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Books and Movies 2010...
Jan. 17th, 2010 02:49 pmI'll probably not keep this up.
Books
#1 - "Too Big to Fail" Russ Sorkin: it's a fly-on-the-wall write up of the near failure of Western Civilisation we had in late 2008. I've argued that it wasn't as bad as people think it could be, it was actually much much much worse. The shear monolithic ineptitude of the major banks and the governments involved is set out in a stark series of reported interviews and blow-by-blow details of the fall of Lehman Brothers and just why AIG fell.
Most scary for me is what I already suspected. In the generally awful Rendezvous with Rama II, Clarke postulated a collapse of global banking in the wake of the Rama I incident. His outline pretty much almost happened in September 2008. I know that a lot of left and right leaning people are angry about this but consider the conversation reported between Hank Paulson and Jamie Dimon, CEO of JP Chase Morgan. Basically Dimon informed Paulson after closing the doors on Friday that he could open on Monday but he was pretty sure that it would only be him and Goldman Sachs opening. He was clear that they would not re-open on Tuesday because they would be out of business. Basically we were within 48 hours of a complete and utter collapse of the banking system. While people might say it serves the bankers right, I do wonder how they'd have felt on Tuesday morning when the ATM didn't work and nor did their credit cards. Seriously, we were THAT close.
Worse still: even the CEOs of the banks were admitting at the end that they didn't know their cash positions, debt positions nor, in fact, what they had bought. AIG thought they had a $20bn temporary liquidity problem when things started going pear shaped. It took a team of accountants and bankers from Merrill Lynch and Goldman Sachs almost a week to find it was $60bn, and then they found basically another $20bn hidden under the carpet.
Utterly terrifying and most scary in that we really haven't dealt with the problem. I'm coming around to the idea that the ideal size of a bank is a mutual society and that investment systems need to be non-limited liability. Anyway...
Movies:
#1 Paranormal Activity: Starts slow, good middle, ends lame. Worth watching but be-warned you're not really going to care what happens to the protagonists.
#2 Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs - never heard of this as a story before and as somebody who quite likes Sardines I didn't much like the set up. Anyway, all I can say is somebody was on some damn fine drugs when they wrote this one.
#3 Moon: Gosh - awesome stuff. I spotted the McGuffin fairly quickly but that didn't detract.
#4 10 Things I Hate About You - I think I saw this in 1999 when it came out but I might be wrong. I recorded it 'cos it claimed to be set in settle and it interested me. Fun teen rom-com stuff. The late Heath Ledger really holds it together, but David Krumholtz (the guy from Numbers) steals the show as the light relief. Based on the outtakes at the end they had a lot of fun making it. Stupid but a feel good movie none-the-less
Books
#1 - "Too Big to Fail" Russ Sorkin: it's a fly-on-the-wall write up of the near failure of Western Civilisation we had in late 2008. I've argued that it wasn't as bad as people think it could be, it was actually much much much worse. The shear monolithic ineptitude of the major banks and the governments involved is set out in a stark series of reported interviews and blow-by-blow details of the fall of Lehman Brothers and just why AIG fell.
Most scary for me is what I already suspected. In the generally awful Rendezvous with Rama II, Clarke postulated a collapse of global banking in the wake of the Rama I incident. His outline pretty much almost happened in September 2008. I know that a lot of left and right leaning people are angry about this but consider the conversation reported between Hank Paulson and Jamie Dimon, CEO of JP Chase Morgan. Basically Dimon informed Paulson after closing the doors on Friday that he could open on Monday but he was pretty sure that it would only be him and Goldman Sachs opening. He was clear that they would not re-open on Tuesday because they would be out of business. Basically we were within 48 hours of a complete and utter collapse of the banking system. While people might say it serves the bankers right, I do wonder how they'd have felt on Tuesday morning when the ATM didn't work and nor did their credit cards. Seriously, we were THAT close.
Worse still: even the CEOs of the banks were admitting at the end that they didn't know their cash positions, debt positions nor, in fact, what they had bought. AIG thought they had a $20bn temporary liquidity problem when things started going pear shaped. It took a team of accountants and bankers from Merrill Lynch and Goldman Sachs almost a week to find it was $60bn, and then they found basically another $20bn hidden under the carpet.
Utterly terrifying and most scary in that we really haven't dealt with the problem. I'm coming around to the idea that the ideal size of a bank is a mutual society and that investment systems need to be non-limited liability. Anyway...
Movies:
#1 Paranormal Activity: Starts slow, good middle, ends lame. Worth watching but be-warned you're not really going to care what happens to the protagonists.
#2 Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs - never heard of this as a story before and as somebody who quite likes Sardines I didn't much like the set up. Anyway, all I can say is somebody was on some damn fine drugs when they wrote this one.
#3 Moon: Gosh - awesome stuff. I spotted the McGuffin fairly quickly but that didn't detract.
#4 10 Things I Hate About You - I think I saw this in 1999 when it came out but I might be wrong. I recorded it 'cos it claimed to be set in settle and it interested me. Fun teen rom-com stuff. The late Heath Ledger really holds it together, but David Krumholtz (the guy from Numbers) steals the show as the light relief. Based on the outtakes at the end they had a lot of fun making it. Stupid but a feel good movie none-the-less
