http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/joris-luyendijk-banking-blog/2011/sep/15/computer-programmer-high-frequency-trading
― diouf est le papa du foot galsen merde lè haters (nakhchivan), Thursday, 15 September 2011 11:49 (1 year ago) Permalink
"I just feel incredibly lucky to be living now. What would I have been doing with my maths skills 100 years ago? Or 100 years from now? This is exactly the right time in history to have these skills. And I have them."
yah i mean the fuck use was maths in 1911?
― diouf est le papa du foot galsen merde lè haters (nakhchivan), Thursday, 15 September 2011 11:50 (1 year ago) Permalink
lol
this stuff is still my plan b : (
― caek, Thursday, 15 September 2011 11:54 (1 year ago) Permalink
http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/09/15/us-ubs-idUSTRE78E15I20110915
(Reuters) - Swiss bank UBS said a trader who had lost it around $2 billion in unauthorized deals had been arrested in London, where police were holding 31-year-old Kweku Adoboli.
― dayo, Thursday, 15 September 2011 17:38 (1 year ago) Permalink
The trader in question, Mr. Adoboli, who graduated with an honors degree in computer science from the University of Nottingham,
think about all the social media websites these guys could be starting
― dayo, Thursday, 15 September 2011 17:39 (1 year ago) Permalink
One of the few noteworthy moments in Michael Moore's last film was showing how Wall Street woos math majors.
― Anakin Ska Walker (AKA Skarth Vader) (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Thursday, 15 September 2011 17:40 (1 year ago) Permalink
haha this same conv is going on in the grad school thread
― iatee, Thursday, 15 September 2011 17:41 (1 year ago) Permalink
hardly surprising though. from reading books about when finance companies fuck up, this kind of thing happens every 2-3 years. bet these companies build this into their models.
― dayo, Thursday, 15 September 2011 17:41 (1 year ago) Permalink
― caek, Thursday, 15 September 2011 17:41 (1 year ago) Permalink
like "commodities market volatile this year, 23% chance... blue chips up this year, 10% chance... broken arrow rogue trader, 25% chance...oh, pizza's here! meeting adjourned"
― dayo, Thursday, 15 September 2011 17:42 (1 year ago) Permalink
"we model so well when we're on cocaine!" *fist bumps*
― caek, Thursday, 15 September 2011 17:43 (1 year ago) Permalink
sorry "I love that we can model while were on cocaine"
― buzza, Thursday, 15 September 2011 17:51 (1 year ago) Permalink
But I don't care. I expect to make enough money to be out of this business in a few years. I think I would like to go back to university. I have become very interested in the humanities and philosophy.
my friend used to work for a company that designed materials to help assuage successful businessmen about their guilt at having made huge amounts of money
it was a bunch of pseudophilosophical tracts that, when boiled down, said "yes, you DESERVED to make all that money! don't feel bad! if you like, give some to charity!"
― dayo, Thursday, 15 September 2011 21:20 (1 year ago) Permalink
that's amazing
― iatee, Thursday, 15 September 2011 21:21 (1 year ago) Permalink
haha you know him! you can ask T about it sometime
― dayo, Thursday, 15 September 2011 21:22 (1 year ago) Permalink
!
how would u even find such a company? do they leave brochures lying around hotels in st moritz
― diouf est le papa du foot galsen merde lè haters (nakhchivan), Thursday, 15 September 2011 21:23 (1 year ago) Permalink
company reps on every 35th storey ledge in new york
― diouf est le papa du foot galsen merde lè haters (nakhchivan), Thursday, 15 September 2011 21:24 (1 year ago) Permalink
I wish I could find the article, from the NYT I think, about a Ph.D. in math from Berkeley, a logician even, who took a quant job, made gobs of cash, fucked things up so that his company lost gobs of cash, quit, & ended up doing shark fishing in the Pacific, because it had the thrills to which he'd become accustomed on Wall Street.
