Devil’s in the Details
Cidu Bill on Apr 30th 2010
What I was planning to write here was: “Damn. I just read more than 250 pages of Michael Lewis’s The Big Short, and I could have gotten the same information in less than a minute by reading today’s Abstruse Goose.” Then I realized that the strip’s unnamed artist was way ahead of me: the graphic file was named “the_big_short.”
Filed in Abstruse Goose, Bill Bickel, Wall Street, comic strips, comics, humor | 15 responses so far
yellojkt Apr 30th 2010 at 09:37 am 1
It’s still too confusing to understand and I’ve read both The Big Short and this cartoon.
Cidu Bill Apr 30th 2010 at 09:54 am 2
yellojkt, I never claimed to really understand it all either.
Molly J Apr 30th 2010 at 10:28 am 3
This American Life on NPR did an “The Giant Pool of Money” and a couple of follow up episodes later called “Pool of Money Revisited” or something like that. That’s the closest I’ve gotten to a rational explanation of what the hell happened.
You can listen to the first one here: http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/355/the-giant-pool-of-money
BetterBanon Apr 30th 2010 at 10:50 am 4
Did anyone else notice the synchronicity between this and this: http://www.gocomics.com/nonsequitur/2010/04/29/
Kevin Madden Apr 30th 2010 at 11:15 am 5
The Frontline episode “Inside the Meltdown” did a pretty good job of explaining things as well, I thought.
Elyrest Apr 30th 2010 at 12:22 pm 6
I don’t totally understand this one, but it is masterful and funny as all get out. The Non Sequitur is nicely synchronious BetterBanon.
paperboy Apr 30th 2010 at 02:27 pm 7
I’m no Paul Krugman, (more of an “Alan Greenspan” since Economics is kinda baffling to me) but it seems the current “Financial System” is confusing on purpose, for the same reason a 3-Card Monte dealer makes it confusing to find the red card.
What may make it harder to grasp is that maybe people keep trying to see a “value” produced at the end of all “Dispursement Allocation Swaps”, “Benefit Alteration Capsules” and “Incentive Asset Relocations” (as Lloyd Dangle calls them). If you look at it as gambling with other people’s money, the other aspects become a bit more understandable.
MikeK Apr 30th 2010 at 05:15 pm 8
PolitiFact.com confirms that 15 years ago the assets of the 6 largest banks was 17% of GDP but now those assets total 63% of GDP! No wonder the CEOs appear before Congress with a “Yeah, whatever” attitude.
Robert May 1st 2010 at 01:12 am 9
“We own all your weapon, we own all your shoes/
We own all your generals/ touch us and you’ll lose.
Morporkia! Morporkia! Morporkia owns the day!
We can rule you wholesale - touch us and you’ll pay.”
(from Terry Pratchett’s wondrous ‘Discworld’ series - the Ankh-Morpork national anthem)
Cidu Bill May 1st 2010 at 01:16 am 10
Oh. “We own all your generals.” Let’s not discuss how I misread that at first.
Winter Wallaby May 1st 2010 at 04:49 am 11
+1 on MollyJ’s “Giant Pool of Money.” Very good.
chuckers May 1st 2010 at 05:34 am 12
@Cidu Bill #10
You say that as if your misreading would have been incorrect. Certainly fits in the context.
John in Tronna May 1st 2010 at 08:13 am 13
All your weapon are belong to us?
Usual John May 1st 2010 at 11:13 pm 14
The Wall Streeters’ SSO (soul securities obligation) contracts were fraudulent. They sold their securities souls to the street, but the same souls previously had been sold to the devil. Also, their original sale of souls to the devil was a primary obligation. It wouldn’t have been combined with an SDS derivative obligation (the soul default swap) on an SSO that hadn’t been created yet.
Andrea May 10th 2010 at 08:23 pm 15
Robert’s post reminded me of the Broadway song “Bet Against the American Dream,” which was commissioned for a recent episode of the public radio program “This American Life.”
See the song being performed at http://vimeo.com/10815824