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Two Cows and Venture Capital

Written by: Paul Kedrosky

Article Overview: Some very funny stuff in a Mark Gilbert column today on Bloomberg wherein he explains most of modern finance using "two cows" metaphors. Maybe you have to be a finance geek, but he had me laughing hard:

Two Cows and Venture Capital

Some very funny stuff in a Mark Gilbert column today on Bloomberg wherein he explains most of modern finance using "two cows" metaphors. Maybe you have to be a finance geek, but he had me laughing hard:

Leveraged Buyouts
You have two cows. You come home from the fields one day to find Henry Kravis chatting to your spouse at the dining-room table. Two days later, you have no spouse, no farm, and no table. Two guys the size of sumo wrestlers have saddled up the cows and are riding them around the farmyard.

Bond Market

You have two cows. One is Brazilian, one is Australian. They yield 25 quarts of milk per day. That's half as much as three years ago, when you traded your less-lactiferous German and U.S. cows for them. You are thinking of swapping for a pair of Namibian cows. They only have three legs but, hey, they produce 26 quarts per day.

Derivatives

You have two cows. You repackage five of them into a Collateralized Lactating Obligation, pay for a AAA credit rating, slice the CLO into 10 pieces and sell it to investors, skimming the cream from the milk for yourself. Three of the cows fall ill, and the credit rating plummets. You get to keep the cream.

Hedge Funds

You have two cows. A guy in an open-necked shirt drives up in his Bentley and offers to take care of them for you in return for a year's supply of steak and 50 percent of their milk. They won't be allowed to leave his compound for two years.

Six months later, you have half a cow, producing sour milk. ``You have to be willing to lose rump today to get rib-eye tomorrow,'' the hedge-fund guy mumbles through a mouthful of sirloin and champagne.

Pension-Fund Management

You have two cows. How boring is that? You pay a month's supply of milk to a consultant, who advises you to sell one cow and buy two aardvarks instead. The aardvarks die. The consultant charges you four months of your (now reduced) milk supply and advises you to sell half of your remaining cow and buy a wombat. The wombat dies. The consultant charges eight months of milk for a copy of his new report, ``Two-Cow Strategies for Alleviating the Impending Pensions Crisis.''

Interest-Rate Swaps

You have two cows. You pledge one of them to me as collateral in a swap for some of my pigs. I pledge the cow to my neighbor as collateral in a swap for some of his sheep. He pledges the cow to his cousin as collateral in a swap for some of his cousin's goats. Better pray the livestock market doesn't crash and we have to try and round up that cow.

Commodities

You have lots of stocks and bonds, but no cows. Are you crazy? Cows are the hot new market. Here, buy this exchange- traded cow futures contract. It can't lose. It gained 40 percent in the past six months.

Gold

You have two cows. You wear a cap you made out of tin foil so that the tiny black helicopters can't read your thoughts. You spend your days blogging about how the government's decision to abandon the cattle standard in 1933 was part of a global conspiracy by the world's central banks to destroy the value of your herd.


Hmmm, what would a "two cows" model of venture capital look like? Maybe like this:

Venture Capital

You have two cows. One is male, and one is female. Mike Moritz says he loves both cows and will buy 35% of the pair for $100. After the deal is signed he tells you to kill your female cow, and then says your male cow must produce a baby cow within three months or you're fired. Three months and one day later he fires you, takes your remaining cow, and transfers it into a milking machine company which then goes public on Nasdaq, earning him $10,000,000. Citing a lactation preference in the term sheet, however, he keeps all but $0.10 of the proceeds. "No hard feelings," he says, "and be sure to come back the next time you have cows."

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Article Tags: aaa credit, aardvarks, bond market, clo, dining room table, funny stuff, half a cow, hedge fund, henry kravis, leveraged buyouts, mark gilbert, milk supply, necked shirt, pension fund management, rib eye, rump, sirloin, sour milk, sumo wrestlers, two cows



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