This page has been archived and commenting is disabled.
CEO Of Jefferies: "These Are The Cancers That Will Cause The Next Crisis"
In a moment of surprising lucidity, Rich Handler, the CEO of Jefferies one of the few remaining pure-play investment banks that was not converted into a bank holding company as part of the Paulson-Geithner bailout of the financial industry in 2008, has called about the kind of "cancerous" behavior that in his opinion will lead to the next financial crisis.
As Bloomberg summarized, "Bankers and investors need to ensure they don’t repeat “bad behaviors” that contributed to the credit crisis as the financial-services industry embraces greater risk, said Richard Handler, chief executive officer of Jefferies Group LLC."
“People who take short cuts, are political, prioritize themselves above others, take excessive risks for personal gain, don’t value capital, or are unethical are outright cancers.... These types of people will not only flourish in the next crisis, but most probably they will cause it.”
And the punchline, one which the permabullish Fed cheerleader from the same firm, David Zervos, will surely blast in his next comic missive:
When the ten-year U.S. Treasury offers a "riskless" return of only 2.69%, it may take a lot of leverage to generate real returns in fixed income. What we are suggesting is that we all may want to have our eyes wide open regarding the risk that is clearly starting to make its way back into our system.
Sadly, he is right. Just as sadly, it is precisely the "cancers" that are now in charge of the insane asylum. Which is why any hopes that a new crisis will be avoided due to prudent "macroprudential" intervention by the Fed (which operates precisely on behalf of said cancers) or anyone else (the BIS' second warnings in two years came... and was roundly ignored by everyone once again), will most likely be left holding the bag.
And as usual, despite all the people who have repeatedly warned what is coming, the broad consensus will be that nobody could have possibly seen any of what is coming, coming.
* * *
Full letter by Handler "To Our Clients"
Let’s Not Dwell, But Let’s Not Forget
It is summer time again, an always personally enjoyable season, yet an often volatile time in the financial markets. We also think it is a good time for a bit of reflection. We continue to put some much appreciated distance from the epic financial crisis that first erupted in 2007, and then overwhelmed the markets and the world in 2008 and 2009. Miraculously, the world today is awash with liquidity, stock market indices are at all-time highs, bond yields remain at all-time lows, volatility is astoundingly subdued, unemployment is approaching pre-crisis levels, and productivity appears to be on the upswing.
However, let’s not completely forget the summer of 2007, which was truly the beginning of the great global de-leveraging and the financial contagion that left virtually nobody and no company unscathed. We do not think it is necessary to remind anyone of the specifics of what happened. We all either experienced losses ourselves or knew someone we cared for whose life was permanently changed. We are talking about the loss of companies, jobs, life savings, personal health and personal relationships. We also sadly lost a bit of innocence when we realized our unshakable belief in our economic system and fundamental way of life was in fact very shakable and far from guaranteed to exist forever.
The purpose of this note is not to sound the alarm that now that we are back to record levels, we should brace ourselves for an imminent crisis. In fact, there are many fundamentals in the world today that we find better underpin the valuations that are now prevalent, relative to the false sense of security many of us felt before the summer of 2007. That said, we do think it is a good time to reflect on three of the factors that we can control and thereby help ourselves avoid the slippery slope of the next real problem: Leverage, Style Drift and Culture.
Leverage can be an amazing tool. While it does an incredible job of amplifying the good, it does not know its master and is equally capable of magnifying the bad. In a world that is starved for yield, it is easy to get lulled into a false sense of purpose that your investors, whether they be shareholders or retirement accounts, can only be satisfied by returns comparable with those achieved in earlier periods, albeit very different times. When the ten-year U.S. Treasury offers a "riskless" return of only 2.69%, it may take a lot of leverage to generate real returns in fixed income. What we are suggesting is that we all may want to have our eyes wide open regarding the risk that is clearly starting to make its way back into our system.
After a few years of relative stability, it is also easier to begin to have “style drift,” whether one is managing a company or a pool of investments. We each tend to have our respective areas of expertise and most of those are highly competitive and not without endless challenge. Outside our respective specialties, the world is a very competitive place and nothing new is ever easy or safe. Clearly, diversification strategies and growing out of your comfort zone are important to create long term value.
