​A top honcho at Morgan Stanley, William Bryan Jennings, has been charged with stabbing a Middle Eastern cabbie with a pen knife and using racial intimidation, cops say.

The banking behemoth says that the Americas co-head of fixed income and capital markets has since been put on leave, according to the New York Times.

Here's what supposedly went down: On Dec. 22., Jennings took a cab from a New York charity gala to his $3.6 million Darien, Conn. home. When he got there, he refused to pay the $200 fare, the cabbie claims. He's also said to have become abusive and started using racial slurs.

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​While the general message from the Bloomberg administration has been that crime is down, that people are healthier, that everything is groovy, the New York Times City Room blog reports on a crime increase in one area: Bank robberies in New York City nearly doubled from 2010, when there were 26, to 2011, when there were 44 armed incidents. Of course, this is still nothing like the gritty days of yesteryear (in 1979 there were 319 armed bank robberies). But still! To what do we attribute this increase, which, along with more man-on-bank crime, has brought us cinema-ready villains like the "Bouquet Bandit" (above, caught) and the "Dapper Bandit," a/k/a Dana Connor, pictured after the jump, who is still on the loose?

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This internal memo from Bank of America to third-party contractors has been circulating around the Internet:

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It's regarding yesterday's Occupy Our Homes action, in which protesters reclaimed foreclosed properties. The memo, which actually does appear to be real, includes tips like "Your safety is our primary concern, so do not engage with the protesters" and "While in neighborhoods, please take notice of vacant BAC Field Services managed homes and ensure they are secured."

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Not a Chase ATM, though we'd probably avoid this one.

​Two men have been arrested and face charges "including burglary, criminal possession of forgery devices, and larceny," reports the New York Times, for installing devices in card slots of 11 ATMs at four different Chase locations around Union Square. The men, Nikolai Ivanov, 31, and Dimitar Stamatov, 28, live in Quebec (they are from Bulgaria) and tried their skimming trick twice -- in January for five days, and then again in May, when Iordan Ivanov, Nikolai's brother, helped. Nikolai and Stamatov, who also face charges of identity theft, were arrested in May while trying to remove the skimming device they'd installed, which just goes to yet again prove that returning to the scene of the crime never pays (for criminals, that is).

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​Malcolm Gladwell, author of Blink and The Tipping Point among other books, has a new gig: doing speaking engagements for Bank of America. Somehow nobody seems to have known about this, and Bank of America only released the press release today. Gladwell likes money almost as much as he likes pop pseudo-science!

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via RTE

​Sean Quinn, once rated Ireland's richest man with a fortune estimated around €4 billion (about $6 billion), declared bankruptcy yesterday. The Irish Independent reports Quinn told a Belfast court he acquired untenable debts after investing in the failing Anglo Irish Bank. In technical finance terms, Quinn performed what is commonly referred to as a "Reverse George Jefferson."

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Citigroup CEO Vikram Pandit, still unaware of his termination.

​We got an interesting e-mail this morning from a man in Bayside, Queens. David R. Yale, a 67-year-old consultant, is firing Vikram Pandit, the CEO of Citigroup.

Yale mailed a pink slip to Pandit that notifies him of his termination. "Inasmuch as your performance as fiduciary guardian of my funds, and as a member of the community, has been unsatisfactory, you are hereby notified that your services are no longer needed. I have closed two of my accounts (checking and money market) at Citibank's Bayside NY branch effective immediately," it says.

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via

​Tomorrow marks the event created by L.A. gallery owner Kristen Christian, who, tired of bank fees and her treatment at the hands of Bank of America, as well as the behaviors of the big banks overall, decided that she would transfer her funds to a credit union and invite others to do the same. She called the day "Bank Transfer Day," and scheduled it for November 5. Currently nearly 80,000 people say they'll be moving their money, via the event's Facebook page. The Christian Science Monitor reports that "already 650,000 people across the country have joined credit unions in the past four weeks."

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​Bank of America has changed its mind about charging customers a $5 monthly fee for using their debit cards, a move that angered many a banking customer, not to mention lawmakers, and in part was a catalyst for Bank Transfer Day, a move initiated by Kristen Christian, an L.A. woman, to get people to take their money from the big banks to credit unions. Reuters reports that Bank of America is the last big bank (following JPMorgan Chase, Wells Fargo, and then SunTrust and Regions Financial) to take back their plan to charge the fee, which they'd said they would initiate next year to make up for revenue lost when the U.S. capped fees on debit-card transactions earlier this year via the Dodd-Frank Act.

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Yesterday, we reported that 24 people were arrested after protesting at a Citibank near Washington Square Park. The above video shows the demonstrators locked inside the branch and police arriving on the scene. Some protesters say they were merely trying to close their accounts, while the police charged the 24 with criminal trespassing. Citibank has released a statement regarding the incident. Read it after the jump.

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