― Euler, Thursday, 15 September 2011 21:24 (1 year ago) Permalink
article would be from the late 1990s I think
haha wow yeah I'm gonna I want to hear more xp
― iatee, Thursday, 15 September 2011 21:25 (1 year ago) Permalink
I might be misremembering but I think that's the thrust
I imagine this company was probably started by a successful businessman turned professional confessional
― dayo, Thursday, 15 September 2011 21:25 (1 year ago) Permalink
pretty sure that article wasn't from the 90s cuz it would have been made into a major motion picture with cuba gooding jr in a supporting role
― diouf est le papa du foot galsen merde lè haters (nakhchivan), Thursday, 15 September 2011 21:27 (1 year ago) Permalink
relevant to our interests here:
If Aristotle Ran General Motors: The New Soul of Business
written by a former Notre Dame philosophy prof who now is fantastically wealthy peddling this sorta stuff to the plutocrats
― Euler, Thursday, 15 September 2011 21:28 (1 year ago) Permalink
I've looked SO LONG for that article over the last few years (shark fishing quant I mean); I think I read a scan of it on a webpage in the 90s & now I can find nothing.
― Euler, Thursday, 15 September 2011 21:29 (1 year ago) Permalink
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2038139/Colin-Birch-hanged-paying-2-prostitutes-stage-mock-execution.html
― diouf est le papa du foot galsen merde lè haters (nakhchivan), Friday, 16 September 2011 17:19 (1 year ago) Permalink
the monk who sold his ferrari kinda shite
― talking heads, quiet smith (darraghmac), Friday, 16 September 2011 17:33 (1 year ago) Permalink
have long pondered a book of common-sense negativity, provisional title 'feel the fear and cop the fuck on'
― talking heads, quiet smith (darraghmac), Friday, 16 September 2011 17:36 (1 year ago) Permalink
Detective Superintendent Lee Neiles told the hearing: ‘Mr Birch had been redundant since September 2009 and had had difficulties in finding other means of employment, although the family were financially stable.’
god I *hate* the british use of the term 'redundant'. it's so callous.
― iatee, Friday, 16 September 2011 17:41 (1 year ago) Permalink
not in the british meaning, though
― talking heads, quiet smith (darraghmac), Friday, 16 September 2011 17:43 (1 year ago) Permalink
iykwim
― talking heads, quiet smith (darraghmac), Friday, 16 September 2011 17:44 (1 year ago) Permalink
yeah I guess I didn't think of that! but from an american's perspective it just sounds evil.
― iatee, Friday, 16 September 2011 17:44 (1 year ago) Permalink
here it's like 'you were bad at your job' or 'we can't afford you' but 'redundant' gives me a sense of 'you are unnecessary as a human being'
which means it probably was correctly used w/r/t to this banker, but outside of that...
― iatee, Friday, 16 September 2011 17:47 (1 year ago) Permalink
nobody rly uses redundant as a synonym for unemployed and 'laid off' is more often used instead of 'made redundant' in newspapers etc
i think it's just policemen and their strangely clunky phrasing, cf 'other means of employment' instead of 'a job'
― diouf est le papa du foot galsen merde lè haters (nakhchivan), Friday, 16 September 2011 17:48 (1 year ago) Permalink
'made redundant' still common terminology iirc, though there's subtle emp. law differences between the two i think
― talking heads, quiet smith (darraghmac), Friday, 16 September 2011 17:50 (1 year ago) Permalink
it is a shitty term tho, def
― diouf est le papa du foot galsen merde lè haters (nakhchivan), Friday, 16 September 2011 17:51 (1 year ago) Permalink
eh i dunno, it's quite useful as a means of conveying the right tone of contempt society ought to feel for the wastrel layabouts tbh
― talking heads, quiet smith (darraghmac), Friday, 16 September 2011 17:53 (1 year ago) Permalink
I have no problem w/redundant. It doesn't imply fault like 'fired' does. It implies that the employer doesn't have any meaningful/profitable work for you to do.
