywhere in the 30-country European Economic Area are allowed to open outposts in other member countries. Those “branches,” which can house a range of business activities, face limited oversight by local regulators. Instead, they primarily are the responsibility of regulators in their home countries.

KKR and TPG look to move into Brazil (FT)
KKR and TPG are hunting for a senior figure to lead their offices in Brazil, who will then recruit start- up teams, people in the industry said.

At Nasdaq, a Pitch and Woo (WSJ)
Nasdaq OMX Group Inc. has rolled out the red carpet to hedge funds, racing to persuade them to buy up shares of NYSE Euronext to derail the Big Board’s planned tie-up with Deutsche Börse AG…Some merger arbitragers and hedge-fund investors have met with Nasdaq Chief Executive Robert Greifeld three times in the last few weeks, people familiar with the matter said. They also are being offered private meetings with Mr. Greifeld and special tours of Nasdaq headquarters, these people said.

Southampton’s Former Goldman Sachs Party Pad Sells for $4.1M (Curbed)
In 2009, the New York Post caught wind that Goldman Sachs exec Richard Kimball Jr. was in hot water with the Southampton Police. Turns out Kimball, the ex-husband of Holly Peterson, was throwing pretty rowdy pool parties at his Southampton rental. But while Kimball was partying, the rental was trying to find itself a more permanent buyer.

Wall Street’s Cult Calculator Turns 30 (WSJ)
Thirty years after the launch of the 12c, it’s still commonplace for financial analysts filing into a conference room to set down their calculators next to their papers and cellphones. Indeed, the 12c, which costs $70 on H-P’s website, is H-P’s best-selling calculator of all time, though the company won’t reveal how many units it has sold over the years. (A standard calculator costs about $10.) Its chief competitor is Texas Instruments’ $28 BA II Plus, which is the only other calculator test-takers are permitted to use on the official CFA exam.

Florida woman, Gloria Esther Perez, busted for hiding knife in her ‘private area’ (NYDN via Daily Intel)
Perez was searched and found to be hiding dozens of prescription pills, police said. Perez then “became ill,” the police report states, and was taken to a hospital. Once there, it was discovered she was concealing two knives. One was tucked within the folds of her fat while the other was “hidden in her vagina.”

Article courtesy of Dealbreaker

As you may have heard, Steve Cohen recently put in a bid for a minority stake with the Mets. Should he be successful, the SAC Capital founder’s partial ownership will please a great many people- the organization, which needs the money, the players, who need the discipline, the SAC employees, who will have the honor of taking turns filling in for Mr. Met when his performance is deemed shit and most of all, the fans, who stand to benefit the most from Steve’s leadership, as you don’t win rings without having a guy around who will light a fire under everyone’s ass. It’d unquestionably be a win-win situation for all. And yet.

A coupla guys named Brad and Brett are worried. Worried that Steve will lose focus. Worried that he won’t be able to handle owning a Major League Baseball team and running SAC Capital.

“Owning a team can be a function of ego, it is very high-profile, and it could prove to be a distraction,” says Brad R. Balter, head of Boston-based Balter Capital Management, which farms out money to hedge funds. “As an investor, I have to consider that.” Words to bear in mind for Steven A. Cohen, the billionaire hedge fund manager who is bidding for a minority stake in the New York Mets. Investors such as Balter are watchful for signs fund managers have become less attentive to their day jobs. “We don’t begrudge managers getting rich, but we want to invest with people who are motivated and are concentrating full-time on managing money,” says Brett H. Barth, a partner at New York-based BBR Partners, which invests in hedge funds.

The little brains on Brad and Brett– most likely not SAC investors though they’d kill a man in cold blood for the privilege– seem to think that it takes constant monitoring of all markets as well as an extreme attention to detail to run an ultra successful hedge fund manager, and that were Steve to start going out on school nights and not put in 100 hours a week keeping up with his stocks, that the whole thing would fall apart. What they fail to get? Is just how easy this is for SC. Trading these markets? It’s a fucking joke to him. He could do it from the dugout during the 8th inning of a Johan Santana no hitter, whereas Brad and Brett could be given could be given an order to cover a short position and all they’d do is fumble around and fuck it up.

