I work in a sell-side meat-packing plant. You've heard our name before, a lot, because we're big, the biggest.

You wouldn't believe some of the scraps they're able to sell there. If the vendor on the corner can sell pig penis in a hot dog, why can't we sell mezzanine paper in a AAA package? It all tastes good, even if it gives you indigestion.

I love the hypocrisy: a broker will finish a conversation about the firm's contemptuous missteps in risk management, then he'll subsequently lash out about how his client can't secure a $350k mortgage with 10% down off sub-par credit. (That's another anomaly: your salesman probably knows as much about his securities inventory as the hot dog vendor.)

I like to think my own business is a tight ship. My clients are sophisticated--institutional & high-net-worth--but we hardly dabble in the exotic foods aisle. If we do, we fully understand it.

Despite my merits, like I said, I work in the packing plant. Since we sell every product on the Street, I make sure I know what's in them, and I make sure I know what they do to a weak digestive system. That's why I'm sticking around: to see it all, to dissect everything.

I'm getting out when I feel that I've seen enough on the inside to be an expert from the outside. That's my story.

Both my clients & I make money on the upside, money on the downside, so why does everyone around here keep yelling "Buy" until they're blue in the face? Because they're too lazy to figure it out on their own, so they do what their squawk box says. The executives wrote the script for the squawk box, and the government guided the executives' pen.

That's all you need to know... but you knew it already.