Wednesday, April 30, 2008

Junk Food

Participating in the current financial markets is like eating junk food — an act of profound faith, or at least of willful ignorance ... Take the mortgage-backed securities at the center of this crisis — in which thousands of mortgages were blended together, sliced into pieces, and then sold to millions of investors. Compared to the traditional mortgage lent out by a single bank to a single investor, these are the pizza-flavored low-fat Pringles to a baked potato. (via)

This is my new favorite metaphor for the market meltdown. It opens up vast econo-tropes. What's the financial equivalent of eating local organic? Are we struggling with a financial obesity epidemic? And this makes Suze Orman and Jack LaLanne roughly the same person, right?


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