I’ve been reading The Partnership: The Making of Goldman Sachs by Charles D. Ellis. Goldman has been in the news quite a bit lately so I decided to get a bit of background, and Ellis is an investment consultant so the book is as close to an official history as has yet been written.

The major players from Goldman are pretty well known — Henry Paulson, Bob Rubin, Joshua Bolten, but it’s pretty interesting where some of the lesser known ones others turn up.

Take former Goldman partner Thomas L. “Dusty” Rhodes, president of National Review, chairman of the conservative Club for Growth, and one of the strategists behind Proposition 209, a California initiative that ended affirmative action. He shows up briefly in The Partnership:

“SAMA — the Saudi Arabian Monetary Authority — had huge cash flows to invest in the late 1970s, and interest rates were not as important to SAMA as credit quality. Through the contacts of partner Thomas “Dusty” Rhodes, the utility group arrange two- to five-year private placements with SAMA for many of the highest grade U.S. utilities.”

I’ll be giving updates on other interesting Goldman alumni as I come across them in the book.

Ken Silverstein poses an interesting question on his blog at Harper’s: Who’s Buying Guns? He notes that stock of Smith & Wesson is way up and so are gun sales, spurred, annecdotally, by fears over the Obama administration.

Silverstein also suggests that the NRA has stoked these fears with an advertising campaign that notes Obama has indicated support for a 500 percent tax on guns. In 1999, when he was in the Illinois state senate, Obama did show support for such a tax but he hasn’t said much about it lately, according to factcheck.org.

Gun maker Remington notes in its 10-K (via) report that fear is good for business:

Management believes that despite the challenges in the banking industry, the resulting stock market drop, unstable fuel prices and the ensuing government bailout, we have experienced no significant adverse impact in our overall sales. We believe the overall market for our products picked up subsequent to the U.S. Presidential election and we believe this is attributable to consumer concerns that the new administration could ban and regulate certain guns and ammunition in a more restrictive manner.

The key word here is “certain” guns.  Remington isn’t publicly traded so it doesn’t break out details on its sales but Smith & Wesson is traded publicly and it reported this in its 10Q report of Oct. 31, 2008:

Sales of our M&P 15 rifles were $8,654,385 for the three months ended October 31, 2008, a $6,534,882, or 308.3%, increase over the three months ended October 31, 2007. M&P 15 sales were helped by a consumer promotion as well as what appears to have been speculation on the outcome of the presidential election. On the law enforcement side, 204 police and security agencies to date have either selected the M&P 15 or approved the M&P 15 for on-duty use. The backlog for tactical rifles was $5,988,418 at October 31, 2008. (emphasis added)

No other category of Smith & Wesson firearms was up as much as the tactical rifle category. Notably, sales of hunting rifles and shotguns fell. If hunters feared losing their guns under the Obama administration they would have bought more hunting rifles and shotguns from S&W, not less.

The ones who were doing the buying here were the hardcore gun lovers, who were worried that they wouldn’t be able to buy a military-style rifle like the M&P 15 once the Obama administration got in.

For the three months ending January 31, 2009, which covers gun sales after Obama was elected, Smith & Wesson reported that total firearms sales were up 11 percent to 219 million.

Once again, tactical rifles again led the way with a 108 percent increase in sales.  Hunting firearms, however were down again nearly 36 percent.

Gun sales are up, but it seems like hunters — the core of the NRA’s membership — are just fine with Obama. Those who fear our new president are the black helicopter types, the kind of folks who shelled out $22 million to buy an update on the old military-tested AR-15.

Chicago Sun-Times files Chapter 11:

The company has one significant creditor — the Internal Revenue Service. The IRS has said Sun-Times Media Group owes up to $608 million in back taxes and penalties from past business practices by its former controlling owner, Conrad Black, now imprisoned for theft from corporate coffers.

Unlike other newspaper owners that have filed for bankruptcy amid steep dropoffs in advertising, including Chicago-based Tribune Co., Sun-Times Media Group has no bank debt. But its IRS debt thwarted efforts to raise new capital.

And USA Today’s free newspaper giveaway strategy isn’t working out so well these days.

USA Today President and Publisher Craig Moon retired abruptly yesterday and said the nation’s biggest newspaper lost 100,000 subscribers from the slowdown in travel. A decline in hotel occupancy means fewer people are there to collect free newspapers.

USA Today gives away 1.3 million daily copies in hotels, which accounts for more than half the newspaper’s 2.3 million total circulation. These giveaway copies are booked as paid circulation. This is obviously a sham but it’s technically considered circulation under newspaper circulation rules.

