If he's hustling new business and a county says "We don't need no interest rate swaps" his response is "That's the beauty of it".
In the middle of a negotiation with a current customer (a gold miner) on adjusting their hedge book, they want clarification on exposure in the mark-to-market, "That's the beauty of it".
When I first heard his all-purpose turnaround I thought it was genius; if needed, it put a crowbar into the gears of the discussion, setting a new zero point.
Later I realized he would use it when he couldn't think of anything else to say, akin to the politicians who blather "Do it for the children".
I'm tired of "Do it for the Children". Don't misunderstand, I like kids. Kids like me. So do dogs. And lunatics.
On the street there can be a thousand people and I'm the one the deranged want to share their RFID, 50USCode, carrier group theories with.
So. I like kids, I don't like politicians who say "Do it for the children" more than, oh, once a year.
I have decided to mentally substitute "Do it for the cows" when a politician's lips start move.
This has mental effects. Because you see what you look for, I am more attuned to stories of the bovine persuasion, I have a greater appreciation of those who ruminate and am a ready audience for any ten-year-old with a cow joke.
I can appreciate Fat Knowledge's borderline DSM-IV obsession with Bovinae.
AltEnergyStocks has a post up, A Modest Proposal: Cellulosic Beef, which displays a profound understanding of the hoof-ed ones (although why he didn't sniff "Let them eat grass", je ne comprends pas):
...Let Cows Eat Grass
Cows evolved to eat grass, including proposed energy crops such as switchgrass, which is already used as forage for livestock, and the more productive mixed prairie plants (including grasses.) We don't have to wait until the technology for converting grass into ethanol becomes economic to use grass to increase ethanol production: Instead, all we need to do is to supply the grass to the cattle, and use the corn that they would have eaten instead to produce ethanol.
Feedlot operators will doubtless protest at the massive logistical problems of bringing hay, rather than corn, to feedlots where cattle are fattened. However, these logistical problems seem to me to be on the same order of magnitude as supplying that same grass to cellulosic ethanol plants, if it is too much to ask of the cattle industry to let the cattle "harvest" the grass themselves by grazing....
Worth a read. Do it for the cows.
