Ahmedinejad: Hola, Hugo.
Chavez: As-salaam-aleikum, Mahi. What's up?
Ahmedinejad: It's that Obama guy. He really pisses me off!
Chavez: Would you say he 'gets your goat?'
Ahmedinejad: Har har. But seriously! He's so unflappable!
Chavez: What?
Ahmedinejad: Bush reacted to every little thing I did! I could taunt him all day!
Chavez: Sure, he was hot-headed...
Ahmedinejad: Hot-headed? He was a child, Hugo! Oh, it made me feel young again, in a way not even my Just For Men beard-dye can reproduce.
Hugo: Ohh, my friend. I see. I miss him, too.
Ahmedinejad: Yeah...
(Pause)
Ahmedinejad: This Obama! All he talks about is "Economy this, economy that." What's a credit-default swab anyway?
Hugo: Swap.
Ahmedinejad: What?
Hugo: Nevermind. Hey...listen: I've got an idea.
Ahmedinejad: What?
Hugo: So he cares about the economy, right? Let's start a bank together!
Ahmedinejad: A what?
Hugo: A bank! An anti-capitalist bank!
Ahmedinejad: Oh man! Yeah! That'll get his attention!
Hugo: Yeah! C'mon, Mahi!
Ahmedinejad: Yeah! Thanks, Hugo, you're a real pal!
Showing posts with label the Looming Financial Crisis. Show all posts
Showing posts with label the Looming Financial Crisis. Show all posts
Friday, April 3, 2009
Friday, March 27, 2009
Sam Learns About Stuff
It's been a pretty educational 15 minutes here at 1070 Bway this fine morning:
I. So I keep hearing blah blah "stress tests for banks" blah. Right? I had NO IDEA what anybody actually fucking MEANT by 'stress test' up until just now*:
I'm still really unclear on how exactly all this goes down, whether there's an acceptable leverage ratio vs "if everybody asked you for all of their money TODAY, could you do it?," &c. But still: a little clarity.
II. So I've lived in a seriously Puerto Rican neighborhood for over a year now, and while I was working I worked in a room full of Puerto Ricans, Dominicans, and an Ecuadorean. But I'm an awkward white kid from Maine. So I've always been at kind of a loss about the best way to refer to all these people collectively. Until earlier today:
That's from an interview (on the excellent FreeWilliamsburg) with a DJ from La Mega 97.9, aka Car Service Radio. That is to say, he knows what he's talking about. What have we learned? "Latin" and "Spanish." I've been saying "Latino" and feeling awkward about it, so I'll stop.
*I don't read this blog. I searched for "'stress test' bank definition" on google.
I. So I keep hearing blah blah "stress tests for banks" blah. Right? I had NO IDEA what anybody actually fucking MEANT by 'stress test' up until just now*:
The only way to make sense of Tim Geithner’s “stress test” for banks is to assume a kind of triage. Banks that are reasonably healthy right now -- whose assets are fully adequate to fund their liabilities, and can make new loans...
I'm still really unclear on how exactly all this goes down, whether there's an acceptable leverage ratio vs "if everybody asked you for all of their money TODAY, could you do it?," &c. But still: a little clarity.
II. So I've lived in a seriously Puerto Rican neighborhood for over a year now, and while I was working I worked in a room full of Puerto Ricans, Dominicans, and an Ecuadorean. But I'm an awkward white kid from Maine. So I've always been at kind of a loss about the best way to refer to all these people collectively. Until earlier today:
Most Latin people know meringue like most white people know rock but some white people know good rock and underground rock..... Where a lot of Spanish people know “so much” about Latin music, there's still a lot they don't know about so we dig that up and do our own mixes.
That's from an interview (on the excellent FreeWilliamsburg) with a DJ from La Mega 97.9, aka Car Service Radio. That is to say, he knows what he's talking about. What have we learned? "Latin" and "Spanish." I've been saying "Latino" and feeling awkward about it, so I'll stop.
*I don't read this blog. I searched for "'stress test' bank definition" on google.
Thursday, March 26, 2009
Yuano?
So have you heard this stuff about the Chinese wanting a non-dollar global currency, and Michele Bachmann freaking out about it &c &c?
I have a really hard time believing this will actually happen. Here're the things:
So that means they would have to start this new currency using non-Euro countries that also didn't want to move to the dollar. Then, they would have to sell off their dollars. The best part is that IF their new currency takes off, they'll take significant losses on the sale of their dollars (cause who would buy them instead of the new fabulous China-backed currency?), which would actually weaken their new currency. Plus most of the countries who would sign on would be either a)poor or b)run by crazy people (or both).
