Monthly Archives: October 2007

Optimism

Credit crunches and buildings fall. The world turns upside down and things we used to count on become the dreams we wish we still had. The sounds of happiness and laughter drift into sounds of yelling and despair and all that we used to hope for gets trapped in dissonance and angst. Call it a bill and obligation or a future hoped for in vain. All these images arise across a country of golden ambers aflame in overzealous pursuit of the dream. I keep hoping we will wake up and see daisies and lilies and sunshine. I think we can.

Message From Someone In Need

I got this message today from a friend here at school. Please read this note.

Hello,

My name is Avi Kremer. Three years ago I was a normal, healthy 29-year old. Then I was diagnosed with ALS, also known as Lou Gehrig’s disease. Now I am confined to a wheelchair, and I can barely use my hands. ALS is rapidly destroying all of my physical functions. The disease is fatal and there is no cure. Unless we find one, I will die within three years.

Last year I joined forces with friends and top researchers in the field to found Prize4Life, an innovative non-profit organization that is already removing the obstacles that stand in the way of a cure. But we need your help. We are asking you to give $1 at www.dollar4life.org and to spread the word about our unique campaign. It is your support more than your money that is important – we aim to demonstrate how a large number of small donations can result in meaningful impact. The power of one, times a million, can help us find a cure.

If you choose to give $1 and to tell your friends about the Dollar4Life campaign, if you put the information on your blog and on your website, if people see it and they give and tell people too, then that $1 will quickly become $100 and then $1,000 and eventually $1 million. That $1 million could save my life and the lives of the 500,000 people around the world who have ALS.

Please go to www.dollar4life.org to make your donation. Each donation will light up a pixel in the portrait gallery of ALS patients on the website. We hope that with your help we will light up one million pixels and brighten the life prospects of ALS patients everywhere.

To learn more about the Dollar4Life campaign and Prize4Life*, the organization that will receive the full amount of every donation, please visit www.dollar4life.org. If you would like to contribute with a check, please make it payable to Prize4Life, Inc. and address it to P.O. Box 381708, Cambridge, MA 02238-1708.

Thank you,

Avi

The Understatement of The Year

Greenspan Sees `Rethinking’ on CDOs After Losses

Although the equity markets regained their footing and have now surpassed the peak set this summer, the credit markets continue to be in difficult shape, highlighted by Citigroup’s announcement yesterday that they will take a huge loss based on writing down some of their credit assets.

I try not to be a cynic, but the more I think about this, the more it looks like the froth in the equity markets is benefitting the have’s (i.e. the slice of American’s who can afford to have a piece of this pie), while the have-nots are continuing to be left in the dust of a crumbling real estate market with their dollars depreciating against not only currencies of countries they may never visit, but also against stuff like oil, wheat, and platinum.

If this is true it comports with the concept of the rich having power over Washington and through that power the Fed…

But it also comports with the idea that the increased leverage in the system makes the equity markets more volatile – on both the upside and the downside – so that what we are seeing now is a volatile move in reaction to the base stimulus provided by the Fed.

I have never claimed to be able to predict the next move in something like the Dow or Nasdaq, so I won’t start yet…I just think if Greenspan is only now acknowledging CDO’s may have to be revised, we have a long time until the system digests just how bad things got in the credit markets. Some big investors tend to agree: Fed Fails to Restore Creditor Confidence, Pimco Says