Monday Morning

Colts lost. Pretty sure the biggest turning point in the game was that I had picked the Colts to win. The onside kick and the interception return for a touchdown were big, but you can overcome that kind of mistake. What you can't overcome are the cosmic forces involved when I wager on a game. Oh yeah, congrats to the Saints, that's a nice story. So, onto some interesting links.

"The unpalatable reality that few, self interested industry participants are prepared to admit is that much of what passes for financial innovation is specifically designed to conceal risk, obfuscate investors and reduce transparency. The process is entirely deliberate. Efficiency and transparency is not consistent with the high profit margins on Wall Street and the City. Financial products need to be opaque and priced inefficiently to produce excessive profits." That's Satyajit Das from his recent blog post on the current proposal to regulative derivatives. He's considered an expert on CDS'.

This is pretty interesting. Graph of how many second mortgages are held by large financial institutions and why that complicates any plan to modify first mortgages. I was not aware that the Big Four held such a high percentage.

Fire department's charging for services. Pretty outrageous if you ask me. I think this does raise a lot of questions about spending priorities and crowding out of certain priorities.

Looks like over 100 million people watched the Super Bowl. Crazy. The NFL is so much more popular than any other sport in the US. I wonder how fans will react if the anticipated breakdown between the owners and the NFLPA comes to pass. I mean people did not really care when the NHL pulled this, and they cared about it a bit when baseball did it, but neither of those sports are anywhere close to the NFL in popularity or ratings.

Nurse to Stand Trial for Reporting Doctor. The sheriff in this story should be fired.

Glad everyone got so riled up about that Tebow ad. By the way, I don't get offended like some people do by the Super Bowl ads and their supposed misogyny, but I am pretty sick and tired "be a man" type ads. They are annoying, usually unfunny, insulting to both sexes, and tired. If they were funny I could live with the other stuff.