On MTM, insolvency, and market over-corrections

[davelj]

[quote=drunkle]dave, you don’t know what the net cds exposure is, you won’t consider it in determining what is cheaper, bk or bailout, and you’re a-ok with not knowing whether there’s any water in the pool before jumping.

you think this system of black boxes, voodoo witch doctors and influence peddlers is worth saving, that the alternative of society guided by the rule of law is less important than keeping this house of horrors afloat.

i know these things because you have said them yourself. i merely wanted to know why and the answer appears to be: because you’re a prick.

[/quote]

You’re preaching to the choir, drunkle. I’ve noted many times here on the Pigg that I’m not just a prick, but an unrepentant prick. So, what’s your point?

Yes, I don’t know what Citi’s economic net derivatives exposure is. Does anyone? Probably not even Citi’s CEO does!

But here are a couple of things I do know, from which I think we can glean some important insights:

(1) AIG’s notional derivatives exposure was $1.6 trillion as of the end of 1Q. An unfortunately large part of which was unhedged. Which is why we now own it. The current estimate is that there are about $50 billion in losses buried in that mess. Maybe it’s $75 billion. But at this point I’d be willing to bet that it ain’t $160 billion. And, again, a large part of their book was unhedged CDS. So they should have some outsized losses in there relative to their notional exposure.

(2) Lehman and Bear Stearns’ derivative books – roughly $14.2 trillion between the two prior to Lehman failing and Bear being merged into JP Morgan – have been in slow liquidation for almost a year now. There have been some hiccups, but no major tens of billions in losses during the unwinding. By your “multiply it by 10%” methodology, there should be almost $1.5 trillion in losses, right? The reason there haven’t been enormous problems is because these books were largely hedged – not perfectly hedged, mind you – but largely hedged. Unlike AIG.

(3) Just to use an example of why gross notional numbers are not particularly useful, let’s assume you’re a trader for XYZ Bank and you write $1 million worth of calls on some stock at $50, then turn around and buy $1 million worth of calls on the same stock at $50, capturing some arb spread. The notional amount of your derivatives exposure is $2 million on the trade. The net exposure is $0. Now I realize that mismatching happens and, of course, we have AIG (unhedged!), but… based on what we know from AIG, Bear and Lehman thus far, assuming 10% losses against Citi’s notional exposure is a very bad bet. And betrays a considerable misunderstanding of the business. (And recall that throughout “the system” the mismatch-related losses will be offset by the same amount of gains, adjusted for counterparty losses.)

If Citi blows up – and it very well could – it will likely largely be from credit issues, not from derivatives issues as in AIG’s case.

As to my wanting to keep this “house of horrors afloat” is concerned, apparently you don’t read so well. I’ve stated on many occasions that these banks are too large and too complicated and we need a whole new expanded set of regulations to deal with them. Including much greater capital bases. And I think these Big Uglies should be slowly winding down their derivatives books and shrinking, in general. Generically, I’m AGAINST what we call “financial innovation.” I despise these big piles of shit. Having said that, I don’t think the answer is to shut these pigs down and put it to the government to liquidate them or whathaveyou. My suggestion – and reasonable people can disagree – is to let them work out their own problems over a period of years using the capital of the idiots who provided it to them in the first place, rather than MORE taxpayer money. How anyone could have read my posts over the past year and come to a different conclusion is beyond me. I’m ANTI black box, ANTI voodoo, ANTI big bank. (Hell, the small banks I deal with wouldn’t know how to enter into a CDS if I showed them!) But I’m also ANTI using more of my money to fix these pigs.

Now, back to being a prick. An unrepentant prick.

[davelj]

[quote=TheBreeze]For those of you who like to rely on experts, Bill Black is an expert from the S&L scandal and he disagrees with the policy of bank zombification:

http://www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/04032009/watch.html

It’s a half-hour interview, but there’s so much good stuff in there it’s well worth listening to. His comments on zombification start at about the 20-minute mark.

