I can’t tell you the number of times I’ve asked what I was absolutely certain was a dumb question, and found my phone-a-friend had no idea either, leaving me annoyed, but somewhat relieved. I suspect all of us suffer that little
Rick Jones Blogs
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It’s Politics, Stupid
One of the most consequential threats to our business is political volatility. Newsflash? Hardly. It’s a threat hiding in plain sight. We know it’s there; we even periodically dredge it up for a bit of worrying. Nonetheless, our awareness of the damage that political diktat
It’s Time For A Structured Warehouse
Having written hundreds of thousands of words of CrunchedCredit over the years, it’s possible I’m about to cross a bridge I already crossed long ago, but I thought it was a worthwhile topic in this time and place.
It’s time we develop
What A Piece of Currency is Stablecoin. How Noble and Reasonable?
I’ll admit up front to my luddite tendencies. Technology and I are not the best of friends. I sort of understand the argument about Crypto at a very superficial level. Okay, I get the argument that Crypto is like gold; it’s expensive to
Get Used to It – UK-Style Politics Is Coming to the US, And That’s Not Good
If you want to get a preview of where the US is going there’s no better place to look than into the bubbling cauldron of UK politics. Not to bury the lede, it’s bad for the country, bad for the economy
Stress Is Not A Flaw…It’s a Design Feature
At the risk of appearing unduly churlish, I’m annoyed with our obsession with stress and anxiety these days. So many seem to proudly complain bitterly about having to endure stress in everyday life. “Not fair!…Why must I endure stress merely to achieve
If It Happens, It Will Begin in Private Credit (And, No, I’m Not Just Piling On Because It’s Cool)
If “It” is an event causing a riptide of damage to our economy, I don’t see anything horrific anytime soon, but that’s different than saying “we’re good.” You’ve got to stay frosty. We almost never notice “It” until we have been smacked
Shakespeare Was Right About the Lawyers
It’s our fault. Well, if not entirely our fault, we certainly enabled it (you business types let this happen with nary a peep of protest). What am I banging on about? Legal documents. The legal documents we use in mortgage finance and securitization are
NIMBY Fails: A Black Swan Moves in Next Door
Regular readers of this column may be aware that I have an arguably unhealthy fascination with black swans. To quote the late Donald Rumsfeld, these known unknowns and unknown unknowns can be pesky…at best and pretty horrible at worst (he wasn’t
Not Every Problem Deserves a Solution And Not Every Solution is a Solution: That’s a Problem
It has worked its way into our cultural gestalt that every problem deserves a solution, created, crafted, implemented and enforced by our increasingly paternalistic government. Our government, for its part, endlessly tells us that indeed, yes, it is the solution to…pretty