Here’s the rule from the Audit Bureau of Circulations governing newspaper bulk circulation:

All copies purchased by hotels, restaurants, airlines and rental car agencies for free distribution to their guests and by sponsors for free distribution to hospital patients and nursing home residents, regardless of the number of copies, will be reported as Third-Party Sales when at least 25 percent of the basic price is paid, either in cash or by applicable barter.

“Congratulations on a fabulous quarter,” Christine Chen of Needham & Co. on Urban Outfitters Q4 2008

“Alright guys, thanks for taking my question and congratulations on getting the term financing on the CDO facility,” Matthew Howlett of Fix-Pitt Kelton on Newcastle Investment Corp. Q4 2008

“Hi, good evening. Congratulations on another great quarter here,” Brendan Strong of Barclays Capital on Genoptix Q4 2008

“Nice quarter guys, kind of back up at high altitude again, Bill,” Jay Meier of Felti & Co. on Entrust Q4 2008

“Yes, congratulation everyone on another fantastic quarter,” Jeffrey Klinefelter of Piper Jaffray on Guess Inc. Q2 2008

“Nice quarter guys, thanks for the color,” John Barnes of BB&T Capital Markets on FedEx Q2 2008

“Nice quarter, guys — really a nice job,” Vincent Colicchio of Noble Financial on Micros Systems Q2 2008

“Congratulations, Norm, a very nice quarter on you and your entire staff,” Frank Magdlen of The Robins Group on AAON Inc, Q2 2008

“Congratulations on a nice quarter, guys, and thanks for taking my questions,” Nat Kellogg, Next Generation Equity Research on Olympic Steel Inc. Q1 2008

“Hey, congrats on an awesome quarter guys,” Brett Levy of Jeffries & Co. on GrafTech International Q1 2008

“Hi guys, nice quarter!” Tim Nelson of Piper Jaffray on Zoll Medical Q4 2007

“Hi, good afternoon. Congratulations on a nice quarter and a nice year,” Quintin Lai of Robert W. Baird on Invitrogen Corp. Q4 2007

“Very nice quarter guys, very nice,” Rodney Ratliff of Stanford Group Co. on Equinix Q2 2007

“Nice quarter guys,” Adam Frisch of UBS on Accenture Q1 2007

“Congratulations on the great results,” Margaret Major of Goldman Sachs on Coach Q1 2007

“Nice quarter guys,” Matt Doland of Becker Capital on Lifecell Q4 2006

“Once again great quarter guys, congratulations,” Anthony Stoss of Craig-Hallum Capital Group on SRS Labs Q3 2006

“Congratulations on the exceptional numbers,” Alexei Yakovitksy of Deutsche Bank on Mobile TeleSystems Q3 2006

“Congratulations for the nice quarter and nice guidance,” Kaushik Roy of Susquehanna International Group on Brocade Q4 2005

“Nice quarter guys,” David Steinberg of Deutsche Banc on Sepcracor Q4 2005

“Well thanks very much and congratulations on a remarkable quarter,” Richard Jaffe of Steifel Nicholas on Coldwater Creek Q4 2005

“Hi thanks, first I would say congratulations to everybody, its (a) really terrific quarter,” John Morris of Harris Nesbitt Gerard on Abercrombie & Fitch Q4 2005.

“Hi guys, great quarter,” Adam Holt of JP Morgan on Citrix Q3 2005

“I’m not sure any one said nice quarter yet, guys but maybe that is becoming a little bit routine to you,” John Roberts of Buckingham Research on Corning Q3 2005

Thanks to Seeking Alpha’s transcript search engine.

The ticketing marketplace for rock concerts shows a real lack of sophistication, meaning this: the true market value of some tickets for some concerts is much higher than what the act wants to be perceived as charging.

For example, there are some people who would be willing to pay $1,000 and up to be in the best seats for various shows, but MOST acts in the rock / pop world don’t want to come off as greedy pricks asking that much, even though the market says its value is that high. The acts know this, the venue knows this, the promoters know this, the ticketing company knows this and the scalpers really know this.

So…The venue, the promoter, the ticketing agency and often the artist camp (artist, management and agent) take tickets from the pool of available seats and feed them directly to the re-seller (which from this point on will be referred to by their true name: SCALPER).

I am not saying every one of the above entities all do this, nor am I saying they do it for all shows but this is a very common practice that happens more often than not. There is money to be made and they feel they should participate in it. There are a number of scams they employ to pull this off which is beyond the scope of this note.

More here