― em vee equals pea queue (Michael White), Friday, 16 September 2011 18:01 (1 year ago) Permalink
that's awful
― partistan (dayo), Friday, 16 September 2011 19:18 (1 year ago) Permalink
this is typical police illiterately pretentious usage though. no one except a policeman would say "he has been redundant for a year". you get made redundant, and then you are unemployed. like how only police say "i was proceeding along oxford st" or "he asked myself how to get to piccadilly circus".
― caek, Saturday, 17 September 2011 07:51 (1 year ago) Permalink
holler
― is it shakeymostep? (cozen), Saturday, 17 September 2011 08:52 (1 year ago) Permalink
Redundant is only a little better than 'managed out'. Not by much.
― xyzzzz__, Saturday, 17 September 2011 08:59 (1 year ago) Permalink
further underscoring the impotency of the SEC
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/17/business/sec-official-in-madoff-case-may-draw-a-criminal-inquiry.html?_r=1
― partistan (dayo), Saturday, 17 September 2011 11:40 (1 year ago) Permalink
ts your maddie vs our maddie
― talking heads, quiet smith (darraghmac), Saturday, 17 September 2011 14:37 (1 year ago) Permalink
Adoboli (who, let me stress, has yet to enter a plea) was in exchange traded funds – which used to look like unit trusts, but have got increasingly complicated. One of the top market regulators, Mario Draghi, recently described ETFs as "reminiscent of what happened in the securitisation market before the crisis". Read that quote again: he's comparing them to sub-prime mortgages. Most of us should get very worried; rogue traders should go steaming in.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/sep/19/brain-food-ubs-kweku-adoboli/print
― diouf est le papa du foot galsen merde lè haters (nakhchivan), Monday, 19 September 2011 23:12 (1 year ago) Permalink
http://curiouscapitalist.blogs.time.com/2011/09/16/why-financial-reform-hasnt-stopped-rogue-traders/
― Whiney G. Blutfarten (dayo), Tuesday, 20 September 2011 12:16 (1 year ago) Permalink
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/21/business/dodd-frank-act-is-a-target-on-gop-campaign-trail.html
Republicans say Dodd-Frank is the root of some of today’s economic problems. It has stopped banks from lending to “job creators,” they contend, and is a direct cause of high unemployment. “It created such uncertainty that the bankers, instead of making loans, pulled back,” said Mitt Romney, the former Massachusetts governor, speaking at a South Carolina rally over Labor Day weekend where he again called for the law’s repeal.
ahahahaha
hahahah
haha
...
*shoots self*
― Whiney G. Blutfarten (dayo), Wednesday, 21 September 2011 10:27 (1 year ago) Permalink
http://www.spiegel.de/international/zeitgeist/0,1518,788462,00.html
for this headline I am not against journalistic muckraking
― dayo, Monday, 26 September 2011 18:56 (1 year ago) Permalink
Jérôme Kerviel, gambled away billions in 2010. He is still serving a three-year jail sentence.
p cool how you can lose billions and just do 3 years in a minimum security jail
that study sounds pretty weak but oh well i'm still always happy when people push the psychopath angle, cuz if there were a cultural and spiritual system that caused and possibly even mandated people who were not psychopaths to behave like psychopaths that system might benefit from review
― the-dream in the witch house (difficult listening hour), Monday, 26 September 2011 19:31 (1 year ago) Permalink
here is a lot of information about annual income and debt
http://www.federalreserve.gov/pubs/bulletin/2012/pdf/scf12.pdf
especially pp56-73
― I will forlornly return to my home planet soon (dandydonweiner), Wednesday, May 1, 2013 11:33 AM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink
This shows that people in the 90th percentile and up have BY FAR the lowest leverage ratios, so I'm really not sure what you're getting at
― huun huurt 2 (Hurting 2), Wednesday, 1 May 2013 15:40 (2 weeks ago) Permalink
am I reading page 59 wrong?
― I will forlornly return to my home planet soon (dandydonweiner), Wednesday, 1 May 2013 16:04 (2 weeks ago) Permalink
size of debt in dollars is not really a useful measure without comparison to income and assets.
That aside, there's an awfully large amount of secured debt from "other" residential property (if I'm reading that right) which I guess means either second homes or rental property for income. Worst thing that happens if they can no longer service that debt is they lose a vacation home or a rental property.