[/quote]

Calculated Risk posted a part of this interview that I want to comment on:

********************

BILL MOYERS: In your book, you make it clear that calculated dishonesty by people in charge is at the heart of most large corporate failures and scandals, including, of course, the S&L, but is that true? Is that what you’re saying here, that it was in the boardrooms and the CEO offices where this fraud began?

WILLIAM K. BLACK: Absolutely.

BILL MOYERS: How did they do it? What do you mean?

WILLIAM K. BLACK: Well, the way that you do it is to make really bad loans, because they pay better. Then you grow extremely rapidly, in other words, you’re a Ponzi-like scheme. And the third thing you do is we call it leverage. That just means borrowing a lot of money, and the combination creates a situation where you have guaranteed record profits in the early years. That makes you rich, through the bonuses that modern executive compensation has produced. It also makes it inevitable that there’s going to be a disaster down the road.

BILL MOYERS: So you’re suggesting, saying that CEOs of some of these banks and mortgage firms in order to increase their own personal income, deliberately set out to make bad loans?

WILLIAM K. BLACK: Yes.

**************************

OK, I like Bill Black, but… this kind of overstating of one’s case just makes his other reasonable points look dubious.

To use a specific example, does anyone really believe that Kerry Killinger at WAMU willfully told his crew to go out and underwrite bad loans so that he could get a bigger bonus? When he held millions of shares of WAMU’s stock that dwarfed his cumulative cash compensation? Please! That’s insane. (The same argument could be made about Mozilo and lots of others.)

Yeah, a lot these folks fell asleep at the wheel. And, yes, there were a lot of misaligned incentives and they chased a lot of business that they SHOULD have known was bad. But I don’t think there was a lot of willful fraud in the executive suites of these crappy companies. I think it was just stupidity combined with reckless risk-taking. I guarantee you that in most of these executives’ heart of hearts, they thought things would turn out o.k. with most of these loans. By and large, they just didn’t know any better. And I guarantee that the vast majority – with 20/20 hindsight – would have acted much differently. They would have taken much lower cash payouts in exchange for keeping the companies alive. I think most of the fraud was at the middle and lower levels because these folks weren’t owners – they took the money and ran. Although the senior execs should have known better and certainly didn’t do a good job of aligning incentives or managing their enterprises, I don’t think there was a lot of out-and-out fraud. In general, they lost too much – even adjusting for their cash comp – for that to be the case.

Dummies? Yes. Bad managers? Yes. Reckless? Yes. A system of bad incentives for employees? Absolutely. But evil Madoff-like fraudsters that willfully ran a Ponzi scheme knowing it was going to blow up? I don’t buy it.

[davelj]

[quote=TheBreeze]For those of you who like to rely on experts, Bill Black is an expert from the S&L scandal and he disagrees with the policy of bank zombification:

http://www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/04032009/watch.html

It’s a half-hour interview, but there’s so much good stuff in there it’s well worth listening to. His comments on zombification start at about the 20-minute mark.

[/quote]

Calculated Risk posted a part of this interview that I want to comment on:

********************

BILL MOYERS: In your book, you make it clear that calculated dishonesty by people in charge is at the heart of most large corporate failures and scandals, including, of course, the S&L, but is that true? Is that what you’re saying here, that it was in the boardrooms and the CEO offices where this fraud began?

WILLIAM K. BLACK: Absolutely.

BILL MOYERS: How did they do it? What do you mean?

WILLIAM K. BLACK: Well, the way that you do it is to make really bad loans, because they pay better. Then you grow extremely rapidly, in other words, you’re a Ponzi-like scheme. And the third thing you do is we call it leverage. That just means borrowing a lot of money, and the combination creates a situation where you have guaranteed record profits in the early years. That makes you rich, through the bonuses that modern executive compensation has produced. It also makes it inevitable that there’s going to be a disaster down the road.

