We asked Joshua Persky, a former investment banker who blogs about his search for work, to offer some advice to others facing unemployment.

You may have seen a photo of me wearing a sign-board, “Experienced MIT Grad for Hire.” My goal was to hand out some resumes, generate a few new leads, and find a job. Instead, I became world-famous for being unemployed. OK, I’ve had my 15 minutes of fame – for the past three months – and my publicity is still generating more publicity.

Apparently, my creativity, bravery and transparency paid off -- well, almost. I am still unemployed, but I am working on several start-up venture deals, speaking with some very interesting people from Europe and Asia, have a few interviews lined up, and have several other leads moving forward. I’ve also started a blog www.oracleofny.com to document my search and keep in touch with people around the world who are interested in following my story. Who knows where it will lead? However, I am open to change.

I had expected to get a new and perhaps even better position in financial services two to three months after losing my last job, but instead Bear Stearns collapsed. Most of the large investment banks and commercial banks announced they were writing off billions of dollars and firing thousands of people. Then it was summer, and meetings took weeks to arrange. Everyone seemed to be traveling or on vacation. Currently, the situation is even worse. Lehman is gone. Merrill is gone.

My advice to unemployed bankers and all working-challenged financial services people is to look elsewhere as quickly as possible – and be creative. It will take years for the financial services sector to recover. Tens of thousands of unemployed bankers are now chasing a few job openings. I have learned the hard way these past nine months. It is time for a change. I am still applying to financial services positions and hoping for the best, but my focus is now on business development and selling my transferable skills which can be applied to a wide variety of industries. If possible, start your own business!

Because I am willing to think and act outside the box and willing to change careers, I am speaking to a doctor in Japan who needs help managing his cancer research clinic and disseminating his research and life-saving techniques throughout the world, and I am in touch with the CEO of an international furniture manufacturer based in Europe and Asia who needs a representative in the USA.

As the bard said:

Come senators, congressmen
Please heed the call
Don't stand in the doorway
Don't block up the hall
For he that gets hurt
Will be he who has stalled
There's a battle outside
And it is ragin'.
It'll soon shake your windows
And rattle your walls
For the times they are a-changin'.

- Bob Dylan “The Times They Are A-Changin'”

A timely book called "150 Best Recession-Proof Jobs" arrived in our office this week, packed with tables ranking professions that should survive the downturn. No surprise that investment bankers don't make the list, although economists do scrape in at #107, one spot above taxi drivers but below podiatrists.

If you're a computer systems analyst at a bank, you're in luck: you top the table for recession-proof industries. Bulge-bracket workers might want to skip to the list of best-paying recession-proof jobs, which is led by physicians and surgeons. If you can't afford to stay out of the job market long enough to graduate from med school, then a career as an air-traffic controller might beckon.

Average earnings for controllers exceed $117,000 and training is all on-the-job, according to the 414-page tome. You need to have a "conventional" personality, which might not fit the description of the proverbial BSD, but traders might feel at home in a work environment described as "indoors; noisy; sitting." The book hits the shelves in November. Publisher JIST Works might want to bring that date forward.

Picture: Workers talk at the FAA's Air Traffic Control System Command Center in Herndron, Virginia, December 19, 2007. REUTERS/Larry Downing

What a week. Events are again conspiring to ruin Wall Street’s weekend, and stock futures are pointing down.

Where to begin? Well, the outcome of the $700 billion bank bailout has become as cloudy as the skies over Manhattan, and some say the uncertainty threatens to derail the financial system, not to mention tonight’s presidential debate.

And all the politicking and hand-wringing is taking place amid the biggest bank failure in U.S. history. The government shut down Washington Mutual and sold its assets to JPMorgan Chase for $1.9 billion.

St. Louis Fed president James Bullard is speaking on the U.S. economy today, and you can bet he’s got a lot of interesting material to work with.

The dollar is down against an index of major currencies. U.S. Treasuries are mostly higher. Oil prices are lower.

Data on tap includes a final reading on second-quarter gross domestic product growth and a report on consumer sentiment.

