28 Oct

Posted at 12:48h in Credit Spectrum

Very loosely speaking, and in line with some of the analogies to physics given in this book, structured finance could be viewed as the "quantization of corporate finance". The authors succingtly give a hint to this viewpoint when they write in chapter 2 that structured...

24 Oct

Posted at 12:30h in Outside Looking In
As far as I could tell, it took the Internet about a minute and a half to explode over Romney’s now infamous comment about binders and women. “We took a concerted effort to go out and find women who had backgrounds that could be qualified to become members of our cabinet. I went to a number of women’s groups and said, ‘Can you help us find folks,’ and they brought us whole binders full of women." And thus a meme was born. The history of its evolution has been charted on the site Know Your Meme. Before the debate had ended, a Twitter account, Romney’s Binder, was created (inaugural tweet: “Boy, I’m full of women!”)....

23 Oct

Posted at 16:39h in Credit Spectrum
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....

23 Oct

Posted at 12:43h in Film Fundamentals
In a coincidence that is almost as magical as a certain type of underpants, Mitt Romney inadvertently rounded off the recent release of the Women's Impact Report 2012 with a reminder of why some folks in Hollywood thought it important to do the report. Sure, Romney was trying to explain his approach to diversity in political hiring, whereas the Women's Impact Report is exclusively focused on the entertainment industry. But it's all the same thing.

12 Oct

Posted at 18:27h in Film Fundamentals
It is the age-old philosophic question. What is reality (or, actually, what is the nature of reality)? According to Plato, it was mathematics. For the Romans, it was the flesh and blood material of the natural world. After the Enlightenment, it turned into a conflict between rational human intelligence and nature. But today, it is Honey Boo Boo. Oh well, at least we don't have to deal with all of that math stuff that so enthralled Plato. Reality television – and its strange evolution – has become a topic among indie filmmakers. To be honest, I first discovered this fact when I heard Christine Vachon

06 Oct

Posted at 12:46h in Film Fundamentals
Obviously my knee jerk response is to say no. But that tends to be my knee jerk response to many things. Twenty years of fatherhood does that to a guy. However, the question is being raised in many quarters. During the past year there has been a virtual parade of articles ranging from a CNBC piece on the end of movie studios to critic Andrew O'Hehir's speculations on the death of film culture, along with Keanu Reeves' view on the death of analog film-making and numerous pronouncements by the British and European press. Almost every component of the industry has received its own obituary.

30 Sep

Posted at 02:51h in Credit Spectrum
No doubt Romney and Obama each sincerely believe the other has the wrong idea of how to restore America to economic health. But, most of the narrative about the economy (is better, is worse) is sheer nonsense. We voters know it, and they know we know it. The true cause of our economic woes is the decoupling of the real economy from the financial system. It has been nearly 40 years since the commercial banks morphed into investment banks, ceding their credit function to the credit rating agencies; and nearly 10 years since the credit rating agencies switched allegiances from the buy side to the sell side. Today, neither government investment nor QE can put the asset and liability sides of our private sector balance sheet (a.k.a. the economy) back together again.

29 Sep

Posted at 04:15h in Film Fundamentals
There's seems to be a mythic notion that I have money. How else can I explain the great movie “investment” offers I receive every week. So let me first set the record straight. I don't have money. Not really. Certainly not the $10,000 to $10,000,000 that various folks are hoping I will want to invest into their movies. I am even having to pass on an offer of cheap land in India (though what I would do with a couple of acres over there leaves me baffled). The internet is a vast land of opportunity. Not necessarily good opportunities, but lots and lots of offers.

24 Sep

Posted at 05:55h in Credit Spectrum
I just spent two wonderful days in Singapore teaching a risk-management and valuation seminar to managers at CapitalLand, a leading Asian real estate and property management concern. CapitaLand has a strong knowledge culture, and Singaporeans are also consummate hosts--at least, my hosts were. Dr. Boaz Boon (head of CapitaLand’s corporate research department), John Pang (Managing Director of CapitaLand Financial) and Wen Khai Meng (CEO of CapitaLand Financial) made