Not a bad business to be in: for most companies, all they can do when a customer has an argument with a rep is ask them to leave. Airlines get to punish their customers by having them arrested as terrorists. I guess we're lucky the record industry doesn't have the same ability.
The Tarp has not revived the banks or their lending, but it has supported a massive transfer of taxpayer wealth to the management and owners of well-connected financial institutions. Some of those transfers – as in the case of Merrill Lynch using its government-financed sale to Bank of America to enable $4bn in bonuses last month – are beyond egregious. Yet the US is now inured to corruption and in such a rush that even billions of dollars of public funds shoveled into Merrill’s private pockets in broad daylight barely merited a day’s news cycle.
Worrywarts like Nassim Taleb (The Black Swan) and John Robb (Global Guerrillas, Brave New War) focus on the dark side of global networks — their vulnerability to exploitation by bad actors. While they make good points, though, they're missing the forest for the trees. Terrorists and hackers are relative nuisances compared to the overwhelming good that globalization and modern technology provide.
Not sure he understands what we are talking about.
Barnett. Not the world I live in. Few things demonstrate how disconnected I am from this group, or any group, in DC than this. I bet my friends reading this are thinking along the same lines.
He said that the workouts (process of negotiation to avoid bankruptcy) in which he had been involved where assets were securitized were never successful. In his experience, if the assets were securitized, workout was impossible and bankruptcy was the only option.
The classic line from the man that fell off of the empire state building as he passed by the 70th floor windows: so far, so good. A NYTimes article in this vein. At 13% (adjusted for fluff) unemployment and rising rapidly, a 1982 bottom would feel absolutely great.
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