Tuesday, April 28, 2009

Now Hiring Credit Analysts: The PPT (Self Administered 401k Included)

All you wannabe masters of the universe who want to bypass the three- to five-year apprenticeship at Goldman Sachs and go straight to the motherlode of manipulative machinations, look no further than this job posting on the Ladders, in which none other than the bastion of free market communism, aka the New York Fed, is seeking a Financial Analyst/Corporate Bond Analyst. With all the newly minted billions of corporate debt floating around and not yet purchased by gullible "buy-and-hold" investors, the PPT has realized it is short one credit Wizard of Oz. An amusing blurb from the Request For Plunge-Protectors (RFPP):
The candidate would be expected to develop a macro approach towards analyzing corporate credit with a focus on those high-grade and high-yield sectors that have implications for monetary policy and financial stability. This will entail tracking credit spread movements in both cash and derivatives markets and understanding how they are impacted by changes in the macro environment. This will also entail informing policy makers on what these markets say about the macro environment and market liquidity. A key element will also be to understand the market microstructure against which price movements take place and the conditions under which they could negatively impact market liquidity and financial stability. To this end, the candidate would be expected to develop extensive contacts with corporate credit market participants – both primary dealers and buy-side investors -- as well as to interface with other areas of the bank, such as Bank Supervision and Research.
It is about time the Fed hired someone to inform them that both the "macro environment and market liquidity", not to mention the "market microstructure", are on the verge of collapse. Then again, this posting puts everything in perspective: obviously the last corp bond analyst got poached by Goldman, and the NY Fed is flying on Tiny Tim's cliff notes for what to do in an emergency which can be summarized by the phrase "Buy Everything."

We urge our readers to please apply for this position, and not just to take pictures of the famous oak conference room where the fate of LTCM was being decided 12 years ago: someone has to slow down this plane before its hits the mountain at warp 9. Also it would be so cool to know that you singlehandedly are responsible for the market value of your (and everyone else's) 401(k). Lastly, the bragging rights of saying you really do run the world to pompous second-year analysts out of Goldman is worth the interview alone.




P.S. Any reference to Plunge Protection Teams, both real and imagined in ampheatmine-laced, kool-aid snorting, opium den sessions is purely coincidental. No illegal short positions (not just naked) were established in the writing of this post.

hat tip Brian Sphere: Related Content
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