Star Trek just isn't as expansive as Star Wars, according to Robot Chicken

I kind of like Robot Chicken.  It seems incredibly self-indulgent, a bunch of nerds making a bunch of nerdy sketches that only other nerds would get, but it has its moments every so often.  Plus the use of action figures adds a certain charm to it.

I think, however, that their Star Wars specials take things too far.  The whole episode felt less like an attempt at sketch humour, and more like a bunch of pals snarking and commenting on their favourite movies.  Family Guy did the same thing, and I can't fathom how these things are getting releases. However, Family Guy attempted to do the same thing with Star Trek 2: The Wrath of Khan, but Paramount shot that down. Apparently, Robot Chicken aren't even interested in doing something on not just TWoK, but Trek in general. Their explanation is somewhat bizarre.

The reason there'll never be a Robot Chicken Star Trek
You just don't see as much intensive spoofing of Star Trek. There aren't as many Trek in-jokes in popular culture, and you don't see it referenced as often as Star Wars. We asked Senreich why he thought that was. He responds:

It's not as deep and expansive of a universe, whereas Star Wars as a universe -- there's so many worlds and planets and different creatures that are roaming around. You know, it's different species interacting with different species. Star Trek was the character of the week, if you will. It wasn't until later that you had them interacting in the political spectrum, with all the different races and beings at the same time. It's really just the crew that you're following, and those are the only ones you know the stories of. How much do you know about those other [characters] and races? Very little.
In Star Wars, you're passing an alien on the street, and you're like, "What's that guy's story? He looks really cool." You just wonder where they're all going and what's happening. And you walk into that Cantina, that bar, and they're all just hanging out and having their own stories. They go to some guy who's a giant, like, muppet, and he doesn't speak English but they understand him perfectly. It's just embedded And everybody just goes with it. You never just question that.

I... just... I... Is he serious?!?

Well, I'm a bit perplexed by this answer. I could take what he says and swap Trek and Wars, and it would make exactly the same impression:

It's not as deep and expansive of a universe, whereas Star Trek as a universe -- there's so many worlds and planets and different creatures that are roaming around. You know, it's different species interacting with different species. Star Wars was the character of the week, if you will. It wasn't until later that you had them interacting in the political spectrum, with all the different races and beings at the same time. It's really just the crew that you're following, and those are the only ones you know the stories of. How much do you know about those other [characters] and races? Very little.
In Star Trek, you're passing an alien on the street, and you're like, "What's that guy's story? He looks really cool." You just wonder where they're all going and what's happening. And you walk into that Ten Forward, that bar, and they're all just hanging out and having their own stories. They go to some guy who's a giant, like, muppet, and he doesn't speak English but they understand him perfectly. It's just embedded And everybody just goes with it. You never just question that.

You could pretty much apply this very argument there against Star Wars.  "Oh, but the expanded universe!" - well if we're including expanded universes into this, we can jolly well include the Trek expanded universe, can't we?

I mean my goodness, I'm a fan of both Trek and Wars, and was for a while a massive Warsie, mostly inspired by a period of being obsessed with Star Wars: Dark Forces 2: Jedi Knight (yes, two colons).  I read up on all the expanded series material.  Similarly, I went through a period of being obsessed with Star Trek.  Right now, my interest in both has atrophied somewhat, but if you asked me which universe was more fleshed out and expansive, I would say Trek.  Easily.

Let's try an experiment: how many major alien species can I name from Trek, without googling or wiki-ing?  Vulcans, Klingons, Romulans, Bajorans, Cardassians, Borg, Ferengi, Trill, Jem'Hadar, Founders, Vorta, Betazoids, Orions, Q, Talaxians, Suliban, Andorians.  I could go onto the more obscure (to the public eye) ones like Bolians, Tholians, Organians, Tellarites, Breen, Tamarians, Benzites, and the really alien ones like Mugato, Excalbian, Sheliak, Horta, V'Ger.  Now Star Wars.  That's easy too: Humans, Ewoks, Wookies, Sand People, Hutts, Jawas, Twi'leks... urm... Yoda's species... Salacious Crumb's people... Admiral Akbar... Droids?  Do Droids count?

OK, wise guy, what about the average guy on the street?  Well, while I think the average joe would know various aliens from Star Wars as "that hammer-headed dude from the Cantina" or "that chick with the head tentacles that the Rancor ate," I can't see them recognizing the species, or knowing anything about their culture.  The only species names I think they might remember would be something outright stated in the film, like Rancor, Hutt or Jawa.  In contrast, if you ask them what a Klingon, Vulcan or Borg is, I think they'd probably have a decent idea of their society and culture.

