{"id":165,"date":"2008-10-12T13:47:36","date_gmt":"2008-10-12T20:47:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.josemarquez.com\/xsml\/archives\/165"},"modified":"2008-10-12T13:47:36","modified_gmt":"2008-10-12T20:47:36","slug":"ponies","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.josemarquez.com\/etc\/2008\/10\/12\/ponies\/","title":{"rendered":"ponies"},"content":{"rendered":"

Imagine if you borrowed money from a hundred investors to bet big on a horse race. And then, as the race was underway, and your horse was trailing by a head, your backers decided to collect on their loans, with interest, one by one. Would you still stand to win even if your horse did?<\/p>\n

Noting that investment banks are organized gambling, James Surowiecki<\/a> points out that for investment banks, “going public…meant exposing themselves to a minute-by-minute referendum…on the health of their operations.” Which is to be expected, he adds, since they were betting with other people’s money.<\/p>\n

In the same issue of the New Yorker, Nick Paumgarten<\/a> describes credit-default swaps and related instruments as the products of magical thinking. <\/p>\n

It might be a good time for an adaptation of The Rocking-Horse Winner<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Imagine if you borrowed money from a hundred investors to bet big on a horse race. And then, as the race was underway, and your horse was trailing by a head, your backers decided to collect on their loans, with interest, one by one. Would you still stand to win even if your horse did?…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[13],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.josemarquez.com\/etc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/165"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.josemarquez.com\/etc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.josemarquez.com\/etc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.josemarquez.com\/etc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.josemarquez.com\/etc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=165"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.josemarquez.com\/etc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/165\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.josemarquez.com\/etc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=165"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.josemarquez.com\/etc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=165"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.josemarquez.com\/etc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=165"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}