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here was no knife recovered at the scene, leading officials to suspect the death was not a suicide, and they were trying to determine who had access to his apartment. One-bedroom apartments at the building are listed at more than $1 million.

PRESS RELEASE NOVEMBER 14, 2014 ROBBER BARON BANKERS: Scam $1.3 Quadrillion/yr November 14, 2014 – Reuters reported yesterday: “Regulators fined six major banks including Citigroup (C.N) and UBS (UBSN.VX) a total of $4.3 billion for failing to stop traders from trying to manipulate the foreign exchange market, following a year-long global investigation. HSBC (HSBA.L), Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS.L), JP Morgan (JPM.N) and Bank of America (BAC.N) also face penalties resulting from the inquiry that has put the largely unregulated $5 trillion-a-day market on a tighter leash, accelerated the push to automate trading and ensnared the Bank of England.” See:...

Tyler Durden 11/11/2014 A funny thing happened on the way to the ‘end’ of the multi-trillion dollar bond buying program known as QE - the Fed chronicles. Aside from the shift to a globalization of QE via the European Central Bank (ECB) and Bank of Japan (BOJ) as I wrote about earlier, what lingers in the air of “post-taper” time is an absence of absence. For QE is not over. Instead, in the United States, the process has simply morphed from being predominantly executed by the Federal Reserve (Fed) to being executed by its major private bank members. Fed Chair,...

A Goldman Sachs managing director has died following an apparent kiteboarding accident, police said. The body of 39-year-old Nicholas Valtz was found floating off Lazy Point in Napeague Harbor, Long Island, on Sunday. The amateur kiteboarder was still attached to his kite, while his gear was scattered in a grassy area of the harbor. The East Hampton Star reported the Brooklyn resident went kiteboarding early in the morning. When he failed to return by 2pm, relatives he was staying with at a Bridgehampton home called police. 'We’re deeply saddened by this tragedy and our thoughts are with Nick’s family,' Goldman...

It is a rare occurrence for conversations about contemporary art to happen outside of the insular circles of the art world. Contemporary art, by and large, exists as a bubble. So it should come as no great surprise that other “bubbles” are the only thing that may collide with contemporary art. Like, for instance, the elite insider world of high finance that purchases much contemporary art at auction. Last week, one such collision came to light when Credit Suisse was criminally convicted for assisting tax evasion and further revealed what more and more people realize: art can be quite the...

Nearly a month after Andrew Jarzyk went missing his family, at long last, has been given some amount of closure. The 27-year-old's family has confirmed that a body found in the Hudson River on Monday is that of the Hoboken, N.J., jogger and banker who had been missing since the early hours of April 1. But despite his body's recovery, his family says his death and disappearance is still deeply shrouded in mystery. "At this time we do not have answers into why Andrew's life ended at such a young age. Please be accepting to the fact we may never...

Long before George Bailey wrestled with Mr. Potter in "It's a Wonderful Life," the public decried the pay of top executives in large financial institutions. Overpaid bank executives are the villains in regulatory morality tales and feed distorted public perceptions about bankers' pay. It is true that the very top bank executives make more in a year than most of us make in a lifetime, but compensation of this magnitude is rare. Most banks in this country are small businesses and pay employees modest salaries. The Bureau of Labor Statistics reports that the average annual salary of a bank employee...

Who rules America? All the Presidents’ Bankers is a groundbreaking narrative of how an elite group of men transformed the American economy and government, dictated foreign and domestic policy, and shaped world history. Culled from original presidential archival documents, All the Presidents’ Bankers delivers an explosive account of the hundred-year interdependence between the White House and Wall Street that transcends a simple analysis of money driving politics—or greed driving bankers. Prins ushers us into the intimate world of exclusive clubs, vacation spots, and Ivy League universities that binds presidents and financiers. She unravels the multi-generational blood, intermarriage, and protégé relationships...

A mere two weeks since former JPMorgan banker, Kenneth Bellando jumped to his death, Bloomberg reports that the former CEO of Dutch Bank ABN Amro (and his wife and daughter) were found dead at their home after a possible "family tragedy." This expands the dismal list of senior financial services executive deaths to 12 in the last few months. The 57-year-old Jan Peter Schmittmann, was reportedly discovered by his other daughter when she arrived home that morning. Police declined to comment on the cirumstances of his (and his wife and daughter's) death. This is not the first C-level ABN Amro...

Having changed her Facebook profile picture to a "V...for Vendetta" face mask, the widow of former Zurich Insurance CFO Pierre Wauthier said she and her family cannot accept Zurich’s claim that his death wasn’t brought on by undue stress. As Bloomberg reports, Switzerland’s biggest insurer said in November that no “undue pressure” was put on Wauthier, who said in a suicide note that then-Chairman Josef Ackermann had created an unbearable working environment. But, his wife is demanding to know why her husband's former boss resigned if he had not accepted blame for the death, and why details of tensions at...

