Tuesday, December 16, 2008

just keep on bouncing
so it snowed today, the first snowfall of the year. sitting on the 20th floor, right near the window. snow looks very much like white candyfloss. yep, i know thats random. i was itching to take a picture, espeically since i had my new camera in my bag - but i didnt since i didnt want to really attract attention and besides i dont know if im allowed to take pictures.
anyway, this year's sucky airline award goes to virgin atlantic. im handing out this award to them, before even flying with them. yes, im biased. so, ever since this whole chaos at work has started, im thinking that going for two weeks of vacation is not a good idea (god i miss those times where 2 weeks was considered short). especially when i want to ask for vacation in april. so i wanted to cut my trip short by a week, i feel sad already. anyway i call them and their automated system is a little funky, sometimes the only way to get someone human on the line pronto is to pretend you are flyign first class, sadly once you actually do get someone to talk to they quickly lose interest in you. anyway, so they connect me to at first guess, india, the support guy puts on this heavy american/british accent - god knows what it was. even though he knows im desi and speak in a very normal accent. i really dont get the whole pretending thing, in his defense his accent didnt slip once and remained this weird hybrid kind of thing. anyway they dont have too many routes and the only way i can get a cheap ticket in december if im willing to travel on dec 31st, jan 1st and dec 25th. and i cannot transfer the ticket to my relative, in case i dont want to use it. i dont understand why airlines care about who uses your ticket as long as they get their income it should be okay. but no that would mean being fair, and as of this second its not a fair world.
in other news, the latest scandal to hit the market is the Madoff Ponzi scandal. Here's a recap, super exclusive catered only to super rich people fund goes up in smokes, the returns the fund was supposedly generating was actually funded by new investements to the firm. I dont understand how people can do so much jhol and not feel guilty. Its unbelievable. Here is what I think, I could be totally wrong. As per what I have read. He says he acted alone, I highly doubt that 50 billion dollars is not a joke and theres no way you can pull off something like that so surreptitiously. This may signal the end of the hedge fund secrecy and frankly the end of the hedge fund era. No sane person will invest in anything that isnt transparent enough, just because its giving good returns. No sales person should be allowed to sell anything based on historical returns. More bailouts will happen, since everything is so connected, and jumbled up (lack ofbetter word). There isnt just one madoff around, there has to be some other ponzi schemes going on. I wont be surprised if someone else confesses, probably wont be as big of an amount but still high enough. People are going to start buying bigger mattresses to now store their money under. What a ridiculous time to be in banking. Its almost like a swear word.

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