Back in the 1980s, a colleague was getting a doctorate at Harvard Business School and had to take a seminar in statistical methods. Each participant was assigned a paper and was required to present to the class a critique of the statistical approaches employed. The paper he was given was a dissertation that had caused […]
Read more...This interview of Maria Bartiromo, of her new book, The Weekend That Changed Wall Street, was taped back in September. Some readers may deem it to be a bit softball, but a book TV program isn’t a format that lends itself to pointed questions. In fact, I found the experience a bit like what I […]
Read more...After the dramatic multi-state foreclosure halts by three major servicers, GMAC, Bank of America, and JP Morgan, over the use of improper, “robo signed” affidavits, the new party line from these banks and others who also used robo signers, like Wells Fargo, is that this was a mere “technical” problem, that they had reviewed ten […]
Read more...Winning the World Series with math ScienceNews Warming ‘destabilises aquatic ecosystems’ BBC End Of An Era: Sony Stops Manufacturing Cassette Walkmans CrunchGear (hat tip reader bob) Lies, Damned Lies, and Medical Science Atlantic Jim Puplava interviews Stoneleigh, Part 2 The Automatic Earth (hat tip reader May S) G20 vows to avoid currency war Telegraph. Geithner’s […]
Read more...Gretchen Morgenson has written an uncharacteristically cautious piece, “One Mess That Can’t Be Papered Over,” which in a rather abstract manner, discusses the issue we’ve been harping on for over a month, that the trusts that were established to hold the promissory notes for residential real estate loans and the related liens (the mortgage) may […]
Read more...I hope readers will forgive the overweight reporting on Florida, but it is serving as a test ground for how battles over foreclosures and mortgage fraud will play out around the US. Florida is not only one of the states with the highest level of foreclosures, but it also has the most cohesive group of […]
Read more...→ Washington’s Blog The corporate media has almost entirely stopped covering the Gulf oil spill. Many have tried to say that the effects of the spill are not nearly as bad as feared, and that everything is pretty much cleaned up and back to normal. But today, it is widely being reported that there are […]
Read more...I promise to get to some more serious posts over the weekend, but frankly, I need a bit of a breather. WikiLeaks has posted its second Iraq trove, nearly 400,000 pages. The New York Times, Guardian, Le Monde, and Der Spiegel got embargoed documents. The New York Times claims, “…the Iraq documents provide no earthshaking […]
Read more...Yves here. One thing I have noticed on posts that discuss the US labor market and trade is reflexive and frankly somewhat dogmatic defeatism. The position seems to be “China and Bangladesh have such cheap labor, there is no way we can compete.” This view is simplistic. First, in capital intensive industries, direct labor is […]
Read more...In all honesty, the news report out of the G20 strikes me as such a weird idea that I don’t know what to make of it. From the Financial Times: During an all-night meeting in South Korea of finance ministers from the G20 group of countries, the US called on nations to cap current account […]
Read more...→ Washington’s Blog The Fourteenth Banker writes today: In the stock market, program trading dominates volume. I heard recently that 70% of trade positions are held for an average of 11 seconds. He’s correct. As the New York Times dealbook noted in May: These are short-term bets. Very short. The founder of Tradebot, in Kansas […]
Read more...Rhino horn GPS used to deter poachers BBC The physics of how wet animals dry themselves (w/ Video) PhysOrg The Daily Mail cancer story that torpedoes itself in paragraph 19 Guardian (hat tip reader John M). Bad science edition. China Has Ability to Hijack U.S. Military Data, Report Says Bloomberg. Another excuse for more Internet […]
Read more...The Obama Administration is entirely predictable. It ever and always sides with large corporate interests, while trying to create the impression that it is actually concerned for the welfare of the average citizen. Admittedly, the occasionally tough talk with little follow through feeds a perverse spectacle of plutocrats sulking, pouting, and claiming that they are […]
Read more...By Richard Alford, a former economist at the New York Fed. Since then, he has worked in the financial industry as a trading floor economist and strategist on both the sell side and the buy side. In the 1960s and 70s, an arm of the US government destroyed villages in Vietnam in order to save […]
Read more...As much as state attorneys general could be an effective force in acting for consumers and investors against banks, the fact that an attorney general has saddled up does not necessarily mean the effort is serious. At a minimum, it might just be a gambit to garner some good PR without seriously inconveniencing the perps; […]
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