On Extortion and/or On Retaining Legal Counsel
by Mr JugglesIt has become apparent to us that in this period of economic catastrophe that there will be an increase in rent-seeking generally, and legal wrangling, specifically. To ensure that we are adequately protected from/by the legal mafia, we have retained our own made esquire, Pleb.
Based on his first memo, two things are clear to us:
- He is clearly under impression that he is being paid by the word.
- Long or Short’s executive team and its legal counsel will be in a race against one another to suck all of the cash from the firm’s coffers, while there still remains cash in the coffers to be sucked.
Recommendation: Legal counsel is a market which is clearly not Mugabe Optimal. We think the former lawyers who populate congress should do the right thing and make the supply more affordable for the demand.
Think of the legal profession as a really clever hedge fund operated by and for mediocre liberal arts majors: no matter what the result of any conflict, lawyers on both sides profit immensely. In fact, the worse it gets, the more we profit. Pretty sweet scam, eh? It’s as if a super baller had purchased the political party in power, directed it to destroy the economy, and then shorted the shit out of the dollar – though nobody that I know of would be clever, ballsy, rich or Hungarian enough to do something like that.
Clearly we have found the bull market: legal industry! Pleb, as they say: it pays to be a first mover.
Quick excerpt from the Washington post:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/03/23/AR2009032302830_pf.html
The Obama administration is considering asking Congress to give the Treasury secretary unprecedented powers to initiate the seizure of non-bank financial companies, such as large insurers, investment firms and hedge funds, whose collapse would damage the broader economy, according to an administration document.
The government at present has the authority to seize only banks.
Giving the Treasury secretary authority over a broader range of companies would mark a significant shift from the existing model of financial regulation, which relies on independent agencies that are shielded from the political process. The Treasury secretary, a member of the president’s Cabinet, would exercise the new powers in consultation with the White House, the Federal Reserve and other regulators, according to the document.
So given the new trend towards nationalizing all types of financial firms (I would assume this could be extended to non-financials) this should be quite a bull run for a very long time. Well played sir, well played.
Straight Cash Homie – thanks for the props. It’s true I have an amazing job. We lawyers can get away with anything. It rocks. I know this one lawyer, not naming names or anything, we’ll call him Chair of House Financial Services Committee Extraordinaire, or COCYX for short, who is my role model. COCYX oversees the whole financial sector of the economy. Plus, for the last 7 or 8 years, he has been sleeping with this total hunk, a brilliant Quant who was in charge of dreaming up risky financial products for Fannie Mae, y’know, the famous ones that tanked the company. Small world, eh? Not only is COCYX wicked powerful, but he’s sleeping with a famous hunk! As ranking member of the Committee, COCYX’s main issue was ensuring that banks issued lots of subprime loans because to do otherwise would be racist. Now, as Chair, COCYX is in charge of getting to the bottom, as it were, of who caused this whole mess. Towards that end, ahem, he suggested today that all executives in the U.S. should be subject to pay caps because the way money gets distributed in the U.S. today just isn’t fair. We should really all bow down before him and his awesome powers.
Being a lawyer these days is like having superpowers but without all of that Peter Parker “responsibility” bullshit.
Say it with me: GOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOD Morning Vietnam!!!!
Since England FAILED in it’s bond float yesterday for the first time since 1995 what happens when that happens to US? I can’t stand Barney Frank or Chris Dodd. I heard a rumor that Larry Kudlow was thinking of running against Dodd.
Was sagen sie den, Herr Pommer-Eesti? Ich bin kein bankchef. Das kann ich nich verstanden.
Oh, eine minute… sind sie unser Nigerisch Korrespondent? Herr Juggles hat mir gesagt, das Lange und Kurze Investierung ganz leistungsfähig und massiv ist… Also, haben sie DM 10,000? Ich bin die Witwe von der Angolisch Volksfuhrer, Jonas Savimbi, und er hat in ein Amerikanisches Bank ein hundert millionen Dollar niedergelegt…
>>He is clearly under impression that he is being paid by the word<<
An easy mistake to make. Quoting Adam Smith: “It has been the custom in modern Europe to regulate… the payment of the attornies… according to the number of pages which they had occasion to write… In order to increase their payment, the attornies… have contrived to multiply words beyond all necessity, to the corruption of the law language…”