--- In [email protected], "do.rflex" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > > > Video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SJ_qK4g6ntM >
********* >From salon.com An excerpt, minus John Fortune's extraordinary deadpans and hilarious eyebrows: BIRD: Ah yes, the so-called subprime situation. FORTUNE: How does that work exactly? BIRD: Well, imagine if you can, an unemployed black man sitting on a crumbling porch somewhere in Alabama, and a chap comes along and says would you like to buy this house before it falls down, and why don't you let me lend you the money? FORTUNE: And is this chap who says this a banker? BIRD: Oh no no, he's a mortgage salesman. His income depends entirely on the number of mortgages he can arrange. FORTUNE: So his judgement to arrange mortgages is completely objective. BIRD: Completely objective, yes. FORTUNE: And what happens next? BIRD: Well this debt, these mortgages, are taken by a bank and packaged together with a lot of other similar debts -- FORTUNE: Without going into much detail about what actually -- BIRD: Without going into any detail at all. It's far too boring. And so this debt moves onto Wall Street, and it's absolutely extraordinary what happens there: somehow this package of dodgy debts stops being a package of dodgy debts and starts being what we call a structured investment vehicle. FORTUNE: And then someone like you comes along and buys it. BIRD: I buy it, yes. And then I ring up someone in Tokyo and say I've got this package, do you want to buy it? And they say what's in it? And I say I haven't got the faintest idea and they say how much do you want for it and I say a hundred million dollars and they say fine, that's it. And that's the market FORTUNE: And presumably, that kind of thing can happen several times to the same package. And every time it does, of course, then you and someone like you will get a fee and a markup and so on. BIRD: A profit. Yes. Well you can't expect us to do it for nothing. It's hard work.
