the finance industry / wall street

it's definitely a variation on poe's law

but I mean if you have ever read a book chronicling the lives of wall street traders (and yes, even w/ the bias), you'll know why he passes the sniff test; he's just parroting what every trader out there is thinking atm.

dude isn't really helping the cause imho

I mean as far as I can tell from what I'm reading, I could just as easily call myself a "trader" in the sense he means it, i.e. someone who sits in his underwear and buys and sells stocks from time to time.

boy, that video is a hit in lib blogs today.

does that surprise you

Not a bit.

ok now i'm puzzled by this guy

i guess he got what he wanted?

lol

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LiWlvBro9eI&feature=player_embedded#!

not him tho

really

Yes Men are smarter than this guy imo

if they pulled a stunt, it would be funny for one thing

uh huh, ok

not quite goin that far, but no, i mean--are you looking at these two dudes? this dude is not that dude.

They both have bushy eyebrows, crooked nose, funny accent. I smell a rat

was already talkin about him in the other thread

http://observers.france24.com/content/20101006-iran-youth-flirting-tehran-cars-traffic-jam-boys-girls-iran-zamin

Alessio Rastani, 33, is a London stock market trader of Italo-Iranian origin. He regularly visits his relatives in Tehran.

06/10/2010

he also has myspace and twitter accounts dating back more than a year

trust me dude, my experience with cloverfield has made me way too good at this shit

lol

Wow the Yes Men are so good at this, aren't they? You have to hand it to them.

l8r

You are a Yes Man, what do I win

Alessio Rastani = Sales ratio ANSI

makes u think

hmm yes

oh hey our boy

oh hey

http://www.leadingtrader.com/09/alessio-rastani-a-big-thank-you-from-alessio/

oh hey

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/01/nyregion/wall-street-occupiers-protesting-till-whenever.html?pagewanted=all

the perpetual snark the times levels at the protestors is kind of obnoxious

I dunno it's a little patronizing but fairly accurate when describing the mood. I find that 'hero' dude obnoxious.

http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2011/09/matt-stoller-occupywallstreet-is-a-church-of-dissent-not-a-protest.html

this is good

hate stoller on twitter but look fwd to readin this

glowing profile of eric schneiderman, the new york AG who opposed the $20 billion hush money settlement for the banks

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/02/nyregion/for-eric-schneiderman-new-york-attorney-general-some-notice.html?_r=1&pagewanted=all

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/23/business/dexias-collapse-in-europe-points-to-global-risks.html

cool another bank gets bailed out because they made bad bets

Whole article worth reading, final page in particular

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/23/magazine/dont-blink-the-hazards-of-confidence.html?pagewanted=4&src=recg#

Soul searching

In an abstract sense, we know what roles financial institutions fulfil. In particular, (i) financial institutions avoid duplication both when monitoring loans and collecting information, (ii) they help to smooth consumption, and (iii) they provide liquidity.6 There are many enjoyable descriptions of some activities enacted in the financial sector that seem hard to reconcile with the laudable tasks thought of by economists. Moreover, knowing what the tasks of the financial sector are in theory does not tell us whether those tasks are fulfilled efficiently and at the right price. Nor does it tell us why the income earned by the financial sector has increased so much. As pointed out by Philippon (2008), in the 1960s outstanding economic growth was achieved with a small financial sector. Has it become more difficult to obtain information so that we now need to allocate more resources to the financial sector?

final paragraph does not go far enough, but it is still remarkable to see it published from this corner

http://www.businessinsider.com/why-do-we-need-a-financial-sector-2011-10

Kevin Phillips, author of Nixon's Southern Strategy and hence of much of what ails the U.S., has in the past decade brought much attention to the "financialisation" of the U.S. economy and its parallels with the late stage of other global empires like Spain and Britain. It's worth searching for his shorter essays on the topic (search "Kevin Phillips financialisation") even if you aren't inclined to read his mea culpa trilogy about the colusion of financialization, resource scarcity, and the Americal Christian fundamentalist movement in bringing about the end of our era's empire.

I'd link them here, but this hotel's painfully slow wi-fi + the hassle of bbcode on an ipad are conspiring to make my posting a painful exercise.

That would be "financialization" with a 'z'.

http://dealbook.nytimes.com/2011/11/03/as-regulators-pressed-changes-corzine-pushed-back-and-won/

http://bigpicture.typepad.com/comments/images/2007/08/30/bookstaberdemon_jacket.jpg

^ highly recommend this book, v informative even if my eyes glaze over every now and again

I commended Satyajit Das 1997 Traders, Guns and Money in the undersubscribed book of the aughts poll as my favorite non-fiction book. He has a new one out entitled Extreme Money, also funny, bitter, and dense with references (he's the Dennis Miller of derivatives/finance writers) that is a nice complement to the Bookstaber above.

http://businessandinvestingbooks.files.wordpress.com/2011/09/51k7rvirdl-_aa250_.jpg

I don't think you're gonna sell anything here w/ a dennis miller comparison

Think Dennis Miller before he became a right wing tool. Das has a similar quick draw on cultural referents.

had been planning to read "traders, guns & money," sanpaku, would u suggest "extreme money" instead

I see UBS rogue trader Kweku Adoboli studied the same subject at the same university as my least favourite ex, probably the year below him. I don't know whether to wonder if they met or just observe that they are clearly all terrible people

meanwhile the current bf used to work as a software engineer for some stock exchange trading software/network company and it was the worst place he's ever worked for the sheer amount of bullying to work twice your contracted hours for no extra pay, meet unreasonable deadlines, get sent away on business at the weekend (again, for no extra pay and with no expenses paid). and it wasn't any better paid than any other IT job

(replying to things from a month ago)

(in case anyone wondered how he came to have this job, the software team had previously been a little independent not-specifically-financial software company who got bought out by a finance team, and he got out as soon as he could after seeing what the new regime was like)

extreme money started out with so much throat-clearing and "told you so". now I'm a bit further in, and the information density is picking up quite a bit...

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/08/opinion/end-bonuses-for-bankers.html?_r=4

http://www.economist.com/node/21542452

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/17/business/the-invisible-hand-behind-wall-street-bonuses.html?_r=1&hpw

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/g/a/2012/01/30/bloomberg_articlesLYKT1E6TTDSI01-LYM9Q.DTL