Unstructured Finance

New Jersey Governor Chris Christie shakes hands with Lloyd Blankfein lookalike outside Goldman Sachs on Wednesday

Editor’s note: Updated with reason for Christie’s visit.

These days it seems New Jersey Governor Chris Christie is everywhere, from TV talk shows and radio appearances to accompanying Prince Harry on a well-publicized tour of the devastated Jersey Shore. So maybe it’s not too surprising he was spotted outside of Goldman Sachs’s Lower Manhattan office Wednesday morning. An Unstructured Finance reporter happened to see the sharp-tongued Republican governor walking into 200 West Street just before 11:30. Spokespeople for Goldman and the governor’s office said he was there for the bank’s Global Macro conference, which invites politicians, regulators, diplomats, CEOs and other power players to talk about big-picture trends.

Christie, who filed papers last year to run for re-election in 2014, recently announced that he had gastric bypass surgery to deal with his weight problem and he was looking in good spirits on Wednesday. He had a thick security detail and shook hands with a guy who, from behind, looked like Lloyd Blankfein but turned out not to be. He buttoned his jacket and waved to onlookers on his way into 200 West Street.

Christie has a lot of connections to the Wall Street bank — starting with having beaten its former co-CEO Jon Corzine in the governor’s race in 2009 —but no clear reason to be visiting this week.

Goldman bankers helped Christie get into office that year by offering a cash-flow analysis of the state that formulated his view of the budget, according to a New York Times Magazine report in 2011. Christie’s hard-line on budgetary issues has been controversial  but has made him popular among fiscal hawks and some segment of the voting population.

The following is a contribution from our chief Federal Reserve reporter, who is out in the field  at The Economist magazine’s annual economics conference:

By Jonathan Spicer

What is the most overvalued asset across the world’s advanced economies? Vincent Reinhart, the chief U.S. economist at Morgan Stanley, posed that rhetorical question on Thursday at one of New York’s signature economics conferences. After a pause: “The answer is, voters’ expectation of the net present value of the entitlements they … are expecting. Why? Because they by and large don’t have a tax system to support that,” Reinhart said.

It was a cold shot of reality as the United States roars toward the so-called “fiscal cliff” on Jan. 1, when a series of automatic tax rises and spending cuts will take hold and seriously damage the economy – unless lawmakers step in to prevent them. Most economists and investors are still betting the worst of the cliff will be avoided, probably by putting off tough questions on tax reform and longer-term government spending. That means Congress kicking the can down the road – yet again – on finally setting a plan to meaningfully reduce the massive U.S. debt after three straight years of budget deficits topping $1 trillion.

Fall really arrives in NYC this weekend. What better time then for Sam Forgione’s weekend reads. Have a whale of a time.

From The New York Times:

Susan Dominus long read about Ina Drew, the “natural” risk manager, who oversaw JP Morgan’s $6 billion trading loss.

From Vanity Fair:

More on Jamie Dimon and JPMorgan from the writing team of William D. Cohan and Bethany McLean