Uh Oh…It’s 1982 Again!

What the heck is going on at Goldman?

Happy Independence Day

Happy 4th of July! Here’s a cool video, care of CrunchGear, produced by a Japanese band called Sour. They enlisted their fans to create a cool music video with webcams.

What Is A Browser?

The Google office in NY asked people on the street to define “browser.” I’m shocked (link care of Techcrunch).

Mirror at NotesToSelf

Finance Primer Round-Up

Here’s a round-up of some “primer” posts I’ve either written or linked, for convenient reference.

“Yet Another CDO Primer” Videos:

Ep 1: Basic Intuition

Ep 2: Economic motivations and PPIP

Posts:
Delta and Mark-to-Market. This has been NoteToSelf’s most popular post, by far. It explains the basic intuition behind expected loss and delta for synthetic tranches.

Fixed Coupon is the same as CDX. The “Big Bang” made for standardization of CDS coupons. Not a big deal if you understand how the CDX index works (explained in the post).

My Liability Is Your Asset. An initial reaction to Simon Johnson’s piece in the Atlantic. A bit of a ramble.

Mark To Market vs. Mark To Model. A link to Rortybomb’s explanation of this concept.

Financial Crisis for Beginners. A link to Baseline Scenario’s mega-link page of helpful articles on the current crisis.

Red Cameras

I’ve been following the development of uber camera Red One and its siblings for a while now, and it continues to amaze. I have nothing to do with the movie industry and certainly could never justify buying even the “budget” Red Scarlet. Nevertheless, the hype artistry of former Oakley exec and Red founder Jim Jannard is backed-up by real technical innovation, making for some powerful gadget-freak catnip. Here’s a short video of how the cameras are being used in practice, blurring the line between video and high-fidelity photography (link care of Gizmodo).