Recent comments

  • and that's where you will find Pelosi's vote. Prof. Warren is the only that was honest enough for that job and now they want to get rid of her. She is the last one with common sense.

    Reply to: Sandbaggin' COP Chair Elizabeth Warren   15 years 7 months ago
    EPer:
  • I think there does need to be an outside body writing up a thorough analysis.

    But putting Politicians on the panel, chosen by Congressional leadership? joke, joke, joke!

    The problem is, for example, the 9/11 commission found very serious problems with immigration Visas, IDs, national security generally.

    So, bam, our open borders, special interests and big cheap labor money people don't want that fixed, so you cannot get a system in place in the US to track on who is here and create a secured ID that cannot be tampered or stolen.

    The banking system has had secure systems for financial transactions for years but lord help you on creating of a secure identity or tracking on Visa entries, exits, stays and know who is in the country...

    Why? Because the illegal alien lobby simply doesn't want it for one, and so we get all sorts of spin to stop the entire process....ignoring the fact our system is a joke and anyone can come into the U.S. and do serious harm.

    Reply to: Sandbaggin' COP Chair Elizabeth Warren   15 years 7 months ago
    EPer:
  • We don't need another commission. This is bullshit - trying to appear like they are doing something. The congressional committees and TARP COP can handle any necessary investigation.

    It is a matter of control. Prof. Warren is not likely to be controlled by big money banking industry. She will provide an honest assessment.

    Many in Washington, including many in WH, want to preserve the status quo as much as possible. A new commission will help those in the pocket of big money banking industry to control the message.

    It is all about protecting the financial oligarchy!

    Reply to: Sandbaggin' COP Chair Elizabeth Warren   15 years 7 months ago
  • Unless I live in mathematical fantasy land, I simply cannot believe his original paper was so endorsed. This makes me believe in financial mathematics, quantitative analysis, actuarial science, the peer reviewed journal articles from colleagues....they are simply not doing their own homework.

    Isn't this incredible, the guy who came up with the "simplification" to reduce an entire group of dependencies to a scalar (that's like saying, ok dudes, multiply by 2 and that's the answer on say calculating the number of beams one needs in a skyscraper) as an infallible model.

    It seriously is a mess. To try to reduce such massive dependencies and interactions such as global markets and individual elements into basically a glorified scalar...
    well, I have a hard time believing anyone who has a PhD in these mathematical areas would buy that...

    so frankly, maybe the 6 figure money for geeks made them all say "who cares" and created some fictional mathematics simply to get filthy rich....I honestly do not know but from the Scientific community side, this is kind of amazing to me that they would take that paper and create an entire derivatives industry out of it that basically collapsed in just 6 years.

    I just hope this sheds a little light on Academia. They so often are considered sacrosanct and they really should not be so considered.

    Reply to: From couples to copulas, David Li was an actuary!   15 years 7 months ago
    EPer:
  • But yeah, I gotta really laugh when the talking heads prattle on about socialism as if it is this evil thing like the totalitarianism of the USSR or say the cultural revolution of China.

    Reply to: Sunday Morning Comics - Socialists Edition   15 years 7 months ago
    EPer:
  • Thanks for the posts! I hope you're having a good weekend, my good man!

    Reply to: Sunday Morning Comics - Socialists Edition   15 years 7 months ago
    EPer:
  • hell...I may start to consider buying them. Because in that scenario, the deals have been done to keep the company going until it reaches profitability. Honestly, if you think about it, at these prices and no chance of shareholder wipeouts, its cheaper to buy the stock than Call options. In fact, it WOULD be like buying a Call option, only without an expiration date! :)

    Reply to: GM Employee Fund Manager Dumps all GM Shares   15 years 7 months ago
    EPer:
  • The article doesn't specify whether the GM stock funds sold represented employee designated payroll contributions, company matching, or GM stock purchased by an employee/retiree initiated, directed exchange between one or more funds to GM stock fund. I think the administrator is on shakey ground if she has sold GM stock in the 3rd scenario, taken as a flyer for speculative purchases. I'll wait to see what the letter says. Regardless, if GM doesn't go belly up and the stock remains intact and thrives.....she's in deep sh**, no matter what the intention.

    Reply to: GM Employee Fund Manager Dumps all GM Shares   15 years 7 months ago
    EPer:
  • Black-Scholes. Let me add that having worked w/CRA extensively I have to say that I don't think you quite understand CRA and neither does Suzy.

    Reply to: Critique of Black-Scholes’ “Black Swan” Problem   15 years 7 months ago
  • Looking at it, unless I saw evidence that would tell me otherwise. Secondly, why didn't they attempt to sell the stock when it was...oh I don't know...in the double digits? You know, earn ...no not the right word...preserve some money for those 401ks?

    Reply to: GM Employee Fund Manager Dumps all GM Shares   15 years 7 months ago
    EPer:
  • is that you had hedge funds running off this type of thinking. There was, I remember on CNBC several years back, these two guys in London who ran a black box operation that claimed to use fuzzy logic (not sure how) to game the difference between the various spot metals contracts on the LME. I think one of those guys killed himself while the other went missing or living in a van in Glascow.

