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05-17-2015, 06:34 PM
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In defense of the poem, I think the mortgage crisis was more complicated than Roger and others are making it sound. I will gladly defer to anyone who has a deeper knowledge of this topic than I do, but here's how I understand it. Many banks were making irresponsible loans to people who had very little hope of paying them off. Those loans were then gathered into CDO's--large collections of subprime mortgage bonds that were treated as a "diversified" portfolio (though they weren't really diversified) and redesignated as "triple-A," lowering their perceived risk and making them much more profitable to sell. This is the product that "Chichikov" is trading. Traders who bought and sold CDOs spread around the bad mortgages to banks not involved in making the initial loans, profiting from their inflated value until the underlying mortgages started going bad in huge numbers, leaving nearly the entire banking system on the hook for worthless bonds. So the problem was certainly not just with the initial loans. Traders like Chichikov may well have persuaded themselves that the CDOs were more valuable than they really were, but whatever their good or bad intentions, they inflated the value of the bad debt, making the collapse, when it came, even more catastrophic. As for "Tatiana," while the CDOs packaged large numbers of loans, somewhere in the undoubtedly massive paperwork there had to some information about the individual loans. It seems plausible that, as Chichikov flipped through the documents, a name could catch his eye. Whether the specific details of the loan ("waitress, mother of four") would be available in that paperwork is beyond my knowledge, but it doesn't seem impossible. And the few people who understood what the CDOs really were would know that Tatiana was struggling, as nearly all of the subprime borrowers were. So it's certainly not a stretch for the poet to know, as we all know now, that the typical subprime borrower was losing the war to stay solvent.
Last edited by Kyle Norwood; 05-17-2015 at 06:41 PM.
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05-17-2015, 07:47 PM
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Join Date: Nov 2005
Location: usa
Posts: 7,645
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Thanks for clarifying the sonnet, Kyle. I'm remembering now the bits I read about the mortgage crisis. Maybe this sonnet is trying to bite off more than it can chew.
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05-18-2015, 02:05 PM
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Join Date: Dec 2013
Location: Derry, NH
Posts: 133
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This sonnet has a packager of mortgages actively engaged in trading them. They are two distinct things and I would think highly, highly, unlikely to be simultaneously pursued. It seems to say traders have access to personal information. I find this hard to accept. An underwriter maybe, but not a trader. It's my understanding that a CDO is a derivative, a security backed by mortgages. It's a bet on the underlying agreements but is a separate investment. While I understand the sentiment, the scenario is just too far-fetched for me, even though it's poetry and not accounting. Maybe that's part of it. The subject matter invites more truthiness than, say, poetry on the subject of romance or nature.
Last edited by Catherine McDonald; 05-18-2015 at 02:15 PM.
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05-18-2015, 04:18 PM
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Join Date: Oct 2014
Location: Maine
Posts: 19
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homage to Gogol
I think the analogy with Gogol is very appropriate and works. Though there are stumbles, the tone also works and I didn't find any financial lingo that was hard to understand.
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05-18-2015, 09:08 PM
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Join Date: May 2009
Location: Inside the Beltway
Posts: 4,057
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Toni Seger
I think the analogy with Gogol is very appropriate
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Exactly. Without commenting on the work at hand, in Dead Souls the swindler is buying them up precisely because they're already dead. So when one of the 'sellers' tries to up the value of the 'merchandise' by saying something like 'Bob's a brilliant blacksmith, and Joseph can take a piece of old leather and make you a pair of shoes that'll last four winters...' the swindler doesn't care, since 'Bob' and 'Joseph' are, in fact, dead.
There's only one problem. In the book, the swindler has to leave town in a hurry. But the CDO guys are still on Wall Street...
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05-18-2015, 09:26 PM
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Join Date: Dec 2001
Location: Solon, OH, USA
Posts: 270
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The poem does justice to the popular view that cold, bloodsucking bankers dreamed up the instruments called CDOs.
Raghuram Rajan's book "Fault Lines" (voted Business book of the year 2010) debunks that myth. From Clinton to Greenspan to Bush to Bernanke, Rajan does not spare anybody. The bankers, it turns out, were the bit players.
Cheers,
Paddy
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05-20-2015, 10:35 AM
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Join Date: Oct 2001
Location: Plum Island, MA; Santa Fe, NM
Posts: 11,168
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Like this one very much - hard-edged, contemporary language, a modern tale squeezed into a sonnet's limitations; and even a few nods to literary classic. Wonderful job of compression - I don't see a word wasted. This one gets my vote. And I'll guess it's by Rick.
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05-21-2015, 06:52 AM
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Join Date: Aug 2012
Location: Arkansas
Posts: 2,041
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I was not familiar with Chichikov so the title never let me in. Gogol didn't help me either. I guess this is about the lack of empathy for regular folks and the gap between them and the one-percenter's, but it doesn't go anywhere for me, and doesn't say anything new in a way that makes me want to remember it. I think the sestet is overly telling.
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05-21-2015, 09:27 PM
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Join Date: Mar 2012
Location: Elgin, IL
Posts: 63
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In lieu of a proper critique...
L2 could be edited to flow more smoothly if we rearranged "cramming" between "flows" and "into" leaving the meter perfectly in place albeit being a tad convoluted in expression.
This is a pretty bit of work I shall not pretend to comprehend as it aught to be appreciated, apparently rendered with all references beautifully in place, the title character I'll guess successfully pictured thus.
Suffice it, my sorry ignorance comes away with a poignant sense of the heartless trading arena and bourgeoisie unconscionably treading the lower classes underfoot without so much as a nod.
A too exquisite sketch of modern society, it haunts with the devilishness sans a solution, presenting the case beautifully, I'll hazard to guess. Kick me.
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05-21-2015, 09:37 PM
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Moderator
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Join Date: Feb 2007
Location: NY, USA
Posts: 4,602
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Thumbs up from me--a fine update of Gogol. I agree the octave is better than the sestet.
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