Credit Cards Morph into Bonds

Here's a lecture by a journalist Paddy Hirsh to explain how credit cards become asset-backed securities...




... and here is Paddy back with a lecture on deleveraging:


Leveraging and deleveraging from Marketplace on Vimeo.
How credit cards become asset-backed bonds from Marketplace on Vimeo

All of “The Marketplace Whiteboard” videos can be accessed at www.marketplace.org.

The Rationality of Less-than-rational

I've been bugged for years by over confident people around me asserting their absolute rationality. I guess that is the undeserved fate of working in the world of nerds. The most annoying example of this over-confidence was the existence of those how argued for "efficient markets" and who held high the torch of "homo economicus". I would try to poke holes, but unfortunately, if you know that you are supremely rational, you don't have time for arguments or examples. Truth spreads its own light in front of you and you march triumphantly forward, much as the financial industry did from in the first decade of the 21st century.

Here's Dan Ariely, a behavioural economist, pointing out the oddities of a belief in "homo economicus"...

The Letter of the (Religious) Law

This is just too funny... it points out the crazy religious fanatics and how they take the letter of the "Law" too seriously...

Shillerian Drama

Not the drama of Schiller... just the drama of Shiller:

Ronald Wright's "What is America?"

This is an excellent history/analysis of what makes the US "tick". It looks at the seamy underside of fanaticism and cultural delusion to show the factors that have made the US behave the way it has. It is full of interesting bits of history. He is especially strong on native American history (a remnant of his previous book "Stolen Continents". This is a "must read" book. You can't have a real "education" or understanding about America without reading this book.

Here's a bit that I've suspected, but which is documented in this book:

In mid-2004 when George Bush's re-electoral prospects were looking dim, the White House and the Justice Department actually discussed postponing the general election because of the "terrorist threat." Such a thing has never been done in the history of the United States -- even in world wars.

Big Brother

When I was a kid and saw the film 1984 based on George Orwell's novel, I found it horrific. The all-seeing eye that watched you. The grimy day-to-day reality of people whose lives were totally controlled by a hierarchy whose values were obviously anti-people was frightening.

But this is the reality that the corporate world bring us with DRM (digital rights management).

Here's a video that looks at a lot of the issues:



For me, the one part that is most upsetting is the story by Jeremy Teplinsky, a lawyer who bought a Sony CD and discovered that the act of trying to "play the music" in fact started a process of reconfiguring his computer to (a) load software onto his machine without requesting permission and (b) create security holes in the operating system that made his computer insecure. This is outrageous. A corporation completely trampled the rights of its customers in a supposed effort to protect the property rights of the corporation. Nutty. And scary.

High Flying Finance, or why pigs fly!

Everybody please line up to the left to get your bailout money... no pushing please... wait your turn... the line starts to the left...



Hey! When do I get my "bailout" money?