A 28-year old Manhattan investment banker has died after an apparent suicide, police sources said. Kenneth Bellando, who worked at Levy Capital since January, was found dead on the sidewalk outside his East Side building on March 12, after allegedly jumping from the sixth-story roof, sources said. Bellando, a former investment bank analyst at JPMorgan, is the son of John Bellando, chief operating officer and chief financial officer at Condé Nast. His brother, John, a top Chief Investment Officer with JPMorgan, works on risk exposure valuations.

What are we to make of this sudden rash of banker suicides? Does this trail of dead bankers lead somewhere? Or could it be just a coincidence that so many bankers have died in such close proximity? I will be perfectly honest and admit that I do not know what is going on. But there are some common themes that seem to link at least some of these deaths together. First of all, most of these men were in good health and in their prime working years. Secondly, most of these "suicides" seem to have come out of nowhere and...

It’s become a health hazard to be a banker. What evil lurks beneath the pile of bodies?In growing numbers, the bodies of bankers are piling up in the streets — at least eight global financial types in recent weeks (and five others in the past year). And a financial reporter for The Wall Street Journal walked out of his house and mysteriously hasn’t been seen or heard from in weeks.So what gives? Three of the bankers worked for JPMorgan. One worked for Deutsche Bank AG. Others for companies not so prominent, i.e., not “too big to fail,” but possibly...

There have been several prominent news reports on the sudden and mysterious deaths of several bankers and businessmen from around the world since January, leading some to speculate that the deaths point to economic trouble on the horizon and others to suggest that work-related pressures likely played a part, as suicide has been a factor in many of these cases. The latest mysterious case reported is that of James Stuart Jr. Stuart, a former CEO of National Bank of Commerce whose career path includes time at Citibank and First Commerce Bancshares. He was found dead on Feb. 19 with no...

Over a few beers after work one spring evening, two junior Goldman Sachs employees started contemplating the best ways to kill themselves. “If the goal is, like, how do I inflict maximum psychological damage, then I think just going up to your desk and blowing your brains out in the middle of the day would be the best,” said Jeremy Miller-Reed, 23. “Nah,” said Samson White, 22. “You know what would happen? All the other analysts would get an e-mail from the associates saying, ‘Can you guys clean this up?’ And then everyone would go back to work.” Jeremy and...

What are we to make of this sudden rash of banker suicides? Does this trail of dead bankers lead somewhere? Or could it be just a coincidence that so many bankers have died in such close proximity? I will be perfectly honest and admit that I do not know what is going on. But there are some common themes that seem to link at least some of these deaths together. First of all, most of these men were in good health and in their prime working years. Secondly, most of these "suicides" seem to have come out of nowhere and...

JPMorgan banker jumps from Hong Kong headquarters A 33-year-old man jumped to his death from the skyscraper roof of U.S. investment bank JPMorgan Chase & Co’s Asia headquarters on Tuesday, police said. JP Morgan has confirmed that the man who jumped was an employee at the firm with the last name Li. He was a junior investment banker.

FDR's Raw Deal Exposed August 30, 2003 BY THOMAS ROESER For 70 years there has been a holy creed--spread by academia until accepted by media and most Americans--that Franklin D. Roosevelt cured the Great Depression. That belief spurred the growth of modern liberalism; conservatives are still on the defensive where modern historians are concerned. Not so anymore when the facts are considered. Now a scholar at the libertarian Cato Institute has demonstrated that (a) not only did Roosevelt not end the Depression, but (b) by incompetent measures, he prolonged it. But FDR's myth has sold. Roosevelt, the master of the...

A paper currency system contains the seeds of its own destruction. The temptation for the monopolist money producer to increase the money supply is almost irresistible. In such a system with a constantly increasing money supply and, as a consequence, constantly increasing prices, it does not make much sense to save in cash to purchase assets later. A better strategy, given this scenario, is to go into debt to purchase assets and pay back the debts later with a devalued currency. Moreover, it makes sense to purchase assets that can later be pledged as collateral to obtain further bank loans....

More than 75 percent of Europe’s banking millionaires are based in the UK, according to a report by the EU’s bank watchdog. More than 2,700 UK-based bankers were paid more than €1 million in 2012, compared to a further 794 across the rest of the EU. Germany was a distant second with 212, followed by France with 177. Ten EU countries had no banking millionaires. The data, contained in the London-based European Banking Authority annual “High Earners” report, reveal the extent of the UK’s dominance of the banking rich-list. …