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So, time has run short and I need to get a couple of practice runs in on manual transmission before I leave for France on, um, Sunday....any Boston area folks want to help me out with a crash course on Thursday, Friday or Saturday?
I'd be forever in your debt, and promise not to destroy your clutch... |
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It's so on.
Who's with me? |
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Iowa?
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Apr. 3rd, 2009 @ 11:19 am
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Everyone who had Iowa in their office pool for "next state where gay marriage will be legal" give yourself a big pat on the back.
http://www.desmoinesregister.com/article/20090403/NEWS/90403010Current Mood:  surprised |
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Naked Capitalism is a blog run by Yves Smith, and is basically a financial news and commentary aggregator. Yves takes noteworthy stories and comments on and picks them apart, and she's very good.
This is mostly for ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) g_me but I think others will find it interesting as well.
http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2009/03/obama-pushing-quick-surgical-big-auto.html
I also highly recommend reading this blog if you're interested in this stuff. Yves has recently begun to incorporate guest posters as she's working on a book, and I'm a little suspicious of some of their content at this point, but her posts are generally worth it. If it's your first foray into this sort of stuff, there may be terms and concepts that don't make sense, but stick with it (and feel free to email me with questions, and I'll help you out if I can!) and it'll be worth it. |
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The final volume of A Song of Ice and Fire will not be published prior to 2020. |
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Comes between Robinson, Kim Stanley and Rowling, J.K on my bookshelf.
How about yours?
Mar. 3rd, 2009 @ 10:34 am
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| » Hair |
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Jess: [statement of mood]
Steve: Is it because you're there sitting on the couch, looking beautiful?
Jess: I don't look beautiful, have you seen my hair? It's all...
Steve: Red!
Jess: Rumpled.
Steve: Hair doesn't get rumpled, dear.
Jess: Have you seen yours....?
Jan. 10th, 2009 @ 01:20 pm
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| » In case you're missing it |
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Rod Blagojevich (Democratic governor of Illinois) is having a bad day. Check out nytimes.com or your favorite news source for details.
I went to his wikipedia page to figure out how to say his name and was confronted with his already long record of shady dealings. Also for the record books: his approval rating as of October is something like 4%.
But seriously, how brazen or stupid do you have to be to get caught on a wiretap trying to sell a senate seat while you're already under federal investigation for various kinds of corruption. That's just silly.
For a good laugh, check it all out at
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rod_Blagojevich
Dec. 9th, 2008 @ 01:09 pm
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| » In case you missed it |
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Back in October, Iceland's entire banking system imploded and took the country's economy down with it. Losses may exceed the Icelandic GDP and the country may (legal details are murky) owe vast amounts of money to various creditors in the UK and the Netherlands. To call this 'crippling' would be an understatement.
This didn't get as much coverage in the US press as I would have expected, but there's a reasonable recap at http://www.voxeu.org/index.php?q=node/2549, but it's sadly light on details of what this actually means for people living in Iceland at this point. Please provide additional links if you have them.
Nov. 12th, 2008 @ 10:19 am
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| » Couple of funny vids |
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1: People getting punched in the face in slow motion
http://edge.famecast.com/actionfigure//AQ_PUNCHES_EDIT.mov
2: Original music video for A-ha's "Take On Me" with reworked lyrics that describe the actions depicted in the video. Better than I made it sound. Just watch it.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8HE9OQ4FnkQ
Nov. 12th, 2008 @ 10:07 am
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| » The Other Arlington |
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I just got a robocall from US Senator John Cornyn. Now, while it is true that I once lived in Texas, much as I might like to (and no, I wouldn't anyway) I can't vote for the man tomorrow. You see, I live in Arlington, suburb of Boston, not Arlington, suburb of Dallas/Ft Worth.
I'm entertained, and happy that some small amount of Texas Republican money was wasted on me.
Nov. 3rd, 2008 @ 06:33 pm
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| » Portents |
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You know you're in for a good ride when you open a novel and the two quotes that lead you into the story come from 1: Kafka and 2: Hitler.
Props if anyone can identify the book from that information.
Oct. 24th, 2008 @ 09:26 am
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| » I am a bad person |
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Conversation at work:
Coworker says, "Gears of War 2 won't be seeing a release in either Germany or Japan, thanks to the game's level of violence and gore."
My immediate response: "Suckers. That's what you get for losing a world war."
Oct. 23rd, 2008 @ 12:37 pm
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| » Portraits, anyone? |
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So, I've been exploring photography and finally feel ready to try to take photos of people in a sit-down kind of setting. I think I've talked to some of you about this before, but now is finally the time. I'm somewhat spurred to action by the class I'm currently taking over at NESOP which deals with off camera flash, so I'll be able to kill two birds with one stone here and make some pictures I can take to class.
Anyway, if you're interested in having photos taken, please comment or email me. I'll give you whatever I come up with, but you have to be patient, as I'm going to be figuring stuff out and probably want to take a lot of shots with lights in various places, etc. If you have any ideas about shots you want (a particular image in your head) that would be exciting too, as I'm always looking for new ideas.
So, get in touch and we'll figure out a time. Originally I was hoping to try to find someone to experiment on for tonight, but that seems unlikely at this advanced date.
I'll leave you with a photo I took last night (not of people) when I went out for some night photography with stenz and a coworker of his.
