Leveraging and more

Yes, as we did with fiction and finance, we can also look at the oops related to leveraging. At one time, leveraging was consider not smart. Think of it, would you offer a large loan without any collateral (that you could verify in value) for some hair-brained scheme (how do you know how to evaluate the scheme? well, this is where skeptical thinking and experience come in).

So, in trying to catch up with the madness (having left school 30+ years ago and frankly not paying attention to the activities of idiots with money), reading like mad, watching results being analyzed (usually, the analysis was trifling and without substance), and considering how all this madness got started (related to age old issue, I know), on several occasions it was necessary to look at what it means to pile up debt.

As an aside, in Wichita, Hawker Beechcraft is loaded with debt from their split from Raytheon. The step of going IPO in order to spread the hurt, in little pieces, to others has not happened, yet. That whole game needs to be looked at, too. Hawker has a maintenance cost of 0.2B yearly; that must smart. No amount of belt-tightening or smart maneuvers can retire that level of debt. No, it requires the facilities of a market (who would want to buy?).

Leverage and truth -- March 25 . Looked at the underlying theoretics, which are usually fairly dismal in economics (the name fits perfectly). Ah, reinsurance is mentioned. Yes, didn't everyone think that risk was spread ad infinitum (Berkeley would love it!). And, then we have AIG, do we not?

Leverage and truth II -- March 31. Ah yes, the market dogma. It is touted by those whose pockets get lined immensely. Then, we have those who argue not zero-sum (hah!). What we'll have to do here is show that the best that we can do is near zero-sum.

Leverage and truth III -- May 19. Even by this time, I wasn't ready to accept all the idiotic changes to lessons from the 30s. We need to somehow make it clear that the CitiBank guy was wrong (Weill - well, he has his money) - Marx actually has a better take. Oh well.

Leveraging and oops -- May 19. So, we know that the financial community went out on the limb with leveraging. Do we not know that outsourcing (of certain varieties) is a type of leveraging? One problem with the engineering outsource is that of keeping it real (oops of this nature were coincidental to the start of this blog) and avoiding happy thinking. (Note 11/01/2008 - Well, now, Boeing is claiming insights about the possible banes of outsourcing.)

To the hilt -- August 19. Yes, like any addiction, the thing of going out on a limb grabs and does not allow one to let go. Evidently, to look at how smart people start to look like idiots. Of course, we really need to look at some physical binding (not gabbing) for money, that is other than a precious metal.

The idea here is to not just gab (that is the current basis) but to get technical and specific. After all, engineering computing handles similar issues, including the need to resolve several types of issues related to modeling, verification, and validation.

Oh, yes, the economy seems to be run like a real-time game. How do we get some notion of rigor applied? Well, it's not by chasing money.

Remarks:

05/30/2012 -- As covered by flightblogger.

05/04/2012 -- A recent filing relates to this theme.

04/03/2011 -- Need to look at some background. Too, tranche and trash.

03/17/2011 -- Politicos might actually be compounding the issues.

12/23/2010 -- Do oops continue to emerge?

07/23/2009 -- After the bust and the rebound, toxic assets are still a problem due to tranche realities.

12/18/2008 -- Leveraging, in and of itself, is not bad.

Modified: 05/30/2012