(Avril 14th by Aphex Twin)

Please excuse the bad sound quality.

Thank you for your attention and solve the bloody riddle, you lazy sods!

I miss my piano. :’(

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Fret not, there are many, many posts in planning, but due to the preparations for tomorrow’s Jessica Albarn show, I didn’t get to spend a lot of time here on the picturesque interwebs.

So instead, let’s have another competition, shall we?

Mainly because I’m so super generous but also, because you proved how very smart you are in the last few riddles and I was so deeply impressed that I actually believe we should all found a neo-Platonic iAcademy where we start growing impressive beards and walk up and down columned halls on ChatRoulette mumbling nonsensical Greek theorems while rubbing our collective chin. Oh, yes, it will be a new dawn of braiiiiins!

Anyhow, so today’s conundrum is therefore especially challenging, but if you kept up to date with the WurzelBlog since its infancy, and happen to have very keen eyes, you should be able to solve this mystery.

Here we go:

What is so very clever about the blocks in Koen Hauser’s Nigredo photograph from his Opus Magnum Atomium series (see image above)?

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My friend Jessica Joslin has been working tirelessly on an all new menagerie of handsome chaps made of bone and brass that’s due to go on show at the Lisa Sette Gallery this coming week.

It’s difficult to pick favourites amongst all these charismatic filigree beasties proudly dressed in velvet and glove leather, but I must admit that I’ve grown rather fond of black casqued hornbill Almeria and conjoined kitties Clio & Loci (see images below).

Loci (detail) by Jessica Joslin, antique hardware and findings, painted wood, brass, silver, bone, beads, chain, glove leather, glass eyes, 2010 - click to enlarge

So yes, my dears, if you happen to find yourself in Arizona from April 1 to April 24, please do go down to Lisa Sette Gallery in Scottsdale to mingle with the brassy awesomeness that is Jessica Joslin’s Brass & Bone.

Almeria (detail) by Jessica Joslin, antique hardware and findings, bone, velvet, silver, vestment trim, glove leather, cast pewter, glass eyes, 2010 - click to enlarge

Opening reception: Thursday, April 1, 2010, 7 - 9 PM - Jessica will be in attendance

Preview show | Flyer

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Sentiment

The major averages battled back from early losses and are trading mixed late Monday. The table was set for early losses after markets fell across Asia and Europe amid ongoing concerns about the implications of the SEC fraud charges against Goldman Sachs. Those worries seemed to overshadow better-than-expected earnings from Citi (C) as well a 1.6 percent increase in the List of Leading Indicators in March.

However, after sluggish action in the first half of trading, the tone improved and, with an hour left to trade, the Dow Jones Industrial Average is up 55 points. The tech-heavy NASDAQ is down 7 points ahead of earnings from IBM due out after the closing bell. The CBOE Volatility Index (.VIX) hit a morning high of 19.55, but was recently down .19 to 18.17. Trading in the options market remains active, with about 7.7 million puts and 8.7 million calls traded.

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Money magazine recently published an article where some of the nation’s leading business owners offered advice to readers. With a diverse list of experts and many nuggets of wisdom, at times the advice starts blending together.

However, one piece of information caught my eye and separated itself from the rest. The wisdom came from Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban and addressed investing. Cuban has a long history as an entrepreneur and famously sold Broadcast.com to Yahoo! for $5.9 billion. His advice centered on investors’ need to perform adequate research before investing. He rhetorically asks, "Unless you think you have better insight on a stock…why are you trading?"

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It’s no surprise that Financials are the worst performing sector since the SEC announced that it was suing Goldman Sachs (GS) for fraud. However, a look at the performance of other sectors since last Thursday’s (4/15) close highlights some puzzling trends. If GS was really the cause of the sell-off, why would sectors like Materials, Industrials, and Technology be underperforming? Concerning Materials, there is one convoluted theory going around that GS’s involvement in commodities has caused an exodus out of Material-sector stocks, which would be adversely impacted from weaker commodity prices. Even if that reasoning had any validity to it, how are we supposed to rationalize the underperformance of Industrials and Technology? Was GS manipulating the pricing for semiconductors and networking gear too?

A more likely explanation for the the weakness is simply that with markets as overbought as they were, investors were looking for any potential excuse to sell, and on Friday they got it. Since then sectors that led the rally have underperformed, while sectors that lagged are outperforming. GS’s news has been billed as a harbinger of tighter government oversight in the financial sector, but like other "groundbreaking events" in the past, this news too will likely fade to the background.

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Why does the market for synthetic CDOs exist? Is it because we ran out of deadbeat borrowers in early 2007? In other words, were the bears (Paulson, Magnetar, etc.) in the same position as an equity short determined to press a winning trade - unable to borrow any more shares - so they decided to create more out of the whole cloth of credit default swaps? It sure looks like it.

Synthetic CDOs have no mortgages directly backing them, a fact which (as the Wall Street Journal pointed out today in its lead editorial) the SEC seems blithely unaware. Instead, from the perspective of the buyer of a synthetic CDO, they’re exactly like writing an insurance contract. They’re a bet that the purchasers of the insurance (in this case the hedge funds), will continue to pay their premiums, and that the mortgages underlying the swaps won’t default.

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As the situation around CDOs, CDS and synthetic CDOs develops, and with the SEC’s suit against Goldman Sachs (GS) in the headlines, I have been thinking of an old legal doctrine: uberrimae fidei. Briefly, it’s a Latin term, translated as “of the utmost good faith.” A contract is said to be uberrimae fidei when it requires a high standard of honesty - unprompted disclosure of all material facts: absent good faith at this level, it is voidable.

The thesis presented in this article is that financial innovation has outpaced the development of legal principles to control fraud, abuse and manipulation. The solution: CDS are contracts of insurance, and like insurance, contracts uberimae fidei. Further, the concept can be extended into the entire area of securitization: MBS, CMBS, ABS, CDOs of ABS etc. should all be accorded the status of contracts uberrimae fidei.

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By MG Siegler

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