“How Complex Systems Fail”
Complex systems are prone to catastrophic failure. Have we come to embrace policies and values that increase the odds of failure?
Read more...Category Archives: Risk and risk management
Louis Proyect: Once More on IT and a Return to the Drachma
Why selling magic sparkle ponies, in the form of presenting a conversion to the drachma as easy when it isn’t, makes for bad IT and even worse policy prescriptions.
Read more...William J. Astore: Seventy Years of Military Mediocrity
How the US has developed military muscle at the expense of brainpower.
Read more...Power 8, Sponsor of Everton FC, Fulham FC and RCD Espanyol, is a $250Mn Pyramid Fraud
Power 8, Sponsor of Everton FC, Fulham FC and RCD Espanyol, is a $250Mn Pyramid Fraud.
Read more...Libor Trader Sentenced to 14 Years for Market Manipulation. So What About His Bosses?
While it’s gratifying to see former UBS trader Tom Hayes go to jail for large-scale Libor bid rigging, his bosses had to have known what he was up to. So when will we see their indictments?
Read more...More on the Systemic Risk of Bank IT Systems
Why financial firm IT is a bigger and more imminent source of systemic risk than you might think.
Read more...Bank IT, Grexit, and Systemic Risk
Why bank IT is more of a mess than you possibly imagined, and why that matters.
Read more...Perry Mehrling: Flash Crash Explained by HFT
The official report on the October 15, 2014 “Flash Crash” raises some questions which unfortunately it does not answer.
Read more...The Decisions of July: The European Elite Goes to War in 1914
Elite decision-making before “the Guns of August,” with suggestive parallels to decision-making in the Greek Debt Crisis.
Read more...Groundhog Day for NZ FSPs: Bryan Cook of Asia Finance Corporation is a Crook, but Does NZ’s FMA Care?
Why is it Groundhog Day? Back in 2011, I wrote a seriously messy blog post about dodgy New Zealand FSPs (Financial Services Providers), their dodgy web sites and people and addresses, and the evidently nonexistent oversight of all of this by the NZ Ministry of Economic Development and the NZ Companies Office. To my surprise, […]
Read more...Time to “Fire” Mary Jo White: SEC Covers Up for Bank Capital Accounting Scam Promoted by Her Former Firm, Debevoise
Pam Martens and Russ Martens published a mind-boggling expose yesterday on how the SEC is refusing to stop an abuse by major banks that increases systemic risk.
Read more...Bill Black: Geithner’s Ghost Writer and the Parable of the River of Risk
Bill Black flags a new stunning bit of bank propaganda, that risk is an unavoidable natural condition that is futile for regulators to control.
Read more...Ilargi: QE Breeds Instability
Why both Keynes and Minsky regarded low interest rates as poor policy.
Read more...Perry Mehrling: Volcker Alliance Describes How Regulatory Silos, and Also Intellectual Silos, Hold Back Financial Reform
A report by the Volcker Alliance on financial reform is readable and meaty, and curiously dropped from media sight.
Read more...SEC Vindicates Deutsche Bank Derivatives Whistleblowers Eric Ben-Artzi and Matthew Simpson
Three SEC whistleblowers have been proven right in charging Deutsche Bank with misreporting its biggest derivatives risk,. the bank, predictably, looks to have gotten off easy.
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