Today my Head Wants to Explode

So, besides the subsiding sinus pressure of the traditional Back-to-School bug that tends to bite the faculties of America's colleges and universities, there are other things making my head want to explode. An article appeared today in the NY Times indicating that companies that rated the securites that were purchased with subprime mortgages as collateral were inappropriately inflating those securities' ratings to make them look better on paper. It's unclear whether Bear Stearns, et al. asked the ratings agencies to do this for them, but this is really bad.

I have a previous post on this that talks about moral hazard, but this story on the security rating agencies adds a completely new layer to the insanity. Basically, what comes out of it is two-sided moral hazard where both parties to a contract have an apparent incentive to deliberately engage in bade behavior. We're waaaaay past supply and demand here. What makes this stuff mind blowing is that the existence of a stable equilibrium is usually not very likely in general terms-- usually only for certain numerical examples with restrictive assumptions. Second, optimal contracts that can overcome the moral hazard problem tend to be characterized partially, and the contractual relationship has to be repeated in order for the contract to carry much weight. There's lots of really hard math involved in the theoretical excursions into this area, hence head explosion.

Bottom line-- the more layers of moral hazard you add to a problem the more chaotic and unpredictable the result, and the more likely it is that bad things happen. Bad things happened.

Stop China-bashing

So, it's not China that's secretly sabotaging our toys to kill our babies and take over our country. Apparently our own designers and managers in the US that are not doing their jobs. In a statement issued under cover of darkness (how's Friday afternoon/Saturday morning gonna grab Lou Dobbs' attention?), Mattell admitted what many of us suspected all along: the lead in the toys was the fault of management and design teams (KC Star).In a related story, recalled cribs made in China by Graco are also a result of faulty design-- by good ole American design workers. (Video: here, courtesy of YouTube.) It is interesting how the fact that the cribs were made in China takes the headline over the fact that the design flaw had nothing to do with China, offshoring, globalization, Lou Dobbs' War on the middle class, or the price of tea. Just a plain combination of sloppy or unscrupulous decisions by designers and managers. But, as they say, iiit runs downhill, and China (foreigners generally) are at the bottom of the social hill. I'll be tilting if someone will be my windmill.

Oh well I guess it doesn't sell newspapers to report that thousands of poor people in China did their jobs and your good ole American white-bred neighbor screwed up his and killed a few babies.

Baby Crib Recall

China and TRADE HAVE NOTHING TO DO WITH THIS! It's a design flaw by US designers and managers!