Proof that Starbucks is just Hype

I have never liked coffee from Starbucks. It always tasted burnt to me. And now they just demonstrated they are just hype. They are now introducing instant coffee and saying that it is just as good as the original.

Random Thought for the Day

I've been pretty bad at posting here--mainly because I've been doing too much on Facebook. Nonetheless, I have a few things I've been kicking around which I would like to post.

Here's one: the Democrats' arguments for pushing for birth control spending sound just like Republicans' arguments against immigration. Both seek to keep undesirables out of the country, and both worry about the drag of these undesirables on the economy. However, in the long run, both are wrong.

All of my Pasts Thrust into the Immediacy of Now.

In others words, I have become active on Facebook.

Everything I ever needed to know I learned in kindergarten (mortgage securities edition)

Most people probably remember the game "telephone" from when they were young. In this game, one person started out with a message. The message was passed from one person to the next, through everyone in the room. By the end, the message was completely garbled.

This process of information attenuation I believe explains a lot of what has happened in the mortgage market. The brokers at one end of the mortgage chain had all the information about the true status of the loans. The loans were sold to wholesalers, who had less information about the loans but still a lot of it. The loans went to banks, who with less information than the wholesalers packaged them as securities. The purchasers of those securities had even less information about how crappy the loans were. To top it off, AIG and others got into the business of insuring these loans (the "reverse credit swaps") with even less information than the security holders had.

What decentralization of the mortgage industry has done is to add many more layers at which information could be lost. The effects are clear.

This effect can be seen in many more places in business. As someone mentioned a few days ago, long-term forecasting is a very dicey proposition. The people who run the forecasts generally know how much error is in the forecasts. However, the people who do the forecasting are not the ones who make decisions based on those forecasts. Instead, the forecasts pass through one or (more likely) several layers of management. By going through these layers, the error levels are lost, especially since there will be one or more layers at which people do not understand the errors (the Tower of Babel problem again). By the time decisions are made, the subtlety is lost, and decisions are made based on less information. Management decisions are always based on the numbers they have. A quantified risk/reward will always dominate over an unquantified one.

2009

It's here already? Who authorized that?

The Last 5 1/2 months

On the way to work:

14,380 miles total driven.
8,500 times XM dial changed.
$1757.13 for gasoline purchased.
538 gallons of gasoline purchased.
258 hours in the Toyota Camry spent.
114 wild turkeys in one day's drive seen.
80 long days the endless drive was taken.
46 times fast food on the rood purchased.
24 inches of snow overcome, survived.
13 different routes on the way taken.
12 paychecks thankfully received.
4 jaywalking people avoided.
1 speeding ticket received.
0 animals killed.
0 accidents.

Lyrics for Today

Got the idea to post lyrics from here. December here has been merciless. Snow after snow after snow--and it's only the 9th. This song seems to fit the national mood right now, and I've been listening to it over and over the last week.

A Long December, Counting Crows

A long December and there's reason to believe
Maybe this year will be better than the last
I can't remember the last thing that you said as you were leaving
Now the days go by so fast

And it's one more day up in the canyons
And it's one more night in Hollywood
If you think that I could be forgiven
I wish you would

The smell of hospitals in winter
And the feeling that it's all a lot of oysters, but no pearls
All at once you look across a crowded room
To see the way that light attaches to a girl

And it's one more day up in the canyons
And it's one more night in Hollywood
If you think you might come to California
I think you should

Drove up to Hillside Manor sometime after two a.m.
And talked a little while about the year
I guess the winter makes you laugh a little slower,
Makes you talk a little lower about the things you could not show her

And it's been a long December and there's reason to believe
Maybe this year will be better than the last
I can't remember all the times I tried to tell my myself
To hold on to these moments as they pass

And it's one more day up in the canyon
And it's one more night in Hollywood
It's been so long since I've seen the ocean
I guess I should.


Here's the video (it's not allowed to be embedded).