In mergers and acquisitions, Industrial and Commercial Bank of China says it’s eager to expand in the Middle East - but it’s wary about the United States.

- Lisa Von Ahn

Like a well-timed lightning flash and a clap of thunder, Washington Mutual was felled late last night as politicians withdrew their shaking hands and started pointing to alternatives. The failure - by far the biggest - looked like another steal of a deal for JPMorgan Chase, which picked up branches and assets from what had been the biggest savings and loan for $1.9 billion. So the once-mighty west-coast lender, which had a market cap of $3.9 billion just yesterday, joins Bear Stearns in JP Morgan CEO Jamie Dimon’s stable of failed finanial firms.
 
Now the market can get back to the business of trying to figure out who goes next, and politicians can get back to protecting their (constituents’) interests. Attention may head overseas next, where fear that Washington’s problems getting the bailout going will pound their own banks. Rumors that HSBC might take out UBS have been around for a while, but were seen pushing prices around this week.  Dutch-Belgian bank Fortis’ shares plunged 14 percent as its president insisted it had “no liquidity issue.”
 
Wamu was a particularly big target. The largest U.S. savings and loan has been one of the lenders hardest hit by the nation’s housing bust and credit crisis, and had already suffered from soaring mortgage losses. Here’s how much bigger - Washington Mutual has about $307 billion of assets and $188 billion of deposits. The largest previous U.S. banking failure was Continental Illinois National Bank & Trust, which had $40 billion of assets when it collapsed in 1984. 

Deals of the day:

* Macquarie Group , Australia’s top investment bank, plans to sell its margin lending business due to increased costs of funding and to focus on its core businesses. 

* Malaysia’s central bank told state-owned Maybank to cut the price of its $2.7 billion bid for Bank Internasional Indonesia in a latest twist that could kill the troubled deal.

* Russian tycoon Suleiman Kerimov’s Nafta Moskva has offered to acquire fellow billionaire Vladimir Potanin’s 35 percent stake in Polyus Gold for $1.6 billion, Vedomosti business daily said.

* German airline Lufthansa has expressed interest in taking a stake in Alitalia , a union leader said. 

* Top Nordic telecom operator TeliaSonera aims to tap growth in Asian markets by buying controlling stakes in operators in Nepal and Cambodia for around 3.2 billion Swedish crowns ($488 million), it said.

* Tata Motors , India’s top vehicle maker, is in talks with private equity funds to sell up to 25 percent each in six unlisted units, the Economic Times said, citing bankers close to the development.

* Machinery maker Avery India said its parent company had agreed to sell the 58.28 percent stake in the firm to ITW Global Investments, resulting in change in control.  

It was WaMu’s 119^th birthday on Thursday.

The thrift’s predecessor was incorporated on Sept. 25, 1889, “to offer its stockholders a safe and profitable vehicle for investing and lending.” This helped Seattle residents rebuild after a fire torched the city’s downtown.

The government’s choice of the day to seize the thrift, which became the largest U.S. bank failure, is unusual in other ways as well: Regulators typically take over failed banks on Friday afternoons. It gives them more time to sort out things over the weekend.  

The FDIC said it did the deal on Thursday due to media leaks and to calm WaMu’s customers.

For JPMorgan Chase, which offered to take over the thrift for about $7 billion only a few months ago but got spurned, it must look like poetic justice. It is paying $1.9 billion to get the cleaner version of the troubled savings & loan.

Finally Jamie Dimon got to open his WaMu account on Thursday. And he did it with a “whoo hoo!”

(Photo credit: Reuters)

How big is the $700 billion financial bailout package for the markets? Big enough that a change in perception as to whether it will pass can overshadow a cut in outlook from industrial and financial powerhouse General Electric.
 
Initially down after GE slashed its quarterly and full-year forecast, Dow Jones futures turned higher in later pre-market trade on optimism that the bailout will go ahead with only minimal friction in Congress. GE CEO Jeffrey Immelt said persistent woes in its finance arms, which account for half of its business, were to blame for the dimmed outlook. 
 
