The men who made millions from the global economic meltdown

 

Just came back from the Bay where I lashed out on the new-release DVD The Big Short which is based on the unbelievable true story and best-selling book by Michael Lewis.

When the crash of the U.S. stock market became public knowledge in the fall of 2008, it was already old news. The real crash, the silent crash, had taken place over the previous year, in bizarre feeder markets where the sun doesn’t shine and the SEC doesn’t dare, or bother, to tread. Who understood the risk inherent in the assumption of ever-rising real estate prices, a risk compounded daily by the creation of those arcane, artificial securities loosely based on piles of doubtful mortgages?

This movie tells the story of four outsiders in the world of high-finance who predicted the credit and housing bubble collapse before anyone else and risked all to take down the banks.

 

EGOTIST: Someone who is usually me-deep in conversation.

I've gone nuclear

 

It all started innocently enough: I needed a new referral from a GP for my dermatologist who's keeping an eye on my melanomas (I guess that's how they keep each other in business).

The GP, who's from Sri Lanka (we send them development aid; they send us their doctors), asked, "When did you last have a check-up?"

Check-up?", I replied, "I guess they weighed me when I was born." (Germans are not only worldleaders when it comes to building cars and running trains on time but also when it comes to being funny because we take our humour very seriously).

After much thigh-slapping and laughing (I laughed so hard the tears ran down my legs), the GP prescribed a battery of blood tests and, being on a roll (or a commission), added an ECG (or 'electro-cardiogram' to those who suffer from acronyphobia).

I've just come back from a Myocardial Perfusion Study carried out at the Southern Nuclear Imaging Group and I'm still glowing after they injected me with some sort of radioactive substance. Couldn't quite see the label on the vial as the nurse (aka Nuclear Medicine Technol-ogist) was holding it upside down but I think it read: 'lʎqouɹǝɥƆ'.

She assured me that this dose of radiation was the same as the one I would receive during two return flights between Sydney and London. Difficult to compare as the last time I sat in the pointy end of a QF1-flight to London, they plied me with so much free booze I glowed in the dark with or without radiation.

Then she strapped my arms above the head and shoved me into a tunnel for twenty minutes while some sort of camera-stuff whirred and rotated above and around me. And that was just for starters to tell them what my heart looks like at rest!

Pity but my nuclear medicine technologist didn't look that good! ☺

This coming Thursday they'll put me on an exercise bike to simulate the Tour de France and just when I think I've won the yellow jersey, they'll inject me again (I can already feel my trypanophobia kicking in again) and shove me back into the tunnel to find out what my heart looks like under stress (hadn't I told them that I was a married man and already under stress?)

Anyway, my heart should be as good as new because as an accountant I hardly ever used it! ☺

 

It's all Greek to me

 

On a cool and grey autumn morning like this I need to kickstart myself with some Greek music which makes me immediately think back to my two years in Greece.

Why did I ever leave? Was it a misdiagnosed case of homesickness or was it just that I had had enough of working for a fickle Arab boss?

Did I regret having chucked in an almost perfect job? Of course, I did; but then 'Impetuousness' has been my middle name ever since I chucked in an equally perfect job in Burma ten years earlier.

People keep saying, "Have no regrets!" Edith Piaf made a whole song-and-dance act out of it - click here.

For my part, I have plenty of regrets because I have lived a very full life. If you have no regrets from the life you have lived, your biggest regret should be the life you haven't lived.

 

And the winner is ...

 

Recently there was an amateur art contest in the Netherlands and people were invited to create a work of art depicting the current era of multiculturalism in Europe.

This was the winner!

What's the saying? A picture is worth a thousand words?

And here's some forthright commentary: click here.

 

It's almost half a century ago!

Peter & Peter outside the 'Clubhouse' by the pond at "Riverbend"

 

Peter Logan and his charming wife Ida (née Zander) just called in at "Riverbend". I knew Peter from my time in Rabaul in 1970 where he worked for Rabaul Garage and we lived in dongas next to each other at the Public Works Department mess hall in Malaguna Road.

 

 

He had contacted me in 2012 after reading "The Die was cast!" in the "Una Voce" journal - see here - and we've been in contact ever since.

More recently, he had revisited Port Moresby and met up with another former colleague from our Rabaul days, Grahame Ward - see here, - and as we sat over lunch at the Steampacket Hotel, the memories and the names of people and places just kept coming back.

Peter stayed in PNG until 1990, after which he worked in Fiji, Tonga, and American Samoa, and now lives in Caloundra on the Sunshine Coast. During our time in Rabaul he was a car salesman, a really gregarious type and out on the town most nights. I think he was also pretty popular with the girls. I was the complete opposite: nerdily pursuing my accounting studies night after night, hardly ever drinking (lack of money had something to do with it), and while I had a bit of a crush on Agnes, the Chinese office girl, I remained her secret admirer. Now that age has smoothed out some of our differences, Peter and I had lots and lots to talk about.

Ida and Peter at the Steampacket Hotel

Besides Grahame Ward whose two passions in life were beer and billiard - in fact, he was known as 'Felson' (remember The Hustler ?) -, there were the AMP's Bruce Fisher who had sold me a policy almost as soon as I'd stepped off the plane; Rabaul's uncrowned king, John Dowling, who passed away in 1994, aged 74, but whose business empire lives on through the Kator Company; my two bosses Barry Weir and Mark Henderson, both now retired; another colleague in the same firm of chartered accountants, Peter Langley, who's still balancing the books at his own firm Hill Rae & Embrey in Sydney; Jerry Carr-Boyd, an accountant from another accounting firm in town; the always-drunk Brian Davies who worked as spraypainter for Rabaul Garage and lived next to us in the mess hall; John "Millsie" Mills, the chemist at Rabaul Pharmacies ...

John Mills (left) at the PNGAA Christmas Function in 2010

... and Breckwoldt's Horst Hoertelmann who's now PNG's Honorary Consul in Hamburg ... - when I mentioned that I had Horst Hoertelmann's email address, both Ida and Peter asked me to send him their best regards. Are you reading this, Horst? (Peter & Ida's email address is loganfam3[AT]bigpond.com)

All accountants must've have been equally badly paid: here's an advertisement showing Jerry Carr-Boyd, an accountant working for Wayland & Wayland, dabbling on the side in real estate

Who says you shouldn’t live in the past? Those were the best of days and the best of people and I thank Peter and Ida for dropping by and sharing those old photos which I scanned and added to this blog:

Grahame Ward (left) outside the company's house ...

... which was shared with several others; Brian Davies on the left

Grahame Ward posing with someone else's car

Ditto

Grahame wearing sunnies to protect his bloodshot eyes on the morning after the night before

Behind the dongas at the Public Works Department mess hall

The front of the donga where we lived

Added only because at the centre is Grahame's white DATSUN Bluebird, buckled and bent

Click here to open PWD Mess Menu in separate window

It was a beautiful, sunny afternoon, made even sunnier by all those wonderful memories. Thanks for the lunch and thanks for the wine and thanks for the memories, Peter and Ida, and I'm sure we'll meet again.

 

P.S. Horst Hörtelmann has since passed away: