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