A brief musical interlude

Could not have said it better myself

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Malcolm Gladwell: What we can learn from spaghetti sauce

Ten principles for a Black Swan-proof world

By Nassim Nicholas Taleb

1. What is fragile should break early while it is still small. Nothing should ever become too big to fail. Evolution in economic life helps those with the maximum amount of hidden risks – and hence the most fragile – become the biggest.

2. No socialisation of losses and privatisation of gains. Whatever may need to be bailed out should be nationalised; whatever does not need a bail-out should be free, small and risk-bearing. We have managed to combine the worst of capitalism and socialism. In France in the 1980s, the socialists took over the banks. In the US in the 2000s, the banks took over the government. This is surreal.

3. People who were driving a school bus blindfolded (and crashed it) should never be given a new bus. The economics establishment (universities, regulators, central bankers, government officials, various organisations staffed with economists) lost its legitimacy with the failure of the system. It is irresponsible and foolish to put our trust in the ability of such experts to get us out of this mess. Instead, find the smart people whose hands are clean.

[FT]

Country boy

Hat tip

I did not know that

An underground submarine base?

Amazing what the cold war wrought. [EnglishRussia]

Nice kitty

If you know Russian, do let us in on the story of what kind of “cat” this is.

You too can bail out of that pesky sub-prime mortgage

According to Barry Ritholtz of Big Picture, an article written for the AP wire service (for which he was interviewed) hasn’t gotten enough notice- yet. Maybe it’s too dangerous, and it’s been suppressed!

No, seriously, this item apparently contains a pretty cool angle that bisects the industry’s slant, pretty much reminding us we have a law about how any mortgage, even a sub-prime mortgage, can be rescinded- transforming the lender into just another creditor (not the primary).

The pump-and-dump near-boiler room nature of most sub-prime mortgage brokers probably means loans were often rushed into being, without proper documentation. This just might be the saving grace for some grieving “homeowners” who are upside down. As we now know, many do regret ever taking on that nasty, vicious, landed-serf retro death-stalking sub-prime mortgage.

Hell, there might even be an escape from a conventional mortgage, considering the Truth-in-Lending Act (TILA) is really quite clear about disclosure, for all types of loans.

As home values plummet, it is natural to expect that some people might want to consider consulting with a legal professional with expertise (since they didn’t read their contract in the first place), ascertaining if this enhances their position- and packing a parachute for later use, should their loan obligation becomes too onerous.

Maybe paralegals can take on some extra work; who knows, this might even become a growth industry over the next few years.

This article hasn’t appeared yet in any of the news sources I frequent (e.g. Yahoo), but since it is AP it’s bound to appear sooner or later. I’ll keep an eye and an ear open and link to it when it does.

This was a public service announcement.

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 Jeez I Can Has Cheezburger is Invading the Web, innit?

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