Article Review Example

Article Review Example Article Review – Article Example Betting on the blind side In the article, Michael Lewis talks about a younger investor, Michael Burry because of his blindness, viewed the world in a different manner. In 2004, Michael Burry decided to invest in huge bubble and subprime mortgage bond market when the market threatened to collapse. The hedge fund and stock market manager did not reveal to anyone why he decided to invest in bond markets but instead sat in his office and read article and financial filings. His main curiosity was to figure out how the subprime mortgage bonds functions. Investors from the top floor received low ratings than those from bottom floor because they were taking on more risks. Investors who sought to purchase mortgage bonds had to decide which floor of the tower they wanted to invest. However, Burry on the other hand was not after buying mortgage bonds but rather sought out how he could bet against subprime mortgage bonds. Using information from the available prospectus, each mortgage bond had it s own little corporation. However, despite this, Burry despite much of his time scanning through these prospectuses with the hope that he could get what he needed to understand about subprime mortgage bond. In 2004, there was decline in the lending standards. Burry did not view these standards as decline but for him they had just hit the bottom. According to Lewis, the bottom was referred to as the interest only negative amortizing rate subprime mortgage whereby the home purchaser were offered an opportunity of paying nothing and was allowed to roll whatever interest you owed the bank into a high balance. Burry was amazed why such an individual who lent money would desire to extend such a loan. The problem that Burry had was the various tranches of subprime mortgage bonds in which these bonds were impossible to sell short since to sell a stock short, you needed to borrow it, which were not easy to find. An investor would buy or not buy them but could not bet explicitly against the m because the subprime mortgage market had place for investors who took a shallow view of them. This is based on the idea that the entire subprime mortgage market was doomed and nothing could be done to rescue it. The stock market could increase much longer than Burry could remain solvent. Burry also discovered credit default swap in which began to purchase insurance on companies he thought would suffer from real estate downtown since such as meltdown would force these companies to lose money. Burry realized that the credit default swaps on subprime mortgage bonds were significant in subprime mortgage market in that they were used for hedging. In sum, Burry knew that in order to make side bets on subprime mortgage bonds, credit default swap was needed. Work CitedLewis, Michael. Betting on The Blind Side. Vanity Fair, 2010. Print.

Shakespeares New Year and Christmas Quotes

Shakespeare's New Year and Christmas Quotes New Year Celebrations hardly feature in Shakespeare’s works and he only mentions Christmas three times. Explaining the lack of New Year quotes is easy enough, but why did Shakespeare dodge Christmas in his writing? Shakespeare New Year Quotes New Year barely features in Shakespeare’s plays simply because it wasn’t until 1752 that the Gregorian calendar was adopted in Britain. In Elizabethan England, the year changed after Lady Day on 25 March. For Shakespeare, the New Year celebrations of the modern world would have seemed bizarre because in his own time New Year’s Day was nothing more than the eighth day of Christmas. However, it was still customary in the court of Elizabeth I to exchange gifts at New Year, as this quote from Merry Wives of Windsor demonstrates (but note the distinct lack of celebratory tone): Have I lived to be carried in a basket, like abarrow of butcher’s offal, and to be thrown in theThames? Well, if I be served such another trick,I’ll have my brains ta’en out and buttered, and givethem to a dog for a new-year’s gift†¦Merry Wives of Windsor (Act 3, Scene 5) Shakespeare Christmas Quotes So that explains the lack of New Year celebration; but why are there so few Shakespeare Christmas quotes? Perhaps he was â€Å"a bit of a Scrooge!† Joking aside, the â€Å"Scrooge† factor is actually very important. In Shakespeare’s time, Christmas simply wasn’t celebrated in the same way as it is today. It was 200 years after the death of Shakespeare that Christmas was popularized in England, thanks to Queen Victoria and Prince Albert importing many of the German Christmas traditions. Our modern conception of Christmas is immortalized in Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol, from the same period. So, in many ways,  Shakespeare was â€Å"a bit of a Scrooge!† Here are the three times Shakespeare did mention Christmas in his plays: At Christmas I no more desire a roseThan wish a snow in May’s new-fangled mirth;Love’s Labours Lost (Act 1, Scene 1) I see the trick on’t: here was a consent,Knowing aforehand of our merriment,To dash it like a Christmas comedy:Some carry-tale, some please-man, some slight zany,Love’s Labours Lost (Act Five, Scene 2) SLY. Marry, I will; let them play it. Is not a comonty a Christmas gambold or a tumbling-trick?PAGE. No, my good lord, it is more pleasing stuff.The Taming of the Shrew (Intro, scene 2) Did you notice how downbeat these Shakespeare Christmas quotes are? That’s because, in Elizabethan England, Easter was the main Christian festival. Christmas was a less-important 12-day festival known for pageants put on at the Royal Court and by churches for townspeople. In the quotes above, Shakespeare does not hide his dislike of pageant acting: In Love’s Labours Lost, Berowne guesses that a wooing strategy has failed and that the ladies are now ridiculing the men. The ridicule is compared to a Christmas play: â€Å"dash it like a Christmas comedy.†In The Taming of the Shrew, Sly disregards the action as a Christmas â€Å"gambold†, a word meaning a frolic or light entertainment. Page suggests that it will be better than that awful acting you see at Christmas. Overlooking New Year and Christmas The lack of New Year and Christmas celebration may seem strange to the modern reader, and one must look at the calendar and religious conventions of Elizabethan England to contextualize this absence. None of Shakespeare’s plays are set at Christmas, not even Twelfth Night, which is commonly considered to be a Christmas play. It is widely believed that the play’s title was written for a performance on the twelfth day of Christmas at the royal court. But a reference in the title to the timing of the performance is where the Christmas references of this play end. It actually has nothing to do with Christmas.