The Fabulous Fab

Freakonomics blog linked to the transcript of the famous Goldman Sachs emails released last month. Their motivation was that one of the main protagonists discusses taking a little holiday to read the Freakonomics book. The context of the emails is discussed in this Telegraph article. A quote that stands out is below (highlighted in the Telegraph article). This is from Fabrice Tourre, a senior executive in GS central to many of their dealings in mortgage based instruments. An interesting mental image if you are wondering how some of these markets work in a day-to-day sense.

“More and more leverage in the system. The whole building is about to collapse anytime now ... Only potential survivor, the fabulous Fab[rice Tourre] ... standing in the middle of all these complex, highly leveraged, exotic trades he created without necessarily understanding all of the implication of those monstruosities [sic]!!!”

Freakonomics also links to the instantaneous reaction to the plunge of P+G shares last Thursday. A strange world we are living in.