BILL MOYERS: So you’re suggesting, saying that CEOs of some of these banks and mortgage firms in order to increase their own personal income, deliberately set out to make bad loans?

WILLIAM K. BLACK: Yes.

**************************

OK, I like Bill Black, but… this kind of overstating of one’s case just makes his other reasonable points look dubious.

To use a specific example, does anyone really believe that Kerry Killinger at WAMU willfully told his crew to go out and underwrite bad loans so that he could get a bigger bonus? When he held millions of shares of WAMU’s stock that dwarfed his cumulative cash compensation? Please! That’s insane. (The same argument could be made about Mozilo and lots of others.)

Yeah, a lot these folks fell asleep at the wheel. And, yes, there were a lot of misaligned incentives and they chased a lot of business that they SHOULD have known was bad. But I don’t think there was a lot of willful fraud in the executive suites of these crappy companies. I think it was just stupidity combined with reckless risk-taking. I guarantee you that in most of these executives’ heart of hearts, they thought things would turn out o.k. with most of these loans. By and large, they just didn’t know any better. And I guarantee that the vast majority – with 20/20 hindsight – would have acted much differently. They would have taken much lower cash payouts in exchange for keeping the companies alive. I think most of the fraud was at the middle and lower levels because these folks weren’t owners – they took the money and ran. Although the senior execs should have known better and certainly didn’t do a good job of aligning incentives or managing their enterprises, I don’t think there was a lot of out-and-out fraud. In general, they lost too much – even adjusting for their cash comp – for that to be the case.

Dummies? Yes. Bad managers? Yes. Reckless? Yes. A system of bad incentives for employees? Absolutely. But evil Madoff-like fraudsters that willfully ran a Ponzi scheme knowing it was going to blow up? I don’t buy it.

[davelj]

[quote=TheBreeze]For those of you who like to rely on experts, Bill Black is an expert from the S&L scandal and he disagrees with the policy of bank zombification:

http://www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/04032009/watch.html

It’s a half-hour interview, but there’s so much good stuff in there it’s well worth listening to. His comments on zombification start at about the 20-minute mark.

[/quote]

Calculated Risk posted a part of this interview that I want to comment on:

********************

BILL MOYERS: In your book, you make it clear that calculated dishonesty by people in charge is at the heart of most large corporate failures and scandals, including, of course, the S&L, but is that true? Is that what you’re saying here, that it was in the boardrooms and the CEO offices where this fraud began?

WILLIAM K. BLACK: Absolutely.

BILL MOYERS: How did they do it? What do you mean?

WILLIAM K. BLACK: Well, the way that you do it is to make really bad loans, because they pay better. Then you grow extremely rapidly, in other words, you’re a Ponzi-like scheme. And the third thing you do is we call it leverage. That just means borrowing a lot of money, and the combination creates a situation where you have guaranteed record profits in the early years. That makes you rich, through the bonuses that modern executive compensation has produced. It also makes it inevitable that there’s going to be a disaster down the road.

BILL MOYERS: So you’re suggesting, saying that CEOs of some of these banks and mortgage firms in order to increase their own personal income, deliberately set out to make bad loans?

WILLIAM K. BLACK: Yes.

**************************

OK, I like Bill Black, but… this kind of overstating of one’s case just makes his other reasonable points look dubious.

To use a specific example, does anyone really believe that Kerry Killinger at WAMU willfully told his crew to go out and underwrite bad loans so that he could get a bigger bonus? When he held millions of shares of WAMU’s stock that dwarfed his cumulative cash compensation? Please! That’s insane. (The same argument could be made about Mozilo and lots of others.)