― huun huurt 2 (Hurting 2), Wednesday, 1 May 2013 16:10 (2 weeks ago) Permalink
xp and that info is conveniently provided on p. 72, where we get lots of great information about debt burden to income ratios. People in the 90th percentile and above have about half the ratio of every other decile group. In addition, the percentages of people in the top decile with debt payments making up more than 40 percent of their income, and people in that group who are past due on debt, are tiny compared to the other groups.
smarten up Don
― huun huurt 2 (Hurting 2), Wednesday, 1 May 2013 16:25 (2 weeks ago) Permalink
right, as I noted above there is usually an advantage to net worth (and as Adam elaborated on) but that doesn't mean that rich people aren't leveraging themselves like crazy. It just means that for whatever percent of the top (3% ? I dunno, you name it) there is likely a significant safety net that they can likely mitigate most unplanned, negative financial situations.
But that leaves millions of others with a relatively high net worth who are certainly leveraged by their homes and other secured debts. You know that. Not sure why you're trying to fight me over how leveraged most rich people are.
― I will forlornly return to my home planet soon (dandydonweiner), Wednesday, 1 May 2013 16:36 (2 weeks ago) Permalink
well according to the doc you sent me rich people are like half as leveraged as everyone else!
― huun huurt 2 (Hurting 2), Wednesday, 1 May 2013 16:39 (2 weeks ago) Permalink
Don suggested that most rich people live check to check and that does not seem right.
― curmudgeon, Wednesday, 1 May 2013 16:41 (2 weeks ago) Permalink
kind of depends what you think is rich--top 10% is $148k of annual income on up and it would seem reasonable that above 5% ($208k on up) probably has an effect on the leveraging. And the halving point starts at $107k hh per year. Maybe it would be better if I defined rich better.
Honestly, I found it odd that aggregate debt was within a few percentage points for all 70% of the country. And, that, it was only around 20%. So in that metric, I'm totally fucking wrong. Like, wayyyyyy wrong. Like always, right?
― I will forlornly return to my home planet soon (dandydonweiner), Wednesday, 1 May 2013 16:53 (2 weeks ago) Permalink
why would people in the top 5% be more leveraged than people in the top 10-5%?
― huun huurt 2 (Hurting 2), Wednesday, 1 May 2013 16:59 (2 weeks ago) Permalink
didn't type that well; what I meant was that the amount of leverage between the top 10% and 5% is probably significant. I am curious to where it really starts dropping because that to me would be an indication of where the truly "financially independent" households like. Sorry I have been terribly sloppy today and wasting so much bandwidth.
I really thought that aggregate debt for most households would be in the 30%+ range. Can't get my head wrapped around that.
― I will forlornly return to my home planet soon (dandydonweiner), Wednesday, 1 May 2013 17:05 (2 weeks ago) Permalink
I think what's really striking is that there's a huge dropoff in leverage from the 80-90 group to the 90-100 group, whereas 70-80 is pretty similar to 80-90. But I guess that makes sense if the 70-80 is x income to y income, the 80-90 is y income to z income, but the 90-100 is z income to infinity.
Does it say whether those ratios are median ratios, within the decile? Is the ratio listed exactly the 95th percentile mark?
― huun huurt 2 (Hurting 2), Wednesday, 1 May 2013 17:11 (2 weeks ago) Permalink
anyway, even if you broke down that top decile further I don't think you'd find a significant percentage of those people were MORE leveraged than most Americans.
― huun huurt 2 (Hurting 2), Wednesday, 1 May 2013 17:12 (2 weeks ago) Permalink
well, the point was more if we pull the super rich out of the equation (as affable outliers!) then are the rich still leveraged like the rest of us (by percentage of aggregate debt!)? Honestly, with debt levels around 20% for even 70% of households, my argument about people being leveraged seems HORRIBLE. I need to find a new metric. Or invent one.
I didn't read the details of the breakdown that well. I think it's possible to download the whole table of data and then maybe we could (likely?) slice and dice by whatever we wanted and create our own income stratas.
