It is a common belief in the West that chess was invented in Iran. Like many common beliefs in the West about the East, the belief is wrong. The Iranians know that chess is an Indian invention. Legend has it that it was sent to the king of Iran by the king of India as …
The Conspiracy Theory – 2: Vanquishing Ironies, Making Sense of Chaos Read More »
In today’s New York Times I came across this picture of Bernanke. The Chairman of the Federal Reserve Board is sitting in the middle of an empty hallway next to some elevators, sheepishly looking at the camera. The Times credited one Mary F. Calvert with the picture. She no doubt went for the powerful-man-alone-in-the-hall-of-power effect; …
Last Tuesday, the Wall Street Journal published a letter by Franklin Raines, the ex CEO of Fannie Mae. (I don’t provide a link because the WSJ charges for access to its articles). Raines had written to protest and correct the errors and misrepresentations of a hack job, of the kind that the Journal frequently publishes …
The Conspiracy Theory – 1: Judging a “Narrative” Read More »
If the securities laws in the U.S. were consistent, there would be no Goldman case. A consistent body of the securities laws would be based on a scientific understanding of finance and the legal and the economic definition of a “security” would match. Since neither a CDO nor a CDS is a security, matters related …
Epilogue –The Goldman Case: The Insanity of the Rational Read More »
The second paragraph of the last post on the destruction of the Constitution, starting with “In places, content dominates…” was missing; since when I know not. Perhaps since Monday when I began writing the epilogue to the Goldman Case and somehow inadvertently deleted it. Or maybe it had been missing since the time of the …
The relation between form and content is a complex one. It lies at the core of man’s recognition of himself and his environment. It is the central question of all artistic activities, indeed all human communications: what to say and how to say it. It is a critical link in Hegel’s dialectics and the key …
The CDO at the center of Goldman case is a synthetic CDO.According to the New York Times, a paper that has won many awards for educational reporting – that would be reporting that educates the public: During the later stages of the boom, banks began offering so-called synthetic CDOs. Instead of combining bonds, these combine …
Today’s Financial Times published a joint commentary piece by the prime ministers of the UK and Sweden under the heading Reining in Europe’s deficit is just the first step. As you can infer from title, it was an economic manifesto put together “to ensure that Europe thrives and prospers”. It had “four clear steps”. The …
Recall that our purpose, when we got together as a group of investors, was making money. “A group of investors” has no other purpose. I said the way to go was arbitrage. Some of you were not clear on that point. You thought we were going to buy mortgages with the idea of selling them …
Fundamental misunderstanding, when it comes from animals, is funny; we find the animals’ innocence in terms of “not getting it” endearing. Hence, the “animal jokes”. You’ve probably heard the old one about the horse turning to the jockey and saying: what are you hitting me for, there is no one behind us?! Fundamental misunderstanding from …