I am responding to Susan Saulny's article about homelessness and joblessness, a topic very close to my heart. R&R Consulting is willing to teach any jobless college graduate how to do structured finance the right way (ie, to grow jobs and avoid another Crisis) who is...

In my presentation to NYSSA last Friday, I posed the question:
  • Are you playing Wall Street's game
  • Or is it playing yours?
The bittersweet truth is, Wall Street is itself a kind of infinite game but many games played on the Street are high stakes, finite games that turn people into unemployment statistics. To have success on Wall Street or anywhere else, it is important to stay in the game, no matter what. This is one of the first lessons I learned as a card-counter on the floor of the Chicago Board of Trade....

Everyone I know is anxious. Those who are employed are worried about how long their jobs will last. My entrepreneur-friends are all anxious that they are not making enough money, not getting enough recognition, not realizing their goals fast enough, etc. Of course those who are neither working nor "entrepreneuring" are also anxious. If we are going to eradicate the root of our economic problem, we must embrace the possibility that these three propositions are true:
  1. Balance sheet realities largely determine economic reality.

So, structured ratings are not good indicators of secondary market value, and market prices are not working their usual magic. Why are we surprised? More importantly, how do we want the sector-wide securitization crisis of confidence to turn out? Do we secretly desire a return...