A futures exchange for movie receipts!

I came across this interesting concept via Knowledge at Wharton.

The movie industry fared well during the current recession, generating record receipts of more than $10 billion in 2009. In fact, demand for movies typically increases during economic downturns even while the demand for most other goods and services falls.

For investors, movies represent a potentially attractive investment. The correlation between annual box office receipts and the Standard & Poor 500 Index is slightly negative, meaning that film investments can still do well while the rest of your portfolio suffers. Moreover, a good blockbuster like Avatar might also produce revenues that are multiples of its costs. There are not many available asset classes that exhibit these sorts of tradeoffs.

So, wouldn’t it be great if you could invest in a new film that you thought could be a real blockbuster?

Questioning role of media, analysts, economists etc in the European debt crisis

Lorenzo Bini Smaghi of ECB does it again. He has been questioning many a things about this crisis. and in particular US response to it.  

In this speech he rips apart the various comments media/economists made about Europe bailout. He questions the incentives and many a conflict of interest in the financial industry.

 He says the crisis is in its third stage. First phase started in Aug 2007, second after Lehman fallout in Sep 2008 and now the third phase of European economies.

Niall Ferguson on Fiscal Crises and Imperial Collapses

Niall Ferguson of Harvard University gives a real pessimistic outlook (PPT here) on the state of fiscal debt in advanced economies.

What are the ways out of a debt crisis? He says there are six: