Two cows and bunch of CDOs

We all know that in Wall street these days some very rich people are becoming somewhat less rich due to some technical corrections. I tried explaining to my wife how the whole process is unraveling but I failed when it came to details.
Thankfully we have smart folks like Roubini to convert all that CNBC-breathlessness [...]

Spooky Wall Street Games

Asset driven economy

Try searching on Wikipedia for “The asset-driven economy” and see what you get.
When too many new terms start showing up and then probably its time to fine tune your BS detector. Asset-driven economy, Ponzi finance, ARM’s way and what not.
It’s roosting time!

Freakonomics and dire predictions for debtlodocus

It’s plain economics which is freaking out everybody:
The average American has an income of about $40,000 a year and has, as
we have seen, a personal savings rate of zero. The average Chinese
earns around $1,500 per year but has personal savings of 23 percent of
his income — and is lending a large chunk of these savings, [...]

Roach coach is predicting flat tyres

Stephen Roach is at his ominous best (or worst). It seems the reality of wonder called Internet is hitting him again and again. To the extent that now Internet can be blamed for something Stalin and Marx together couldn’t do ie finding holes [...]

Social Investing

(Via HBS) Ronald Cohen is about to start new venture aimed at social investment. Another highly successful venture capitalist - Vinod Khosla is also pursuing social entrepreneuership actively.
This is more than just philanthropy, its a deep realization that the traditional capitalism is hitting its limits and will not work in the larger part [...]

Buffet - A Thin Slicer ?

Warren Buffet (link via Rajesh) has few interesting one-line advice for next generation investors:
..I asked him what he wanted to do for his career, and he replied that he wanted to go into a particular field, but thought he should work for McKinsey for a few years first to add to his resume. To [...]

Mortgage industry

Numbers are pretty big -
Mortgage brokers, virtually nonexistent 25 years ago, now number 400,000 workers at more than 50,000 firms. They are scrappy entrepreneurs and sales representatives who match up borrowers and lenders on roughly 7 out of 10 mortgages. This year, they will collect some $33 billion from their share of an estimated [...]

China Factor

So my friend lost a half a million dollar worth  deal to some Chinese textile supplier.  Naturally he  is not happy about it and thats not because he has anything against Chinese.  In fact he is all mad against the buyer - supposedly some upscale French department store.  Point is where do you draw the [...]

More on the bubble

For the sake of comparison:

Penn cited an article in The Economist and reported that the total
value of residential property in developed countries had risen by more
than $30 trillion over the past five years, to $70 trillion, an
increase equivalent to 100 percent of those countries’ combined GDPs.

Penn went on to say that such rapid growth [...]