This coming Saturday is the Red Bull Flugtag, the event where amateur teams build humorous "flying machines", then jump off a ramp where they invariably "fly" all of 30 feet....straight down.
It sounds like it should be a hoot and a half. As a cool front is coming through on Friday, and the temps on Saturday are expected to top out in the mid-80's, K and I are seriously considering going.
My only hesitation is the crowd/parking situation. We tried to go to the Red Bull Soap Box Derby back in the spring, but it was an uphill hike both ways from the parking area 20 blocks to the event site. We arrived there and my knees took a look around and said, "no thanks".
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It was exactly 5 years ago that our economy began it's near-fatal meltdown. Greed ruled over prudence back then, and lenders were making terribly bad loans, then selling them to unwary investors as top-quality thanks to phony bond ratings.
Now, with real estate loans again being packaged by banks and sold to investors, Standard & Poor's has again lowered it's bond rating standards in order to bring in more business.
Talk about a conflict of interest! Banks directly pay the rating agencies (the Big Three are S&P, Moody's, and Fitch) for a review of the bonds they are hoping to sell, and they are shopping around to see who will give them the most favorable rating. "Tell me what I want to hear, I'll pay you lots of money." Since lowering their standards, S&P's market share has jumped from 18% to 69%.
So what have we learned? Five years ago banks were "too big to fail". Today they're bigger. Five years ago bond ratings were a joke. Today it looks like they're headed that way again. So much for "financial reform". Bank Lobbyists, 1; The Public Interest, 0.
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Here's a thought....maybe we could make that Flugtag jump from 300 feet, and get all the Ivory Tower Bankers to enter themselves as a team. :)
S