When Hedge Fund Owners Invest In Sports Teams [BusinessWeek]

Article courtesy of Dealbreaker

Catch Andrew Ross Sorkin’s column about Goldman Sachs this morning? Charlie Gasparino did and he didn’t like it. Noting Goldman Sachs’ desire not to make a big deal about the money it made correctly predicting the housing market crash, perhaps in an attempt not to attract anymore attention from Senator Carl “Goldman Sachs is a financial snake pit rife with greed, conflicts of interest, and wrongdoing” Levin, Sorkin encouraged the Masters of the Universe to stop denying their success. Rather, ARS would like to see them “take a bow,” as their housing call is something they should be proud of and which shareholders and taxpayers alike should be happy about, since it meant the latter didn’t have to bail the firm out to the extent it did Citi and AIG.  And that pissed Gasparino off something fierce.

Normally he wouldn’t say anything (“‘I’m not and never have been in the Goldman is the root-of-all-evil-camp,” CG prefaces) but after last month’s antics wherein the firm dared to deny his report Lloyd Blankfein’s friends claim he’s thinking of retiring, Chaz can no longer bite his tongue. Not to get too off-topic, but it still baffles CG as to how GS spokesman Lucas vP “can deny someone’s impression from a private conversation.” Sorry, he just had to get that out there. But back to the suggestion that Goldman should be taking any bows– bull shit, Gasparino says. Bull, shit.

“The last thing Goldman should be doing right now is taking a bow and telling the world it’s a great firm, because when it comes down to it, Goldman isn’t really a great firm.

“What is it then,” CG asks fuming. Not being here to simply raise questions without providing answers, Gasparino goes on, attributing a well-known saying to a guy he gets drunk with.

“Well, in the words of a drinking buddy who is a frequent consumer of financial news, ‘Goldman is like the tallest midget in the room.’”

How did Goldman become the tallest among short people?

Standing the tallest among these little men is Goldman, the firm most adept at exploiting the corrupt system that puts the government in bed with the big banks. Just today, Goldman announced that it earned $1.64 billion in the first quarter of 2011 even after repaying Warren Buffett the $5 billion he lent them in 2008 when the firm was teetering with the rest of Wall Street. Seems like a pretty amazing feat until you consider how Goldman earned all that cash. Low interest rates from the Fed over the past two-plus years means Goldman can basically borrow at next to nothing to place its market bets.

Those bets, it turns out, really aren’t bets at all. Firms like Goldman began buying depressed mortgage bonds in 2009 because they knew prices would rise. How did they know something like that? The Fed instituted a program to buy these bonds in the open market as a way to support the housing market. Like most things tried by the Obama administration to jump-start the economy, the plan didn’t work for Main Street. But not long after the buy-back program commenced, Wall Street — and Goldman in particular — began announcing record profits and bonuses to its bankers and traders. All of which transpired as Blankfein and his team tried to convince the world that Goldman really didn’t need all that bailout money in late 2008 and that they accepted the $10 billion in cash from then Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson because they were forced to do so by a government more worried about the health of entire financial system than the financial condition of Goldman Sachs. Sounds like a very modest gesture until you calculate how the taxpayer bailout of the giant insurer AIG was in actuality a back-door bailout of Goldman Sachs.

It didn’t have to come to this, Gasparino says, this being his exposing GS, and it wouldn’t have, if everyone had just listened to Uncle Charles way back when.

As all this came to light back in late 2009, I wrote a column here on HuffPost saying Blankfein should just resign and save the world the trouble of holding him accountable for explaining why Goldman is such a large midget.

Goldman Sachs: The Tallest Midget In The Room [HuffPo]

Article courtesy of Dealbreaker

Los Angeles startup TreatFeed just launched a new spin on the crossover between social networking and e-commerce — it wants to reward users for their social recommendations with prizes and cash.

Scott Roback, the company’s senior vice president of strategy and business development, said that where companies like Facebook are trying to build a social graph, TreatFeed is trying to create “the commerce graph, or the monetization layer of the social graph.”

