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In This Issue     Feature: Untangling the Rat’s Nest Where We’ve Come From Hurting Today, with More Pain on the Way TARP and the Law of Unintended Consequences Bad Assets for Sale – When, Where, and How? Hope for the Future? Looking Forward About the Author   In Other House News…   How to Subscribe May I Share This Newsletter? About SNS About the Publisher SNS Website Links   Upcoming SNS Events & Media Links   Where’s Mark?

By Bruce Watterson

 

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The FiRe Box:

 

   “FiRe 2009: Shaping the Rebound:

      Technology Driving Economics”

 

“Many people concerned about the consequences of future climate change would find abundant reason for optimism, were they to witness the spirit of innovation and commitment to solve this problem that pervades the discussions at FiRe.” – James McCarthy, Leader of the Nobel-Winning Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, and Professor of Oceanography, Harvard University.

 

“FiRe is my home, the place I come back to every year.” – Larry Brilliant, Chief Philanthropy Evangelist, Google.

 

New additions:

 

Australian Consul-General Phil Scanlan, leading a panel on new U.S./Australia broadband and business connections.

 

Ambassador Dennis Hays, representing Thorium Power, on how to produce nuclear energy in the 21st century without producing weapons.

 

Henry Tirri, head of Research and Development for Nokia, on “Phones of the Future.”

 

Sophie Vandebroek, CTO of Xerox, on “The Future of Enterprise Computing.”

 

Dan Novak, VP of Global Marketing for Qualcomm, on “Wireless 4G and Why LTE Wins the 4G Race.”

 

AND If you want to meet and hear HP CEO Mark Hurd, perhaps the most successful technology CEO at work today, come to FiRe 2009: www.futureinreview.com

 

 

What else will you find?

 

“The Battle Over Bandwidth Economics,” with Telstra CEO Sol Trujillo.

 

How “Cloud 2.0” will support corporations and consumers.

 

“Infrastructure 2.0: Unleashing the Power of Dynamic Network Infrastructure,” an advanced look at the design and performance of next-generation Net infrastructure.

 

“Fixing Healthcare: Technology Following the Demographics.”

 

“Wireless Broadband: LTE, WiMAX, and Other Global 4G Alternatives,” with a separate look at NASA’s most advanced wireless broadband technology AND NASA’s WorldWind software.

 

“The Best-Selling Computer of All Time: Next Design Steps for the CarryAlong/Netbook/Mini.”

 

On-the-ground application of new green energy technologies in Hawaii and China.

 

“1:1 Educational Computing” in new Inkwell pilot programs in Mexico, the U.S., and Africa: perhaps the greatest computer sales opportunity of the decade.

 

Elon Musk will describe being the first private party to launch a rocket into orbit, bring us the newest version of the Tesla sedan model electric car, and update us on large SolarCity installations.

 

And much more.

 

Member Price Alert: Use “firecode 2009” when registering, and save the usual member discount of $300. Catch it now, before it slips away –

Date and Place: May 19-22, 2009, Hotel del Coronado, San Diego. Register here to join us for the best Future in Review yet:

 

www.futureinreview.com

 

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Publisher’s Note: I have known Bruce Watterson, and his firm Watterson-Prime, for over a decade, first serving them as a software consulting client in the 1990s. At that time, learning that Bruce was an expert in valuing bank assets like mortgages, I couldn’t quite get my arms around why the need for this would be so great. Didn’t they get what they paid for? Today, we all know the answer to that one. At a time when even Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner still seems slightly unsure of how to go about solving the Toxic Assets/ Frozen Credit problems enunciated by President Obama in his recent Congressional address, it’s fair to say that we all know about the problem, and no one knows the answer.

I think, by reading Bruce’s treatment of this subject, that those members who were not sure of their footing in this market will now understand how we got here, and where we are. More important, Bruce helps point to the way out.   – mra. 

 

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» Untangling the Rat’s Nest:

    A Ground-Floor View into Mortgage Finance, Yesterday and Today

 

            By Bruce Watterson

 

 

The term[“rat’s nest”] can also be used metaphorically, to describe a messy situation…. As a general rule, this term is used in a deprecating way, under the assumption that most people prefer a state of general cleanliness to a mess. – www.wisegeek.com

 

In the vein of the definition above, fishermen sometimes also call a “rat’s nest” that impossibly knotted mess in their line when they’ve screwed up a cast. Technicians use it to refer to the tangle of wires behind most TV and stereo setups. In all cases, it’s clearly a mess, no one can tell you quite how it got there, and many (especially fishermen) would rather just cut the line than take the time and patience to work it out. It therefore strikes me as the perfect metaphor to describe the state of the mortgage finance industry over the last couple of years, and the nearly impossible question we’re faced with today: “How in the heck did we ever get here?”