Want to read a succulent, tempting thriller that keeps on your toes. I am not suggesting you a Agatha Cristie, Dan Brown, Michael Clayton or Archer’s fiction book. I am talking about the Wall Street saga, never has been a time when I have taken so much interest in the financial turnarounds. Assets, liabilities, interest, profit and loss is something my financial knowledge was limited to but now what the hell is leverage, hedge funds, private equity fund, debt, equity, securities and many more?? Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae are financial institutions; I thought they were twin daughters. AIG is a top insurance firm, oh thought it was something on the lines of NIKE sponsoring a football club. Hank Paulson, Ben Berkeley, Timothy Geithner…. who are these people??? Why am I despised when taking names of Richard Fuld and Jimmy Cayne?
So, what went wrong? How does one explain this to a layman like me :-)
Lehman Brothers was like the little kid pulling the tail of a dog. You know the kid is going to hurt eventually, so no one is surprised when the dog turns around and bites the kid. But the kid only hurts himself, so no one cares about that much. Bear Sterns is the little pyro – the kid who was always playing with matches. He could harm not only himself but burn his own house down, even the entire neighborhood. The Fed stepped in not to protect him, but the rest of the block. AIG is the kid who stumbled into a bio-tech warfare lab found all these unlabelled vials, and headed out into the playground with a handful of them jammed into his pockets. Federal Reserve was the babysitter who gave the kids the dog and the matches and forgot to lock the door to the lab. The politicians hired the babysitter. The babysitter did not behave like a responsible parent and let the kid become big, fat and diabetic and was now seeking redemption by taking the whole family on a diet of rice and beans. Fannie and Freddie were the two twins who bought bad meat and made poisonous sandwiches. Henry Paulson was the good babysitter who tried to pamper the kids with a candy of $700 billion bailout plan so that the kids stop crying for a short while.
All said and done, it’s a sad time for the financial market but a good time to learn facts from fiction. Perhaps, this saga too like any other will have its up and down with a not so happy-ending. For all the fin-heads unable to answer to people who have lost their money are escaping by saying………….
Never Ask for money spent
Where the spender thinks it went
Nobody was ever meant
To remember or invent
What he did with every cent…!!!!!!
Not a really good way of calming the people isn’t???
So, what went wrong? How does one explain this to a layman like me :-)
Lehman Brothers was like the little kid pulling the tail of a dog. You know the kid is going to hurt eventually, so no one is surprised when the dog turns around and bites the kid. But the kid only hurts himself, so no one cares about that much. Bear Sterns is the little pyro – the kid who was always playing with matches. He could harm not only himself but burn his own house down, even the entire neighborhood. The Fed stepped in not to protect him, but the rest of the block. AIG is the kid who stumbled into a bio-tech warfare lab found all these unlabelled vials, and headed out into the playground with a handful of them jammed into his pockets. Federal Reserve was the babysitter who gave the kids the dog and the matches and forgot to lock the door to the lab. The politicians hired the babysitter. The babysitter did not behave like a responsible parent and let the kid become big, fat and diabetic and was now seeking redemption by taking the whole family on a diet of rice and beans. Fannie and Freddie were the two twins who bought bad meat and made poisonous sandwiches. Henry Paulson was the good babysitter who tried to pamper the kids with a candy of $700 billion bailout plan so that the kids stop crying for a short while.
All said and done, it’s a sad time for the financial market but a good time to learn facts from fiction. Perhaps, this saga too like any other will have its up and down with a not so happy-ending. For all the fin-heads unable to answer to people who have lost their money are escaping by saying………….
Never Ask for money spent
Where the spender thinks it went
Nobody was ever meant
To remember or invent
What he did with every cent…!!!!!!
Not a really good way of calming the people isn’t???