GE stunned Wall Street in April with an unexpected drop in first-quarter profit. It blamed the global credit crunch and the collapse of Bear Stearns for pushing its finance arms lower. These are the businesses at the root of the outlook problems now. At least the market is getting some warning this time — in the spring, GE sprung the bad news on investors in its results statement.
 
GE shares were down early, sagging to $23.50, off more than $1 from Wednesday’s close. If they hit $20.25 they will have lost half of their value since Immelt became CEO. 
 
Given the size and breadth of its financial biz, it would be no surprise to see GE in line for some bailout money. But the company seems to be saying it is fully capable of managing its own problems for now. If the market starts to sense, though, that the profitable parts of GE, the industrial stuff, will be the next shoe to drop in the economic slowdown…look out.

Deals of the day:

* Washington Mutual , the large U.S. savings and loan company beleaguered by mortgage losses, has approached private-equity firms about a potential takeover after a line-up of listed firms showed reluctance, the Wall Street Journal said citing people familiar with the situation

* Hynix Semiconductor said it would sell part of its stake in a Chinese joint venture to partner Numonyx for $100 million, as Numonyx seeks to raise its control over the Hynix-led chip plant.

* South Korea’s antitrust watchdog said it had granted conditional approval for eBay Inc’s plan to buy a controlling stake in South Korean online retailer Gmarket.

* French insurer AXA and Munich Re’s insurance unit ERGO are among the preliminary bidders for a small South Korean life insurer put up for sale, a source at the domestic insurer said.

* China’s Xuzhou Construction Machinery Science & Technology said that it will buy operating assets worth 5.31 billion yuan ($778 million) from its state-run parent via a share placement.

* Grange Resources will merge with Australian Bulk Minerals in an all stock deal to create a A$1 billion ($833 million) mining company, Grange said in a statement.

Will GE meet its lowered profit forecast for 2008?

After a couple weeks of just trying to keep up with developments in the financial crisis, reporters and bloggers are taking halting steps toward describing the mythos of the investment banker.

It’s been a while since Tom Wolfe and Bret Easton Ellis popularized the bespoke-suited arrogance commonly associated with the financial world’s anointed — the easy millions, the casual disdain for the rubes and the marks in the lower classes and the single-minded pursuit of money. Depicting the carnivore in his or her habitat is beginning to come back into vogue as taxpayers who may soon be on the hook to bail out their social betters in the investment banking world wonder why they’re getting stuck with a bill they didn’t incur.

New York magazine ran a story called, “The Rage of the Previously Rich: A Lehman trader copes with the sudden onset of income shrinkage,” featuring this choice nugget:

The collapse of the world’s most powerful wealth-creating engine required everyone to take stock of their financials. One Lehman executive in Rye Brook, fretting about paying off a Hamptons summer house and a ski chalet in Vermont, panicked on Monday morning and laid off her nanny, who had been with the Westchester family for nine years. “The nanny called me crying,” says Marla Sanders, who runs Advance Nannies and staffs Lehman homes. “One of the children she had brought home from the hospital.” Sanders knows more cuts for her clients are on the way. “They’re going to have to sell homes. The question is, will the homes sell? They’re cutting some of the children’s activities out, dance class, acting class. Are they going to have flowers delivered every day to their homes? I don’t think so!”

On Wednesday, ivygateblog featured comments from the pseudonymous “George”:

One of my friends at Bank of America texted me, ‘Hey, we might be buying you guys.’

I was in denial. You see, Merrill has a much better repuation than a commercial bank like Bank of America. I was shocked I would be joining a lower-tier commercial bank. There’s a feeling, ‘I didn’t go through this whole interview process to work at a commercial bank.’

More from George:

Changing compensation will obviously change the attitude of students toward the industry. They might go to med school or law school instead. … This is a sad week. … We may be losing the competitive advantage for getting the best talent.

And finally, regarding the proposed $700 billion bailout plan, courtesy of the United States’s 300 million would-be shareholders of bad debt:

It’s a good step toward stabilizing the turmoil. If the government can take the balance sheet pressure off the companies then the companies will look better going forward.

After all, that’s the only thing that counts in this whole story.

