Forrest Gump explins the crisis

louixo · Jan 14, 2009

Mortgage Backed Securities are like boxes of chocolates. Criminals on Wall Street stole a few chocolates from the boxes and replaced them with turds. Their criminal buddies at Standard & Poor rated these boxes AAA Investment Grade chocolates. These boxes were then sold all over the world to investors. Eventually somebody bites into a turd and discovers the crime. Suddenly nobody trusts American chocolates anymore worldwide.

Hank Paulson now wants the American taxpayers to buy up and hold all these boxes of turd-infested chocolates for $700 billion dollars until the market for turds returns to normal. Meanwhile, Hank's buddies, the Wall Street criminals who stole all the good chocolates are not being investigated, arrested, or indicted.

Mama always said: 'Sniff the chocolates first, Forrest'.

Quote of the day from a fund manager:

"This is worse than a divorce... I've lost half of my net worth and I still have my wife.."

The bailout, a different perspective

Back in 1990, the Government seized the Mustang Ranch brothel in Nevada for tax evasion and, as required by law, tried to run it. They failed and it closed. Now we are trusting the economy of our country to a pack of nit-wits who couldn't make money running a house of ill repute and selling booze?

Turtle · Jan 14, 2009

A particularly stellar example of why most Bloggers shouldn't be allowed to Blog. Most Bloggers are just plain stupid is as stupid does. The Forrest Gump analogy is an excruciatingly bad one. Aside from the fact that Mortgage Back securities are not like a box of chocolate, because with a box of chocolates you don't find that someone has stolen some of the chocolates and replaced them with turds, Gump was all about simplicity in everything, his life and his explanations of it. Such an explanation as the one above, with turds and criminals and convoluted correlations between biting into a surprise turd and not trusting American chocolates is one that Forrest Gump couldn't come up with no matter how long he spent on a shrimp boat.

In addition, this Blogger seems to think that this crisis is America's doing, talking about people not trusting American investment, while not realizing that the same thing was and is happening all over the place. Europe, Austrialia, even South America, they all have had the same over-priced housing bubble and loads of high risk loans to cover it all. And the bubble burst.

Then, if stupid is as stupid does couldn't get any stupider, he tosses out the Mustang Ranch example of how the federal government can't do anything right. We have enough real examples of that without having to make one up. The Mustang Ranch was forfeited to the US government in 1999 after losing a tax fraud case that also involved racketeering and conspiracy. The Ranch was closed the same day, and has never reopened. The interior furnishing were auctioned off in 2002, and in 2003 the Bureau of Land Management auctioned off the buildings on eBay. The buildings were moved to another location 5 miles away at the Wild Horse Adult Resort and Spa, and after a lengthy court battle the new owner won the rights to the Mustang Ranch name, and has since began doing business in the new location under that name, where both the Wild Horse and Mustang ranch sit side-by-side.

One of the worst things about the Internet is: people read it, they believe it. And it gives morons a credible voice because of it.

layoutshooter · Jan 15, 2009

Don't let the facts get in the way of things, Turtle. That is a good way to mess up our education system. We really can't have just plain facts taught in schools. Then we would have informed voters and the government as we know it now would go away. They like 'Stupid is as stupid does". Layoutshooter

louixo · Jan 15, 2009

Don`t forget that it`s a humorous analogy, not Pulitzer journalism.

cheri1122 · Jan 15, 2009

Even so, some in the peanut gallery are discerning, with little tolerance for stupidity (no matter how erudite it sounds), and some are just nit pickers. I won't assign people to pigeonholes,
but I will add that author Winston Groom never had Forrest's Mama telling him to "sniff the chocolates first", ok?

aristotle · Jan 16, 2009

Bad analogy. Poor taste. Not funny. The use of vulgarisms is so unnecessary.

Turtle · Jan 16, 2009

Nothing against Louixo, of course.

I'm assuming he didn't write it. I do enjoy his posts.

It's just that it's a really bad analogy, and what started off to be humorous (the Forrest Gump premise) failed miserably because the Blogger didn't have any intelligence behind the humorous premise. There are many things that can make something funny. One of them is sticking as close to the truth as possible, but this one didn't do that, even though he made a lame attempt to do so. He changed the facts, made up his own to fit his premise. That never works. The first line is funny, because you know what's coming next. As in,

Mortgage Backed Securities are like boxes of chocolates. You never know what you're gonna get.

That's funny. And if he'd have left it alone it would have stayed funny. But the very next line it went from funny to stupid-angry, and instantly lost the Forrest Grump premise. The rest of it is just ignorant, angry, and someone with no sense of humor, other than toilet humor, trying too hard to be funny.

Most of these mortgaged backed securities are like a box of chocolates, because you really don't know what you're gonna get. But when he starts talking about people replacing chocolates with turds, and then buying them all up while waiting for the turd market to come back (there's no market fort turds, trust me), it all falls apart.

Some of the chocolates in the box are good, some not so much. I've had a few that would gag a shark. But not once have I bit into a turd replacement.

Vulgarities can be funny, when uttered in the right context. There's nothing inherently funny about a turd (although that's a pretty funny statement right there). The same analogy, written less ignoratnly and less angrily could be written just as bittingly scathing, if it was spoken by, say, Larry The Cable Guy, and it could be very funny. But this is just angry, and there's certainly nothing funny about an angry turd, as the Blogger proves. Because, well, you know, turd is as turd does.

louixo · Jan 17, 2009

I saw only humor in this post, which is the reason I posted it. I didn`t analyze it for political correctness, I just laughed and passed it on. It seems others didn`t feel that way. Now I`m sorry I posted it. As Johny carson used to say when a joke bombed "they can`t all be gems". That quote may be appropriate here.

Moot · Jan 17, 2009

louixo said:
As Johny carson used to say when a joke bombed "they can`t all be gems". That quote may be appropriate here.

Another quote comes to mind and is in keeping with the potty humor theme: "that went over like a turd in the punch bowl."

cheri1122 · Jan 17, 2009

You know, Louixo, even with the rare dud (and if Johnny Carson could bomb, you're in good company), your batting avg at finding the gems is still WAAAAY above average.....thanks for all the real giggles you bring.