Financial Thoughts . .

The Bing Blog took a very rare look at the current situation and I think that it is a very refreshing view.

Maybe all this misery is just payback

Now it seems a little vindictive and maybe the writer had a few problems with the market and the people that work with and around the market. However, it does point the finger at a group of people other than the big businesses. From the articles that I have read, the majority of articles and blogs seem to focus on the big businesses and what they are doing.

Lehman Bankruptcy: Bankruptcy laws under a Microscope

The Lehman bankruptcy problems seem to just be starting. Ultimately, this gigantic lending corporation declared bancruptcy yesterday morning and then the fun started.

“I think it’s a really scary time right now,” says Ed Morrison, a professor
and bankruptcy expert at Columbia Law School. (from the article referenced below)

Interestingly enough CNNMoney.com explains in a recent article that our law structure is setup to protect smaller entities from creditors, however for the larger beast that is Lehman it is designed to not be as protective. This is really the litmus test for these laws.

Smaller institutions get an automatic stay that basically freezes its debts like we saw with Delta recently, however Lehman will not get the same protection against many of its creditors.

In the article, Morrison goes on to explain that in 1978, and in amendments passed in 2005, most financial contracts — including securities contracts, swaps, repurchase agreements, commodities contracts, and forward trades — are unaffected by automatic stays. Worse still, as soon as Lehman’s parent corporation goes into bankruptcy, that event (under the contractual language governing most of these) triggers default, allowing the counterparty — the bank or other institution that entered into the deal with Lehman — to immediately accelerate or cancel the contract and seize whatever collateral may cover it.

Why? The thinking, Morrison explains, was that if an investment bank like Lehman ever failed, all its counterparties (like, say, a Bank of America) could extricate themselves immediately from Lehman’s troubles rather than getting mired in a bankruptcy proceeding. “They won’t be locked in and dragged down with Lehman,” Morrison says. The laws will — theoretically — minimize risk of market meltdown. (paraphrased from the article)

Ultimately, the stock market took a down turn and there is a lot of worry now about the price of oil and the housing market. Only time will tell if the trend will continue.

Awesome Halloween Costumes: Part 2

I am truly amazed by the human ability to invent things. Just looking for do it yourself Halloween costumes came up with more information than I could read in a week. After perusing this information looking for the diamonds in the rough, I have whittled it down to a few of the good ones.

It took me a minute to realize what this was, but it would be a cool project. The mask is not shown but I included the link below.

How to build an Ironman Arc Reactor.
How to build an Ironman Mask.













The previous project too easy for you? Try this complete make your own realistic werewolf costume.

How to build a realistic werewolf costume.
















The blog zzilch has a post about how they used to make their own costumes with a few very good links to easy and harder costumes.

Homemade Halloween Costumes on zzilch

Large Hadron Collider. . .

It appears that I misspelled the name of the "Doomsday" device that was supposed to wipe out life as we know it by testing black holes and thinks like that recently. I had it spelled as Halidron but I guess it should be Hadron. If you would like to know more about that device and don't mind reading scientific college textbook like PDF files feel free to follow the link below.

Halidron Collider Details - PDF file from CERN

An excerpt from the above file:

LHC stands for Large Hadron Collider. Large due to its size

(approximately 27 km in circumference), Hadron because it accelerates

protons or ions, which are hadrons, and Collider because

these particles form two beams travelling in opposite directions,

which collide at four points where the two rings of the machine

intersect.

Hadrons (from the Greek ‘adros’ meaning ‘bulky’) are particles

composed of quarks. The protons and neutrons that atomic nuclei

are made of belong to this family. On the other hand, leptons are

particles that are not made of quarks. Electrons and muons are

examples of leptons (from the Greek ‘leptos’ meaning ‘thin’).

Awesome Halloween Costumes Part 1

Although I could (and should) probably come up with a better story/caption for this picture, in reality I just came across it in a do it yourself moustache hat that would be a pretty cool start for a Halloween costume. Feel free to post any caption in the comments that you think would better fit this picture. I think I will see what other do it yourself Halloween costumes I can turn up.

For the original article click here.

Where's the man who assaulted you . .

This made me chuckle a bit.

Halidron Collider

Description of the picture above:

Explanation: Europe's CERN built the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), the most powerful particle accelerator yet created by humans to answer some fundamental questions such as "Why do objects have mass?" It will also look at micro black holes, magnetic monopoles, and explore the possibility that every type of fundamental particle we know about has a nearly invisible supersymmetric counterpart. In the picture above, a person stands in front of the huge ATLAS detector, one of six detectors being attached to the LHC.

The Halidron Collider is scheduled for its first "Big Bang" test on Wednesday 09/10/08. This device is supposedly able to create a simulated "Big Bang" or recreate what happened when our universe started out. A lot of the forums and commenters are getting pretty heated about this because they see this as the scientists putting the entire world in danger for an experiment and some of the comments have been quite heated.

According to the scientists, there's no chance that the Earth will cease to exist as CERN scientist activate the Large Hadron Collider this Wednesday. However, feel free to watch using the real-time CERN video broadcast.

The video was just an idea of what could happen to our planet as it has happened 6 times previously in our planet's history according to the text in the video.