I am the happiest piglet in the world. I’m done with finals. The instructor told me I had enough credits for an A (afterwards!) and that I didn’t really have to take the final exam.
I know that if I’d had to go and take an exam for acting, I wouldn’t have got anywhere. You don’t take exams for acting, you take your courage.
Quotation from Dame Edith Evans
They only ask you one question, they say ‘Who are you?’ and I got seventy-five per cent on that.
Quotation from Peter Cook
“What’s in the cookie batter?” she wanted to know. “Lots of sugar,” he said. “Just remember I’m not responsible if you don’t like them.”
Goldman Sachs charged with fraud by SEC “These charges are far more severe than anyone had imagined,” and suggest Goldman teamed with “the leading short-seller in the industry to design a portfolio of securities that would crash,” said John Coffee, a securities law professor at Columbia Law School in New York. (Reuters)
Abacus Allowed Goldman to Shuffle Mortgage Risk Like Beads “The SEC said that Goldman Sachs created and sold Abacus 2007-AC1 without disclosing that hedge fund Paulson & Co. helped pick the underlying securities and also bet the CDO would default. Paulson was proved correct, and his hedge fund eventually turned a $1 billion profit and CDO investors lost a similar amount, according to the SEC.” (Bloomberg)
The product was new and complex but the deception and conflicts are old and simple. Goldman wrongly permitted a client that was betting against the mortgage market to heavily influence which mortgage securities to include in an investment portfolio, while telling other investors that the securities were selected by an independent, objective third party.
Quotation from SEC Enforcement Director Robert Khuzami
Here’s my plan: I want to be practical. I want to work in the writing/photography/graphics field, but my background is in banking/economics/finance. I need to be completely honest with myself, but I’m torn. Do I make the risky choice or the safe choice? Tell me– What should I do?
Don’t compromise yourself. You are all you’ve got.
Quotation from Janis Joplin
I have been struggling for many years in pursuit of a career in opera and am finding that it’s the people who have money behind them who are getting places, whether or not they have the best voices… So, yes, I’d marry for money at this point. After all, having the career would make me happy.
Quotation from “pvlstar” on iVillage.com
While $1 million or $2 million may sound like a lot to people making $30,000, it’s hardly enough to transform someone’s life or make them “rich” by contemporary billionaire standards.
Quotation from Robert Frank, Marrying for Love of Money
I’ve been flying by the seat of my pants. It has been a month since I’ve been told my department will be shutting down in six to twelve months, so time is precious. I’ve decided to take the Series 66 Registered Investment Advisor examination. I don’t know if that’s really what I want to do, but it gives me another option to pursue careerwise. And that means my updates to Encore Seraphine (and my time online) will be less frequent for a few weeks to a month.
Yes, I’m doing this on purpose. I love you all, and thank you for understanding.
Happy were she could finish forth her fate
In some unhaunted desert, where, obscure
From all society, from love and hate
Of worldly folk; then might she sleep secure.
Poem from Robert Devereux, A Passion of my Lord of Essex
Everyone thinks they know themselves. After all, we live in the back alleys of our minds smelling the same soup every day. But how self-aware are we really? Are we like my Uncle Clem who seems mindless that his house smells like dog urine? Do we get so used to ourselves that we can’t smell what is obvious to everyone else?
While Washington poured billions into propping up the banks and financial institutions that brought our economy to its knees, the Chinese spent their stimulus billions on an epic 19,000 miles of new railroad track. Nearly half of that total will go towards completing a web of more than 42 inter-province hyperspeed rail lines that will link almost every major city in the country. The fastest of the new trains travel at 229 miles per hour. So China comes out of the economic crisis with a rail system that will be the envy of the world.
Quotation from Graydon Carter, Wild on the Street, Vanity Fair
I want to be free. No responsibilities. Sitting in a cafe drinking kir royale while reading a book, observing life and people between the pages until they become real.
Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart.
Quotation from Steve Jobs, Commencement address delivered to Stanford University
It’s like being in high school and knowing I’ll graduate in six months. The real world is out there and I’m wondering what I’m going to do. People tell me: “Some day you’ll look back at this and think how wonderful it was.” Ha!
Richard Vernon: What did you want to be when you were young?
Carl: When I was a kid, I wanted to be John Lennon.
Richard Vernon: Carl, don’t be a goof. I’m making a serious point here.
Quotation from the movie The Breakfast Club
Andrew Clark: You don’t have any goals.
John Bender: Oh but I do.
Andrew Clark: Yeah?
John Bender: I wanna be just like you. I figure all I need is a lobotomy and some tights.
Another quotation from the movie The Breakfast Club
Eleanor Roosevelt said “Life is what you make it. Always has been, always will be.” But wow, if things end badly, does that mean I’m a failure?
It turns out that rumors — or, more precisely, those rumors that continue to be passed along office grapevines — tend to be substantially true.
Quotation from Joel Lovell, Workplace Rumors Are True (The New York Times)
But for most Ugandans, word of doomsday cults brings bitter memories of the Movement for the Restoration of the Ten Commandments, which burnt hundreds of members alive in a church in Kanungu, near the Congolese border, in March 2000. Police believe leaders systematically killed hundreds more followers after their judgment day forecast failed to happen, and corpses were found in mass graves across the country.
Quotation from Daniel Wallis, Police raid doomsday cult born from floods (Reuters)
Congratulations to Brian Moynihan, who will replace Ken Lewis as CEO of Bank of America on January 1st. BAC was unsuccessful in hiring a “star industry executive” for the top job because of pay restrictions imposed by the U.S. government.
The move draws to a close what is probably the executive search from hell. They needed to find someone to end the drama so that the bank can get back to regular business, but at the same time I am surprised by their choice. You will have a young and untested CEO running a major commercial bank in the U.S.
Quotation from Tony Plath, UNC/Charlotte
What you have is a payoff when there’s poor performance. But that’s the nature of contracts. There’s such a tremendous risk these days with being a CEO of a major corporation.
Quotation from Charles Peck
[It's surreal, however, when taxpayer monies are needed to complete the contract. Best Wishes, Mr. Moynihan ~Sera]
“Your paycheck will be delivered via Thought Transference. Please ensure you have a valid connection with the Human Resource Department or your salary could be delayed indefinitely.”
When you have too much month for your paycheck, then what you need to do is realize that there is abundance all around you and focus on the abundance and not your lack and as night follows day, abundance will come to you.
Quotation from Sydney Madwed
Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner’s new Financial Stability Plan is more “bandaid” than comprehensive plan. It throws more money at financial institutions (including the ones that got us into this mess) rather than strongly supporting healthy companies (and prudent financial institutions) that provide jobs. Throwing good money after bad will continue to bankrupt us all.
Geithner Remarks on Financial Stability Plan (The Wall Street Journal Blog)
An elderly waiter with trembling hands was hurriedly spreading a pink and white checked cloth over the rusty green iron table, saying: “If the lady and gentleman wish to take their tea in the garden, if the lady and gentleman wish to take their tea in the garden…” I decided that if the shaking of her breasts could be stopped, some of the fragments of the afternoon might be collected, and I concentrated my attention with careful subtlety to this end.
Poem by T.S. Eliot, Hysteria
Say after me: My name is America, and I’m an oil addict.
I again squandered the opportunity for energy independence
and I hurt everyone who believed in me by not taking
personal responsibility for myself and my actions.
Evil is not to be traced back to the individual but to the collective behavior of humanity.
Quotation from Reinhold Niebuhr
Nothing worth doing is completed in our lifetime; therefore, we must be saved by hope.
Another quotation from Reinhold Niebuhr