Monday, October 20, 2008
More Doom
I gather the credit default swap market - $62 trillion (it's so hard to think of anything below a billion as real money these days) - is going to be the final derivative nail in the coffin of our rapidly fading prosperity. Meanwhile, doubtless, we will be told we're over the worst, there's light at the end of the tunnel, appropriate measures have been taken etc.. History doesn't repeat itself, only human folly does that.
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A blog about, among other things, imaginary ideas - What ifs? and Imagine thats. What if photographs looked nothing like what we see with our eyes? Imagine that the Berlin Wall had never come down. What if we were the punchline of an interminable joke? All contributions welcome.
We could take our lead from the Wicker Man, if we erect towers around the financial centres, prepare the fires and select the best candidates from amongst the city herberts, music and dance supplied by misc Morris Dancers, the mob in costumes of their choice, (although dressing up as copies of old fivers would be an excellent piece of irony) fanning the flames with rolled up copies of eviction notices. To keep those who are about to become cinders company we could bung in the odd economist, insolvency practitioner and ex chancellor, a few fried lawyers would round off the ceremony nicely.
ReplyDeleteTwo or three weeks of this and we would all be feeling refreshed, the laws of justice applied to a hot topic and having been seen to be done.
We shall have a better idea/guess tomorrow Bryan, when its DDay for Leaman Bros CDS.
ReplyDeleteOn paper its 62 Trillion (or to be more accurate "off book") but most of them cancel each other out, as said we are about to see.
But the main point of CDS is spreading the risks give everyone the impression the risk is smaller, when it is not, it still adds up to the same thing.
And who was it that printed the funny money in the first place? was it the mad bankers or mad politicians? If the central banks had shut down the money press in 2003, we would still be waiting for the financial detonators to go off at Fannie and Freddie.
Look on the bright side Bryan, last week the Chinese gave property rights to a huge chunk of its massive population, it was probably the biggest news story of last week, but barley reported.
China outlines land reform plan
Are we going to be able to compete with this if we go back to protectionism and printing money? I dont think so, this is not the 30s or the 70s.