Mayors and Rabbis Busted in Jersey

I haven’t read Malcolm Gladwell’s best-selling book The Tipping Point so correct me if I’m wrong but I believe, with respect to financial scandals, such a point was just reached this morning with the arrest of approximately 30 New York and New Jersey residents, including several rabbis and the mayors of Hoboken and Secaucus, in connection with an international money-laundering conspiracy.

Speaking of Gladwell, in case you missed the speech he gave a few months ago about how overconfidence killed the economy (which I previously linked to), the writer’s words were published this week by The New Yorker in a piece entitled, “Cocksure: Banks, battles, and the psychology of overconfidence.” It's well worth your time.

Finally, and sadly, it appears that Academy Award-Winning Spanish thespian Javier Bardem (who won an Oscar for portraying a poetic serial killing bounty hunter in the Coen Brothers film adaptation of Cormac McCarthy’s thriller No Country For Old Men) will not don Armani and Hermès to play an evil hedge fund manager in Oliver Stone’s sequel to Wall Street, the film that put “greed is good” and Gordon Gekko on the map. Reportedly, Bardem has opted to portray the love interest of a sappy soul searcher played by Julia Roberts in an adaptation of the best selling Eat, Pray, Love, rather than the nemesis of a young and hungry securities trader played by Shia LaBeouf.