the finance industry / wall street

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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"

caek, Thursday, 15 September 2011 17:43 (1 year ago) Permalink

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

Euler, Thursday, 15 September 2011 21:24 (1 year ago) Permalink

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

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://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

dayo, Monday, 26 September 2011 18:56 (1 year ago) Permalink

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

never review ILM, please

dayo, Monday, 26 September 2011 19:33 (1 year ago) Permalink

Milton Parker, Monday, 26 September 2011 19:56 (1 year ago) Permalink

yeesh

runaway (Matt P), Monday, 26 September 2011 19:59 (1 year ago) Permalink

hahaha! they rule! literally.

scott seward, Monday, 26 September 2011 20:05 (1 year ago) Permalink

you would think they could afford better cameras

dayo, Monday, 26 September 2011 20:07 (1 year ago) Permalink

and thrones

runaway (Matt P), Monday, 26 September 2011 20:07 (1 year ago) Permalink

they should throw blood diamonds at all the passing hippies.

scott seward, Monday, 26 September 2011 20:09 (1 year ago) Permalink

i'm no help cuz i kinda hate all the people involved. the cops, the fatcats, the hippies. they all need some billy club action.

scott seward, Monday, 26 September 2011 20:10 (1 year ago) Permalink

The Hibernian Express will shave six milliseconds off that time.
Of course, verifiable figures are elusive and estimates vary wildly, but it is claimed that a one millisecond advantage could be worth up to $100m (£63m) a year to the bottom line of a large hedge fund.

This is kind of the real plot of the latest William Gibson novel

Kiarostami bag (milo z), Monday, 26 September 2011 20:10 (1 year ago) Permalink

the crowdsourcing of linkbait

iatee, Monday, 6 May 2013 15:00 (1 month ago) Permalink

http://blogs.forbes.com/help/how-do-i-become-a-contributor/

ilx should start a forbes blog

iatee, Monday, 6 May 2013 15:01 (1 month 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 (1 month 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 (1 month ago) Permalink

this is like finding fault w/ a comment for a yahoo news article

iatee, Monday, 6 May 2013 15:02 (1 month 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 (1 month ago) Permalink

yes...in charlottesville virginia

iatee, Monday, 6 May 2013 15:06 (1 month ago) Permalink

with 66 twitter followers
https://twitter.com/MarottaOnMoney

iatee, Monday, 6 May 2013 15:06 (1 month ago) Permalink

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?

huun huurt 2 (Hurting 2), Monday, 6 May 2013 15:06 (1 month ago) Permalink

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 (1 month ago) Permalink

the seeking alpha of money magazines

huun huurt 2 (Hurting 2), Monday, 6 May 2013 15:09 (1 month 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 (1 month ago) Permalink

New rules to regulate derivatives, adopted last week by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, are a victory for Wall Street

That's from the New York Times

http://truth-out.org/video/item/16500-banks-win-big-as-regulators-refuse-to-rein-in-700-trillion-derivatives-market

A discussion of it from elsewhere

curmudgeon, Wednesday, 22 May 2013 15:06 (4 weeks ago) Permalink

Upthread there are comments from Hurting 2 and others about how you can't charge Wall Street folks for actions that are not crimes.

This won't help:

May 24 New York Times

DEALBOOK
Banks' Lobbyists Help in Drafting Financial Bills
By ERIC LIPTON and BEN PROTESS
In a sign of Wall Street's resurgent influence in Washington, bank lobbyists are aiding lawmakers in drafting legislation that softens financial regulations

curmudgeon, Friday, 24 May 2013 14:02 (3 weeks ago) Permalink

'lobbyists help draft bills' is not a news story

iatee, Friday, 24 May 2013 14:06 (3 weeks ago) Permalink

It's news to the extent that the details go counter to the Obama and Democratic party PR meme re enforcement of Dodd-Frank (yep I know its only been pr and never really true). I was gonna add that myself, but it's worth mentioning how its still going on, business as usual, although that's no surprise either.

curmudgeon, Friday, 24 May 2013 14:16 (3 weeks ago) Permalink

http://dealbook.nytimes.com/2013/05/23/banks-lobbyists-help-in-drafting-financial-bills/

One bill that sailed through the House Financial Services Committee this month — over the objections of the Treasury Department — was essentially Citigroup’s, according to e-mails reviewed by The New York Times. The bill would exempt broad swathes of trades from new regulation.

iatee, Friday, 24 May 2013 14:19 (3 weeks ago) Permalink

do you know what that means

iatee, Friday, 24 May 2013 14:19 (3 weeks ago) Permalink

it means absolutely nothing because the bill will not be passed

iatee, Friday, 24 May 2013 14:19 (3 weeks ago) Permalink

Representative Maxine Waters, the ranking Democrat on the Financial Services Committee, was among the few Democrats opposing the change, echoing the concerns of consumer groups.

curmudgeon, Friday, 24 May 2013 14:28 (3 weeks ago) Permalink

A watered-down compromise version that will satisfy Wall Street may pass though

curmudgeon, Friday, 24 May 2013 14:29 (3 weeks ago) Permalink

Grassley said in a statement late Wednesday he had not heard from the White House about Comey's nomination but said Comey possessed a lot of important experience on national security issues.

"But, if he's nominated, he would have to answer questions about his recent work in the hedge fund industry," Grassley said. "The administration's efforts to criminally prosecute Wall Street for its part in the economic downturn have been abysmal, and his agency would have to help build the case against some of his colleagues."

Senator Grassley, man of the people

curmudgeon, Thursday, 30 May 2013 13:47 (2 weeks ago) Permalink

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2013/05/31/join-wall-street-save-the-world/?hpid=z1

Hedge fund types who give large chunks of their salary to fighting malaria and other charities

curmudgeon, Friday, 31 May 2013 19:06 (2 weeks ago) Permalink

http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/political-animal-a/2013_06/dim_prospects_for_brownvitter045192.php

Bipartisan tougher regulation for big banks not likely to go anywhere

curmudgeon, Monday, 10 June 2013 18:33 (1 week ago) Permalink

http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/alexis-goldstein-the-intimidate-the-ctfc-act/2013/06/12/18451f48-d374-11e2-a73e-826d299ff459_story.html?hpid=z2

So derivatives experts, is this Occupy guy's guest editorial regarding a derivatives bill wrong?

curmudgeon, Wednesday, 12 June 2013 18:14 (1 week ago) Permalink

Occupy person

curmudgeon, Wednesday, 12 June 2013 18:15 (1 week ago) Permalink

that basically makes sense. iirc lots of components of bank operations are in london instead of e.g. ny because of different regulations. including, especially, the ability to take something you've gotten as a swap from someone else, and in turn engage in a swap with it, etc. so that big pools of capital can be generated from just swapping the same things back and forth.

stefon taylor swiftboat (s.clover), Thursday, 13 June 2013 12:01 (6 days ago) Permalink

We're doomed

curmudgeon, Thursday, 13 June 2013 14:46 (6 days ago) Permalink

here's the paper i was thinking of on this stuff. singh has done lots of follow-on research too. gotta love the term 'rehypothication'!

http://www.imf.org/external/pubs/cat/longres.cfm?sk=24075.0

stefon taylor swiftboat (s.clover), Thursday, 13 June 2013 19:42 (6 days ago) Permalink

http://www.motherjones.com/mojo/2013/06/swap-jurisdiction-certainty-act-house-cross-border

More on House efforts to weaken financial oversight

curmudgeon, Friday, 14 June 2013 14:38 (5 days ago) Permalink


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