moving time!


moving time!
Originally uploaded by renfield.

deep thoughts


P1000639.JPG
Originally uploaded by renfield.

Tonchan deep in thought...what next to eat? Left or right breast? When best to poop? To nap, or to chew on the pillow?
Tackling the difficult issues of our time.

lunch @ asterix


lunch @ asterix
Originally uploaded by renfield.

entirely not right

I have neither pity nor tolerance for whiny investors. I have even less patience for this sensationalist "news". Note the opening line; obviously it's the big banks' fault. Never mind the fact that Buck invested his entire life savings in a risky bond "yielding 10 times the going rate on Treasury bills". Think about that for a minute. This man bought an "uninsured money market note" that paid ten times more than a boring yet safe government bond. Uninsured. Ten times. RISKY. Did he not bother to actually read the terms of the bond? He even admits that he should not have put all of his eggs in one basket. First rule of investing: diversify.
So let me understand this: a guy has $300,000 from the sale of his old house, but still has to pay the mortgage on his new place, his wife was planning to retire (serious reduction in income), knows the importance of diversification, gets greedy when he sees the possibility of making ten times the going rate...and then it's not his fault when he loses his money?
Or how about Mr. Russel:
He knows the 13 percent interest rates should have been a warning. ``If it sounds too good to be true, it usually is,'' he said.
And yet knowing that, he still invested and lost $170,000. And whose fault is that?
Or Mr. English who invested "decades of savings" who "saw it as an alternative to the interest rate I could get from a bank." Money in the bank is saving, dumping your savings into risky bonds and then whining about it is just stupid. He wanted to use the money to pay for his three kids' college, so why not invest in a low-risk, long-term 529 college fund? He wanted to use the money to buy a new car, so why not use them money as a down payment for a car lease or loan? He wanted to use the money for a second honeymoon, so why not gamble it in Vegas?
At least Mr. Funk is honest. He lost $70,000 and says he "became too confident and too greedy as the high-yielding notes continued to pay." And yet somehow, "the Wall Street firms were greedy too, yet didn't pay a price for it."
Didn't pay a price for it?
Over 20 bankruptcies across the industry, and who do you think has invested the most in them?
Mortgage Lenders Network goes bankrupt, Merrill Lynch has $36.6 million in financing claimed.
ResMae goes bankrupt, may have to buy back $166 million in bad loans sold to Merrill Lynch.
New Century insolvent, owes $1.5 billion each to Morgan Stanley and UBS.
But forget the money that Wall Street loses. Think about the money it invests. It is the big Wall Street houses stepping in to fund, refinance, or outright purchase these failing businesses. Someone steps in, takes the risk, and tries to rebuild these businesses, keep the people working, keep the mortgages flowing.
Wall Street is not the enemy, and it is no one's responsibility to protect stupid, greedy investors from themselves.

all in the knees

10 people in practice last night, so not much space on the floor. I wasn't in much of a mood to move around, so we practiced really basic stuff; standing, sitting, standing up again. Trying to figure out how standing straight up from sitting and stepping forward from sitting are basically the same movement, the only thing that changes is how much closer you do or don't get to the guy in front of you trying to kill you. Also working on trimming the fat; cutting out unnecessary movement to be left with nothing but the basics. It pays to be lazy!
After class I had to go back to the office for a call with NY, didn't get home until 11:30. The hard life of a salaryman.