Author: -- ms

made this the other day and uploaded it to FB but didn’t put it in WP. I am uploading it now to test the sharing feature to FB. it does work the way I would like it to using one of my plugins but as far as i can tell, i can’t share it as an animated gif. i can only share a thumbnail jpg. if you want to show animated gifs on FB, you have to upload them directly.

I am winding up on the book now. I have about 1 hour left. I spent a little time talking about this in a video I have yet to edit. I am sure I will not sound that articulate in regards to many of the subjects covered in the book. But, I still have an opinion. Imagine that.

I have seen a lot of booms and busts in the market since I first started paying attention to it in 1993. My first exposure to it was in creating a fake portfolio within America Online. I had a bit of disposable income at the time and no one was expounding upon the wonders of home ownership yet. To this day, I still do not own a home and I dream of making the right choice with the markets. I don’t see it as a fault. I took time away, between 2001 and 2013 but now I am back in and I love it. I truly think that the less people learn about the markets as a whole and the more time they put into “increasing” the value of a real estate purchase is proportionate to how fucking stupid they are. I cannot say this more strongly. As a matter of fact, if I were a budding home purchaser, I would be suspicious as hell of whatever the motives would be for anyone to speak highly of home ownership. If you ain’t gonna pop a couple out and you ain’t going to sock them into a learning institution within walking distance of the property then you are a moron.

What gives me this new found confidence? My own decisions and one of the people highlighted in the book, Michael Burry, the guy that was played by Christian Bale in the movie. Actually, each of the foresight leaders in the book were as pretty darn close to anti-establishment as you can get, each in their own ways. But, Burry struck a chord. He was actually a doctor in residence when he chose to get into investing professionally. He had $40k in cash and a $100k in medical school debt. The movie picks up at the point where he had already succeeded and created an office or his company, Scion capital. His methods for success were not unlike some of what Buffet was famous for, value investing. But, what made him very controversial was his moves with the bond market which is what The Big Short is about.

I actually have no interest in the bond market. I think it is necessary for the most part, especially things like municipal or federal bonds. The Big Short is all about mortgage debt bonds. At first listen, the idea of buying debt makes no sense and that initial shock should stay with you. It should make you suspicious about the market permanently and it should make you raise the same fundamental questions regularly, or, you will be like the herd and drive the bus off the cliff. What could really blow your mind, is what would have happened if some of these guys did not simultaneously light a fire under the bond market in the way they did? Also, what has really been reformed? In my opinion, nothing has been reformed and the same mistakes are there waiting to happen again. That is hinted at in the book often but there are no directives, as there really shouldn’t be. I have to return to the track now because the reason that I think that the stock market is actually more important and its implications for the bond market is an item for another post. Chances are though, I would not discuss how the stock market will affect the bond market at all, I am not really interested in it.

I think I will rewatch the movie to get a better sense of the whole endeavor. I bought it about a year ago and I think I have watched it twice in total so far. Both the book and the movie go into the dynamics of the bond types and the repackaging of them as well as how they were all rated. In my little video, I mention the ratings agencies and how they are the ones that the taxpayer should be pissed at. In regards to the whole drop, I don’t really know how much was covered by the taxpayer(reference needed). But, what I do know is that if there were ever a time where the poor could have banded together to collectively fail and either accelerate or decelerate the collapse it was then. No one has ever heard of that ever taking place but the percentages were fixed. If you could have gotten a couple hundred thousand people to default on their loans at exactly the same time, they could have had the power of the banks themselves. The banks would have been forced to allow them to have free rent out of fear of the market collapse. Interesting thought. I wouldn’t want to be the guy to get them all to collectively act though. But they had the power of 100s of billions of dollars. To the average dork, asking them to default would have produced a reaction like, “well, i am going to default in 6 months anyway, might as well do it now”.

I feel somewhat compelled to say something about Avengers: Endgame because it became as big as it did. I don’t know what the stats are for the circulation of the Avengers back when I first started buying them but I can tell you this. I never, in a million years, expected Marvel to get this much attention. Sure, the Disney purchase helped but holy buckets.

I think Americans are generally myth-starved. As Winger says, we are mutts and we were generally kicked out of every other decent country so we need something to believe in that is particularly American. I guess people outside the US are OK with this and pat our wide-eyed, soul searching head with ticket purchases.

So what does the movie say about our heroes or the average American? We don’t really know. We do and we don’t. That is what was so great about Marvel comics. They draw you in and you never really get a sense of closure because it is the drawing in that is of value. When someone that has never come into contact with a comic book picks up a couple of super-hero comics and sees how they could relate to one another he would not be the slightest bit surprised to find out that the story does not end with one comic. He would also not be surprised to see that one hero would do a cameo in another comic that is headlined by different hero. He would probably say something like “that’s basic marketing and the story is sort of irrelevant”.

Anyway, do the powers and the costumes help us understand our own symbolism better? I would say yes. I would also say that the writing behind each of the characters and how they relate to their powers is incredibly complex. So complex in fact, that in order to get a full sense of what the Marvel purists intend for each character, it is not possible through just the Avengers. So, you gotta buy another comic book–nah, it is 2019–see another movie.

If you strip back the archetypes and see how Marvel treats them, there are fascinating things afoot: assassins, warriors, royalty, light, darkness, technology, color, regional demographics, magic, gesture, symbol, immortality, and mortality. In many ways, I am a Marvel purist and I think that whether or not the general public likes it, it has stayed true to its mission. It really cares about itself and it did a good job of taking care of itself. It can stand the test of time because of the death, the old age, and the trading of places. If you have collected paper comics for a couple of decades(and you can reach as far back as 5 decades now), you will see rejuvenation of characters with each generation. Endgame is so good because it is the first realization of that continuity in film and it really condensed it into the last movie, Endgame.

No one should be uptight with Stark dying. It makes sense. It also makes sense that Romanoff would die as well. I would like to explore her character further someday time permitting.

Anyway, if you want to see how a real fan reacts to Marvel’s influence on his life, check out this video. It is Kevin Smith talking about Stan Lee’s cameo in Captain Marvel. Marvel’s heroes have definitely had their impact on me and it is nice to see that I am moving in time with Thor. Wild stories, wild ride.