Here’s how it works: TreatFeed aggregates deals from across the Web. Users come to the site for the deals, then ask their friends and family to join too. When users find deals they like, they can recommend them to their connections on the site. And if someone actually acts on a deal, then TreatFeed gets an affiliate commission, which it then splits with users. The user who signed up for the deal gets a percentage, and the user who brought them into TreatFeed gets a smaller percentage, and so on, up through four “generations”.

Technically, the commission for shoppers takes the form of points, but those points can be redeemed for prizes or cash. Roback estimated that half of the money TreatFeed receives for each deal will eventually go to users.

This system takes advantage of the fact that shoppers are already recommending products and deals to each other, Roback said. And the fact that TreatFeed is rewarding people for bringing in more users, rather than for recommending specific deals, seems smart, because it will help the site build out its user base quickly. It might also avoid criticisms that this system (like other “multilevel marketing” programs) starts to look like a pyramid scheme.

Even though TreatFeed is building a social graph (er, “commerce graph”) of its own, it also integrates with Facebook, allowing users to find friends from Facebook and post deal recommendations on the social network. And it will work on affiliate programs with publishers, allowing publishers to make money not just on the shoppers who sign up directly from their site, but on the larger SocialTree that builds as those shoppers continue using TreatFeed and bringing in their friends.

TreatFeed was incubated by Lagovent, the firm created by Konstantin Glasmacher and Brett Markinson. Markinson is the new startup’s chief executive. The pair has already successfully launched one e-commerce company, HauteLook, which was acquired by Nordstrom. TreatFeed raised $5.4 million in a round led by Norwest Venture Partners.

Tags: social e-commerce, social shopping

Companies: Lagovent, TreatFeed

People: Brett Markinson, Konstantin Glasmacher, Scott Roback

Article courtesy of VentureBeat » deals

Samsung has agreed to sell its hard disk drive business to Seagate for $1.375 billion in cash and stock.

Coming off the heels of Western Digital’s $4.3 billion purchase of Hitachi’s storage business, the deal represents a major consolidation in the hard drive business, which is one of the fundamental technologies of the computer era.

Korea’s Samsung will shed the money-losing division and get a 9.6 percent stake, or 45.2 million shares, in Scotts Valley, Calif.-based Seagate. Those shares are valued at $687.5 million.

Samsung will focus more on next-generation displays and solar cells. The companies said they will work together to better align their own future product development efforts and roadmaps. Seagate had about 32 percent of the hard disk market in the first quarter, according to market researcher iSuppli. With Samsung, the company’s share will rise to 40 percent, second only to Western Digital’s 50 percent share.

Samsung was losing money in part because of the competitive pressure in storage, where magnetic-based hard drives are competing with chip-based flash memory. But it’s business was still huge. The company shipped 48.9 million hard disks in the fourth quarter and it had revenue of $2.7 billion from that division. Samsung will get a seat on Seagate’s board.

Article courtesy of VentureBeat » deals

As a follow-up to last week’s news the U.S. Department of Justice brought charges against some of the top online poker sites, Business Insider’s Dashiell Bennett reports today that online card players have been “frantically trying to get that money,” meaning the funds that had been deposited in online poker accounts that are now frozen by the FBI.

Some readers writing in say they had gotten cashed out via physical cheque, but Bennett muses that such cheques may not be able to be cashed at this point. Another reader says a transaction from their account that had already been approved was declined on Friday, “which would seem to indicate that it was blocked by the FBI’s crackdown,” writes Bennett. “The person didn’t lose the money, but it’s now back in a locked account.”

Article courtesy of Tech Trader Daily

Senator Levin: Goldman Sachs Misled Congress After Duping Clients (Bloomberg)
Goldman Sachs misled clients and Congress about the firm’s bets on securities tied to the housing market, the chairman of the U.S. Senate panel that investigated the causes of the financial crisis said. Senator Carl Levin, releasing the findings of a two-year inquiry yesterday, said he wants the Justice Department and the Securities and Exchange Commission to examine whether Goldman Sachs violated the law by misleading clients who bought the complex securities known as collateralized debt obligations without knowing the firm would benefit if they fell in value….Much of the blame for the 2008 market collapse belongs to banks that earned billions of dollars in profits creating and selling financial products that imploded along with the housing market, according to the report. The Levin-Coburn panel levied its harshest criticism at investment banks, in particular accusing Goldman Sachs and Deutsche Bank AG of peddling collateralized debt obligations backed by risky loans that the banks’ own traders believed were likely to lose value.