Yeah, a lot these folks fell asleep at the wheel. And, yes, there were a lot of misaligned incentives and they chased a lot of business that they SHOULD have known was bad. But I don’t think there was a lot of willful fraud in the executive suites of these crappy companies. I think it was just stupidity combined with reckless risk-taking. I guarantee you that in most of these executives’ heart of hearts, they thought things would turn out o.k. with most of these loans. By and large, they just didn’t know any better. And I guarantee that the vast majority – with 20/20 hindsight – would have acted much differently. They would have taken much lower cash payouts in exchange for keeping the companies alive. I think most of the fraud was at the middle and lower levels because these folks weren’t owners – they took the money and ran. Although the senior execs should have known better and certainly didn’t do a good job of aligning incentives or managing their enterprises, I don’t think there was a lot of out-and-out fraud. In general, they lost too much – even adjusting for their cash comp – for that to be the case.

Dummies? Yes. Bad managers? Yes. Reckless? Yes. A system of bad incentives for employees? Absolutely. But evil Madoff-like fraudsters that willfully ran a Ponzi scheme knowing it was going to blow up? I don’t buy it.

[davelj]

[quote=TheBreeze]For those of you who like to rely on experts, Bill Black is an expert from the S&L scandal and he disagrees with the policy of bank zombification:

http://www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/04032009/watch.html

It’s a half-hour interview, but there’s so much good stuff in there it’s well worth listening to. His comments on zombification start at about the 20-minute mark.

[/quote]

Calculated Risk posted a part of this interview that I want to comment on:

********************

BILL MOYERS: In your book, you make it clear that calculated dishonesty by people in charge is at the heart of most large corporate failures and scandals, including, of course, the S&L, but is that true? Is that what you’re saying here, that it was in the boardrooms and the CEO offices where this fraud began?

WILLIAM K. BLACK: Absolutely.

BILL MOYERS: How did they do it? What do you mean?

WILLIAM K. BLACK: Well, the way that you do it is to make really bad loans, because they pay better. Then you grow extremely rapidly, in other words, you’re a Ponzi-like scheme. And the third thing you do is we call it leverage. That just means borrowing a lot of money, and the combination creates a situation where you have guaranteed record profits in the early years. That makes you rich, through the bonuses that modern executive compensation has produced. It also makes it inevitable that there’s going to be a disaster down the road.

BILL MOYERS: So you’re suggesting, saying that CEOs of some of these banks and mortgage firms in order to increase their own personal income, deliberately set out to make bad loans?

WILLIAM K. BLACK: Yes.

**************************

OK, I like Bill Black, but… this kind of overstating of one’s case just makes his other reasonable points look dubious.

To use a specific example, does anyone really believe that Kerry Killinger at WAMU willfully told his crew to go out and underwrite bad loans so that he could get a bigger bonus? When he held millions of shares of WAMU’s stock that dwarfed his cumulative cash compensation? Please! That’s insane. (The same argument could be made about Mozilo and lots of others.)

Yeah, a lot these folks fell asleep at the wheel. And, yes, there were a lot of misaligned incentives and they chased a lot of business that they SHOULD have known was bad. But I don’t think there was a lot of willful fraud in the executive suites of these crappy companies. I think it was just stupidity combined with reckless risk-taking. I guarantee you that in most of these executives’ heart of hearts, they thought things would turn out o.k. with most of these loans. By and large, they just didn’t know any better. And I guarantee that the vast majority – with 20/20 hindsight – would have acted much differently. They would have taken much lower cash payouts in exchange for keeping the companies alive. I think most of the fraud was at the middle and lower levels because these folks weren’t owners – they took the money and ran. Although the senior execs should have known better and certainly didn’t do a good job of aligning incentives or managing their enterprises, I don’t think there was a lot of out-and-out fraud. In general, they lost too much – even adjusting for their cash comp – for that to be the case.

Dummies? Yes. Bad managers? Yes. Reckless? Yes. A system of bad incentives for employees? Absolutely. But evil Madoff-like fraudsters that willfully ran a Ponzi scheme knowing it was going to blow up? I don’t buy it.