    Reply to: What is Appropriate & What is Not on The Economic Populist   15 years 7 months ago
    EPer:
  • I am not familiar at all with Kevin Phillips' thesis on CPI, or anything else for that matter. However, I can't see how you can call Geoghegan's observations and insights "specious". He isn't trying to mislead anyone to a different policy direction. He's all for re-regulation, no doubt. But let's recall the LBO craze started in the 80s and a mini real estate "bubble" was created in that same decade. The middle class was largely gone long before the repeal of Glass Steagall. There can be no meaningful "economic recovery" unless some serious attempts are made to restore a living wage middle class in America. Rather than being specious, I think Geoghegan is being cautionary that we not stop short of making ALL of the necessary changes. If Geoghegan is guilty of anything, it is being an idealist. And frankly, I have felt that this country has had a significant deficit in this area for a long, long time.

    Reply to: The Populist Pub is Now Open   15 years 7 months ago
    EPer:
  • LOL

    To everyone else, fuzzy logic is a type of mathematical axioms based on probabilities and regions of convergence.

    In layman's terms binary logic:

    It is It is not

    fuzzy logic:

    It probably is it might be it probably isn't

    It ain't this, but it's close in similarity to that more than this.

    Reply to: What is Appropriate & What is Not on The Economic Populist   15 years 7 months ago
    EPer:
  • Now that you mention it, it's very much like fuzzy logic.

    Reply to: What is Appropriate & What is Not on The Economic Populist   15 years 7 months ago
    EPer:
  • For I suspect you are a granola creature. ;) I'm just trying to say that the "car culture" needs a "love object" replacement. It's all sales, marketing, image so it can be done, taking into account why people "love their cars" and coming up with a "new love".

    Some of the upcoming electric technology will be able to astound, rival...it's just like people who "love their Macs". You can create a competitive technology which will be adopted but it's gotta "wow" and "awe" in terms of total "awesomeness".

    like just take trains for a moment. One could have a smoking car that is completely isolated from the rest of the train. Politics will dictate not to promote smoking, but the reality is a certain amount of the population is going to want it to use public transport for that length of time (think the time of a nicotine withdrawal period and that's about it).

    Another example would be the "doggie car". People want to travel with their pets. the pet is a family member. So imposing "no pets" means they simply are not going to use the transport.

    Same thing with eating. They want their colas and snacks.

    I'm trying to imply to get new technology adopted, they need to deal with how people are instead of how they "should be".

    Reply to: Pontiac to Be Killed off - Death to the Muscle Car   15 years 7 months ago
    EPer:
  • ... when weighed against the tens of millions to die in climate chaos, if we are lucky, no, I do not see that it is sane to give them any weight whatsoever.

    That does not mean that I take them lightly.

    Reply to: Pontiac to Be Killed off - Death to the Muscle Car   15 years 7 months ago
    EPer:
  • metaphysics is not "on topic". Believe me, there are plenty of people out there with all sorts of "theories". But when someone posts out some basic algebraic inequalities claiming this is a new "economic theory", sorry, that's enough for me.

    There is already plenty of confusion, misinformation on what actually works, what the theory actually is. So many people have great difficulty with mathematical equations and I've seen even some "name brand" research where they put some fictional mathematics in it which actually doesn't prove anything due to either invalid assumptions or bad math. I mean let's look at CDOs themselves. Talk about some serious bad math, they are based on CDS evaluations, which themselves have only been in existence for about a decade. So, we don't need more fictional mathematics being promoted.

    We are a layman's blog but that said, the idea is to let people learn, reason, discuss the real details, facts....
    not to be a place to enable more stuff that's so "off" it lends itself to rense.com type of beliefs (although sometimes this site is very fun! I love CT for entertainment purposes!)

    Point is there are plenty of other sites.

    Reply to: What is Appropriate & What is Not on The Economic Populist   15 years 7 months ago
    EPer:
  • I'm sorry, but I think you have a fundamental misunderstanding of what Black-Scholes is, and where it can be applied.

    Really, the Black-Scholes formula is composed of two different parts. The first part (which rests on your "axiom" #2), attempts to describe the behavior of the price of some asset. The second part (using your "axiom" #1), sets the price of an option on that underlying asset, given the price movement described by the first.

    Now, it seems that in your post above, you have taken issue with "axiom" #1. But the Black-Scholes model does not require that every market participant is able to borrow or lend money at the risk-free interest rate. All it requires is that some market participant is able to, and can arbitrage the difference between the market price of an option, and the price of some other portfolio of assets that has the same cash flow. The only people who need to get that risk-free interest rate are those engaged in that type of arbitrage.

    Lastly, the Black-Scholes model has nothing to do with house prices, or the housing market in general. The method that it uses to model the movement of a stock is inapplicable to the housing market (Brownian motion doesn't even really model the stock market all that well).

    Again, I'm sorry. But, even my (limited) understanding of the Black-Scholes model, and its applications, allows me to say that you don't really understand what you're talking about.

    Reply to: Critique of Black-Scholes’ “Black Swan” Problem   15 years 7 months ago
    EPer:
  • Robert, I don't think anyone here is subject to being snoockered. I, too, am highly critical in my analytics.
    Grozny's position just seemed more like metaphysics. Not totally clear about what his basic assumptions were to support his "axiomatic" premise.

    Reply to: What is Appropriate & What is Not on The Economic Populist   15 years 7 months ago
    EPer:
  • My take on Kevin Phillips is somewhat different: in his book, "Wealth & Democracy," he forewarned of the melt down that has occurred. Systemically generated wealth imbalances (many the result of insider corruptions) threaten the entire political system. I do not see him as a flake for this view.

    Reply to: The Populist Pub is Now Open   15 years 7 months ago
    EPer:

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