July 30, 2010 Routine, Financial crisis and the meaning of life

It has been said that 95% of life is routine. Some people call this a rut and others view and a comfort zone. No doubt there is comfortableness and familiarity in a routine. Does it make you less of a person or somehow unfulfilled if you stay in a rut. Sometimes the rut is very comforting especially when compared to a rough ride outside of the rut.

Today's conversation was rut filled and routine. How was the vacation? Good. Too short. How's the running program? Not good, achilles tendon still hurts. How about yours? Pretty good. i ran 4 this morning.

My friend has a trial coming up soon. The issues involve an unusal aspect of the underinsured motorist act that deals with workmen's comp liens. An issue that only two lawyers would ever be caught discussing. In a weird twist of the law a person could end of paying twice for the workmen's comp medical bills.

We discussed Michael Lewis's book, The Big Short. I have read many of the books on the financial crisis and this was one of the better ones. As a confirmed free market capitalist I am opposed to government intervention but if anything could convince me that it is sometimes needed it may be the recent financial crisis. After reading Lewis' book it is hard to come away with any conclusion other than the bankers were creating complex financial instruments for the sole purpose of increasing their profits. While financial innovation is necessary and beneficial to a global economy there is no justification for the synthetic CDOs and CDSs that were created. It appears that all of the investment bankers, e.g. Goldman Sachs, etc were at best duplicitous and at worst fraudulent when they started playing both sides of the CDO and CDS market. The focus of Lewis' book is two eccentric financial gurus who saw the coming crisis and made a fortune by shorting the mortgage backed instruments. However, the tragedy is not that those two guys made loads of money but that all the people who created the fake financial instruments; e.g. the Goldman Sachs folks, etc also made boatloads of money, were bailed out by the government and have never had to face the consequences for their irresponsible decisions.

Kafka is credited with the shortest description of the meaning of life. He reported said that "the meaning of life is that it ends". After reading Lewis' book i would describe more as "life sucks and then you die".