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Politics : View from the Center and Left -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Dale Baker who wrote (107740)	4/5/2009 6:31:42 PM
From: Sam	Respond to of 541102

Speaking of drugs, this guy use liquor to give a description of the financial crisis. Thanks to Mq for finding it. Financial Engineering at its Finest Written by Reggie Middleton Friday, 03 April 2009 An interesting bit I found on the Safehaven listserv that I took the liberty of editing: Financial Engineering at its Finest .... Heidi is the proprietor of a bar in Detroit. In order to increase sales, she decides to allow her loyal customers - most of whom are unemployed alcoholics - to drink now but pay later. She keeps track of the drinks consumed on a ledger (thereby granting the customers loans). Word gets around about Heidi's drink-now pay-later marketing strategy and as a result, increasing numbers of customers flood into Heidi's bar and soon she has the largest sale volume for any bar in Detroit. By providing her customers' freedom from immediate payment demands, Heidi gets no resistance when she substantially increases her prices for wine and beer, the most consumed beverages. Her sales volume increases massively. A young and dynamic vice-president at the local bank recognizes these customer debts as valuable future assets and increases Heidi's borrowing limit. He sees no reason for undue concern since he has the debts of the alcoholics as collateral. At the bank's corporate headquarters, expert traders transform these customer loans into DRINKBONDS, ALKIBONDS and PUKEBONDS - all rated AAA by Snooty's Investor Services, Snitch and Standard and Get Poor's - for a fee, of course. These securities are then traded on security markets worldwide. Naive investors don't really understand the securities being sold to them as AAA secured bonds are really the debts of unemployed alcoholics. Nevertheless, their prices continuously climb, and the securities become the top-selling items for some of the nation's leading brokerage houses. One day, although the bond prices are still climbing, a risk manager at the bank (subsequently fired due his negativity), decides that the time has come to demand payment on the debts incurred by the drinkers at Heidi's bar. Heidi demands payment from her alcoholic patrons, but being unemployed they cannot pay back their drinking debts. Therefore, Heidi cannot fulfill her loan obligations and claims bankruptcy. DRINKBOND and ALKIBOND drop in price by 90 %. PUKEBOND performs better, stabilizing in price after dropping by 70 %. The decreased bond asset value destroys the banks liquidity since the banks borrowed up to 32x their initial capital to buy the bonds (even more in their off balance sheet bar companies) and a mere 20% drop in these bonds would wipe them clean, save government intervention. The events effectively prevent it from issuing new loans since the market won't give them more than 30 cents on the dollar for the best of them. The suppliers of Heidi's bar, having granted her generous payment extensions and having invested in the securities are faced with writing off her debt and losing over 80% on her bonds. Her wine supplier claims bankruptcy, her beer supplier is taken over by a competitor, who immediately closes the local plant and lays off 50 workers. The Detroit stock market drops, then rallies vociferously as the Fantasy Accounting Standards Boards states, under duress and a sleeper choke hold from honest politicians that causes them to tap out (UFC style), that the bank may now use their discretion in valuing these bonds due to the fact that no on in the entire world wants to buy them really has no bearing on their true value! The bank and brokerage houses are saved by the Government following dramatic round-the-clock negotiations by leaders from both political parties. The funds required for this bailout are obtained by a tax levied on employed middle-class non-drinkers. Finally an explanation that alI can understand ..... boombustblog.com