1. Bill Gross left Pimco. When some CEOs leave their companies the shareholders celebrate. In the case of Bill Gross leaving the shareholders of Pimco's parent company, Allianz, decided that the company was worth about 3.8 billion dollars less than the day before. Part of this 3.8 billion dollars is related to new information about the severity of the problems that caused Gross to leave in the first place. But because Bill Gross chose to join Janus Capital the same day, we are left with an estimate of about how much the market values the human capital of Bill Gross - slightly under $900 million dollars.
2. Clay Shirky tries to help his students stop multitasking. Apparently there are many drawbacks to multitasking and I should stop making assorted link posts. (fortunately for me these posts are generally a symptom of my multitasking and not one of its causes)
3. Regulatory capture in the financial sector: Goldman Sachs vs the Fed. We should expect these problems to persist for as long as regulators are hoping to find work for the companies they are regulating (or companies doing a significant amount of business with the regulated companies).
It's interesting to see the PR machine of Goldman go to work on damage control. First the response is "This person tried to get a job from us many times" implying that the employee was merely bitter. They also highlighted the fact that Goldman did have a conflict of interest policy and thus the whistle-blower was wrong (without any emphasis as to whether or not it was effective). Shortly thereafter, there is a massive change in Goldman's conflict of interest policy.