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Understanding Derivatives
Email | 5/26/11 | Unknown

Posted on 05/29/2011 4:29:09 PM PDT by bigbob

Heidi is the proprietor of a bar in Buffalo.

She realizes that virtually all of her customers are unemployed alcoholics and, as such, can no longer afford to patronize her bar.

To solve this problem, she comes up with a new marketing plan that allows her customers to drink now, but pay later.

Heidi keeps track of the drinks consumed on a ledger (thereby granting the customers' loans).

Word gets around about Heidi's "drink now, pay later" marketing strategy and, as a result, increasing numbers of customers flood into Heidi's bar. Soon she has the largest sales volume for any bar in Buffalo.

By providing her customers freedom from immediate payment demands, Heidi gets no resistance when, at regular intervals, she substantially increases her prices for wine and beer, the most consumed beverages.

Consequently, Heidi's gross sales volume increases massively.

A young and dynamic vice-president at the local bank recognizes that these customer debts constitute valuable future assets and increases Heidi's borrowing limit.

He sees no reason for any undue concern, since he has the debts of the unemployed alcoholics as collateral!!!

At the bank's corporate headquarters, expert traders figure a way to make huge commissions, and transform these customer loans into DRINK BONDS.

These "securities" then are bundled and traded on international securities markets.

Naive investors don't really understand that the securities being sold to them as "AAA Secured Bonds" really are debts of unemployed alcoholics. Nevertheless, the bond prices continuously climb! and the securities soon become the hottest-selling items for some of the nation's leading brokerage houses.

One day, even though the bond prices still are climbing, a risk manager at the original local bank decides that the time has come to demand payment on the debts incurred by the drinkers at Heidi's bar. He so informs Heidi.

Heidi then demands payment from her alcoholic patrons, but being unemployed alcoholics they cannot pay back their drinking debts.

Snce Heidi cannot fulfill her loan obligations she is forced into bankruptcy. The bar closes and Heidi's 11 employees lose their jobs.

Overnight, DRINK BOND prices drop by 90%.

The collapsed bond asset value destroys the bank's liquidity and prevents it from issuing new loans, thus freezing credit and economic activity in the community.

The suppliers of Heidi's bar had granted her generous payment extensions and had invested their firms' pension funds in the BOND securities.

They find they are now faced with having to write off her bad debt and with losing over 90% of the presumed value of the bonds.

Her wine supplier also claims bankruptcy, closing the doors on a family business that had endured for three generations, her beer supplier is taken over by a competitor, who immediately closes the local plant and lays off 150 workers.

Fortunately though, the bank, the brokerage houses and their respective executives are saved and bailed out by a multibillion dollar no-strings attached cash infusion from the Federal government.

The funds required for this bailout are obtained by new taxes levied on employed, middle-class, nondrinkers who have never been in Heidi's bar.

Now do you understand?


TOPICS: Business/Economy; Humor
KEYWORDS: bailouts; craponomics; derivatives
Got this via email the other day and thought it clever.

One of those things that would be funny if it weren't so true.

1 posted on 05/29/2011 4:29:12 PM PDT by bigbob
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To: bigbob

When b frank drinks, EVERYBODY drinks!


2 posted on 05/29/2011 4:33:33 PM PDT by freedumb2003 (Herman Cain 2012)
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To: bigbob

This has made the email rounds before but it’s worth the bump


3 posted on 05/29/2011 4:34:32 PM PDT by Popman (Obama. First Marxist to turn a five year Marxist plan into a 4 year administration.)
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To: bigbob
Very nice--thanks for sharing. For perhaps the best popular extended treatment of the housing derivative debacle, I recommend Michael Lewis' The Big Short.
4 posted on 05/29/2011 4:47:42 PM PDT by Hebrews 11:6 (Do you REALLY believe that (1) God is, and (2) God is good?)
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To: bigbob
To me, there seem to be some things that don't completely gel. For example, other than Heidi's patrons being alcoholics, how are the derivatives in the liquor scenario any different from CREDIT payment for ACCOUNTS RECEIVABLES for CONSUMABLES ? For example, how is the liquor scenario different from say, FUEL purchased on CREDIT or FOOD purchased on CREDIT ? Or is that not the point ?

Thanks in advance.

5 posted on 05/29/2011 4:57:45 PM PDT by pyx (Rule#1.The LEFT lies.Rule#2.See Rule#1. IF THE LEFT CONTROLS THE LANGUAGE, IT CONTROLS THE ARGUMENT.)
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To: bigbob

I took two semesters of Calculus and never quite understood derivatives or integrals. This article shed no further light on the subject.


