Thursday, October 30, 2008

Real-state market

When real-state price is falling many investors/buyers tend to wait until it falls further. This hurts the economy. As a result the market falls further because some people need to sell at lower price.
Why not, create a new deal that you sell at today's price but contract with the buyer that in a year or two if the house price index has fallen by a certain percentage (you keep that in an escrow but collect interest) then you refund that % to the buyer. There is no point in waiting. The market moves in a self organized way (not by government intervention) and the market stops falling and you may not have to refund anything. This could be a new type of contract which creates possibility of win-win situation.

Tuesday, October 21, 2008

Credit crisis as Antarctic expedition

Another wonderful whiteboard presentation by Paddy Hirsch. This time he describes the credit crisis as Antarctic expedition.


The credit crisis as Antarctic expedition from Marketplace on Vimeo.

Saturday, October 11, 2008

Financial crisis - CDOs explained in 6 minutes

I have posted cartoons used for visualization of financial crisis here before. However nothing is faster and sticker than a 6 minutes white board presentation. Marketplace Senior Editor Paddy Hirsch simplify and visualize the problem at the white board in a 6-minute presentation he calls Financial Crisis 101: CDOs explained.

Thursday, October 09, 2008

Just in case education

Think back of most of what you learned in high school. How much chemistry or biology you use in your life? We learn those things just in case if you become a medical student or biologist one day. Unfortunately most of the topics at schools are like that. However if you want to learn how to dynamically include a snippet of HTML in your page - you will learn something that sticks to your brain just in time.

Just in case learning is a huge waste in our education system. Can someone teach kids test driven and context-driven material so that they know why a topic can add value to their life?