[davelj]

[quote=TheBreeze]For those of you who like to rely on experts, Bill Black is an expert from the S&L scandal and he disagrees with the policy of bank zombification:

http://www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/04032009/watch.html

It’s a half-hour interview, but there’s so much good stuff in there it’s well worth listening to. His comments on zombification start at about the 20-minute mark.

[/quote]

Calculated Risk posted a part of this interview that I want to comment on:

********************

BILL MOYERS: In your book, you make it clear that calculated dishonesty by people in charge is at the heart of most large corporate failures and scandals, including, of course, the S&L, but is that true? Is that what you’re saying here, that it was in the boardrooms and the CEO offices where this fraud began?

WILLIAM K. BLACK: Absolutely.

BILL MOYERS: How did they do it? What do you mean?

WILLIAM K. BLACK: Well, the way that you do it is to make really bad loans, because they pay better. Then you grow extremely rapidly, in other words, you’re a Ponzi-like scheme. And the third thing you do is we call it leverage. That just means borrowing a lot of money, and the combination creates a situation where you have guaranteed record profits in the early years. That makes you rich, through the bonuses that modern executive compensation has produced. It also makes it inevitable that there’s going to be a disaster down the road.

BILL MOYERS: So you’re suggesting, saying that CEOs of some of these banks and mortgage firms in order to increase their own personal income, deliberately set out to make bad loans?

WILLIAM K. BLACK: Yes.

**************************

OK, I like Bill Black, but… this kind of overstating of one’s case just makes his other reasonable points look dubious.

To use a specific example, does anyone really believe that Kerry Killinger at WAMU willfully told his crew to go out and underwrite bad loans so that he could get a bigger bonus? When he held millions of shares of WAMU’s stock that dwarfed his cumulative cash compensation? Please! That’s insane. (The same argument could be made about Mozilo and lots of others.)

Yeah, a lot these folks fell asleep at the wheel. And, yes, there were a lot of misaligned incentives and they chased a lot of business that they SHOULD have known was bad. But I don’t think there was a lot of willful fraud in the executive suites of these crappy companies. I think it was just stupidity combined with reckless risk-taking. I guarantee you that in most of these executives’ heart of hearts, they thought things would turn out o.k. with most of these loans. By and large, they just didn’t know any better. And I guarantee that the vast majority – with 20/20 hindsight – would have acted much differently. They would have taken much lower cash payouts in exchange for keeping the companies alive. I think most of the fraud was at the middle and lower levels because these folks weren’t owners – they took the money and ran. Although the senior execs should have known better and certainly didn’t do a good job of aligning incentives or managing their enterprises, I don’t think there was a lot of out-and-out fraud. In general, they lost too much – even adjusting for their cash comp – for that to be the case.

Dummies? Yes. Bad managers? Yes. Reckless? Yes. A system of bad incentives for employees? Absolutely. But evil Madoff-like fraudsters that willfully ran a Ponzi scheme knowing it was going to blow up? I don’t buy it.

[Allan from Fallbrook]

Dave: I had the “privilege” of working with a Wharton MBA back in my corporate days. This guy, who was part of the production culture in our company, could not read a financial statement. I’m not talking about the more arcane aspects of the financials, I’m talking about the Income Statement and Balance Sheet and Statement of Cash Flows; the basic elements. Didn’t have Clue One as to what the numbers meant.

He did, however, understand bonuses and meeting sales targets to trigger those bonuses. He wasn’t alone in this, either. I’ve worked with quite a few CEOs and Senior VPs who were out to lunch when it came to the numbers.

I have friends who have worked accounting and finance in investment banking and these people had their jobs threatened if they pushed too hard in terms of diligence or accountability.

I agree with your point that oftimes it isn’t criminality that drives the decisions, but stupidity or greed or a combination of the two. It used to amaze me how many MBAs were absolutely ignorant and not just about the financials, but basic business fundamentals. Same goes for many of the CPAs I worked with. Scary stuff.

[Allan from Fallbrook]

Dave: I had the “privilege” of working with a Wharton MBA back in my corporate days. This guy, who was part of the production culture in our company, could not read a financial statement. I’m not talking about the more arcane aspects of the financials, I’m talking about the Income Statement and Balance Sheet and Statement of Cash Flows; the basic elements. Didn’t have Clue One as to what the numbers meant.

He did, however, understand bonuses and meeting sales targets to trigger those bonuses. He wasn’t alone in this, either. I’ve worked with quite a few CEOs and Senior VPs who were out to lunch when it came to the numbers.

I have friends who have worked accounting and finance in investment banking and these people had their jobs threatened if they pushed too hard in terms of diligence or accountability.

I agree with your point that oftimes it isn’t criminality that drives the decisions, but stupidity or greed or a combination of the two. It used to amaze me how many MBAs were absolutely ignorant and not just about the financials, but basic business fundamentals. Same goes for many of the CPAs I worked with. Scary stuff.

[Allan from Fallbrook]

Dave: I had the “privilege” of working with a Wharton MBA back in my corporate days. This guy, who was part of the production culture in our company, could not read a financial statement. I’m not talking about the more arcane aspects of the financials, I’m talking about the Income Statement and Balance Sheet and Statement of Cash Flows; the basic elements. Didn’t have Clue One as to what the numbers meant.

He did, however, understand bonuses and meeting sales targets to trigger those bonuses. He wasn’t alone in this, either. I’ve worked with quite a few CEOs and Senior VPs who were out to lunch when it came to the numbers.

I have friends who have worked accounting and finance in investment banking and these people had their jobs threatened if they pushed too hard in terms of diligence or accountability.

I agree with your point that oftimes it isn’t criminality that drives the decisions, but stupidity or greed or a combination of the two. It used to amaze me how many MBAs were absolutely ignorant and not just about the financials, but basic business fundamentals. Same goes for many of the CPAs I worked with. Scary stuff.

[Allan from Fallbrook]

Dave: I had the “privilege” of working with a Wharton MBA back in my corporate days. This guy, who was part of the production culture in our company, could not read a financial statement. I’m not talking about the more arcane aspects of the financials, I’m talking about the Income Statement and Balance Sheet and Statement of Cash Flows; the basic elements. Didn’t have Clue One as to what the numbers meant.

He did, however, understand bonuses and meeting sales targets to trigger those bonuses. He wasn’t alone in this, either. I’ve worked with quite a few CEOs and Senior VPs who were out to lunch when it came to the numbers.

I have friends who have worked accounting and finance in investment banking and these people had their jobs threatened if they pushed too hard in terms of diligence or accountability.

I agree with your point that oftimes it isn’t criminality that drives the decisions, but stupidity or greed or a combination of the two. It used to amaze me how many MBAs were absolutely ignorant and not just about the financials, but basic business fundamentals. Same goes for many of the CPAs I worked with. Scary stuff.

[Allan from Fallbrook]

Dave: I had the “privilege” of working with a Wharton MBA back in my corporate days. This guy, who was part of the production culture in our company, could not read a financial statement. I’m not talking about the more arcane aspects of the financials, I’m talking about the Income Statement and Balance Sheet and Statement of Cash Flows; the basic elements. Didn’t have Clue One as to what the numbers meant.

He did, however, understand bonuses and meeting sales targets to trigger those bonuses. He wasn’t alone in this, either. I’ve worked with quite a few CEOs and Senior VPs who were out to lunch when it came to the numbers.

I have friends who have worked accounting and finance in investment banking and these people had their jobs threatened if they pushed too hard in terms of diligence or accountability.

I agree with your point that oftimes it isn’t criminality that drives the decisions, but stupidity or greed or a combination of the two. It used to amaze me how many MBAs were absolutely ignorant and not just about the financials, but basic business fundamentals. Same goes for many of the CPAs I worked with. Scary stuff.

