so anyway, we were sitting in our little booth, talking about interesting podcasts we've listened to recently. joel's a podcast king, downing 3 or more per day during his long commute. his favorites tend to differ from mine. he listens to "planet money" on economics; i listen to "rathole radio" indie music picks.
he told me a fairly simple and amusing story about how the federal reserve came to possess a mall in oklahoma through lots of extremely confusing and seemingly pointless processes involving "mortgage backed securities" and "credit default swaps" ... which are very humorous when one starts to learn about them. not being an economics buff myself, i certainly can't explain them, but joel can, and i got the 10 minute definition of each.
somehow, in the course of this conversation, we stumbled upon the subject of economic "bubbles." the housing bubble a few years ago, the dot com bubble of the '90s ... and the tulip bulb bubble of the 17th century.
yes, that is exactly what you think it is. also known as "tulip mania," the tulip bulb bubble happened in holland in the 1600's. it was very similar to the investment bubbles of today - somehow, tulips increased in value to the point that, in 1637, a tulip contract would sell for 10 times the average skilled tradesman's yearly wage. and what's a tulip contract? a tulip contract wasn't even a tulip bulb - it was the right to own a tulip bulb when it became available ... for $300,000.
so, we decided on a new investment strategy. it involves digging up my planters, building a time machine, making a killing off the 17th century dutch, a brief pit stop in the early 20th century to take advantage off the minor hyacinth bubble during that time period, and voila!
in other podcast-informed news, i have an update on this post on the aclu vs. myriad genetics lawsuit. the aclu has won the case, which means that (as of now) they no longer hold the patent on the BRAC gene. this information has huge implications for testing and research and is a great step forward in the pursuit to understand and deal with the effects of the BRAC gene, which is, obviously, something i have a vested interest in.
3 comments:
Podcast informed? I'm podcast? ;)
Second the strawberry lemonade...I love that stuff. That would be a fun summer outing. :)
that's true, you did the initial informing. there was a podcast on it ... so i suppose i should say "bekah-informed-and-podcast-elaborated" ... :D
Wow. And here I thought Tim and I shared interesting conversations over over-seasoned red robin fries, messy burgers and heavenly strawberry lemonade. ;) You guys take the cake on that one!
I did read that aclu thing too, awhile ago...and i thought of you. It was confusing to me though, so maybe I'll chat with you about it more tomorrow....I'd love to hear how this is going to impact things.
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