sekicho's New Writeups

primary market (idea)

2008-11-12T02:09:10Z

In finance, the "primary market" refers to the market for direct investment in a company or other entity (partnership, trust or what-have-you). Once an investment is made, it can be traded between investors on the secondary market.

By way of example:

The initial public offering of a company is on the primary market. Trading in its stock is on the secondary market.
The issuance of a corporate bond or government bond is on the primary market. Trading in that bond is on the secondary market.
A loan to a company is conducted on the primary market, but the loan can then be sold through the secondary market, or securitized on the primary market (as this involves pooling the loan to create a new investment).
Credit derivatives are issued on a primary market and traded among investors on the secondary market.

Barack Obama (person)

2008-11-03T15:31:21Z

Barack Obama Hussein is the first radical left-wing extreme-Muslim terroristic elitist pro-abortion liberal Negro to con a major party into nominating him as President of the United States.

He was born somewhere outside the United States. We don't know exactly where, because he won't show us his real birth certificate, but it's pretty obvious that it wasn't in America, because otherwise he wouldn't hate America. His parents were Muslims and that, combined with his upbringing at a radical madrassah in India (which, we have it on good authority, is closely linked with both Hamas and Hezbollah) makes him a card-carrying Muhammad-worshiper himself.

After a very uneventful youth which, it should be noted, involved no time at the Hanoi Hilton, Hussein got into Harvard Law School because he was black and Muslim and hated America, and all three gave him preferences in Harvard's affirmative action program. While at Harvard, he got onto the law review by bribing…

Linda Linda (idea)

2008-10-09T13:49:10Z

"Linda Linda" is a famous Japanese punk rock song by a famous Japanese punk rock band called The Blue Hearts. It can be recognized in the field by its inscrutable refrain of

LINDA LINDA!
LINDA LINDA LINDAAAAAAA!

and by the fact that, if you hear it in or around 2008, it is invariably being sung in a karaoke box by an intoxicated salaryman around the age of 40.

The song came out in 1987. If you search for it on YouTube (which is, at least for the next few months, the modern-day equivalent of Audiogalaxy) you can find a live version performed on a Japanese music program around this time, back when Japan was still the Wild West of the OECD. It is rather painful to watch, because around 1987, the average Japanese person was too busy buying Manhattan to have any idea what the word "style" meant. (I should add that…

mark to market (idea)

2008-10-01T09:40:52Z

In the last few weeks, mark to market accounting has become a key factor in the downfall of AIG, Lehman Brothers, Merrill Lynch, Washington Mutual and countless other household names in the global financial industry. So it's probably as opportune a time as any to learn about what it is.

The concept of MTM is simple: Instead of valuing an asset at the price the company paid for it (book value), a company can instead value the asset at its market value, or whatever that asset would reasonably fetch if it were sold to a third party. This is achieved by periodically adjusting the asset's value to match its market price, and recording the adjustment as a profit or loss of the company.

Essentially, this is the same strategy you are using when you keep an online stock portfolio. If you buy 100 shares of Google at $100 each, your portfolio starts out with a value of $10,000. If the share price goes up to $110, your portfolio's value is naturally adjusted to $11,000 and…

John McCain is a dick (fiction)

2008-08-30T01:10:37Z

"Welcome aboard Straight Talk One," he said. "This sled is gonna deliver us right into the Oval Office, so help me God. That little Ivy League motherfucker is toast."

He was reclined in his first class seat as we left the runway, eyes half closed, eating walnuts with one hand and drinking Natural Light with the other. Both right out of their respective cans.

"For a greenhorn he certainly has charisma," I said. "He can gather a hundred thousand people in a heartbeat while you're struggling for ten."

The old man laughed. "You want charisma?" He set down the walnut can, belched under his breath and leaned forward. "Let me tell you a story. From Viet Nam."

Oh shit, I thought, here we go again.

"They had me tied against the wall for a week straight. I suppose that would make most people uncomfortable, but I was just getting angry. So when the guards came to haul me down one day, I was biting my tongue. They started untying the ropes. I could feel…

Piano Man (person)

2008-07-26T11:03:13Z

"I'm going to start with a warm-up song."

That's my first line at the karaoke box. Singing runs in my family, and one of the things I love about Tokyo is the prevalence of intimate places to sing along to a machine.

So every first date begins with "Piano Man." I have sang it as an opening several times now, and each time I sing it across from a lovely young lady, we end up in the sack several hours later.

I don't know why this happens: for that matter, I don't know whether the deciding factor is "Piano Man" or the obligatory midway performance of U2's "Even Better Than The Real Thing" (by which point in the ritual I'm generally comfortable enough to lean back on the couch, nearly into my date's lap) or the embarrassing moments when I decide to do Japanese hip-hop.

Doesn't matter. I love the song. It brings something out inside me.

I know that when I was broke, anonymous and depressed in college, I thought anything must be better than wasting away in a sweaty…