The fate of this Danish wind turbine with its broken regulator is somewhat related to the current state of financial markets.
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March 23, 2008
Fate Of An Unregulated System
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Imagine a species that swam freely into net pens, eagerly, crammed
their life savings into a wild, desparate, churning urge to profit.
As much as everyone on Wall Qaeda Street would dread the concept,
our investment dollars are like stocks of salmon, returning to their
401(k) spawning grounds every paycheck. Then, absent any real growth
in the world to feed those fresh cohorts, Wall Qaeda is butchering
their own fishery. When the once-massive stocks of Baby Boomer cod
are wiped out, it’s a rolling tumbleweeds, wildgame trails USA.
We don’t need their net pens in order to find profit. Think about it!
Intelligent beings will begin drifting towards the fire exits about now.
Posted by: Foster Grant | Mar 23 2008 17:43 utc | 1
Wow. And we’re busy building one right now on campus and around 30 are now mounted on a nearby hill. But it beats 3 Mile Island even if they all come crashing down! But as for the economy, don’t worry. The Invisible Hand will fix everything in about three hundred years!
Posted by: Diogenes | Mar 24 2008 3:47 utc | 3
This is big, Pakistan’s answerto that clusterfuck (aka Dick Cheney) that is Afghanistan and Iraq.
Posted by: Cloned Poster | Mar 24 2008 10:20 utc | 4
It seems like JP Morgan has big problems with the Bear Stearns deal.
JPMorgan in Negotiations to Raise Bear Stearns Bid
JPMorgan Chase was in talks on Sunday night for a deal that would quintuple its offer for Bear Stearns, the beleaguered investment bank, in an effort to pacify angry Bear shareholders, according to people involved in the negotiations.
…
The Fed, which must approve any new deal, was balking at the new offer price on Sunday night after several days of frantic, secret negotiations, these people said. As a result, it was still possible the renegotiated deal might be postponed or collapse entirely, said these people, who were granted anonymity because of their confidentiality agreements.
Well, the Fed provided $30 billion in that deal, so it definitly should have a say. Providing public money to bailout the shareholders of a bankrupt company is not its task.
But it may be that JPMorgan made a very serious error in the contracts.
JPMorgan and Bear were prompted to renegotiate after shareholders began threatening to block the deal and it emerged that several “mistakes” were included in the original, hastily written contract, according to people involved in the talks.
One sentence was “inadvertently included,” according to a person briefed on the talks, which requires JPMorgan to guarantee Bear’s trades even if shareholders voted down the deal. That provision could allow Bear’s shareholders to seek a higher bid while still forcing JPMorgan to honor its guarantee, these people said.
When the error was discovered, James Dimon, JPMorgan’s chief executive, who was described by one participant as “apoplectic,” began calling his lawyers at Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz to seek a way to have the sentence modified, these people said. Finger pointing over the mistakes in the contracts began as bankers blamed the lawyers and vice versa.
…
Mr. Dimon, who had indignantly told associates that he would “send Bear back into bankruptcy” if the deal was struck down, was persuaded by his advisers that he had less leverage than he thought, according to people briefed on the conversation. Such vindictive behavior, they told him, would turn into a legal and public relations nightmare.
What a mess …
Taking down 2 birds with the same stone, Bear and JP Morgan? Sweet news to begin the week.
Posted by: CluelessJoe | Mar 24 2008 16:44 utc | 6
for those of you who do not read Beppe Grillo, he has a post up Robert Kennedy and GDP which is somehow related to this whole mess of financiers tipping over the trough and fully expecting the taxpayers to right it and fill it up again.
Robert Kennedy has some words youtube which describe what many of us here feel about high finance and its detrimental effects on humans.
A brief synopsis of Bobby Kennedy’s killer Sirhan Sirhan is here
not completely related to this post but not too far off topic I hope.
Posted by: dan of steele | Mar 25 2008 20:15 utc | 7