“His urge to give something back grew out of that. It began as a joke, putting home-made salad dressing in an old wine bottle, tying it with a ribbon and giving it to friends. He made more and more, went into partnership, pressed cases on the local grocer, and in two years had a multi-million-dollar business. All profits after tax, more than $250m so far, went to charitable causes round the world, of which his favourite were his 11 Hole in the Wall Camps for children with life-threatening illnesses. There, freed from hospitals, they could “raise a little hell” for a while.”
Paul Newman, actor and philanthropist | Paul Newman | The Economist
Daily Archives: 03/10/2008
Not a chance…
“One solution: Nuke entire parts of the system. In short, destroy the system’s network connectivity. For example, credit default swaps ensure that failure will spread through internetworked contracts. Nuke CDS derivatives ($60 trillion or so) by making them illegal. Destroy parts of the network in order to save the remainder — firewalls and firebreaks.”
I love it when someone proposes an engineering solution to a political problem. Yes, this makes sense to someone with a systems approach. One small question, who defines where the nukes will fall? In reality it will be those that have spent the least on lobbying.
It’s a bit like asking the turkeys to vote for Christmas.
The real story…
“So we no longer have any money and were now perceived as a bad risk in the wholesale money markets, so none of the other banks will lend us any money, which they havent got in any case, because no one will lend them any money because everyones too paranoid about everyone else being a bad risk.
So Im afraid were going into liquidation, but that nice Mr Potter in town will give you 12 cents in the dollar for your money which I think youll agree is a pretty good return on a triple-A rated bond these days.”