(Photo: Workers leaving Lehman Brothers office in London. Reuters)

Having been laden with the acronym TARP, the Treasury’s Troubled Asset Relief Program sounds like a pretty flimsy rescue operation. Perhaps not since the Committee to Re-Elect the President presaged Richard Nixon’s fall from the presidency have we seen a less confidence-inspiring acronym. A tarp, short for Tarpaulin, is defined by dictionary.com as “a protective covering of canvas or other material waterproofed with tar, paint or wax.” Given the bunker mentality of global financial markets, maybe something more solid could have been equally accurate at describing its function?

You could unload dud investments at a fine, sturdy Bad Asset Repository Network, or head down the road from the Failed Asset Relief Mint, where officials might be able to print up some replacement cash, grown from freshly mowed tax receipts. Then again, if the assets are really bad, perhaps they should just go to the Credit Relief Asset Protection Bailout Insurance Network.

There’s nothing like a belle to bring a festive mood to an otherwise gloomy ball, and today that honor belongs to Goldman Sachs, which has drawn attention - and money - from none other than Warren Buffett.

Stock futures are pointing up on news of the uber-investor’s plan to purchase a $5 billion stake in the bank. And Japanese media say that Sumitomo Mitsui Financial Group is also looking to buy in.

But the fate of the Wall Street bailout plan remains the $700 billion question. Congress is continuing discussions today, with Fed chief Ben Bernanke testifying before the House Financial Services Committee.

At the same time, CNN is reporting that the FBI is investigating potential mortgage fraud at Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, Lehman Brothers and American International Group - the very companies at the heart of this financial services meltdown.

Oil prices are up ahead of weekly data expected to show the fifth consecutive decline in U.S. crude inventories.

The dollar is down against an index of major currencies. Longer-term U.S. Treasuries are higher.

On a light day for economic reports, we’ve got existing home sales from the National Association of Realtors.

And while we’re on the subject of the housing slump, home-improvement chain Lowe’s says it’s cutting store openings for its next fiscal year.

- Lisa Von Ahn

When pressed on why he buys into certain businesses, Warren Buffett likes to say he buys only businesses he understands. 
 
Certainly the $5 billion his Berkshire Hathaway Inc plans to plow into Goldman Sachs preferred stock immediately doesn’t represent an outright ownership stake. So perhaps the second-richest American won’t need to understand as much of what the so-called rocket scientists at Goldman do - which is a whole lot less, now that the bank is going commercial bank and its strategies built over decades are in tatters.
 
Another of Buffett’s truisms is that when the markets turn sour the problems are exposed, “you always find out who’s been swimming naked when the tide goes out,” he told CNBC television in August. “We found out that Wall Street has been kind of a nudist beach.”

He gave himself time to ogle before deciding where to plant his towel. Perhaps even more sexy than Goldman’s business is the stunning premium he’s picking up.
 
For its $5 billion, Berkshire gets preferred stock that carries a 10 percent dividend. It also gets warrants to buy $5 billion of common stock, or 43.5 million shares, at $115 per share, within five years, which could give it a roughly 9 percent stake in Goldman. That’s a paper profit on the warrants alone of $437 million, based on Goldman’s closing stock price on Tuesday.

Other deals of the day:

* Sumitomo Mitsui Financial Group, Japan’s No. 3 bank, plans to invest in Goldman Sachs Group, Japanese media said, in what would be the third big Japanese investment this week on Wall Street.

* French utility EDF launched a 12.5 billion pound ($23.14 billion) agreed bid for nuclear operator British Energy, in a revamped offer to take control of Britain’s nuclear power industry.

* Yahoo Inc’s new board approved a new round of discussions with Time Warner over the future of its AOL unit, the Financial Times said, citing a person familiar with Yahoo’s thinking.

* Japan’s third-largest drugmaker Daiichi Sankyo said its open offer to buy up to 20 percent of India’s generic drugmaker Ranbaxy was oversubscribed.

* An Indian government agency is selling a stake worth roughly $1.2 billion in private sector lender Axis Bank , sources familiar with the situation said.