They survived the financial Armageddon of 2008 with their careers, finances, and houses intact. So the question is: are the good times rolling again?

Before firms dole out holiday bonuses, we're taking a look at how a some leading strategists and money managers are budgeting. What they've bought, what they've held, and how generous they plan to be. Our roster today includes a Pimco portfolio manager, a president of a high net worth investment firm, and the chief economist of an institutional trading firm.

Earlier this afternoon, The Federal Reserve Board released minutes from a Committee meeting held on September 21, 2010. Summary and excerpts follow:

Economic Situation

Overall economic picture: economic expansion slowed, inflation stayed low.

"The information reviewed at the September 21 meeting indicated that the pace of the economic expansion slowed in recent months and that inflation remained low. Private bus

inesses increased employment modestly in August, but the length of the workweek was unchanged and the unemployment rate remained elevated. Industrial production advanced at a solid pace in July and rose further in August. Consumer spending continued to increase at a moderate rate in July and appeared to move up again in August. The rise in business outlays for equipment and software looked to have moderated recently following outsized gains in the first half of the year. Housing activity weakened further, and nonresidential construction remained depressed. After falling in the previous three months, headline consumer prices rose in July and August as energy prices retraced some of their earlier decline while prices for core goods and services edged up slightly."

Economic Situation

Overall economic picture: economic expansion slowed, inflation stayed low.

"The information reviewed at the September 21 meeting indicated that the pace of the economic expansion slowed in recent months and that inflation remained low. Private bus

So was Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein trashing Tim Geithner in a Manhattan restaurant recently?

Earlier today, Bess Levin of DealBreaker revealed that one of her sources was sitting next to a Wall Street chief executive at dinner. The source overheard four bits of information. But Bess is playing coy and not revealing who the chief executive is.

Well, we think it's probably Blankfein. First, we'll give you the email from the DealBreaker source, followed by our rationale for pinning the tale on the Blankfein.

Over the last ten years, the percentage of M&A deals done with all cash has more than doubled, from 13.9% in 2000 to 29% in 2010.

And those numbers are not being distorted by a rising share of cash deals in a declining M&A deal market either: Over the same period, the total number of M&A transactions done all cash also more than doubled — rising from 1,393 in 2000 to 2,799 in 2010. \(For those of you scoring at home, that would bring the total number of M&A deals in 2000 to just over 8000, and the total number of M&A deals in 2010 to about 9650.\)

As a follow-up to yesterday’s Page One Wall Street Journal story about possible insider trading by Capitol Hill Staffers, the WSJ’s Deal Journal tracked down the professor whose 2004 study started the controversy over political insider trading.

A bit of background. It had been suspected for years that lawmakers engaged in insider trading. Anecdotally, there were plenty of stories about lawmakers going long stocks that might benefit from legislation or shorting stocks that could be hurt.

But In 2004, Alan Ziobrowski concluded several years of study with a report that found stock picks by US Senators beat the market by about 12 percent each year, while regular folks underperformed the market by about 1.4 percent.

The implication was that either we had elected a bunch of really good stock pickers to the Senate or the Senators were front-running legislation or trading on information they learned in their capacity as lawmakers. Since not many Senators leave to become hedge fund managers, it seems pretty clear it’s not their stock picking prowess that explains the results.

Foreclosure Gate dominates the headlines.

But for Jim Rickards and Chris Whalen none of this is very surprising. Rickards and Whalen, the Senior Managing Director of Market Intelligence at Omnis, and Co-Founder and Managing Director of Institutional Risk Analystics respectively, sounded the alarm about the foreclosure crisis in this very column on September 29th.

I tossed out the question that an economic tusunami warning was being sounded and if bank investors were listening. I guess I should have added Congress and State Attorney Generals.

Since I last spoke with them, there is movement to halt all foreclosures. But is this a knee jerk over-reaction lead to more harm than good to the ailing real estate market? I decided to ask both Rickards and Whalen.

I've been trying to get my head around this all morning. Google has just announced — well, I'm not sure exactly what they have announced.

It isn't a new product or service, per se, as much as a capacity to calculate underlying data. Early reports are thin, but this short article in the Financial Times explains that Google has begun using its "vast database of web shopping data" to construct a new price index.

Steve Rattner’s savaging of FDIC chair Sheila Bair should damage Rattner’s reputation more than Bair’s. Rattner comes off as something worse than an arrogant and entitled commissar—he appears to be profoundly opposed to the structure of the American government.

There’s a long excerpt from Rattner’s book, Overhaul, over at Economics of Contempt . Rattner— the former 'car czar' for Obama—makes it clear that he does not have much respect for Bair, referring to her as a “Kansas lawyer”and unfavorably comparing her academic career to Ben Bernanke’s.

Worse, she once ran for Congress and was appointed by George Bush. She has “an unsmiling, sour demeanor.” Her FDIC is described as “muttering about new capital” for GMAC.

Points go to Rattner for candidness, I suppose. But there’s something inappropriate about his attitude toward her. Keep in mind that Bair was appointed to a decades old independent agency to a position which required confirmation by the U.S. Senate. Rattner was simply part of Obama’s kitchen cabinet, approved by no one except maybe Rahm Emmanuel. Some sort of deference to her rank should be expected.

Several hours before last night's Hailpocalypse descended upon Brooklyn, we were having drinks with a guy who works in fixed income at JP Morgan Chase. He revealed a new and unintended consequence of more bankers using iPhones: some senior bankers are just discovering text messaging.

"My boss used BlackBerry messaging and sent emails all the time. Sometimes his emails were so short, like one word, that I believed he thought it was a version of instant messaging," the banker told us. "But this is far, far worse. He discovered texting through the iPhone and now he won't stop."

40 states to coordinate mortgage foreclosure documentation probe (Wall Street Journal)