Senate Report Lays Bare Mortgage Mess (WSJ)
“I think I found white elephant, flying pig and unicorn all at once.” –Goldman Sachs email describing an Australian client that invested in a souring mortgage structure 4/26/2007

Moody’s, S&P Caved to Goldman, UBS Mortgage Pressure, Levin Says (Bloomberg)
“Investment bankers who complained about rating methodologies, criteria, or decisions were often able to obtain exceptions or other favorable treatment,” according to the Levin report. The decisions appeared to be “concessions made to prevent the loss of business.”

US Probes Libor Dealings (WSJ)
For the past year, law-enforcement officials have been investigating whether the U.S. and European banks understated their own borrowing costs, which are used to calculate the London interbank offered rate, or Libor. The investigators are now looking into whether the banks effectively formed a global cartel and coordinated how to report borrowing costs between 2006 and 2008.

Geithner: We Must Raise Taxes (PBS)
Appearing on the PBS NewsHour Wednesday evening, U.S. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner said there is “no plausible way” to cut the deficit without raising taxes. “Unless you’re going to cut deeply into commitments we have made to seniors and to the disabled and to the poor, or ask the country to go borrow the money, you can’t solve this,” he said.

Raj Keeps Chin Up (NYP)
One reason Rajaratnam has to smile might be the ebullient praise he received yesterday from prominent educator and social activist Geoffrey Canada. Canada, who was called as a character witness, called Rajaratnam a “dear friend” with “a genuine concern for children.”
“Raj and I hit it off right away,” said Canada, the CEO of charitable group the Harlem Children’s Zone. Canada said he approached Rajaratnam earlier this decade to donate to the group and found him eager to help “level the playing field for kids.” “I never had to convince Raj” to be a donor, Canada said when asked to respond to the prosecution’s allegations that Rajaratnam committed his alleged crimes out of greed. “He’s a very generous person,” he added.

Deutsche Bank Sold Mortgage-Linked ‘Pigs’ as Market Buckled, Lawmakers Say (Bloomberg)
“Keep your fingers crossed but I think we will price this just before the market falls off a cliff,” Michael Lamont, the group’s co-head, said in a Feb. 8, 2007, e-mail about Deutsche Bank’s Gemstone CDO VII Ltd., according to a report released yesterday by the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations. The Frankfurt-based firm sold $700 million of the instruments, which lost most of their value within 17 months.

IMF: Banks Face $3.6 Trillion ‘Wall’ of Maturing Debt (Reuters)
Many European banks need bigger capital cushions to restore market confidence and assure they can borrow, and some weak players will need to be closed, the International Monetary Fund said in its Global Financial Stability Report.

Obama Challenges Republicans With Deadline For Deficit Deal (Bloomberg)
The timeline Obama proposed for coming up with an agreement — beginning talks in early May and completing them by late June — sets up a negotiation over the nation’s long-term fiscal challenges in parallel with a congressional debate over raising the $14.29 trillion legal debt limit.

Glenore Aims For $8.8 Billion In IPO (WSJ)
The company said it plans to list a 15% to 20% stake, through an offer to raise around $6.8 billion to $8.8 billion in new capital and up to $2.2 billion in existing shares. At the upper level, that would make it London’s largest-ever initial public offering, topping Rosneft’s $10.6 billion offer in July 2006.

London Retains Lure For Hedge Funds As Banks Demure (Reuters)
Throgmorton’s Rubio points to the “Harvey Nicks effect” — referring to upmarket London department store Harvey Nichols, a magnet for big spenders — and said he had seen one manager relocate to Barcelona, only to move back to London.

