Second Opinion

What a Find: A family finds $10,000 in cash in a box of Annie's Organic crackers purchased from Whole Foods. In a most-improbable zany mix-up, the cash turns out to be some lady's life savings. "The Lake Forest woman, whose identity was not released, had lost faith in her bank and decided the box would be a safer place for the money." Apparently not. (Business Pundit) The Anonymous Equity Private: Speaks with Marketplace, leaving a few clues as to her identity. (HT AR). Now Hiring: A Job Posting for a Wall Streeter interesting in gaming from A VC. Get Over It Guys: Even though it is completely irrational in a recession, applications for luxury management MBA programs remains high. (BusinessWeek)

Fired: The biggest CEO firings of 2008. (MSNBC) Gossipy: Wall Street Folly has a photo of George Soros partying with what the blog purports to be his "nieces" on New Years Eve, while afloat on his Octopus yacht. (Wall St. Folly) The Worst: Footnote of 2008 goes to...A. Schulman's fish camp! (Footnoted) Banned Words: This year the lists includes the likes of "Maverick," "staycation," game-changer," "green," and "Wall St./Main St." But I like the ones suggested in the comments of Paul Kedrosky's blog post about it, which includes "Joe the X," "print money" and "unprecedented times." (Infectious Greed)

Hired: Missouri's Governor, by Solamere Capital. He'll work with Mitt Romney's son. (Springfield Business Journal) One VC's Wish List for '09: Including Facebook getting profitable and Google cutting products and services. (A VC) Looking for LPs?: Try the Church of England, which recently committed 150 GPB in Al Gore's investment firm, Generation Investment Management. (Religious Intelligence) Z2K: Do you own a Zune? Did you notice that it mysteriously failed to work at 12am, December 31? Engadget has the scoop on why.

Yikes: Jim Cramer's advice was slightly worse than a coin toss this year. Lump Of Coal: The Naughtiest and nicest CEOs of 2008 (Bits) How The Other Side Lives (And Dies): Hedge fund return data is ugly. (Deal Journal) Ouch: If you though Credit Suisse's toxic debt alterna-bonus was bad, check out Google, which is giving its employees "dogfood." (Valleywag)

Well: "Just about everyone in Kimberly, Wisconsin, hates billionaire Stephen Feinberg." Are we surprised? (Bloomberg) First Bono: Now Bjork. Another first-name 90s music star joins the world of venture investments. What Is Going On Here: Plenty of people, Jim Cramer included, are angry that TARP-funded banks can't or won't say what they're doing with the money. (Dealscape) Gotta Love Deal Professor: Some wonderfully acerbic lessons learned from 2008, including "Banks trump private equity." We Beat China: In IPOs, by value. How is that possible, you ask? Visa. (FT)

The latest issue of BusinessWeek has a pretty big section of articles catering to would-be or current MBAs. So I thought I'd highlight my favorites: Cracking the Admissions Code: "It turns out business school is inherently extreme. Take 500+ hardworking, determined self-starters with a few years of work experience and a false sense of yuppiedom, then bring them to a hotbed of academia." (BusinessWeek) Shame: The diversity of students' ethnicities at B-schools is shrinking, not growing. That's bad news for schools like the Kelly School, Cornell, and Chicago Booth School of Business. Recruiters have noticed. (BusinessWeek) Speaking of Booth: The school ranked first, above Harvard, on BusinessWeek's ranking of the best U.S. business schools for 2008. (BusinessWeek)

Shock Value: !?!Could Google, Microsoft and Yahoo be the next Ford, GM and Chrysler!?! The comparison, based on M&A history. (Dealbook) Blackstone: A fund that invests in Blackstone Group and other public private equity firms got named one of the worst funds of the year, according to Morningstar. Q&A: What PE can teach the government about rescue investing? Even though their interests aren't aligned, this is an interesting question and good interview by Deal Journal with Lynn Tilton, the founder of Patriarch Partners (which purchased the elusive AriZona Iced Tea earlier this year). Your Favorite Start-Ups: Much Easier than picking a favorite kid I'm sure. Not many kids have balance sheets. (BusinessWeek) Catching Up: A new survey supports what PE pros have been cramming down our throats for years. "It's not about leverage and financial engineering." Often key phrases like "operational expertise" and "partnering with management" are used. Anyways, here's an uplifting survey comparing board members on public companies and PE-backed entities. (Recent contradicting quote from a unnamed PE source: "Boards? Why would we have a board? We don't need a board, we're a private equity firm. That's why we're private!") Why Infectious Greed is Great: A link, a compliment, a quote and a rant. Paul Kedrosky on the NYT behemoth of a Madoff story. (11 bylines?)

Topic Du Jour: Wall Street is a source of inspiration for filmmakers right now, as the sequel of the movie of the same name is being shot and Michael Moore switches the focus of his documentary film to it. There's more. (Dealbook) Ten Predictions For The New Year: That are all pretty hopeful. Including the worst-performing global market for 2009 (hint: its not financial), the fate of Steve Jobs and M&A deals for Bloomberg and Goldman Sachs. Thanks, Deal Journal. More Lists: Predicting bankruptcies and companies that just may not exist this time next year. Safe assumptions like AIG and Chrysler. Interesting choices of NYT, Ride Aid and Nortel. Others: (24/7 Wall Street) Good PR Move: Even though she didn't do anything wrong, PR Firm Brunswick suspended the woman who's husband stole and traded on confidential merger news she had. (Bloomberg)

Backstabbing: A Lehman trader stole info about pending M&A deals from his public relations wife?! And then gave it to 20 of his friends to trade on?! At least in Barbarians at the Gate the PR/financier husband-wife team worked together! What a horribly desperate dude. (CNBC) Call-Outs: Cerberus, update your web site already! You can't ignore the fact that you're all over the headlines forever. (PE Database) Agreed: Paul Kedrosky mathematically argues that Madoff wasn't as unsophisticated as commentators say he was. (Infectious Greed) Asleep at the Wheel: Madoff's accountant wrote an essay about how surprising it is to find ATMs overseas. Really.

Personal MBA: Following on last week's news that maybe you don't need an MBA, here is Personal MBA, a "program" that's "designed to help you educate yourself about advanced business concepts on your own time and without going into a classroom or into debt." Contrarily: BusinessWeek is documenting the five year path to business school in a five-part series. Here's part two. She Knew It: The Barron's reporter that called out Bernie Madoff explains the background of her 2001 story in Portfolio. More people should've listened... (Portfolio) Observations: Where are PE firms located, versus where they are investing? PE Blogger shows its New York, and California, and in second place, respectively, California, and Texas. Clusterstock Wonders: What is the actual purpose of a fund of funds?