Archive for December 4th, 2008

Unappreciated Irony

Andy Spero | December 4, 2008 | 0 Comment(s) |

So, a few coaches sent copies of a communication that they received from the director of their basketball league.  All coaches were simultaneously told that regardless of the advanced notice, under no circumstances could games be canceled or postponed via e-mail as e-mail was inherently unreliable.  Such notice could only be given over the phone!  E-mail is unreliable!

Do you want the guess the medium of the communication?  It didn’t involve paper, voice, pictures, pantomime, carrier pigeons or smoke signals.

Freedom, Liberty and Risk-taking

Andy Spero | December 4, 2008 | 0 Comment(s) |

Daniel Henninger has an interesting column in The Wall Street Journal today.  It is entitled America Needs Its Frontier Spirit.

Although we don’t entirely agree with it, we do like his sentence: “The great danger now is that a depressed and angry people will allow the risk-taking American baby to be thrown out with the toxic-securities bathwater.”

Perhaps he should get out of New York City a bit more, because we’re not sure that common folk such as ourselves are depressed nor generally angry; it’s much more directed and… Read the rest

How to Trade CMBS?

Andy Spero | December 4, 2008 | 0 Comment(s) |

Our site’s statistics program keeps track of the search terms used to arrive at our humble little venue, and this morning we noticed a hit from the query, “How to trade CMBS?”

That, as they say, struck us kind of funny. 

We thought: given the ongoing and (we would guess) accelerating problems in commercial real-estate such a question could come from either (1) someone completely unfamiliar with Commercial Mortgage-Backed Securities or (2) someone completely, deeply, and desperately immersed in the industry.  (As a last-ditch effort for marketing help.)

In that way, we’d imagine that… Read the rest

So Far, So Good, Mr. Obama

Andy Spero | December 4, 2008 | 0 Comment(s) |

The Wall Street Journal reports today that Obama Keeps His Distance From Treasury on TARP.  It seems the Mr. Obama and his representatives are not providing the Bush administration officials with specifics about their mortgage and liquidity crises-related plans.

We say: what’s wrong with that? 

Whether Mr. Obama and his staff are seriously deliberating and contemplating specific plans or actions or whether they are just pretending to do so, either is fine with us.  Both are a vast improvement over the panic-speech of Mr. Paulson and Mr. Bernanke in the last half… Read the rest

Did They Get Our Big Buck?

Andy Spero | December 4, 2008 | 0 Comment(s) |

Deer hunting season started in Pennsylvania on Monday.  At one time, over one million hunters would enter the woods and fields on the first day of buck season giving Pennsylvania something like the world’s third- or fourth-largest standing army for a day or two.

Like many neighborhoods in exurbia, ours is overrun with deer.  Not really over-run, but they are everywhere, especially near a couple of close-by ponds and in a valley leading to the subdivision.  (We’ve spent hundreds on deer scram and that’s the biggest cost we’ve borne, but spreading it always seems worth it.… Read the rest