Well, it does seem that there is some trouble here and there. The sheer abstractness of the financial devices that people came up with to squeeze more money out of the system is staggering. One of the speakers showed how there are now around ten (unseen and unregulated) intermediaries between a home buyer and the institution they get their mortgage from, including people who sell parts of their mortgage to overseas banks, people who insure the mortgage, people who sell parts of that insurance to other banks, etc.
The speaker likened one of the "new" financial products to your neighbour insuring their car for $5000, but you being able to take out insurance against your neighbour having a accident up to millions of dollars. She highlighted one company that was 14,000 brokers and a website, no equity, no offices, nothing, and they had sold billions of dollars of insurance that they simply couldn't cover. Everything was bet against house prices rising, and you know what has happened there.
Frankly we should have all been given MBAs just for turning up, and my head is now awash with CDOs, CDSs, corporate paper and whosie-whatsits. The US government got a tentative thumbs up from the panel for managing to quell out-and-out panic thus far, but they were keen to point out that while we're currently in a financial crisis it's not an economic crisis. No folks, that one is still to arrive.
The free food was good though.
Tension mounts. "But will I still get that six-figure investment bank job I was promised when I applied?"
Mmmmmm! It was a Mexican packed tea.
The main man: Dean Rich Lyons (good name for this sort of work).
Don't panic!
Things have got so bad, Hannah's had to take on a part-time cleaning job.
