Comic for Monday, March 16, 2009

Posted: 6:35 am, Monday, March 16th

2.0 and I are watching CBS Sunday Morning right now (yes, we watch CBS Sunday Morning), and there's a thing on Vegas being completely on the rocks what with the collapse of the global economy. This is convenient for us, because we're thinking of going to Vegas during my April break. I've been once before and got absolutely reamed gambling, so this time will be awesome - I will simply walk around and look at depressed people and maybe go see the Hoover Dam or something.

Speaking of CBS Sunday Morning, Charles Osgood is off this week, which feels kind of like a rip-off. Even worse, and this is where I once and for all out myself as a massive dork, David Brooks was on vacation this past Friday. It's not a proper Friday night NewsHour without commentary from Brooks and Shields. Shields and some random conservative from the Washington Post? That's not a proper Friday.

The mercury is inching ever upward in Brooklyn, and I actually got my bike out briefly in between stints of work for school. The wisdom of leaving the bike out on the deck all winter has made itself known with a nice little "krik krik" every pedal, and the chain jumped once, but I forced back on track. Fascinating, isn't it? This is why people in their 30s usually don't blog.

We watched - years after ripping it from Netflix - Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room the other night. Remember Enron? Man, those were the days. Anyway, fucking fascinating movie, because it basically telegraphs the shitstorm we're in now. Basically everything Enron pulled is everything everyone else has pulled (modified slightly for some of the banks). Also, it's funny to see how many of the banks going under were funding Enron and their ingenius "mark to market" reporting on their balance sheet. (Or wherever you chalk that up - the point to mark to market is, if you don't know, you report all future expected earnings when the deal is signed, regardless of how much cash actually comes in. It's like, say that I'm running this site as a money maker, and to my investors, I report that, on start-up, I'm making Penny-Arcade-type cash. Because I'm a webcomic and they're a webcomic, so it makes sense, right? I assume this whole thing was established to help small businesses keep creditors at bay by being able to vouch for future earnings? Someone who has taken a single business class in their lifetime, feel free to jump in.) Anyway, while the corporate douchebaggery of Enron may seem almost quaint at this point, the assholeness of Kenny Boy, Skilling, their CFO Fastow and this creepy Asian dude whose name is pronounced Pie (missed the spelling) holds up well in any epoch.

Speaking of the economy, Jon Stewart really took Cramer to the woodshed. I feel a little bad, because Cramer seems like an alright guy, but that video Stewart keeps going to really is damning.

Let's drop a few trailers and call it a day here. Drag Me To Hell marks Sam Raimi's return to terror. I suppose it's been since Evil Dead 2 that he's actually worked in horror, since Army of Darkness was really more of a spoof than anything else. Anyway, I'd like to see a good horror flick - the last I caught must've been 28 Weeks Later - so I hope this doesn't blow.

Gore-Tex just got a spotlight for being an awesome place to work. It's because everyone remains dry there - the water, it beads. It beads.

I've not read Mysteries of Pittsburgh, although Wonder Boys is probably my second-favorite Chabon (Kavalier and Clay is just the bomb)(Cavalier and Klay? whatever) and the film was a great adaptation. So I have high hopes for this.

Not like you'd expect anything else, but the Street Fighter movie that's out right now is supposedly brutal, and Chris Klein (the lax player from American Pie - Oz? something like that) is the most brutal part of it. Someone took the time to cut a highlight real of his awfulness. NASH OUT.

Alright, another week on the horizon. Let's do it.

bullfrog

51 -- Monday, March 16 2009, 09:56 am

Hey MNP, wasn't your bday over the weekend? Happy belated!

Enron's problem was they were recognizing revenue when it wasn't earned and were not matching it with corresponding expenses (both accounting 101 concepts). This is not what the banks are doing.

Mark to market was supposed to make disclosure more transparent and prevent hiding losses on the balance sheet. Accounting for investments has changed over time, but some investments you could hold at cost, some at market, and some at something in between. It has nothing to do with recognizing revenue when it's not earned.

One of the reasons that banks are in trouble is because they have securities that essentially have no market, so they value them based on models (mark to model). The models used to say the securities were worth 100, now it's saying they're worth 70, so the banks are taking losses.

All that being said, I haven't read the Enron book in awhile, and they had a few other problems, but i think their main problem was revenue recognition, not mark to market.

Also, I would say a good chunk of the mark to market losses have already been recognized. Now, it's rising defaults on mortgages, home equity loans, credit cards, commercial real estate, that are causing trouble. And none of those things are really related to the securitziation/mark to model problems.

I can't believe I am about to post this link... but I feel it is necessary after the bit about Chris Klein. You can thank gossip site loving partner for this knowledge... http://www.popsugar.com/4223

it sure was, thanks 51! Amazing how anti-climatic birthdays are at 31...

ND is a 2-seed in the NIT...go Irish! (well, take what you can get...)

http://grfx.cstv.com/photos/schools/nit/sports/m-nit/auto_pdf/Bracket.pdf

asdf, gracias. As I said (or alluded to), I've taken nary a business class in my happy little life, so when I say that the problems are the same, I'm referring to something generic like "douchey bookkeeping." I truly am glad for the knowledge of mark to model, though, and see the difference.

Five Bucks to Friday: A learning experience for all involved! Except the readers!

If you read Frogo's 2nd paragraph too quickly, you end up with, "Friday night without commentary from Brooke Shields."

Oddly, I can consider my Fridays totally complete without a discussion of postpartum depression.

By the way, how fucking weird were those VW ads with Brooke Shields talking about how people would have babies just to buy a VW? All I could think the whole time was, "This woman was suicidally depressed after giving birth. She's run the tots over with a VW."

The battle of Cluelessness and Obsession! Tough call!

Feel free to apply this remark to the comic, Enron and regulators, or the maybe even the NIT.

I think I called this - Seattle lost one of its papers today. The Post-Intelligencer (one of my favorite paper titles ever) is done with print.

http://www.avclub.com/articles/byebye-pi-final-edition-of-146yearold-seattle-news,25202/

Which next major market will lose a paper? I'm tempted to go with Detroit - I think they have two majors, right? - but I'm going to go dark horse and say one of the Texas papers.

Or Kansas City. They apparently laid off another 30 people today, including their books editor, and put the TV, art and movie critics on essentially half-time jobs. (Cue sob music: And with it, a portion of my childhood dies . . .)

At least Joe Posnanski is writing for Sports Illustrated now, so he has somewhere to go if the Star tanks.

I have to agree with Kansas City, although I thought they already laid off 30 people about three months ago including their award winning television critic. I think they'll be done by June.

After that it will be San Francisco, which will be left with no general daily newspaper. That will make Chris Matthews wax poetically about his time there.