• The Spectrum Blog brings you news and views by and about R&R Consulting and the issues that concern us all.

Film Fund-amentals: Year-End Tallies

Courtesy of Box Office Mojo, we now have the official (more or less) tally of the year’s top ten films. What does this top ten list tell us?The Dark Knight — $530.8 million (estimated budget $185 million)Iron Man […] Continue Reading…

Posted in film finance | 5 Comments

Film Fund-amentals: Warner Suspends Independent Production

With Warner Brothers’ recent decision to cut their ties with the production of low budget films, 2008 is widely seen as the year that independent filmmaking died. However, this obituary may be a tad premature. The truth of the […] Continue Reading…

Posted in film finance | Leave a comment

Rethinking Our Inheritance

Recently the Financial Economists Roundtable (FER) posted a summary of their thinking in July 2008 on Reforming the Role of Statistical Rating Organizations [SROs] in the Securitization Process. The FER is a group of senior financial economists who […] Continue Reading…

Posted in Rating Agencies, structured securities | Leave a comment

It’s a Bird… It’s a Plane… It’s –

…R&R’s site traffic! Google Analytics’ site statistics and benchmarking software indicates that our site is outperforming other small business Web sites on a number of dimensions:Bounce Rate = 42.30% [vs. 56.42% in peer Web sites]Visit Depth (Pages/Visit) = 3.5 […] Continue Reading…

Posted in RR Consulting | Leave a comment

Sylvain Raynes Quoted in NYT Feature on Moody’s

The mistaken notion that Moody’s was a company like any other, that was very fundamental,” said Sylvain Raynes, a former Moody’s analyst who is co-founder of R&R Consulting, a firm that helps investors gauge debt risks. “It is not […] Continue Reading…

Posted in Moody's Investors Service, Rating Agencies, Sylvain Raynes | Leave a comment

Ann Rutledge Criticizes Limited Impact of New Bond Rating Rules

The Securities and Exchange Commission’s long-awaited new rules for bond rating agencies will do little to alter the practices that helped lead to the financial crisis, experts claimed…. “The market has barely taken note of the SEC action because […] Continue Reading…

Posted in Ann Rutledge, Rating Agencies, Securities Exchange Commission | Leave a comment

The Answer is the Question, the Question of the Deal

My recent post on the sorry state of financial engineering seems to have touched a raw nerve in the FE community.I will not attempt to respond to anonymous comments since the US Constitution gives every citizen the right to […] Continue Reading…

Posted in Next Generation, Sylvain Raynes, structured finance training | 3 Comments

The State of Financial Engineering

We are the CDO makers,and we are the dreamers of dreams.Betting on lone loss triggers,and trading in eclectic teams.Spread losers and yield forsakers,for whom the pale bonus gleams.Yet we are the sole underwriters,of the deals, forever it seems!Fantasia on […] Continue Reading…

Posted in Next Generation, Sylvain Raynes, structured finance training | 11 Comments

Bloomberg Quotes R&R’s Ann Rutledge on Fed’s New Aid Package

…Under the new Term Asset-Backed Securities Loan Facility, the Treasury will use taxpayer funds to protect the Fed against the first $20 billion of losses, or 10 percent, of $200 billion in exposure to AAA rated securitized consumer debt.”I […] Continue Reading…

Posted in Ann Rutledge, bailout, subprime mortgage crisis | Leave a comment

It Tolls for Thee

It’s probably fair to say that, at this very moment, many of you are looking for an easy resolution, something that would enable you to move on, to accept the unacceptable. You are wondering how the devil we got […] Continue Reading…

Posted in Next Generation, subprime mortgage crisis | 1 Comment
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