That said, a lot of our collective problems occurred when some of us strayed too far from what we knew, relied on people we thought we knew, or just let our guard down and “went for it,” hoping for the best (and hope is not a strategy). We all know when our walls of common sense begin to erode. We each need smart partners around us who are not afraid to speak their mind and who are willing to help us restack the common sense walls on a continual basis.
Our final point is probably the one that is most important for not falling back into some of the bad behaviors that can lead one to be especially vulnerable during a crisis: Culture. A good culture keeps a company transparent, nonbureaucratic, focused on its clients and people, and honest. A good culture is devoid of arrogance that can easily seep in and do damage everywhere it touches. A good culture allows you to minimize (ideally zero tolerance) bad actors in your company. People who take short cuts, are political, prioritize themselves above others, take excessive risks for personal gain, don’t value capital, or are unethical are outright cancers. These types of people will not only flourish in the next crisis, but most probably they will cause it. A good culture enables you to surround yourself with the smartest of partners. The right culture will make sure even the most junior person in the organization is empowered to tell you there might be something you are missing, and that person will not fear retribution if they are wrong (or right!).
We do not want to dwell on the painful years of the worst crisis we have experienced in our business careers. We are pretty sure you do not want to either. We do want to keep first and foremost in our minds the things that we can do internally to make sure we are best positioned for the next (inevitable) market dislocation. There is a very simple rule we try our best to live by: In good times, operate aggressively, but do nothing too risky or arrogant. That way, in bad times, you can take advantage of the more plentiful opportunities. None of this is easy, but if we keep reminding ourselves of the challenges, realities, threats and opportunities, perhaps we can sustain the growth that is inherent in our system.
Enjoy your summer with your friends and family,
Rich and Brian
- 23512 reads
- Printer-friendly version
- Send to friend
- advertisements -


Sorry Rich, you already lost the moral high ground. Your ommission of criminal among the behaviors is also noted - particularly when it is entrenched and systemic.
Fascist fraud factories own you and everyone else, but most got paid a lot less than you did. Cut the revisionist tripe.
I guess the genocide in Ukraine is old news... completely out of the news cycle...
For a second I thought ZH would keep on reporting it - guessed wrong :(
Well, just to keep you updated: http://matveychev-oleg.livejournal.com/1224806.html
p.s.: sorry to go off topic.
ot the cancer started in 1913 on jekyll island.
And it metastasizes every election year
Names NOT to give your children if your last name is Handler...
Richard > Rich > Rick > DICK HANDLER
But Dick is on the money when he says:
“People who take short cuts, are political, prioritize themselves above others, take excessive risks for personal gain, don’t value capital, or are unethical are outright cancers.... These types of people will not only flourish in the next crisis, but most probably they will cause it.”
Thats' shorthand for lawbreakers protected by the government, politicians, TPTB Oligarchs, banksters, the Federal Reserve and all the unethical riffraff that orbit the gravitational fields of the aforementioned.
Unfortunately if you say the same thing here on ZH you stand an excellent chance of being targeted by the NSA as a potential terrorist...
All Hail the Oligarchy! Bow down to the Banksters and the Politicians, you must obey! King Oblahlah and Company are doing their best transformation act too! Long Live the Homeland! What a bunch of crap we are in, under every rock, there is a probem, go tell it on the mountain.
May a special place be reserved for them all.
Yep, special place in HELL.
I think the cancer lives inside all humans.
Humans have the capability to be inherently evil.
WS instills the organizations and motivations to focus that cancer.
Organizations that only exist to use that evil are as evil as the individuals themselves.
NEVER LET THEM CAMOUFLAGE OR DIMINISH WHAT THEY HAVE DONE
Kinda like..."Vee ver just folloving ordheirs!"
I think you misjudge humanity a bit, there is inherently good humanity out there, it is for you to find it.
The cancer is always there, sometimes it metastasizes, sometimes not.
They should. Those pictures should serve as a reminder what a warzone with civilians caught in the middle looks like.
Get those X-ians to do some preemptive praying!!!
Butterflies and unicorns!
Butterflies and unicorns!
Butterflies and unicorns!
All the current Fed presidents should be in the hall of Shame. Including Greenspan and Bernanke.
Euthanize all.
Put a 12 year old kid in charge and things will improve quickly.
Damn.
Welcome to the ADD society. Attention span of gnats. Politicians make careers and stupid decisions counting on this.