Sooo, basically, calm down, Michele Bachmann, is what I'm saying.
I have a really hard time believing this will actually happen. Here're the things:
So that means they would have to start this new currency using non-Euro countries that also didn't want to move to the dollar. Then, they would have to sell off their dollars. The best part is that IF their new currency takes off, they'll take significant losses on the sale of their dollars (cause who would buy them instead of the new fabulous China-backed currency?), which would actually weaken their new currency. Plus most of the countries who would sign on would be either a)poor or b)run by crazy people (or both).
Sooo, basically, calm down, Michele Bachmann, is what I'm saying.
Monday, March 23, 2009
FAILOUT
GOD. Have you heard about this Private-Public Investment Thingie Tim Geithner proposed today? Let's just say that had Barry waited to go on Leno until tonight, he could have compared his bowling to this instead. Basically the government asks private investors what they think a certain charmingly-retitled "legacy asset" (why not "albatross," instead?) is worth, and then they give whoever says it's worth the most 97-100% of the money to buy it, sometimes in the form of government debt (for mortgages and stuff, as opposed to the more complicated securities which you and I will be paying for in cash.)
The thing that irks me here is, right: this crash was mostly caused by everybody pretending things cost more than they did. This program, by getting private investors to buy stuff on the company dime, completely incentivizes PRETENDING THINGS COST MORE THAN THEY DO. Listen: I have a bag of shit. You have a bag of shit. The government arrives, and says that if I buy your bag of shit, they'll give me $10 to do so. Same goes for you. Even a Special Olympian could tell you that you and I will both be $10 richer, but will still both be holding bags of shit at the end of the day.
(HT Dealbreaker inter alios.)
The thing that irks me here is, right: this crash was mostly caused by everybody pretending things cost more than they did. This program, by getting private investors to buy stuff on the company dime, completely incentivizes PRETENDING THINGS COST MORE THAN THEY DO. Listen: I have a bag of shit. You have a bag of shit. The government arrives, and says that if I buy your bag of shit, they'll give me $10 to do so. Same goes for you. Even a Special Olympian could tell you that you and I will both be $10 richer, but will still both be holding bags of shit at the end of the day.
(HT Dealbreaker inter alios.)
Thursday, October 2, 2008
Thoughts on Stuff
I. I was listening to the Faint earlier today (whom I absolutely love) and realized that this song has developed an eerie relevance viz. the Looming Financial Crisis:
Some lyrics:
as i lay to die the things i think
did i waste my time, i think i did- i worked for life
all we want are just pretty little homes
our work makes pretty little homes
like a cast shadow
like a fathers dream
have a cut out son
what's a worse disease
to get that pretty little home
...
all we want are just pretty little homes
our work makes pretty little homes
agenda suicide, the drones work hard before they die
and give up on pretty little homes
(Caesura mine, lyrics from here.)
Oooh...I've been thinking a lot about the Faint's weird puritanical streak recently, after listening to them in the car-ride home from D.C. last weekend. Sasha pointed out that they kind of hate sex; listening to their corpus, they seem to generally be repulsed by physicality in general. Cf: "Casual Sex," & "Worked Up So Sexual from Blank Wave Arcade; "Glass Danse," "Your Retro Career Melted," & "Posed to Death" from Danse Macabre; and "Erection" & "Birth" from Wet From Birth.
Interesting. They also hate on hipsters (passim) and the pharmaceutical industry ("Symptom Finger"). One could definitely locate them in some sort of thematic and/or moral space close both to the Roman Satirists and to 16th- and 17th-century (and beyond) Christian writers, which is funny, cause they make dance music.
II.
Watching last night's Daily Show just now (on my computer), I was struck by some stuff:
First of all: does Peggy Noonan talk like that all the time? I feel like that'd be kinda draining.