Article courtesy of Dealbreaker

Last week we reported that the Forbes 2011 Midas List of the top 100 tech investors included only two women.

What may have escaped notice is that only two investors based in Europe made it onto the list: Antoine Papiernik of Sofinnova Partners (No. 36) and Danny Rimer of Index Ventures (No. 59).

The Midas List ranks top venture capitalists according to their leadership within a firm or sector, the firm’s overall standing in the venture capital industry and an analysis of the firm’s disclosed M&A’s and IPO exits. Based on Forbes’ analysis, Europe appears to be the stepchild of the venture capital world.

I tracked down Papiernik and Rimer and asked them about investing in Europe. According to Business Insider, Europe has the smallest stockpile of venture capital funds in the world. While the US has $77 billion in “dry powder” (funds available for investment) as of April 2011, VC funds focused on Europe have $28 billion, while Asia and the rest of the world is sitting on $51 billion.

Danny Rimer started Index Ventures’ London office and has been involved in European success stories like MySql, Last.Fm and Skype. He pointed out that the Forbes list is very US-centric in that it doesn’t include many Asian investors either. He says “It’s like the world series of baseball”, i.e. global in title, but not in reality.

Papiernik, who specializes in Life Sciences and whose fund has been involved in 3 billion dollars in company exits in the past two years, agrees that venture capital is still seen as a US business. “LPs (limited partners, who provide the money to VC funds) traditionally tend to look in their back mirrors”, he says, and European venture capital is not what they see there. Rimer told me that “Europe is not considered to be a hotbed of innovation and good liquidity results” and that his fund has made a good business out of that perception.

Rimer highlights a trend in European tech companies like music subscription service Spotify or multiplayer game portal Gameforge, which have the potential to go global and are even being cloned in the U.S. He would like to see more European IPOs and European companies buying local startups. Papiernik notes that big pharma is closing down a lot of research labs in Europe so many more qualified people are available to start companies.

Given that the European VC market probably has considerable room to grow, it’s surprising that more U.S. venture firms are not looking to expand in that direction. “In life sciences there is more of a level playing field worldwide. Big pharma doesn’t care where a company is,” concludes Papiernik. Sounds like good business to me.

Tags: Europe, Midas List, Venture Capital

Companies: Forbes, Gameforge, spotify

People: Antoine Papiernik, Danny Rimer

Article courtesy of VentureBeat » deals

As you may have heard, the New York Mets are going through a bit of a rough patch, on account of being screwed financially on their investment with Madoff Securities. In January the organization announced it needed to sell a minority stake, to little success. Among the people who turned them down? Steve Cohen. Despite being a huge fan, who has a box at Citi field, Cohen was reportedly “adamant” that he wouldn’t shell out a dime without getting a say in the direction of the franchise. At the time, we told the Wilpons to not take the rejection as a hard no, as Steve is an ideas man and just wanted some level of assurance that if he was going to pony up the money, his voice would be heard. Now, suddenly, the hedge fund manager has “joined the bidding for a minority stake.” What changed?

Details are scant at this time but several legitimate explanations come to mind. The first is that the Mets wised up and promised to adopt the items floated by Steve, via us, most of which will translate to rings come November (included but not limited to:  a down and out clause– if the team is down by more than 15 games at the All Star break, players are told they’re idiots and sent home. (This is how you motivate people.); no more polyester- from now on players wear fleece, with the top 3 or 4 buttons undone so there’s no overheating; SC gets his own playing cards, which are sure to be a breakout hit). Also possible:

* SAC decided to launch a new fund (the Queens Pennant Restructuring Exceptional Value Opportunities fund; fees are 1 and .400)

* Mr. Met showed up to Casa de Cohen drunk and crying and this was the only way Steve could get the guy to leave

* In a dream, the ghost of Keith Hernandez came out of a closet and told Steve: “Let me tell you something kid. Everybody gets one chance to do something great. Most people never take the chance, either because they’re too scared, or they don’t recognize it when it hocks a loogie on their glasses. This is your big chance- you shouldn’t let it go by.”

SAC’s Cohen Bids For Mets Stake [WSJ]

Article courtesy of Dealbreaker