"F. George McDuffee" wrote in message
...
On Sun, 27 Jan 2008 11:19:45 -0500, "Ed Huntress"
wrote:
snip
So, the answer is clear: It's time to learn to dance or shuffle. Practice
those pirouettes, and always deal from the top of the deck, ya'll.
snip
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The black box economy
By Stephen Mihm
January 27, 2008

Behind the recent bad news lurks a much deeper concern: The world
economy is now being driven by a vast, secretive web of
investments that might be out of anyone's control.

Yeah. Remember our discussion about deregulated financial markets and Ronnie
Reagan? It's "collateral, collateral, who's got the collateral?" all over
the world.

I think it was five or six years ago I said here that the derivatives in
hedge funds are going to bite us in the ass some day, because nobody knew
how they linked together, after they've been bundled and re-bundled a
half-dozen times. I pointed out that we'd never find out how they're linked
until they started to tank and everybody made margin calls and tried to
collect on everyone else.

Too bad I didn't sell short on them as an investment.

--
Ed Huntress