Heidi's Bar in Detroit

5/14/2010 2:50:46 PM

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<div style="padding-bottom: 0px; margin: 0px 0px 0px 0.5in; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px">The following is a study guide taken from a Post Graduate course in International Banking and Securities Trading.  After studying the following you will be eligible for a senior level position with any of the BIG 5 Banking and Brokerage Companies.</div>
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<div style="padding-bottom: 0px; margin: 0px 0px 0px 0.5in; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px"> 
 Easily Understandable Explanation of Derivative Markets 
   
  Heidi is the proprietor of a bar in Detroit. She realizes that virtually all of her customers are unemployed alcoholics and, as such, can no longer afford to patronize her bar. To solve this problem, she comes up with new marketing plan that allows her customers to drink now, but pay later. She keeps track of the drinks consumed on a ledger (thereby granting the customers loans). 
   
  Word gets around about Heidi's "drink now, pay later" marketing strategy and, as a result, increasing numbers of customers flood into Heidi's bar. Soon she has the largest sales volume for any bar in Detroit. 
   
  By providing her customers' freedom from immediate payment demands, Heidi gets no resistance when, at regular intervals, she substantially increases her prices for wine and beer, the most consumed beverages. Consequently, Heidi's gross sales volume increases massively. A young and dynamic vice-president at the local bank recognizes that these customer debts constitute valuable future assets and increases Heidi's borrowing limit. He sees no reason for any undue concern, since he has the debts of the unemployed alcoholics as collateral. 
   
  At the bank's corporate headquarters, expert traders figure a way to make huge commissions, and transform these customer loans into DRINKBONDS, ALKIBONDS and PUKEBONDS. These securities are then bundled and traded on international security markets. Naive investors don't really understand that the securities being sold to them as AAA secured bonds are really the debts of unemployed alcoholics. Nevertheless, the bond prices continuously climb, and the securities soon become the hottest-selling items for some of the nation's leading brokerage houses. 
   
  One day, even though the bond prices are still climbing, a risk manager at the original local bank decides that the time has come to demand payment on the debts incurred by the drinkers at Heidi's bar. He so informs Heidi. 
   
  Heidi then demands payment from her alcoholic patrons, but being unemployed alcoholics they cannot pay back their drinking debts. Since, Heidi cannot fulfill her loan obligations she is forced into bankruptcy. The bar closes and the eleven employees lose their jobs. 
   
  Overnight, DRINKBONDS, ALKIBONDS and PUKEBONDS drop in price by 90%. The collapsed bond asset value destroys the banks liquidity and prevents it from issuing new loans, thus freezing credit and economic activity in the community. 
   
  The suppliers of Heid i's bar had granted her generous payment extensions and had invested their firms' pension funds in the various BOND securities. They find they are now faced with having to write off her bad debt and with losing over 90% of the presumed value of the bonds. Her wine supplier also claims bankruptcy, closing the doors on a family business that had endured for three generations, her beer supplier is taken over by a competitor, who immediately closes the local plant and lays off 150 workers. 
   
  Fortunately though, the bank, the brokerage houses and their respective executives are saved and bailed out by a multi-billion dollar no-strings attached cash infusion from their cronies in Government. The funds required for this bailout are obtained by new taxes levied on employed, middle-class, non-drinkers who have never been in Heidi's bar. 
    
  Now, do you understand?</div>
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4 comments

Latest

samsung1

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15 years ago

That’s a pretty good explanation of the health care reform bill also. Medicine now, pay later. We can always soak the rich when we run out of play money. And every one of those suckers getting “free” healthcare will vote Democratic.
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alkaholik

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15 years ago

LOL... may to translate that mess into our terms!

alkaholik

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15 years ago

You forgot to add the part where the banks stopped giving a shit whether the drunks could pay the loans back because they were making a pretty penny selling those loans.  
 
It was like a game of credit musical chair... except the guy left with a chair was the winner.

alkaholik

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15 years ago

Samsung... I am guessing you have not spent much time in other countries. I have spent years in other continents, got to see other countries Health care systems first hand, and I can tell you that we have some major problems... 
 
They guys selling you that BS about us having the greatest health care system are also the same ones sucking off the tits of the biggest lobbying group in government (the health care lobbyists). Don't get me wrong, we have a fantastic health care system... if you make $500K a year. 
 
When it costs $1200 for a teeth cleaning there are problems beyond whether you have insurance or not. One similarity between health care and the real estate investments... inflated prices.

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