Tuesday, June 22, 2010

Thoughts on "Crazy Heart"

I watched Jeff Bridges star in "Crazy Heart" last night. I tweeted a few thoughts while I was watching:
  • 'Interesting hypthesis: how many years of abandonment does it take before it's irreconciliable?'
  • 'I'm not a bartender, but if I ever was I would have a no-serving-men-with-children-in-the-bar rule.'

At the end of the movie I was dismayed at what seemed to be a Disney-like ending. I was upset that the director elected to go with the if-you-just-try-hard-enough-and-clean-yourself-up-you-can-do-it tired, old storyline. Doesn't that plot just give false hope to too many people? Not everyone can enter rehab, come out, and be a successful songwriter. It just doesn't happen that way. There is a point of no return. You can drink too much, smoke too much, and burn too many bridges that there is no escaping your self-inflicted terminal velocity of doom.

Tuesday, June 15, 2010

Good sentences

From The Big Picture by Barry Ritholz:
• Downgrades and negative ratings are also mostly worthless — but downgrades do have the redeeming quality of providing comic relief, to wit, the astonishingly belated downgrades of Enron, Lehman Brothers, Bear Stearns, Citi, AIG and now Greece. (Good times!)

Tuesday, June 8, 2010

Three classes of American business

Brought to you by 4-Block World.

Haiku - fiscal crises

This week's financial markets are permeated by anxiety about government's commitments to their obligations. It is happening in Britain, Hungary, and Spain; in fact, even France's CDS spreads are at an all-time high. America may be the safest place to park your dollars currently, but if the bond/deficit hawks return then we may not be spared from the microscope.

A haiku:
Pass the buck forward,
Hairy decisions postponed,
Need Harry Truman.

If you don't get it, Harry Truman was the President that popularized the phrase, "the buck stops here." This being said I'm not an anti-Keynesian or against government spending. But the day when S&P or Moody's cuts your rating or your CDS spreads blow out or you have a bond auction fail is a whole budget cycle too late. Operating in the budget world right now, I've learned that it takes a long time to turn the ship. And I wonder if our current leaders have the forsight or the Trumanesque determination to make hard choices.

Tuesday, June 1, 2010

Haiku - Reverse Course

This morning's premarkets were down 1% on worse-than-expected economic news out of China. But an ISM report that beat expectations corrected that bearish sentiment carried over from the worst May since 1940. A haiku to commemorate this trading day for the historical record:
Market likes that news.
Award us intraday gains.
Reverse morning flow.
-JDW