Goose pulling

Friday was quite an interesting day.

It started with hot head phones on the bus. The guy is smoking! He was wearing these massive headphones too for his iPod I assume. I could not stop stealing glances at him. I got to th gym, did a complete half assed bike ride and sat in the steam room to try and get rid of my aches from the dojo- Kobra Kai, never die!

Next I got into an argument with the woman who sits next to me about Thursday's action. All of the exchanges said they experienced no system errors during the gut wrenching drop. Yet they all then decided to cancel trades during a certain time period as erroneous trades. WTF? That seems like a complete contradiction to me. If there were no system errors how could there be erroneous trades that need to be cancelled? I stated that and the woman next to me said the trades were clearly erroneous. I said explain to me how and why. She said if someone called a broker during that time and said sell my portfolio and they got those prices then they were in errors. I disagreed. The person entered a market order, that means sell it at the market at that point in time. If they did not want to they should have placed a limit on the orders. There is no error if you enter a market error and get a report at the market price. I told her yes there is an problem with the market structure but there were no erroneous trades. We basically agreed to disagree.

The TED spread is a lot like that character from Monty Python's Holy Grail- not quite dead. It has shown some worrisome signs lately.

I have come to the conclusion that this a repeat of the summer of '08. Greece is the equivalent of BSC, Spain is LEH, France is AIG and Germany is GS. What we learned from that was BSC should have failed, we should have saved LEH and that would have prevented or greatly mitigated AIG. So we need Greece to default and restructure, shore up Spain which will help France and Germany will still be the most prosperous Euro nation.

I really don't see how a $600 billions loan facility is going to help Europe. First, where the frack is the money coming from? Did they EU just collect all the loose change in the sofa cushions in Brussels? Are they going to issue debt- like we don't have enough in the world right now? (Which also presents problems as the EU has structural impediments to it issuing it's own debt and if they are passing the hat around to all the members- hello, they all have serious issues and now they need to kick in more money they don't have?), or will the rumored re-opening of swap lines with the Fed occur which means the Fed will print even more dollars and exchange them for euros so the EU can then monetize the sovereign debt of its members (i.e. WE are monetizing THEIR debt)? Breaking news- the Fed has reopened it's swap lines with the ECB, BOE and SNB...hmmm, guess we know how this is going to play out.

There has to be some universal law much like E=MC squared for financial risk. Much like energy can neither be created or destroyed, it seems like risk is the same. It can only be transferred or hidden it seems. Someone could probably win a Nobel Prize in economics if they create one.

Goose pulling is not what you think you perverts. It seems it was quite the sport for many men way back when. The goose would have it's head greased up, be hung upside down from a bar placed across two posts and then a man would ride a horse past it at a fast speed, attempt to grab the goose head and rip it off as he kept going by. It also seems to still be practiced in some countries in Europe but these days the goose is dead- how humane.

This weekend was interesting. I took the train down to central Jersey and ST picked me up at the station. He drove me to the house, I picked up the car and went home. Yes I was supposed to pick up the boys but they forgot they had committed to sleep over birthday parties. So I drove home, enjoyed a stag evening home. I got up early for a Saturday morning and drove down to pick up the boys. We had breakfast down there and then came back north. I needed a nap at that point. Then we had lunch, vegged out and made plans to go see Iron Man 2. The movie was pretty damn good. Saturday night was kind of late and we all slept very well.

This morning I got to sleep in until about 8:45. Breakfast with the boys, laundry, a run, showered and took the dogs (one at a time) in with me and gave them baths. Funny,the older one plays all tough but he was terrified- possibly having to see me nekkid did it to him, just saying. Lunch then some tv and then I dropped them back off at their mom's house. We of course had to stop on the way so they could get Mother's Day cards- which I paid for, lol.

I picked up the husband, home and then I made pork chops and applesauce for dinner.

Swimming tomorrow morning. The husband has book club.