[Arraya]

drunkle-Dave lives in a smoke and mirrors filled byzantine labyrinth of virtual money, theoretical valuations and ever morphing rules to make it all work out in the end. That kind of thinking does not work when applied to the real world and hashing life out in a cooperative and fair manner. The money men that are running this country have lost their minds and dave is caught in the same rapacious consensus trance of keeping the system afloat at all costs. Probably on an unconscious level he knows that any true reform could very well affect his world in a big way. But your not even aloud to think that far our of the box, for it is heresy!

Still, the clock is ticking quickly and the villagers are sharpening the pitchforks. I’d think they would bring in the troops to uphold their banking system if it came down to it. It’ll be an interesting show and they are guaranteed to fail by any rational measure of success, which they will surely try and define in their morphological world of definitions. haha

“A collective problem, if not recognized as such, always appears as a personal problem… [T]he cause of disturbance is … not to be sought in the personal surroundings, but rather in the collective situation.” — Carl Jung

[Arraya]

drunkle-Dave lives in a smoke and mirrors filled byzantine labyrinth of virtual money, theoretical valuations and ever morphing rules to make it all work out in the end. That kind of thinking does not work when applied to the real world and hashing life out in a cooperative and fair manner. The money men that are running this country have lost their minds and dave is caught in the same rapacious consensus trance of keeping the system afloat at all costs. Probably on an unconscious level he knows that any true reform could very well affect his world in a big way. But your not even aloud to think that far our of the box, for it is heresy!

Still, the clock is ticking quickly and the villagers are sharpening the pitchforks. I’d think they would bring in the troops to uphold their banking system if it came down to it. It’ll be an interesting show and they are guaranteed to fail by any rational measure of success, which they will surely try and define in their morphological world of definitions. haha

“A collective problem, if not recognized as such, always appears as a personal problem… [T]he cause of disturbance is … not to be sought in the personal surroundings, but rather in the collective situation.” — Carl Jung

[Arraya]

drunkle-Dave lives in a smoke and mirrors filled byzantine labyrinth of virtual money, theoretical valuations and ever morphing rules to make it all work out in the end. That kind of thinking does not work when applied to the real world and hashing life out in a cooperative and fair manner. The money men that are running this country have lost their minds and dave is caught in the same rapacious consensus trance of keeping the system afloat at all costs. Probably on an unconscious level he knows that any true reform could very well affect his world in a big way. But your not even aloud to think that far our of the box, for it is heresy!

Still, the clock is ticking quickly and the villagers are sharpening the pitchforks. I’d think they would bring in the troops to uphold their banking system if it came down to it. It’ll be an interesting show and they are guaranteed to fail by any rational measure of success, which they will surely try and define in their morphological world of definitions. haha

“A collective problem, if not recognized as such, always appears as a personal problem… [T]he cause of disturbance is … not to be sought in the personal surroundings, but rather in the collective situation.” — Carl Jung

[Arraya]

drunkle-Dave lives in a smoke and mirrors filled byzantine labyrinth of virtual money, theoretical valuations and ever morphing rules to make it all work out in the end. That kind of thinking does not work when applied to the real world and hashing life out in a cooperative and fair manner. The money men that are running this country have lost their minds and dave is caught in the same rapacious consensus trance of keeping the system afloat at all costs. Probably on an unconscious level he knows that any true reform could very well affect his world in a big way. But your not even aloud to think that far our of the box, for it is heresy!

Still, the clock is ticking quickly and the villagers are sharpening the pitchforks. I’d think they would bring in the troops to uphold their banking system if it came down to it. It’ll be an interesting show and they are guaranteed to fail by any rational measure of success, which they will surely try and define in their morphological world of definitions. haha

“A collective problem, if not recognized as such, always appears as a personal problem… [T]he cause of disturbance is … not to be sought in the personal surroundings, but rather in the collective situation.” — Carl Jung

[Author]

Posts