Sorry what did you say? I was busy watching Survivor.....oh look ..squirrel.
let me guess, one of the chosen like "chelsea handler"? ...stfu, your analyst calls are fucking comical, you should be selling hot dogs in borough park.. but maybe you will be swinging from a tree there soon enough,
Yep, he lost the moral high ground all right! And what an appropriate name: RICH HANDLER
Before graduate school, he worked as an investment banker at First Boston, and after as a junk bond trader for Michael Milken at Drexel Burnham Lambert
AS a novice I got a cold call from a Drexel sales guy and I thought that I was getting high end advice from such a hot shot outfit. He got me into a fully levered position in GE just before the puke. I had to go to my bank to borrow the dough to close the account because I lost far more than the position that I thought that I had.
Drexel had me in positions that I never agreed to in levered stocks that I never heard of. My gains turned into 130% losses once that I figured out what had happened to me. I lost trust that day in 1987.
Not seeing much offered here in the way of prevention?
I think Bankster Concentration Camps would be a positive step.
repeat “bad behaviors”
Holy hell, they far improved (or devolved) upon those fraud behaviors, fer crissakes!
HFT internalization to the max!
Forex rigged to the max!
LIBOR rates rigged to the max!
....
Damage control.
So long as these "arsonists" don't go bankrupt or to prison, he is correct. Gee, thanks captain fucking obvious.
hmmm, no mention of yellen as one of the cancers, well that's queer
Rich - Good stuff , now give me your bid/ask in BitCoin in 10MM.
jefferies are part of that cancer ...
I thought he was describing Jefferies the whole time.
The crisis is already here and has been for awhile now just it is getting harder and harder to hide it from the great unwashed.
If you look in the mirror, you will find the biggest cancer - the banksters. Nice job of misdirection for the gullible though.
This is rich, coming from a guy whose firm, along with JPM and others, are up to their eyeballs in the manipulation of the precious metals markets.
Well, they're doing that for our own good, ya know.
In a way you're right, cause it gives us a chance to buy more at depressed prices. Unfortunately, when it all comes crumbling down, most people are going to lose everything, while these assholes will be on their private islands sipping margaritas and banging their trophy wives/mistresses.
Thank you, Captain Obvious.
No shit private clueless. Who do you think caused the crisis first place? Corrupt private bankers who control the 'federal' reserve, that's who.
Riskless treasury - hahahahaha. I beg to differ as well as the BRICS, especially Russia/China/Saudi/etc.
fuck that maggot and anything he has to say
This story was the BTFD moment of the day
He's been acting pissy ever since they lost their primary dealer status.
he looks like a typical zio-lizard
This cocksucker is talking about himself. Fuck him
Rich Handler, CEO of Jefferies, is full of crap. I'm pretty sure he didn't get to be CEO of a major financial concern without "being political" or "prioritizing himself above others". What fun it must be for the people of Jefferies to work for such a scold.
It's also an exasperating explanation of the financial crisis. People have always been political, have always prioritized themselves above others, and there has always been ambition and greed. It's why in 1776 our forfathers created a limited government with checks on power. The reason we are in the soup now is that those limits have been destroyed. Government manipulates the markets, spys on the people, debases the currency, steals our income, and aggrandizes itself. All in the name of limiting the "greed" of individuals, businesses, and corporations, for the protection of the people. People like Handler are the first to run to said government for protection from the nameless boogeymen he describes here. It's the Handlers of this world that are the cancer.
Read some Ayn Rand.
If only Ayn would have explaned two very important concepts, we'd have a perfect Libertarian utopia.
1) How to make the losers disappear gracefully without bitching (and take their DNA bling with them when they disappear)
2) How to keep the dumbasses from being manipulated by the bullshit created by the smarter-n-savvier people.
Atlas Shrugged Part II: America has devolved into a dark chaos. The people of the valley return to kick ass and set up a new government.
Ayn Rand was a tough lady, but that's no book for a woman to write...
.
I think your redemption can be found at the gallows Rich.
Looks like the financial system needs some broccoli
He says this shit as he tells his little monkeys at the shop to BTFD. We have a nice little U shaped rebound happening in stawks right now. A slow, very measured grind up. I guess wars and sanctions are not considered risky these days.
Well, if ONLY we had some sort of ISM that wasn't ruined by the normal sociopaths and assholes who feel naturally entitled to break the rules, we could have a utopia.
