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.It is bad enough when CDOs, derivatives, and other instruments aresold to such institutions in the process transferring risk from NewOlympian operators to, in effect, the general public.But at least therewas some risk to transfer in the first place, however wrongfully we maybelieve that risk was generated.But in this case, the risks against whichit supposedly hedges do not exist.The product itself is the sole risk.How many of these instruments are out there and what trigger willexpose their real market value as being as badly impaired as that ofthe CDOs?In summary, the New Olympians used financial deregulation fromthe 1970s onward to asset-strip countries such as Britain, whose long-term current account position deteriorated more or less consistently188 the gods that failedsince the 1980s.With returns on our own productive assets and evenon our service businesses and overseas investments inadequate interms of paying our way in the world, borrowed money has poured in,in the expectation that our New Olympians will be able to generatehigher than average returns.In order to do so, the Olympians havehad to make very much riskier bets; effectively, they have turned theUK into a vast hedge fund.Having assumed all this risk, theOlympians then used financial engineering to make it disappearagain, with the result that banks, pension funds, and others havefound themselves stuffed with toxic securities.Looked at in this light, the New Olympians activities have beenand continue to be absolutely terrifying, as are the already realizedand the anticipated consequences.chapter 8-Last Tango on Wall StreetThe Fall of the  American Miracle Pay? It s a word I seldom use.I have a rule in life, never pay whatyou can talk your way out of. Phil Silvers ShowWhether a bubble or a froth, the party was winding down by late2005, when first-time buyers began to find prices increasingly out ofreach.The heady days when buyers paid above offering price tobid away a house were over.Sellers offering prices held up, but buy-ers pulled their bids.Sales volumes according fell sharply for bothnew and existing homes.The boom was over. alan greenspan, The Age of TurbulenceSlam! So it wasn t a game? david bowie,  Watch That Mann the film Trading Places, Randolph and Mortimer Duke are two el-Iderly, crooked commodity brokers who, while seeking to fix themarket for frozen orange juice, strike a bet that it would be possiblefor a small-time hustler from the ghetto to replace the obnoxiousyuppie running their company.What is interesting about the film today apart from the absurdlylow sums involved when the plan goes predictably awry is that the189190 the gods that failedDukes and their fellow financiers seem to spend more time lollingaround in the wood-panelled luxury of their Philadelphia club thanthey do actually making decisions that might make them money.Tothe filmgoer of today, Trading Places may appear to represent a worldthat no longer exists.New Olympians get up early and go to bed latebecause they operate in 24/7 markets that never sleep.Their Black-Berrys are with them night and day, blinking out the command to an-swer an email that might make or break a deal.To be sure, they earnthe sort of packages in a year that ordinary mortals could not dreamof taking home in a lifetime, but the money is the reward for incisivedecision making and sheer hard graft.In fact, the New Olympians response to the financial crisis of2007 and 2008 suggests that not much has changed since Jon Landismade Eddie Murphy a star in his film more than two decades ago.Life was pretty much what it had been for Wall Street s leisured classa century before, as documented by magazines devoted to the glorifi-cation of conspicuous consumption.Life for New York s wealthy wasas good as it had been since the days of Vanderbilt, Rockefeller, andMorgan.Where once the rich would not think twice about hiring asymphony orchestra to serenade a newborn baby, so today the NewOlympians, eager to show that they are both hip and loaded ratherthan merely nouveau riche, may ring around to see if Elton John, per-haps even the Rolling Stones, care to earn $5 million by playing at abash for their wife or daughter [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]