I thought I'd read before that typical HH debt target (for mortgage purposes and including mortgage) was somewhere around 36%. Was very surprised to see aggregate debt levels below that.
― I will forlornly return to my home planet soon (dandydonweiner), Wednesday, 1 May 2013 17:20 (2 weeks ago) Permalink
Keep in mind that those debt levels are heavily skewed by renters. Mortgages are going to be by far the biggest ticket debt item for a family, and a family that doesn't have a mortgage is going to have a much tinier debt burden than an equal income family with none. That's why you see relatively even debt-service-to-income ratios, yet the percentages of lower income families with greater than 40% of their income going to service debt are MUCH higher.
― huun huurt 2 (Hurting 2), Wednesday, 1 May 2013 17:26 (2 weeks ago) Permalink
yes, I was thinking I could go get a table of home ownership and then manually factor that in but it became too much of a hassle. And really this discussion point was supposed to be essentially about cash flow...so rents are related if I'd not have strayed over into debt.
But still, I would probably assume that at least the middle income strata had a high degree of home ownership, and that those home owners likely were near the limits of their loaning ability, and that therefore the 20% was low.
― I will forlornly return to my home planet soon (dandydonweiner), Wednesday, 1 May 2013 17:35 (2 weeks ago) Permalink
it's a cliche, but that almost seems like an onion article
not to derail or be too lol obvious, but the kickoff to this conversation seems rather liberally sourced from this chestnut
the orig. article seems a bit dry f/ satire, though even the lonely-at-the-top sentimental horseshit w/ Oliver James waxing on the simple (and apparently inexpensive) joys of one's student years is ripped straight from the novel. (OTOH "Sarah Butcher" seemed f/ at least a few minutes to have effectively pitched the noxious notion of the upper strata as just another besieged bourgeois outpost affected terribly by the financial shenanigans of ~mysterious others~).
/parenthetical bs
― Hellhouse, Wednesday, 1 May 2013 21:38 (2 weeks ago) Permalink
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/05/01/alexis-goldstein-jim-himes_n_3196206.html#slide=more34585
― Gukbe, Thursday, 2 May 2013 04:00 (2 weeks ago) Permalink
http://blogs.wsj.com/moneybeat/2013/05/02/crude-broker-talk-surfaces-in-london-trading-probe/
― sktsh, Thursday, 2 May 2013 10:27 (2 weeks ago) Permalink
http://news.efinancialcareers.com/us-en/134725/how-to-tell-your-wife-or-husband-you-got-a-bad-bonus/
― Chuck E was a hero to most (s.clover), Thursday, 2 May 2013 17:42 (2 weeks ago) Permalink
"bad bonus"
― Aimless, Thursday, 2 May 2013 17:44 (2 weeks ago) Permalink
― huun huurt 2 (Hurting 2), Thursday, 2 May 2013 18:15 (2 weeks ago) Permalink
Was that "bad bonus" piece for real?
― curmudgeon, Thursday, 2 May 2013 18:28 (2 weeks ago) Permalink
this is amazing:
3. Don’t accuse your wife or girlfriend of being a hypocrite One equity researcher who said he hasn’t had a bonus for five years, advised bankers to resist the temptation to criticize wives’ reactions to the size of their bonus
“My own experience is that a lot of wives and girlfriends of investment bankers don’t necessarily like the fact that their partner is in banking – they’d rather be with someone who’s doing something much more worthy. Spouses pretend that they don’t like the money and the long hours, but the fact is that they also love the expensive holidays and meals out.
“Banking partners are therefore a bit hypocritical. It’s tempting to point this out when a bonus doesn’t come through. I’ve never actually said that to my girlfriend though as it would just cause an argument,” he added.