More importantly, Jon at one point accuses McCain (/some abstraction of Modern American Political Discourse) of talking to voters as if we were children. Stewart asks Noonan why McCain can't say "I'll won't let gays get married and we'll try to overturn Roe v. Wade" instead of "I'll pick judges who'll strictly interpret the constitution and won't legislate from the bench." See, Jon: That's how it's ALWAYS BEEN. Appealing to the Founders (in whatever form: Protestantism's doctrine of sola scriptura, Roman emperors appealing to the principles of Augustus, &c.) is one of the most powerful political tactics. And it's hardly a tactic, really. It's really just practical manifestation of the human tendency to advantageously alter the past to suit current situations. "I'll do it the way we used to do it!" is intimately connected to the equally pervasive "Golden Age" meme (which I once heard is generally established as approximately 50 years earlier than "Now," whenever "Now" was. In retrospect, this seems like not far back enough [relatively speaking], and may have possibly only applied to ancient peoples with little established history [nor anything really resembling modern history whatsoever] and very short life spans, but whatever.) The thing that really frustrates me about partisanship is that it blinds people to the bigger picture: the hierarchies and interrelationships that exist between the Haves and the Have-Nots, the Rulers and the Ruled; and the discourses and praxes that maintain and strengthen those structures. McCain has absolutely no need to be forthright about his agenda, that's simply not how it even works. Nobody, except possibly nymphomaniacs with Asperger's, would ever say "Hey, wanna go fuck in my room?" And yet you don't see Jon Stewart criticizing anyone who uses the decades-old "Wanna get high in my room?" line.
III. Who else is excited for the Palin-Biden debate? It's gonna be like watching a puppy running into an electric fence, over and over and over, for 90 minutes. Schadenfreudey!
IV. Yo, it is cold in Brooklyn.
Some lyrics:
as i lay to die the things i think
did i waste my time, i think i did- i worked for life
all we want are just pretty little homes
our work makes pretty little homes
like a cast shadow
like a fathers dream
have a cut out son
what's a worse disease
to get that pretty little home
...
all we want are just pretty little homes
our work makes pretty little homes
agenda suicide, the drones work hard before they die
and give up on pretty little homes
(Caesura mine, lyrics from here.)
Oooh...I've been thinking a lot about the Faint's weird puritanical streak recently, after listening to them in the car-ride home from D.C. last weekend. Sasha pointed out that they kind of hate sex; listening to their corpus, they seem to generally be repulsed by physicality in general. Cf: "Casual Sex," & "Worked Up So Sexual from Blank Wave Arcade; "Glass Danse," "Your Retro Career Melted," & "Posed to Death" from Danse Macabre; and "Erection" & "Birth" from Wet From Birth.
Interesting. They also hate on hipsters (passim) and the pharmaceutical industry ("Symptom Finger"). One could definitely locate them in some sort of thematic and/or moral space close both to the Roman Satirists and to 16th- and 17th-century (and beyond) Christian writers, which is funny, cause they make dance music.
II.
Watching last night's Daily Show just now (on my computer), I was struck by some stuff:
First of all: does Peggy Noonan talk like that all the time? I feel like that'd be kinda draining.
More importantly, Jon at one point accuses McCain (/some abstraction of Modern American Political Discourse) of talking to voters as if we were children. Stewart asks Noonan why McCain can't say "I'll won't let gays get married and we'll try to overturn Roe v. Wade" instead of "I'll pick judges who'll strictly interpret the constitution and won't legislate from the bench." See, Jon: That's how it's ALWAYS BEEN. Appealing to the Founders (in whatever form: Protestantism's doctrine of sola scriptura, Roman emperors appealing to the principles of Augustus, &c.) is one of the most powerful political tactics. And it's hardly a tactic, really. It's really just practical manifestation of the human tendency to advantageously alter the past to suit current situations. "I'll do it the way we used to do it!" is intimately connected to the equally pervasive "Golden Age" meme (which I once heard is generally established as approximately 50 years earlier than "Now," whenever "Now" was. In retrospect, this seems like not far back enough [relatively speaking], and may have possibly only applied to ancient peoples with little established history [nor anything really resembling modern history whatsoever] and very short life spans, but whatever.) The thing that really frustrates me about partisanship is that it blinds people to the bigger picture: the hierarchies and interrelationships that exist between the Haves and the Have-Nots, the Rulers and the Ruled; and the discourses and praxes that maintain and strengthen those structures. McCain has absolutely no need to be forthright about his agenda, that's simply not how it even works. Nobody, except possibly nymphomaniacs with Asperger's, would ever say "Hey, wanna go fuck in my room?" And yet you don't see Jon Stewart criticizing anyone who uses the decades-old "Wanna get high in my room?" line.
III. Who else is excited for the Palin-Biden debate? It's gonna be like watching a puppy running into an electric fence, over and over and over, for 90 minutes. Schadenfreudey!
IV. Yo, it is cold in Brooklyn.
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