Posted on 10/07/2007 9:53:39 AM PDT by GodGunsGuts
By Satyajit Das
Credit Crunch – The New Diet Snack for Financial Markets
September 5, 2007
**Satyajit Das works in the area of financial derivatives and risk management. He is the author of a number of key reference works on derivatives and risk management and is the author of Traders, Guns & Money: Knowns and Unknowns in the Dazzling World of Derivatives (2006, FT-Prentice Hall).
Living in the Kaliyuga …
Inflexion points in financial markets are difficult to identify. As Yogi Berra observed: “making predictions is difficult, especially about the future”.
In Indian mythology, we are in the Age of Kali - the last age. The world ends when Kali dances the dance of death. There are no such clear markers in markets. Recently, we came close - Jim Cramer, a CNBC pundit, launched a “we’re in Armageddon” tirade on air. Embattled Bear Stearns’ CFO Samuel Molinaro pleaded: “I’ve been out here for 22 years, and this is as bad as I’ve seen it in the fixed-income markets.” Kali had begun to shake her booty. The credit bubble was finally deflating.
In 2007, householders in “cabbage-ville USA” (an English fund manager’s term) failed to make repayments triggering a global credit crisis. Markets ruminated about “a re-pricing of risk”. The faux “business as usual” calm masked the fact that the problems threaten to be the single largest credit crisis since the Savings and Loans collapse in the USA in the 1980s.
The early 2000s were a period of “too much” and “too little” – too much liquidity, too much leverage, too much complex financial engineering, too little return for risk, too little understanding of the risks....
(Excerpt) Read more at prudentbear.com ...
Thanks for the info. Stockcharts shows VGPMX and OPGSX just about even percentage wise. I’m tapped on mutual funds at this point as I now also play individual gold stocks in another account.
That 5.7% upfront sales fee would be a real hurdle for me if I could purchase any gold mutual fund I wanted.
You have no more $$ to invest? So what. Check out an oil services such as Fidelity’s some time. More speculative than oil http://finance.yahoo.com/q/hl?s=FSESX
It is amazing the smartest people in the world are always turning out to be the dumbest. The principles have never changed - just the shape of the tulip bulbs.
It all seems to boil down to two words: "We're Scr*wed!"
I like where I’m at now. Thanks.
“The principles have never changed - just the shape of the tulip bulbs.”
Excellent quote. Freepers are the smartest animals on the planet, I swear. ;)
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