The Big Picture has some excellent photos on the California wildfires that are burning up north. We were in a bit of a news blackout while enjoying Two Harbors on Catalina Island, but couldn’t miss the wall of orange smoke.
The End of Wall Street’s Boom
I found this to be a very interesting behind the scenes read: The End of Wall Street’s Boom
His dinner companion in Las Vegas ran a fund of about $15 billion and managed C.D.O.’s backed by the BBB tranche of a mortgage bond, or as Eisman puts it, “the equivalent of three levels of dog shit lower than the original bonds.”
FrontPoint had spent a lot of time digging around in the dog shit and knew that the default rates were already sufficient to wipe out this guy’s entire portfolio. “God, you must be having a hard time,” Eisman told his dinner companion.
“No,” the guy said, “I’ve sold everything out.”
After taking a fee, he passed them on to other investors. His job was to be the C.D.O. “expert,” but he actually didn’t spend any time at all thinking about what was in the C.D.O.’s. “He managed the C.D.O.’s,” says Eisman, “but managed what? I was just appalled. People would pay up to have someone manage their C.D.O.’s—as if this moron was helping you. I thought, You prick, you don’t give a fuck about the investors in this thing.”
Whatever rising anger Eisman felt was offset by the man’s genial disposition. Not only did he not mind that Eisman took a dim view of his C.D.O.’s; he saw it as a basis for friendship. “Then he said something that blew my mind,” Eisman tells me. “He says, ‘I love guys like you who short my market. Without you, I don’t have anything to buy.”
It might be a little too finance heavy for some folks, but I found the people behind the story quite fascinating.
Divebums Calendar
Divebums is a local website that shows weekly photos taken by divers in Southern California (hopefully a great field ID section soon). Each year John puts out a fantastic calendar made up of photos from the local dive community. In fact, I’m looking at one on my office wall. This year, I was lucky enough to be included in the calendar – my photo is featured for January.
Remembrance Day
Though I’ve lived in the US for 7 years, it feels a little odd to be working today. Today is Remembrance Day in the Commonwealth (Veterans Day in the US). Many in Canada attend ceremonies today to see or place wreaths laid to honour the fallen. It is common to wear a red poppy on your lapel and the day tends to be reserved and respectful. I miss it here. That’s a funny thing with traditions and I – easily adopt new ones, but hate to drop old ones.
Which way will it tip, part 2
It seems the question I asked early in the year has been soundly answered, for now. Deflation is the name of the current game, not inflation. Money supply has been demolished through credit collapse and hording of the leftovers. The surprising thing in all of this to me is how strong the US dollar has stayed relative to other currencies. This seems to be because of three things:
- In some cases the US wasn’t as exposed to its own bad investments as the rest of the world was
- The rest of the world is not decoupling from the US economy, this is a global downturn
- There is still a perception that there are few places to stash a lot of cash safely other than US bonds
The third point is surprising to me. I would have expected the market to hunt out new strongholds to stash their cash. Perhaps that shift will only happen gradually.
Long term the value of the dollar depends on what happens with the economy. As the CS Monitor asks – Who will bail out the US Govt? Currently it is foreign investors buying US bonds and others looking for safe haven. However, if stimulus after stimulus are given or the upcoming debt obligations with Social Security and Medicare obligations are not handled, I don’t see how the US dollar is going to stay stable. At some point the debt load for the US will become critical – once that happens there is a very real risk of the US defaulting or trying to inflate its way out of obligations. Both would be catastrophic.