To be perfectly frank, I think the societies and cultures of Trek are far more fleshed out.  Why?  Because in my opinion, Wars is far more "character of the week," in that the vast majority of the aliens in Wars are the only example of that species in the films.  We know next to nothing about Huttese culture beyond the Mafiosa cartel Jabba rules.  We don't know anything about Admiral Ackbar's people.  We never see another of whatever the hell Salacious Crumb or Yoda or that scaly bounty hunter is.  We barely know anything about even those cultures with significant screentime like the Ewoks.  In contrast, we know an awful lot about the Klingons, Vulcans, Romulans, Borg et al.

Even taking the Clone Wars TV series into account, the various alien races are usually treated as background flavour, with too little time given to the fleshing out of those cultures.  In fact, the vast majority of information on Star Wars' major database comes from the expanded universe - and if we're going to go by extended universes, then we have to count Star Trek's own, which consists of hundreds of novels.  It's a shame, since whenever they do delve into, say, Trandoshan warrior rites, or Wookie society, it's pretty darned interesting.  But just as Star Trek is accused of focusing on the ship's crew, so Star Wars: The Clone Wars often focuses on the regular cast of Jedi Knights, who we already know plenty about from the three prequel films.  That's the whole point of a main cast of characters, after all.

Now, if you're going to argue that the background characters of Star Wars are more interesting, I can't really argue there: who doesn't want to know more about the weird creatures of the Cantina and Jabba's palace?  If you're going to argue that there's more visual variety with the aliens, I won't disagree. But I maintain Mr Senreich's explanation - that it's "not as deep and expansive of a universe" - is a bit nonsensical to me.

I don't particularly care if Robot Chicken does a Star Trek episode.  I just think the reasoning for it is just totally contrary, and I think it would've been better all around for them to just say "well, we're just not as big fans of Star Trek as we are of Star Wars," since that seems pertinently obvious by their attempt at an explanation.

But hey, maybe that's just me.

AIG AUTO INSURANCE BANKRUPTCY : A GAME OF CHICKEN

An AIG bankruptcy filing did not hinge on the resolution of these contracts, thus there could not have been a game of chicken.
Details (greatly simplied but still quite wordy): This story is set in November of 2008, but to understand it we have to go back two months earlier - to September. In September 2008 the clearing price of mortgage-backed securities implied a high rate of mortgage default with low recovery on foreclosed property - a decline in real estate values such as never seen before. Observers were still debating whether prices were correctly forecasting widespread defaults or whether prices were merely depressed due to illiquidity. For institutions levered to real estate the distinction was very important because it meant the difference between short-term liquidity problems and long run insolvency which would force bankruptcy

To understand liquidity problems, we need to understand collateral. In order to minimize credit risk to each other, financial institutions ask for collateral from each other. As trades slowly move up or down in value, cash and securities flow between institutions so that everyone owes each other approximately nothing and the effects of a sudden bankruptcy are much smaller than they otherwise would be. Having collateral in hand means not having to worry about why your counterparty's trades are marking down so low - you are 100% insured by the collateral and if prices rebound you'll just give it back. And if your counterparty goes bankrupt you won't take a loss. Lehman was long real estate and, due to falling prices and having to post collateral, come September they ran out of cash. Regulators shopped them to other banks whose traders pored over Lehman's books and concluded "the company is insolvent, not just illiquid" so "goodnight Lehman Bros".

AIG was in the same boat as Lehman however AIG is an insurance company - this opened up three problems. (1) Banks are usually regulated by federal entities like the Fed and the SEC, so they all fit into similar frameworks nationwide. However insurance companies are only regulated by states. States are not particularly great at regulating because they are small and every state does things differently. (As a side note for fans of health care reform, regulating insurance companies at the federal level and creating national competition is the single most important reform needed. Lack of this in the so-called reform bills is proof that the legislation is all about creating health care entitlement without any real reform.) You can't just call in JP Morgan or Goldman Sachs to tell you what to do here because a bank can't really analyze an insurance company over a weekend. (2) Next, the ratings agencies had assigned AIG their highest rating, AAA, meaning that people who didn't want to do a lot of their own credit analysis, but didn't want to take any risk of default, were the sort of people who bought AIG bonds - that is to say, AIG bonds were largely being held in accounts that were presumed to be taking no risk by their owners. If you go back to news stories from September 2008 you will find many shrill voices invoking the spectre of systemic melt-down, but those voices tend to come from holders of AIG bonds, not random investors worried about "the system". (3) As an insurance company the general public was very broadly exposed to AIG in pensions, annuities, home insurance, etc... and these people aren't holding any collateral at all, but would account for a lot of votes at the polls come November. So, because of these three complications, the same politicians who let Lehman go under decided, at about the same time, to bail out AIG.

