High school geometry:
Wall Street asks for $700B
California asks for $7B
Therefore:
California/Wall Street = 10%
Diane/California = 10% (I’m having Sarah Palin run some models for me)
Ergo >>>> Diane asks the feds for $700M
I’m thinking that can buy a LOT more in Manhattan than it did last year and I’m willing to provide warrants to the feds for the equity increase over time.
See? Math is phun!!
my sanity…my heroesMy friend – who is out about watching Fox TV – had to cancel dinner, which freed me up to witness in real-time what I sensed – horribly, in my innermost core – would be a trainwreck of gutterally epic proportions. My sense of dread was so great that I knew I couldn’t be alone…I simply had to be among others to avoid being reduced to a fetal-positioned wet noodle by 6:05pm PST.
The strategy worked: I lasted until exactly 6:35pm PST!
But there is only so much a human can take. By 6:50pm I was alternating between fervent, assenting house-motions accompanying Biden’s unrattled, experience-driven and germane remarks which addressed the questions posed, to barely dangling by a thread, head-in-between-knees babbling creature as Palin winked & smiled knowingly at the camera while she avoided the questions posed in order to spew out the sound bytes she’d invariably been fed in her boot-camp prep over the past week.
O Lord, thank you for that 30-minute extension of relative emotional health!
Dare I list all the infuratingly frustrating examples that sent me into such a nearly-frothing psychological ball of goo? That had me muttering under my breath and groaning “ooooooohhhh” the entire way home….to try to seek solace with my neighbors who were listening to the time-delayed broadcast but knowing I couldn’t bear to hear another subatomic particle of ‘golly gee I really get it even if I don’t know anything but that’s not my achilles heel it’s my strength’ messaging lest I wished to remain a functional member of society….
…at last to enter my home, pop in some amazing rap and dance…REALLY HARD….
I have a whole sheet full of -isms, sayings, contradictions and the like which may be therapeutic to elaborate on…but on the other hand, such an exercise just might keep me down in that low, desolate place that has me wondering if we are no longer in a place to support a healthy democracy in this country.
So I’ll weigh it out. Can’t bring myself to even read the pundits’ recap yet. All I know is that for now, there is hope. With some good music, I’m coming back.
As the markets unravel we can all reverse-engineer and wade our way to discern what, in fact, happened. A few sources that have proven invaluable lately are below.
Note that this list is hardly exhaustive. For example, more thoughts about how the banks became speculators and traders vs. service providers (and the impact that this ‘derivative’ tangent had) are floating out there somewhere & not captured here…:
1) James Cramer . Never was a big reader of his but this article – already a few days ‘old’ and pre-Buffett investment in Goldman – remains quite spot-on.
2) Princeton economists. Not ivory tower! These guys have the data and the reality to help us not only diagnose what happened, but prescribe a better future. Just a FEW references on some key insights (and I’m only 18 minutes in! I tried to capture rough time-markers….):
– Minute 6:30: the i-banks leverage was just the opposite of household leverage; that is, as asset values increased, so did the banks’ leverage. The opposite happens at an individual household level (as your home appreciates in value, your leverage DEcreases). As a result, when the underlying, long-term asset depreciates, the ensuing death spiral accelerates at unprecedented, exponential paces than historically experienced (and…don’t press me to explain beyond that ;0).
– Minute 12: This is big: the “maturity mismatch” snafu that happened when long-term assets such as homes were chopped up into short-term investment vehicles/products (call them what you will). This led to high volatility as short-term debt no longer could be rolled over when long-term values began to fall.
– Minute 14: 40: recommendation to measure risk and exposure systemically (i.e. don’t just look at how Lender A connects to Lender B to assess the amount of exposure Lender A has – the exposure must be evaluated in light of the whole web).
…and again, I’m not even 1/3 of the way through…I SWEAR those economists are the smartest. I have nothing but geek love for them.
3) Roubini. Again. Nouriel. My hero. He started predicting hedge fund fallout last week. Bets?
