Back in 2006, a startup started up that promised to revolutionize the financial information business. It was called Monitor110, and it had a kind of clever idea: it aggregated and analyzed raw content from all corners of the internet and turned it into useful news and information for traders. Like, message board threads and blog comments and Twitters and Flickrs and Tumblrs and what-have-you would all help measure consumer sentiment or whatever sorts of things traders need to know about. Monitor110 raised millions and millions of dollars and their founders kept saying they'd bury Reuters forever and now, today, they are shuttering because no one wants to give them money anymore. Turns out that 2006 was basically wrong about everything! Crowds are morons and their wisdom is useless noise. Calacanis: right again (after the fact)! [PaidContent]

John Thain is about to free up a bit more capital for beleaguered Merrill Lynch: According to the Times, Merrill will sell its stake in Bloomberg L.P. "for about $4.5 billion, people briefed on the matter said Wednesday afternoon." [NYT]

• Did Goldman Sachs have a hand in the downfall of Bear Stearns? London-based traders at the firm are now under investigation for spreading negative rumors [WSJ]

• Lehman Brothers is said to be weighing a plan to take the firm private. [NYP]

• Lehman's stock price took a beating once again yesterday, this time amid chatter that Pimco and SAC Capital were pulling business from the bank. [WSJ, NYP]
  

Hold for a second the vitriol that Roger Ailes usually inspires. The Fox News boss is worth watching-not so much for his abuse-inviting impersonation of a corpulent former Nixonite but as a financial indicator of a market top. The cable news network Ailes started for Australian media mogul Rupert Murdoch-though a remarkable ratings success-marked the high-water-mark of the Republican ascendancy. A month after the launch of Fox News in October 1996, Bill Clinton came back from the political dead and ascendant Congressional Republicans under Newt Gingrich suffered their first big reverse. So is there an Ailes jinx? Well, take a look at the stock market. Ailes' Fox Business News was supposed to be a news channel with less of the gloom and doom of competitors such as CNBC. Since the start of broadcasting in October last year-right at the peak of the market-the S&P stockmarket index is down more than 15% (click to enlarge graph). If Ailes threatens to launch any new channels, sell!

• As expected, Lehman announced it will pay more of employees' compensation in stock this year; the bank also granted a mid-year equity bonus on July 1st. [Reuters]

CNBC's rumor-mongering on March 10 about Bear Stearns' liquidity crisis may have ultimate brought down the investment firm. Or so writes Bryan Burrough in the August issue of Vanity Fair, adding that the day was as bad for the integrity of financial journalism as it was for Eliot Spitzer and people with mortgages: "Publicly speculating on a firm's liquidity is akin to shouting 'Fire!!!' in a crowded theater; in catastrophic cases it can trigger panic selling. It risks, in other words, becoming a self-fulfilling prophecy."

• An upgrade from Morgan Stanley is expected to help out Lehman's stock price, which fell 11 percent yesterday amid talk of a firesale. [Reuters]

• For his next act, former Bear Stearns CEO Alan Schwartz may jump to private equity. [NYP]

Of all the dignity-compromising things that Wall Streeters have to do over the course of their careers, it's safe to say no one has stooped lower than Mr. Joshua Persky, who stood outside the Charles Schwab building at 50th and Park yesterday wearing a sign that read "Experienced MIT Grad for Hire. (917) 650-8700." How reminicent of the Depression! (Minus the cell number, that is.) A former consultant at the boutique investment bank Houlihan Lokey and a father of five, Persky has been out of work for the past six months. "Instead of sitting at home, writing e-mails and networking, I decided to come out and hit the streets and try to compete a little."

• Embattled Lehman Bros. posts a $2.8 billion loss for the quarter [WSJ]

Local News

The most powerful woman on Wall Street—at least according to Portfolio—is out of a job. Erin Callan, the chief financial officer of Lehman Brothers and the woman who has been on the firing line since Lehman accounced a series of unexpectedly large write-downs (and a disastrous quarterly loss), has been demoted. She'll stay at the bank, albeit not as CFO. And she's not the only one. Joe Gregory, the firm's president and chief operating officer, has been demoted, too.

Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia, the domestic queen's massive publishing and television conglomerate, has just announced that its CEO, Susan Lyne, has (ahem) "stepped down." Replacing Lyne will be two co-CEOs—an equivocation that often signals that a company was not well prepared for an executive transition. Lyne came on as head of the company when Martha Stewart went to jail in 2004, and has presided over a big drop in MSLO's stock price. But while her departure may have been inevitable, it's not necessarily a productive move. The magazine industry is in an irreversible decline, and no number of firings will change that fact. Sorry!

Former Daily News gossip hack Lloyd Grove has a lengthy interview with New York Observer owner and golden-boy-about town Jared Kushner out today, in which the 27-year-old Kushner yacks and yacks about his real estate holdings, his media holdings, and how the Observer's revenues are way up this year (although it's doubtful the paper has made him money yet). He's guarded, and talks a lot like a PR person. But one thing comes through quite clearly, just by his use of examples: this is a rich, rich young man. And maybe done dating Ivanka Trump? He won't say. Still, the time to snag this wealthy media baron is now!:

There's some good news for Eliot Spitzer today! The former governor, who prematurely became former when he was caught sleeping with prostitutes, has been laying low since his resignation, leaving people to speculate just what he'll do next. And today we get an answer! He's going to screw over homeowners. Spitzer, who built his reputation on defending the little guy against Wall Street's worst, is starting a vulture fund. He's taking over his dad's real estate company in order to "scoop up distressed real estate assets around the country, revamp them, and flip the properties for a profit," he told a group of DC union officials last month. Now that he's free of the obligation to govern people to the best of his ability, he's free to take advantage of the massive credit crisis that's shaking the very foundation of our economy for a quick buck. The Sun explains more:

Super-rich guys who work in private equity may be the masters of the universe, but it's remarkably easy to get under their skin. All it takes is some crappy "street theater" mocking them as mean, heartless wealthy elites, and they run back into their corner offices and cry into their monogrammed handkerchiefs. The huge union SEIU has, for the last year, been staging little theatrical protests of the private equity industry's greed, featuring puppets and megaphones and whatnot. Which you would think would be as effective as sitting across the street from the White House with a "No Nukes" sign. But it really gets the rich guys worked up! Now the SEIU is taking their campaign international, with help from grumpy comedian Lewis Black, and it's making the titans of finance so upset they want to run out and buy the Kleenex Corporation. It's not fair!

• Lehman Brothers is reportedly looking to raise capital (yet again) to shore up its balance sheet. The grim news sent the stock down 8% this morning, and likely ruined Dickie Fuld and Erin Callan's day. [WSJ, AP]

The Post rather idiotically suggests that "Wall Street big shots" are now "abandoning expensive limo rides and their gas guzzlers" and opting to bike to work instead due to "soaring fuel costs." The article failed to list a single Wall Street big shot as proof, but we'll be sure to keep our eyes peeled for sightings of Steve Schwarzman or Lloyd Blankfein pedaling through Midtown like a couple of bike messengers. [NY Post]