Now, there are lots of ways to do a bailout. This very same month, the largest financial entities in the world, Fannie and Freddie, were bailed out - and basically by the federal government saying "we simply guarantee all the debts and obligations of Fannie and Freddie". (Note that, in the end, the agency bailout is where the "taxpayer" will take almost all his lumps. But the politicians don't talk about this too much because Washington spent decades exempting Fannie and Freddie from any meaningful regulation and encouraging them, via various acts of congress, to facilitate mortgage loans to people who probably couldn't afford homes, but would make U.S. home ownership "more diverse".) In the case of AIG the bailout took the form of an billion loan. It is important to remember at this point the debate over whether real estate securities were down because a bunch of mortage defaults were coming or just because nobody wanted to own the bonds. The politicians were still hoping for the latter and hoping that a loan would tide AIG through its illiquid period and into a time when the securities recovered. The TARP legislation was debated this same month, and the original intent of TARP was to buy these securities, thus creating a market for them, and a recovery in their prices. (In the end, however, TARP was not used in this way. It was used to invest in banks, for which no legislation was required anyway, and auto companies - which was probably illegal.) The TARP debate informs us that in September the politicians were not believing the market-implied rate of mortgage default. So, AIG used its bailout money to keep collateral flowing on its real estate positions. The thinking on this was that it stopped the counterparties from closing out the trades and thus "locking in the loss".

Now let's move forward to November 2008, the subject of this post. By November those debating that real estate securities were down due to illiquidity rather than coming defaults had given up their argument. A wave of defaults was coming and everyone finally realized that a lot of people who took out sub-prime mortgages always had the intention of defaulting because they didn't want to own a home so much as speculate on real estate going up. Back at AIG, their positions had continued to go against them and it became pretty obvious that AIG was insolvent, not just illiquid, and a more aggressive bailout was going to be needed if they were not to declare bankruptcy. But now if AIG goes bankrupt the government is in for a loss too since it has made all these loans. So "in for a penny in for a pound" the feds decide to up the bailout. Among many issues to be sorted out in the fresh bailout is that AIG still has all these real estate positions which keep bleeding money and, since AIG made the wrong calls on this all along, the feds decide to close out all of these positions.

At this point, the "unlimited bailout" decision has been made, and the discussion over mopping up these positions is a sidebar, not super important at the time (but it will become very politically sensitive a year later). The feds would like to save a few bucks by negotiating the close-out on these trades with the banks. However, because all the banks are holding lots of collateral, and some of them are even insured against AIG defaulting, they expect to be paid in full just like everyone else exposed to AIG. The feds aren't calling PIMCO and asking them to take 80 cents for their AIG bonds, they are calling retirees and asking them to take 80 cents for their pension annuities, and the aren't calling up auto insurance holders and asking them to take 80 cents for fender-bender repairs. Further, the insured banks wouldn't take a loss even if AIG went bankrupt unless you buy the end-of-the-world systemic melt-down scenario. But, even if you believe that, why aren't all of AIG's creditors being asked to contribute? Indeed, why not everyone in the world, since all benefit from there being no global melt-down. The banks are not the primary beneficiaries of the bailout, the bondholders are - bondholders have no collateral. In essence, there is nothing for the fed to negotiate, so they abandon the effort.

So, back to Steve's question. AIG was going to go bankrupt without a bailout, and negotiating 80 cents on the dollar for its real estate positions would not have changed that either way - so no game of chicken. For political reasons, the decision was made to bail them out. The banks were not asked to pay a disproportionate amount towards that bailout, and intelligent minds can debate whether or not they should have, but the case is far from clear. Lastly, I will add that I am unconvinced that letting AIG go bankrupt would have created a systemic meltdown, but it is clear why those involved in the bailout would say that. It is human nature that when you make a convenient but unpopular choice, your first defense is likely to be that you didn't really have a choice. The choice to bailout AIG was convenient and unpopular, but I don't agree that it would have led to systemic meltdown, and the historical arguments on my side are quite strong. Panics happen every 10 to 20 years and it is never the end of the world.
Vehicle insurance (also known as auto insurance, car insurance, or motor insurance) is insurance purchased for cars, trucks, and other vehicles. Its primary use is to provide protection against losses incurred as a result of traffic accidents and against liability that could be incurred in an accident.