In Gogol's Dead Souls a man goes around the countryside buying up dead serfs. As there was only a census every ten years, these serfs would count as property on people's tax rolls causing their former masters years of tax obligations. Quite why this man was buying the dead souls remains a bit of a mystery - Gogol went mad and died before the completion of the work - but presumably he was going to use them for collateral or to advance his rank some how.
But a funny thing happens as he tries to buy the souls. He'd offer $500 for Mischa who passed away the prior year. But after he makes the offer, Mischa's very much alive master would say "$500 for Mischa! You have to be crazy. Mischa used to fix me the finest cup of tea, and never a drunk. Always on time and respectable. Mischa should be worth $10,000 at the least."
I suspect something similar is going to happen when these private companies try to buy the risky assets from the financial institutions currently holding them. The auction system put in place is meant to ameliorate this "Dead Souls" problem, but the selection of assets is going to present the same issue. For example, Citibank knows it has some real garbage loans and it dumps these on the market. Then it starts looking at other tranches of mortgage-backed securities and it'll do some guess work. "If we put this tranche on the market, how much do you think we'll get for it? Well, if there's profitability at that level, why would we sell?" Essentially, "Yes, but my Mischa is worth so much more."
I don't have a better answer and think that the auction system developed is a good way around the Dead Souls issue. But I still think that there's going to be systemic inaction and further ossification of credit lines because of an even greater inability to comfortably price debt.
Monday, March 23, 2009
Monday, March 09, 2009
Charles Ludlam's Axioms: Modern Truths to Live By
Last night I watched a rough of a client's doc about the No Wave film and the Transgressive Cinema movements. (Blank City - hopefully coming soon to a DVD near you.) The Transgressive Cinema movement had a manifesto, the whole idea of which felt both quaint and desirable to me. I thought that a set of principles to believe in that are easily comprehended and transmitted might not be such a bad thing. And yet, of course, such ease in comprehension permits little nuance. Then I was reminded of Charles Ludlam's Axioms for a Theater of Ridicule. They are:
1. You are a living mockery of your own ideals. If not, you have set your ideals too low.
2. The things one takes seriously are one's weaknesses.
3. Just as many people who claim belief in God disprove it with their ever act, so too there are those whose every deed, though they say there is no God, is an act of faith.
4. Evolution is a conscious process.
5. Bathos is that which is intended to be sorrowful but because of the extremity of its expression becomes comic. Pathos is that which is meant to be comic but because of the extremity of its expression becomes sorrowful. Some things which seem to be opposites are actually different degrees of the same thing.
6. The comic hero thrives on his vices. The tragic hero is destroyed by his virtue. Moral paradox is the crux of drama.
7. The theater is a humble materialist enterprise which seeks to produce riches of the imagination, not the other way around. The theater is an event not an object. Theater workers need not blush and conceal their desperate struggle to pay the landlords their rents. Theater without the stink of art.
I used to have these on my fridge, at the ready to humble me daily. These axioms are applicable to so much more than theater. There are manifestos and commandments, but few "truth statements" express the complexity of the human condition and the need to strive for success on our own terms like this. Of course, prohibitions on stealing, murder, and other such interdictions are just fine. But we can generally figure those out for ourselves and needn't be reminded of them on a daily basis. It was Charles Ludlam's axioms that I kept on my fridge for daily reinforcement. I think I'll do so again.
1. You are a living mockery of your own ideals. If not, you have set your ideals too low.
2. The things one takes seriously are one's weaknesses.
3. Just as many people who claim belief in God disprove it with their ever act, so too there are those whose every deed, though they say there is no God, is an act of faith.
4. Evolution is a conscious process.
5. Bathos is that which is intended to be sorrowful but because of the extremity of its expression becomes comic. Pathos is that which is meant to be comic but because of the extremity of its expression becomes sorrowful. Some things which seem to be opposites are actually different degrees of the same thing.
6. The comic hero thrives on his vices. The tragic hero is destroyed by his virtue. Moral paradox is the crux of drama.
7. The theater is a humble materialist enterprise which seeks to produce riches of the imagination, not the other way around. The theater is an event not an object. Theater workers need not blush and conceal their desperate struggle to pay the landlords their rents. Theater without the stink of art.
I used to have these on my fridge, at the ready to humble me daily. These axioms are applicable to so much more than theater. There are manifestos and commandments, but few "truth statements" express the complexity of the human condition and the need to strive for success on our own terms like this. Of course, prohibitions on stealing, murder, and other such interdictions are just fine. But we can generally figure those out for ourselves and needn't be reminded of them on a daily basis. It was Charles Ludlam's axioms that I kept on my fridge for daily reinforcement. I think I'll do so again.
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