― huun huurt 2 (Hurting 2), Thursday, 2 May 2013 18:30 (2 weeks ago) Permalink
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/06/opinion/a-disappointing-debut-at-the-sec.html?nl=todaysheadlines&emc=edit_th_20130506&_r=0
Mary Jo White's initial review for early actions taken
― curmudgeon, Monday, 6 May 2013 13:48 (2 weeks ago) Permalink
http://www.forbes.com/sites/davidmarotta/2013/04/21/is-a-3-million-ira-sufficient-for-retirement/
Forbes defending the rich folks rights to enormous IRAs, and neo-con Hyatt at the Post even thinks Forbes is wrong. This will never pass anyway
http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/fred-hiatt-obamas-modest-proposal-to-cap-retirement-entitlements/2013/05/05/de9eea7a-b402-11e2-bbf2-a6f9e9d79e19_story.html?tid=pm_pop
― curmudgeon, Monday, 6 May 2013 14:52 (2 weeks ago) Permalink
wow so much wrong with that Forbes article
― huun huurt 2 (Hurting 2), Monday, 6 May 2013 14:58 (2 weeks ago) Permalink
forbes blogs are like bleachercrowd / gawkers new thing etc. etc.
― iatee, Monday, 6 May 2013 15:00 (2 weeks ago) Permalink
the crowdsourcing of linkbait
http://blogs.forbes.com/help/how-do-i-become-a-contributor/
ilx should start a forbes blog
― iatee, Monday, 6 May 2013 15:01 (2 weeks ago) Permalink
Assuming 4.5% inflation, a 20-year-old starting to save for retirement today will need a $9.97 million portfolio value at age 65 to have a lifestyle of $60,000 in today’s dollars.
We haven't had inflation of 4.5% or close to it since the early 1990s.
― huun huurt 2 (Hurting 2), Monday, 6 May 2013 15:01 (2 weeks ago) Permalink
the bigger point though is that Obama's proposal is not a cap on how much you can save for retirement, which is what the article makes it sound like
― huun huurt 2 (Hurting 2), Monday, 6 May 2013 15:02 (2 weeks ago) Permalink
this is like finding fault w/ a comment for a yahoo news article
― iatee, Monday, 6 May 2013 15:02 (2 weeks ago) Permalink
Is it really? The guy has written dozens of pieces for Forbes and has his own wealth management firm
― huun huurt 2 (Hurting 2), Monday, 6 May 2013 15:06 (2 weeks ago) Permalink
yes...in charlottesville virginia
― iatee, Monday, 6 May 2013 15:06 (2 weeks ago) Permalink
with 66 twitter followershttps://twitter.com/MarottaOnMoney
What I also don't get about the cap proposal -- traditional IRAs already have a tax-free contribution limit per year, so what would the cap change?
again he has not written '66 pieces for forbes', forbes allows basically anyone to start a forbes blog
― iatee, Monday, 6 May 2013 15:07 (2 weeks ago) Permalink
the seeking alpha of money magazines
― huun huurt 2 (Hurting 2), Monday, 6 May 2013 15:09 (2 weeks ago) Permalink
Don't care about a Forbes blog, or the W, Post editorial re a Forbes blog, here's the USA Today(!):
The president's proposed budget would cap IRAs and other retirement plans at $3 million, but it could fall below that in future years.
It's not easy to get more than $3 million in a retirement account, which includes IRAs, 401(k) and 403(b) plans. Currently, the cap would affect just 0.03% of retirement accounts, says the Employee Benefit Research Institute.
But despite the above:
Capping IRA could deter savings without helping reduce the deficit, Ronald O'Hanley, president of Asset Management and Corporate Services at Fidelity Investments, argued at a speech to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce Wednesday. Most retirement programs are tax deferrals, not tax breaks, he argues: Savers pay taxes when they withdraw. "Not only will such a proposal further challenge retirement savings, it will not generate additional revenue," he says.
http://www.usatoday.com/story/money/personalfinance/2013/04/10/presidents-budget-plan-iras-cap/2071529/
Sure buddy.
― curmudgeon, Monday, 6 May 2013 15:30 (2 weeks ago) Permalink
http://news.efinancialcareers.com/uk-en/141013/goldman-sachs-hires-particle-physicist-from-the-large-hadron-collider/
― 乒乓, Thursday, 16 May 2013 12:08 (5 days ago) Permalink