BankruptcyBill.us

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*Click here for Bankruptcy Bill #20 – Fantasy Bankruptcy #1, here for all previous Bankruptcy Bill cartoons, and here for a previous post on the connection between structured finance and fantasy football.

Here are bios for the highly respected Delaware bankruptcy lawyer Laura Davis Jones of the law firm Pachulski Stang Ziehl & Jones and for the Honorable Judge Arthur Gonzalez of the Southern District of New York who has presided over many of the largest bankruptcy cases including Lehman Brothers, Enron, Chrysler and Worldcom.

And for any fans (or fantasy football owners of) of Tony Gonzalez (another great Gonzalez) here’s info on Atlanta Chapter 7 bankruptcy and Atlanta Chapter 13 bankruptcy.

Get your BAPCPA Man and Mortgantua T-shirts, Mugs, Cards and More!

*To see more of Gideon Kendall’s work go to www.gideonkendall.com.  Or order yourself a copy of Dino Pets, the wonderfully illustrated children’s book written by Lynn Plourde and illustrated by BAPCPA Man’s favorite illustrator, Gideon Kendall.

LawShucks added its own take on Bankruptcy Bill’s Fantasy Bankruptcy in its Quick Shucks 10.08.09:

Fantasy bankruptcy is brilliant. Harvey Miller is the Adrian Peterson of the draft, but then do you go for the double-down strategy of picking Goldstein, or do you diversify and go with someone from K&E?

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Note:  If you are viewing this site using Internet Explorer, you may not be able to view items in the sidebar.  Clicking on any page or post will cause sidebar items to appear.

*Click here for all previous Bankruptcy Bill cartoons, and here for a previous post on the connection between structured finance and fantasy football.

Here’s more information about Matthew Feldman, the bankruptcy lawyer from Willkie Farr & Gallagher who was appointed to the Auto Task Force, as well as about Marcia Goldstein, chair of the Business Financing & Restructuring group at Weil Gotshal & Manges.  And, for what it’s worth, here’s more information about carpal tunnel syndrome.

Also, if you’re really into stats, go here for more information on the Bankruptcy Means Test, and for the Dallas Cowboy fans out there, here’s more info on Dallas Bankruptcy (Redskins fans need not click).

And lastly, here are some recent bankruptcy-relevant posts on Above The Law:

• Student Loan Bailout: House Hearing on Discharging Student Debts in Bankruptcy
• This Week In Layoffs: 10.04.09
• Morning Docket 09.17.09 – link to item about Jones Day and the Lehman bankruptcy
• Morning Docket 10.06.09 – link to item on foreclosures and apparent lack of lawyers

*To see more of Gideon Kendall’s work go to www.gideonkendall.com and gideonkendall.squarespace.com/journal.  Or order yourself a copy of Dino Pets, the wonderfully illustrated children’s book written by Lynn Plourde and illustrated by BAPCPA Man’s favorite illustrator, Gideon Kendall.

[Warning: This is a post with actual writing that has no new cartoons and only tangentially relates to bankruptcy.]

Has anyone else noticed the uncanny parallels between fantasy football and structured finance?

Both seem to involve disconnecting the value from the source of the value.  In the case of structured finance, it’s separating the payments from payment-generating assets such as loans for homes.  This process created a bubble by disconnecting the incentive to make loans from the actual value of the loans.

In the case of fantasy football it seems a similar process is occurring.  We take all the numbers and statistics generated by teams of actual players who practice and work together on a daily basis and form relationships, and we structurally isolate them from true value of the games.  Then we rearrange and redistribute the numbers and re-value them in a way that creates a variety of perverse incentives that are often disconnected from the value of the games themselves.

Where’s the bubble in all of this?  NFL Football is more popular than ever, and a large part of that is due to interest in fantasy football.  Now instead of just following the Redskins and maybe keeping an eye on the Cowboys, you might also flip back and forth to the Lions-Raiders game to see whether Darren McFadden or Justin Fargas is getting the bulk of the carries.  (Seriously.)

On top of that, services like DirectTV are flourishing thanks to the “need” of football fans to not miss a game.  And fantasy football league hosters, news providers and bloggers are gainfully employed for using skills that previously had no value outside of a sports bar.  All because we’ve developed a more creative way to use these statistics that were sitting around not being used by anyone.

What’s the danger of this bubble?  As a fantasy football participant myself (Team name:  “BAPCPA Men”), I’m not sure but I can’t help feeling rather cynical.  The bubble created by the structured finance machine left a lot of destruction and bankruptcy in its wake, and somehow most of our country didn’t see that coming.  So I propose we start worrying about the Fantasy Football Bubble now.  Maybe set up a think tank or ABI commission to start really thinking these issues through.

Or perhaps we can figure it out right here if anyone wants to post some additional thoughts or comments.