Oct. 21st, 2008 @ 09:28 am
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| » Another Marketplace video |
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This one is on the bailout plan in general, and pretty fun. Warning though: it's 4 days out of date, and since it was made things have changed: Helicopter Henry has decided that buying the expiditioneers unwanted equipment isn't a good enough plan and will instead use that cash to just drop food and medical supplies....or something.
Watch the video to understand what the heck I'm talking about.
http://www.publicradio.org/columns/marketplace/offair/2008/10/the_credit_crisis_as_antarctic.html
Oct. 14th, 2008 @ 12:39 pm
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| » CDO Explainer Video |
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Nice video on just what collateralized debt obligations are. If you're interested in the financial mess you may find this interesting. fairoriana, I'm looking at you.
http://consumerist.com/5061365/what-are-collateralized-debt-obligations-watch-these-champagne-glasses
Oct. 10th, 2008 @ 10:36 am
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| » Financial Crisis Mini Explainer: Credit Default Swaps |
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So, let me first say that I'm by no means an expert on this stuff. I work with some people who are, and I work in the financial field, but the whole mess is very complicated, so even smart people only have a vague idea of what's going on in certain parts of the market.
If you know better than I, please correct me.
Ok, here we go.
A few years ago a new financial instrument was invented. It is called CDS or credit default swap. Credit default swaps are basically insurance policies for corporate loans (bonds). Pretty simple, right?
Let's say that I'm a company and I need to borrow a lot of money for a new project. I go out to the market and issue bonds and I promise to pay a certain interest rate. Great. I get my cash and you get your AAA rated (because of course I have a great credit rating and have never been in trouble) debt that is reasonably safe and will pay you interest every 6 months for years to come.
Now, let's suppose you're worried that I might default on my debt. Something will happen and I'm unable to make the payments. You'd love to buy an insurance policy against my bonds. This would let you offload the risk of my defaulting to someone else. This is how the credit default swap was born.
There are many companies (mostly financial services companies) that were willing to write such policies. They come over to me, look at my credit rating, my financial statements, etc, and set a price for insuring my bonds. For a fee they are willing to write you a credit default swap. This basically means that if I were to default on my bonds (or experience some other "credit event" like a downgrade or something similar) then the purchaser of the CDS has the right to exchange my (now worthless) bonds for their face value. I'm oversimplifying, but this is basically how it works.
Great! Now, you can be some bank or hedge fund or similar and buy gobs and gobs of my debt and not worry quite as much as you used to about the chance of my defaulting because you also buy some insurance policies on my bonds. You've got it covered, you think.
Well, not really. See, the real insurance industry is regulated. The CDS market isn't. What does this mean? When a company writes real insurance policies there are all sorts of rules and regulations about how much money they have to have around to be able to actually pay these claims, and a lot of framework to make sure that insurance policy holders don't get stiffed. The CDS market has none of this.
So, let's say you're in the business of writing CDS for people, and someone wants to buy CDS for, oh, Lehman Brothers. Or maybe Washington Mutual. A year ago the chance of these guys defaulting on their debt didn't look a whole lot bigger than zero, so you go ahead and write CDS contracts, take those fees, and roll in the dough. Then you spend it, because there's no chance that Lehman is going belly up anytime soon and there are no rules to say that you really have to be able to pay me. In practice, of course, you have you look like you'd be able to pay me. I'm sure that most of the CDS that were written were written by large, well capitalized companies (with large lines of credit) that believed that their risks were equally well covered.
Then the extremely unexpected happens. Lehman really does go bankrupt, and billions of dollars worth of CDS insured debt is going to land on your front door, with CDS holders expecting to be paid back. But you can't pay them off. You don't have the cash, or what you do have is tied up in bad MBS (mortgage backed securities) and those huge lines of credit that were ready to help you out a year ago have dried up. Now, all those Lehman CDS holders, who used your CDS to hedge their risk, are getting paid off at something like 15 cents on the dollar. Oops. Writedowns, losses, more general badness.
CDS were wildly popular (as are most newfangled and hard to understand financial instruments). Similar to MBS they had the effect of making it hard to really tell where the risk went. When you buy a CDS contract you're selling the risk of holding the corresponding debt to someone else, who in turn can sell it to someone else again....but it turns out that a lot of that risk might have stayed with you and you didn't know it, because your CDS counterparty and their AAA credit rating now can't cover the bond value.
The upshot is that even more people are losing even more money than they expected to, contributing to the general financial shitstorm.
Ok, this is long and rambly and written in about 5 minutes, but I think it's got the right idea.
Sep. 26th, 2008 @ 06:26 pm
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| » In Praise of (Price) Gouging |
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Interesting blog post about the public misperceptions of "price gouging." This is actually pretty old, but I've been meaning to post it for a while.
http://www.economist.com/blogs/freeexchange/2008/06/in_praise_of_gouging.cfm
Sep. 20th, 2008 @ 10:45 am
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| » Good blog post on the current market upheaval |
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http://freakonomics.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/09/18/diamond-and-kashyap-on-the-recent-financial-upheavals/
You would think that, given that I work in the finance industry, that I might understand what's going on, but I don't. Very few people do. A lot of what got these companies in trouble in the first place is the extreme complexity of the financial instruments in question and the ways in which those instruments spread the risk around the market.
Anyway, I can try to answer questions people have, but most of my answers will be referring you to other posts.
Sep. 19th, 2008 @ 12:23 pm
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