6 posted on 05/29/2011 4:57:51 PM PDT by gitmo (Hatred of those who think differently is the left's unifying principle.-Ralph Peters NY Post)
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To: bigbob

“Heidi is the proprietor of a bar in Buffalo.

She realizes that virtually all of her customers are unemployed alcoholics and, as such, can no longer afford to patronize her bar. “

*SNIP*

SO the next time one of reprobates staggered through her door, Heidi pulled her shotgun out from behind the bar, cycled the action and told the deadbeat “Get the f*** out of my bar”.

Heidi only had to actually shoot one, and word soon got around among the deadbeats stopped coming, and no more problems were had with any of them ever after.

Heidi’s remaining cash paying customers were so happy, they started bringing other cash paying customers with them, and everyone lived happily ever after.


7 posted on 05/29/2011 5:07:03 PM PDT by Bean Counter (Your what hurts??)
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To: Bean Counter

I love happy endings.


8 posted on 05/29/2011 5:16:18 PM PDT by rocksblues (Obama, the biggest liar in the history of American politics!)
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To: gitmo
Calculus derivatives are fluxions!
Integrals are anti-fluxions.
Is it all clear now?
9 posted on 05/29/2011 5:19:25 PM PDT by Reily
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To: bigbob

Fine analogy.
And we know from the wisdom of so many freepers that Heidi, her suppliers, and her financiers are just victims utterly entitled to the loot they took away for years, and deserving that taxpayers should reimburse their every ultimate loss.
It’s those cunning unemployed alcholics what did it, make them pay!


10 posted on 05/29/2011 5:30:41 PM PDT by nkycincinnatikid
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To: bigbob

Yeah, I understand a little bit. On the debt interest is charged so any payments made by the customers go toward interest.
But that interest is an income stream that can sold too and processing fees can be charged and contracted out and thus be an income source to someone.
And future income can be borrowed against today. Which means more fees.....Hmmmm... the bar needs to raise prices.


11 posted on 05/29/2011 6:11:16 PM PDT by count-your-change (You don't have be brilliant, not being stupid is enough.)
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To: gitmo
derivative is the "slope" of a function (rise/run) at a particular point

integral is the area between a function and the horizontal axis; or a function which, when you differentiate it, gives you your original function back ("anti-derivative")

"partial derivatives" mean going parallel to one particular axis, more or less.

Cheers!

12 posted on 05/29/2011 6:24:48 PM PDT by grey_whiskers (The opinions are solely those of the author and are subject to change without notice.)
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To: Bean Counter
SO the next time one of reprobates staggered through her door, Heidi pulled her shotgun out from behind the bar, cycled the action and told the deadbeat “Get the f*** out of my bar”. Heidi only had to actually shoot one, and word soon got around among the deadbeats stopped coming, and no more problems were had with any of them ever after. Heidi’s remaining cash paying customers were so happy, they started bringing other cash paying customers with them, and everyone lived happily ever after.

That really made me laugh. Trouble is, our elected representatives are driving. And according their little political brains (or "p-brains"), the financial collapses described in the story mean one fantastic thing: Heidi's bar will be flooded with newly unemployed, broke customers who can provide another cycle of the whole process. But this time, since so many more people are unemployed, the bubble won't burst, because they'll make up the difference in volume. Makes ya wanna go out and re-elect your Congressman and Senator, don't it ?
13 posted on 05/29/2011 6:37:07 PM PDT by PieterCasparzen (Huguenot)
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To: bigbob

Kinda gives Buffalo a bad rap, but it *is* a liberal enclave. Heidi had a Buffalo bar, but she barred all buffaloes from entry. Now the chips are down and the buffalo is empty.


14 posted on 05/29/2011 6:38:35 PM PDT by Fester Chugabrew (minds change)
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To: Fester Chugabrew

Buffle eye?


15 posted on 05/29/2011 6:39:23 PM PDT by Fester Chugabrew (minds change)
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To: gitmo

C=a


16 posted on 05/29/2011 7:12:12 PM PDT by muawiyah
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To: PieterCasparzen

yah...my wife used to do the books for a guy whose favorite saying was “We lose a nickel on every item, but we make it up in volume”....


17 posted on 05/29/2011 7:19:46 PM PDT by Bean Counter (Your what hurts??)
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To: bigbob
Easy:


18 posted on 05/29/2011 9:12:11 PM PDT by JRios1968 (I'm guttery and trashy, with a hint of lemon. - Laz)
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