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The Stock Rabbi makes a guest post on The Reformed Broker blog on Not Being a Schmuck:

First of all, Happy Goyim New Year (my New Year is sometime in September).  I write to you today in the hopes that I can temper some of the animal spirits within you as we begin 2011.  I'm going to give you the most important investment advice you've ever received.  Free of charge, of course.

It's Passover, 1962.  Early evening.

My feet are dangling precariously over the streets of Boerum Hill, my hands flailing about for a grip on something - anything - to keep me from falling.  I am on the rickety fire escape outside our fifth floor walk-up apartment in Brooklyn.  My father leans his head out the adjacent window and yells "Herschel!  Vat the hell are you doing out there?"

"I'm looking for the matzoh you hid," I replied, "I know it's out here somewhere and I need that five dollars!"

"Don't be a schmuck!" cried my father, "the matzoh is under the sofa cushions, now get in here before your mother sees you, she's gonna plotz!"

I've carried the lesson of that night with me into my investing activities.  Remembering not to be a schmuck has allowed me to trade some of the most aggressive, high beta stocks on the board without ever once losing my tucchus in the market.  When I see some of the risky business you people engage in just to grab that extra few hundred basis points, I am reminded of my father's intonation as if it were just last night.

And so, to my speculating colleagues, I offer the following entreaty - Don't be a schmuck!

Buying Chinese reverse merger stocks on the bulletin board?  Schmuck!  The only thing you should be reversing is your big white Mercedes boat out of a Chinese restaurant's parking lot.

Trading palladium and platinum?  Oy!  What do you know from platinum?  Stay out of that whole mishegas, that's not for you bubbie.

Working at Google, selling inside information to those WASPs in Connecticut?  What are you, a schmuck on wheels?  You've got a job!    My niece Marissa out in Dix Hills is babysitting 4 nights a week just to fill her gas tank!  And you're risking your job at GOÖGELEH!

...

So please - whether you're trader or investor, boy or goyl, Jew or Gentile, Team Jacob or Team Edward - heed my advice.  If you find yourself engaging in any of the above activities, ask yourself, "Am I being a schmuck?"  If the answer is yes, then knock it off.

Words to live by.

Looks like my night to post finance humor while I wait for the snow to fall.

I wasn't going to post anything else about Ibanez, but then I came across this bit of fictional dialogue from John Carney of CNBC, on Why It Could Be Very Hard for Banks to Avoid Ibanez Mortgage Catastrophes:

Let’s say you are US Bancorp and you find yourself with a mortgage whose chain of title is incomplete. You took the mortgage from a now bankrupt subsidiary of the now bankrupt Lehman Brothers. Getting someone at Lehman to go through the process of executing the assignment is going to be very difficult. It’s not even clear if anyone at Lehman Brothers has the legal authority to execute an assignment now, while Lehman is bankrupt.

In any case, getting the assignment from Lehman wouldn’t really help you. You’d still have a gap in the chain from Option One to Lehman. It’s probably best to skip over Lehman all together and go directly to Option One to ask for the assignment.

But you have a bit of a problem. You didn’t buy the mortgage from Option One. They aren’t under any contractual obligation to you to execute any documents. So when you call, here’s how the conversation goes.

US Bank dude: “Hey, can I speak to whoever it is who is handling the Ibanez mortgage?”

Option One guy (after some delay): “No one handles that mortgage. We sold it five years ago to Lehman and closed the file.”

US Bank: “Right. Okay. Well, I need you to find someone who will execute an assignment of the mortgage to me.”

Option One: “First of all, no one who handled that mortgage still works here. You might have heard about the mortgage meltdown, right? Second, we sold it to Lehman, according to the file.”

US Bank: “Right. But I bought it from Lehman.”

Option One: “So get the assignment from Lehman.”

US Bank: “They’re an empty company that is in bankruptcy.”

Option One: “I’ve heard about that. Thanks for the news.”

US Bank: “So I need you to execute the assignment.”

Option One: “First of all, you’re going to have to show me that you bought the loan from Lehman. Second, I need to talk to legal to make sure I can assign a mortgage to someone we never dealt with. Third, how much are you willing to pay me to do all this?”

US Bank: “Pay you? I already own the mortgage.”

Option One: “The mortgage we sold to Lehman. If Lehman asks for the assignment, we’ll do it as part of that deal. But, as far as I can tell, I don’t owe you anything. If you want an assignment, you’re going to at least be paying the legal bills for the legal opinion that says it’s okay for us to do this.”

US Bank: "You don't have to be an [expletive deleted] about this."

Option One: "I also don't have to give you an assignment."

( commentary and comments on this dialog from around the web, behind the cut )