Very interesting years they have been, that’s for sure. Somehow I managed to survive all of the cutbacks (in part, I think, because I have strange gifts and unusual skillsets), and have seen a lot of very interesting stuff over the last nigh on six years now (none of it rocket related). I’m not really allowed to talk about any of it because of the usual corporate confidentiality stuff, so I have to be very careful when I write online about finance and economics, since I have access to non-public information.
Luckily, bits and pieces have been published, and since the story of the FDIC settlement was on the front page of the WSJ (http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123206498212588003.html), I don’t think I’m being out of line in noting that at one point I was one of three analysts who spent a number of months re-underwriting each of the thousands of mortgages to the standards of the bank of which the FDIC had sold us some assets. I personally worked on some of the files noted in the article (which was eerie to see), and they weren’t even the worst of the filth.
That was for stuff written in the ~98-01 timeframe, so that was just practice for the stuff that came half an economic cycle later. Part of what I do in a project is visit the individual trees, and then step back to look at the forest to see where the illness is, and what’s unusual. Looking at the American economic forest, I see much illness. The boils are not being lanced, and the cancers are not being contained. The disinfectant of sunlight is not being brought to bear, and so the festering continues.
Part of what makes our nation strong is the strength, fairness and equity of our court system. That’s where most of this nonsense needs to be sorted out, not in the halls of Congress. Honest, hard-working money is going to stay on the sidelines until those who are pillaging our marketplace are forced from it. That’s my personal opinion, and I stand by it.
Because I always wondered what happened to the financier of SpaceX’s rocket test stand in MacGregor, Texas:
http://www.forbes.com/2009/04/03/banking-andy-beal-business-wall-street-beal.html?partner=popstories
Very interesting years they have been, that’s for sure. Somehow I managed to survive all of the cutbacks (in part, I think, because I have strange gifts and unusual skillsets), and have seen a lot of very interesting stuff over the last nigh on six years now (none of it rocket related). I’m not really allowed to talk about any of it because of the usual corporate confidentiality stuff, so I have to be very careful when I write online about finance and economics, since I have access to non-public information.
Luckily, bits and pieces have been published, and since the story of the FDIC settlement was on the front page of the WSJ (http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123206498212588003.html), I don’t think I’m being out of line in noting that at one point I was one of three analysts who spent a number of months re-underwriting each of the thousands of mortgages to the standards of the bank of which the FDIC had sold us some assets. I personally worked on some of the files noted in the article (which was eerie to see), and they weren’t even the worst of the filth.
That was for stuff written in the ~98-01 timeframe, so that was just practice for the stuff that came half an economic cycle later. Part of what I do in a project is visit the individual trees, and then step back to look at the forest to see where the illness is, and what’s unusual. Looking at the American economic forest, I see much illness. The boils are not being lanced, and the cancers are not being contained. The disinfectant of sunlight is not being brought to bear, and so the festering continues.
Part of what makes our nation strong is the strength, fairness and equity of our court system. That’s where most of this nonsense needs to be sorted out, not in the halls of Congress. Honest, hard-working money is going to stay on the sidelines until those who are pillaging our marketplace are forced from it. That’s my personal opinion, and I stand by it.