After all it's not often one lives to see an event that our mathematical models predict can only occur once in 73-603 trillion billion years!

http://www.eurointelligence.com/article.581+M5f21b8d26a3.0.html

Gives new meaning to the saying "You don't see that everyday!"  So now it is safe & right to sneer at the disgraced "quants"

http://www.wilmott.com/blogs/paul/index.cfm/2008/11/17/Actuaries-Versus-Quants

The math got very very intricate and also very very wrong.

Currently my own wacky little model is predicting an upswing in Q3 2009.  But maybe that's the outcome that won't happen for another few hundred billion years! 

I'm going long on pencils and apples.

(Dedicated to Ellen and Quinn)

Fiat Interview

"We tried every trick in the book".

The Fiat CEO believes we are heading toward a world with as few as 6 automakers.   Right now the 3-month treasuries are trading at negative interest as everyone, including most likely the TARP recipients, flee to a safe harbor.  Congress needs to seriously reconsider its planned holiday recess.  After all, this kind of global economic earthquake doesn't occur very often.

Despite all that gloom, there are a dwindling minority of us optimists who still believe we are going to recover sooner than not.  But the world in one year may look a little like the end-state floating tree in Hayao Miyazaki's Castle in the Sky, denuded of an awful lot of commercial accretions.  And if the experimental economics lab results are right, we will just wind up creating another bubble to follow this one.  It seems to be in our nature.

So this party is over, but it won't be long before we start putting together the next one.