But, otherwise, it's: Survival of the fittest, bitchezzzz!!!!!
David "Stocks are Not Overvalued" Zervos will be amongst those first up against the wall when the Revolution comes...
Here's a step-by-step guide of what is happening, what will happen and why. Written in 2008 in Russia, its timeframe is off, but the chain of events is shockingly recognizable:
https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=auto&tl=en&js=y&prev=_t&hl=en&...
Select quotes:
TLDR: The WWIII is a war of a few US families against everyone else in the world. It has begun in mid-90s. We don't recognize it because it's very, very slow by design.
If ZH wants a more palatable translation, let me know.
Starting with Dimon's Cancer.
In this rant, the cart is pulling the horse.
What is this, really, then? It is a deflection. It is a prop to say "see! I am one of the good guys!"
Did anyone see the word "REGULATION" ever once mentioned? How about "PROSECUTION"?
I see a bullshitter cry for something called the "right culture" while admitting that those with the "wrong" culture "...will not only flourish in the next crisis, but most probably they will cause it." Yet the slime ball does not call for
1) better regulating,
2)better funding of regulators,
3)more aggressive prosecutions of fraudsters.
Never once does this parasite call for real solutions. He only calls for people to "behave". What a joke.
We can't have REGULATION because that hurts the opportunites for the job creators to create jobs. Don't you remember history? When Greenspan was a heroic Libertarian? When the banks were self-regulating?
That's capitalism RIP, dood!
This CEO is describing the Psychopathic Takeover:
http://winteractionables.com/?p=13141
We are good and we get the candy. If you are good you can have a Unicorn or a rainbow. If you are bad you have cancer.
CEO Of Jefferies: "These Are The Cancers That Will Cause The Next Crisis"
When are the cures for the current crisis coming?
"However, let’s not completely forget the summer of 2007, which was truly the beginning of the great global de-leveraging and the financial contagion that left virtually nobody and no company unscathed."
De-leverageing hasn't even begun. Global debt has increased from 70 to 100 trillion. Total U.S. debt has increased from 56 trillion to 59 trillion.
Yeah, I read that too...what the HELL? The "great global deleveraging" is what SHOULD have happened, but didn't.
Boy, is this guy in for a surprise when it really DOES start happening...
Cave Echo Psychology: Relationships, Behavior & Law
Relationships are open loop dynamic equilibriums creating variables, separated only by the perception of time, gravity operating in closed loops. Mercenary marriage is a function of peer pressure because it’s a closed loop contract, specifically designed to maintain the status quo, feudalism in a duration mismatch.
Civil marriage and entitlement, with civil law to ensure control over the means of production, natural resources, has always been an extortion system, for those incapable of adaptation. Legacy FILO is just the seed of the gravitational field, adding layers to protect itself, from change.
Under feudalism, seeing is believing, so the participants group themselves by media polling, contracting attention spans to reinforce false assumptions. As a result, they can only communicate in the language of possession. Their job, debt as income for the middle class and debt as asset for legacy, with the upper middle class straddling the line, is who they are.
Civil law is not substantially more complex than a two-pole battery. Legacy families grant arbitrary monopoly licenses by doctrine, to whosoever exploits natural resources most efficiently, to the end of legacy, which is why civil marriage operates on superstition (which is also why you cannot transform lead into gold, directly). The system cannot see beyond its own self-absorption.
Civil law acts like a virus, a ponzi of diminishing return, because closed loop systems with increasingly fixed costs become prohibitively expensive with variability. Boeing can land itself under conditions of near zero variability, but, outside the collapsing empire of price and wage control, we do not live in a zero variability environment.
Tax tribute is just a feedback loop for money supply, pulling debt back which is not fully deployed to exploit natural resources. Whoever exploits human resources the best, to feed the ponzi, wins, lower taxes and more debt.
Physics and the economy do not work quite the way the critters are taught in school, by superstitious teachers, to confirm the status quo of feudalism. All you have to do to collapse a building straight down is ignite a small gravity bomb in the pit, shrinking space to ignite the chain reaction between pressure and heat.
Group security has always been an extortion ruse, perpetrated by insiders against outsiders, divide and conquer, until the pyramid turns on its head, at peak demographic participation. Blaming non-participants for system error ensures the status quo, until it blows up, and the corporate identity is changed to protect the guilty.
