The most powerful firm on Wall Street, Goldman Sach just announced they will be laying off 3,260 workers or 10% of their workforce.  That’s on top of the annual layoffs (culling) of folks deemed “not being worthy of working at Goldman”.  WTF?

The 10% cut means that the $10M mid-level Goldman Trader will be left with $9M and CEO Lloyd Blankfein won’t get the $68M like he did last year, but will have to settle for a paltry $62M.  At those levels I don’t know how he’s going to afford the polo club membership.  But don’t worry, ex-Goldman CEO and now Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson just gave Goldman a $10B loan courtesy of you and me, the American tax payers.

Australia’s Macquarie Fortress Fund just announced that their Net Asset Value (NAV) just reached 0.  Yes, zero, that’s not a misprint….they lost all their investor’s money, over A$220M in less than 6 weeks.  How did these rocket scientists achieve this historic return on investment? By gambling on US non-investment grade corporate debt (a Euphemism forjunk bonds).  Another smart move was to leverage 6x their original investment.  I’m sure these geniuses bought some Lehman Brothers bonds on top of it all.   If hedge funds had a Darwin award, these guys would win it!

Source: WSJ

Sequoia backed social media service Imeem laid off 25% of their 80 person staff.  In addition to the layoff the company hired investment bank Montgomery & Co. to help find a buyer (sucker) to pay $200m to buy the company.   Hello? $200m? last time I checked the stock market is down 39%.  Who has the stock currency (cash in your wildest dreams) to buy an advertising business especially with advertising rates being slashed?

Source: PaidContent

20% of “timewasting” startup Heavy’s employees have a little extra time on their hands today.  The New York based Heavy is a video network oriented towards men 21-34.

The biggest social network you’ve never heard of, Hi5, just laid off 10-15% of their 110 person staff.  Why haven’t you heard of Hi5?  Because most of their users are in comparatively smaller internet markets like Latin America, Asia and Europe.  Here in the US, they are known as the largest social network of Spanish speakers.  On that note…here is one for ya: ¡Ayúdeme yo me he caído y yo no puedo levantarme!

Source: TechCrunch

Seattle based Zillow announced they had cut 25% of their staff of 150.  Zillow is one of the better funded startups with $87M from Benchmark’s Bill Gurley.  The CEO Rich Barton was quoted saying “I’m sad, this is hard, but business is just fucking great.”  Sounds like the CEO is as inflated as the Zillow “zestimates” of housing prices in my area.  This layoff comes on the heels of fellow real estate startup Redfin laying off 20%.