Interesting facts that I did not know

According to the Wall Street Journal, only 5% of the jobs in New York City are in the financial sector - yet they account for roughly a quarter of the wages paid out by jobs here. Pretty scary to think what the budget numbers will look like when tens of thousands of jobs just disappeared into thin air along with Lehman and Merrill...and that's not counting Bear Stearns or the layoffs all across Wall Street that have already claimed somewhere around five digits' worth.

What an insane weekend

I work in the financial services industry - as someone at the bottom of the food chain - but this weekend is going to go down in the books as unlike anything else the financial services industry has seen in a while. I never bought any of the pooh-poohing BS that was being floated about a collapse by Lehman Brothers being any different than that of Bear Stearns; it was clear that the firm was in trouble and wasn't going to survive. The fact that neither Bank of America or Barclays stepped up to the plate gives you an idea of how problematic the assets Lehman is carrying are. Dick Fuld, the soon-to-be last CEO of the firm, is going to take a huge hit to any legacy he has because of his stubbornness in dealing with Lehman's problems. In the end, he fired just about everyone but himself - but it didn't save the firm.

More intriguingly, out of the blue today, Merrill Lynch appears set to sell itself to BoA. I'm a bit surprised at the kind of premium Merrill is being valued at...its stock closed just above $17, and BoA is offering $29/share in an all-stock transaction? I think that's a bit optimistic of a valuation, considering how many losses Merrill has had to absorb in the past year - and how much it probably has left on its books.

That means that the #3, 4, and 5 investment banks in the country will have ceased to exist in a matter of 6 months, leaving Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley as the last investment banks standing at the top. You'll also have 3 gigantic players in the one-stop financial services field - BoA, with Lehman's investment banking operations, will finally be able to compete on the same level as Citigroup and JPMorgan Chase.

Hopefully, that will be the end of any more realignment in the sector...but I wouldn't count on it.

Kicked the tires, went back to Old Reliable

After using Chrome for a few days, I got tired of it and went back to Firefox. My main problem with it stems with some of its Ajax implementation (I'm assuming that's what Facebook uses); it makes the new version of the website very aggravating to use and doesn't properly function at all in some instances. It also has a couple of issues with Flash with which there are workarounds in Firefox for. While I may go back to Chrome in the future - it is definitely faster than Firefox - some work needs to be done before I use it full-time.

Speaking of new things, the new Facebook sucks ass. Oh wait, I already wrote about that.