The Internet, like the telescope, is designed to focus on a biased past, to project a biased future, which is why the critters travel in circles. If you want to explore, you have to meet the universe in the future and build your instrument accordingly, to discount the past.
From the perspective of the universe, the planet is breeding humanity, and civil marriage is just a relativity circuit extending gravity in the distillation. Your job is to learn how to parent, to create variables and provide for the majority, leaving the latter behind to implode, when it seeks to take your children.
Prosperity depends upon adapting to grow the next generation, parenting, because the future is always becoming the present, not Fortune 500, State or Foundation, derivatives living in the past until they can’t. GDP simply measures the efficiency of exploitation by legacy technologies, replacing people with automation, on one side of the fulcrum.
The elderly dependent upon entitlements as income are getting liquidated by RE inflation precisely because the demographic ponzi is collapsing, and are accelerating the collapse from the bottom up, by crowding young people out of the market. For the dependents, it’s the worst possible scenario.
As much as you may prefer, you cannot make choices for others, especially your children, and for every force, there is an opposing force. The empire crowds its side of the lever, packing density with peer pressure.
The feudalists have now printed debt on the backs of several billion slaves, to support a few million slaves higher in the pecking order. Feudalism always seeks order, with disposable automatons, new same as the old. Discount to adjust gravity, adjusting your position accordingly.
You have a strong force and a weak force, an open system and a closed system, operating across a fulcrum, producing gravitational and magnetic fields with nR compilation. Distributions are gears in the clock, and the association of elderly and young discounting inflation is the one that matters.
The law follows behavior follows relationships, except in the empire, which runs backwards under the line in a feedback loop, employing feudalism as a pendulum. The heap moves the gears in and out like a clutch, if you allow it. Order is actually separated by disorder, but don’t tell the superstitious efficiency crowd that.
The Fed is burning up its clutch trying to find a gear it discarded long ago, in the name of efficiency, which has since reorganized. When the old-timer rolls up, it’s quitting time, not before and not after. Quick beats speed, the dead, every time.
Certified, arbitrary stupidity is the low end, not the high end, as RE inflation and debt as income leads most to believe. The bank pays you in debt to become obsolete. The only difference between hardware and software is perception, a false assumption built into the clock. You can program with hardware and rewire with software.
The Nazis are always at war, with each other, and a crisis on their part is no reason for an emergency on your part. The empire is noise, trapped in its own time, racing to nowhere. You can resign yourself to join, get upset and then join, or build out your side of the fulcrum, in multiple dimensions, to complete the circuit.
The empire devalues work and costumes consumption as its replacement because critters have been doing that for thousands of years, and are getting pretty good at it, but the only difference among them is their attire. Parenting is not for the feint of heart, but if somebody(s) wasn’t pretty good at balancing the empire gravity, you wouldn’t be here.
Confidence and expertise is a sales pitch. God only knows what you are going to see next, or what you are going to need to complete the bridge. Don’t let a costume fool you, one way or the other. Optimism is a function of faith which is a function of experience.
My crime was encouraging my children to seek beyond status, for which the empire imprisoned itself. Just because the check engine light comes on does not mean that the oxygen sensor needs to be replaced, or that anything is wrong, but they change it every time, with the same result, experts in false confidence.
Seems like he's part of the problem:
Before graduate school, he worked as an investment banker at First Boston, and after as a junk bond trader for Michael Milken at Drexel Burnham Lambert
This is only a "please don't hang my ass" fairy-tale to be used as Exhibit A by his defense team (the St. Peter redemption entreaty) during his soon to come trial for murder, plunder, rape, pilage, and the annihilation of USA values and culture.
"Let’s Not Dwell, But Let’s Not Forget"
Wouldn't you love that, WS AssHat.
“People who take short cuts, are political, prioritize themselves above others, take excessive risks for personal gain, don’t value capital, or are unethical are outright cancers.... These types of people will not only flourish in the next crisis, but most probably they will cause it.”
Every gov't and corporation on the planet. What could possibly go wrong?
Does anyone offer a suggestion instead of just bitchin on and on? Haven't read anything on that yet-ANYONE??
Yes. To paraphrase an old lawyer joke:
Q: What do you call a thousand bankers at the bottom of the sea?
A: A good start.