Global financial system implosion begins

[Kanda]

... and Tom is proved right

 

[butchersapron]

And after the whinginmg and crying into your cornflakes you've just been doing about stereotypes about people in your particular line of robbery (you poor poor thing). Top marks. 110%. All the way up to 11.

 

[Kanda]

And after the whinginmg and crying into your cornflakes you've just been doing about stereotypes about people in your particular line of robbery (you poor poor thing). Top marks. 110%. All the way up to 11.

Thanks for the high score

 

[butchersapron]

Here, have have someone elses money to keep you going till sunday.

 

[darkfibre]

Yay! It's on.

 

[butchersapron]

Is it 'eck. Passing warboats in the night.

 

[boskysquelch]

better start stretchin out yer coke then y'all ... http://www.democracynow.org/2008/10/23/indigenous_colombians_begin_10_000_strong

but then I doubt v much that 10K of the UK poor will come out and be pissed at what the perceive as those who have in part escalated this shit ..or maybe they will?


lolz AT SWP/Maxwell...allfkkd too the last time I bothered to look.

 

[TomPaine]

My cousins missus is Columbian. She was back visting her family a few weeks ago and had a hell of a job getting back out again with her little kid. The government there are real fucking cunts. Her brother was murdered as well a couple of years back as well
I hope those people kick the bastards out.

TomPaine

 

[darkfibre]

Is it 'eck. Passing warboats in the night.

But I was just working out the case for the prosecution.

You stand accused of holding faith in the illusory power of The Devil..!

I'd picked a hat and everything.

 

[butchersapron]

Phil is correct.

 

[Poi E]

I was doing OK until the LSE stopped shorting :-(

 

[david dissadent]

Well looks like I could have picked the worst possible time to be accepted to a banking degree eh!
Hopefully things will pick up.

TomPaine

Currently new people starting in petrolium geology are earning more than brand new MBA's whats more as enviromental regulations increase, there is a huge swath of retirees from the 50s and 60s generation and the oil comes from smaller fields, there is going to be a huge demand for more petrolium goelogists and engineers. If you can still change, think about it.

 

[TomPaine]

David> I probably could. To be honest I only did a Software Engineering degree because it was easier to get a job whilst I dicked around playing in bands, but I'm not really interested in the subject and although it pays the bills, I need a change.
I've always been interested in history, but there are no jobs really in that area and to get anywhere you need to go to Oxford or somewhere similar and be rich it would seem .

Might look into the geology thing, sounds interesting.

TomPaine

 

[david dissadent]

Can someone explain this to me......


Markets are going to crash......

Markets are going to crash......governments put tax payers money into the markets..... they crash.....


Markets are going to crash......


What is the point. why didn't they just keep the tax payers money?

There was a very real risk of a 1929 style run on all banks around the world and a 1929 depression. Does anyone need to remember the forces that awoke in Europe? The damned shooting match nearly went tits up, with the government guarentees it gives us a fighting chance of getting out of this with merely a rough recession. Obviously this is only my opinion, others, often better educated, differ.

 

[Poi E]

There was a very real risk of a 1929 style run on all banks around the world and a 1929 depression. Does anyone need to remember the forces that awoke in Europe? The damned shooting match nearly went tits up, with the government guarentees it gives us a fighting chance of getting out of this with merely a rough recession. Obviously this is only my opinion, others, often better educated, differ.

Just looks like central banks think they are part of a speculative system.

If I'm not wrong "nationalisation"=we'll have that and no money changes hands. As it is, we have merely become unsecured investors in furtherance of this charade.

 

[darkfibre]

Did nobody get what the basis of Talebs concerns are?

The 'complexity' stuff?

The new series of 'Discovery' had a peek...

In the first of a new series of science discussions, Discovery looks at the maths and physics behind the world’s banking.

Over the last few decades the financial industry has attracted many of the brightest young scientists and mathematicians away from academia and into the offices of the investment banks and hedge funds.

Many become “Quants” – or quantitative analysts – whose job it is to build the mathematical models and software that the traders use to guide them through the markets, minimizing risk and getting a fair price.

Sue Nelson and guests Dr Paul Wilmott, Professor Gene Stanley and Professor William Perraudin discuss whether the science behind the trading was up to the job.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/worldservice/programmes/discovery.shtml

Podcast: http://downloads.bbc.co.uk/podcasts/worldservice/discovery/discovery_20081022-1222a.mp3

 

[david dissadent]

Did nobody get what the basis of Talebs concerns are?

The 'complexity' stuff?

Over optimised is another phrase that could be used, but yes thats why I posted it. The system is less likely to fail but more likely to fail catastrophicaly when it does. Mandelbrot originated the the idea of "butterfly wings", that unexpected small events can be magnified through a system to become huge. Lorentz, one of the other founders of chaos theory, found out that very small initial changes in the start conditions of a model can produce radicaly different results, this chimes in closely with Talebs veiw that risk cannot be accurately quantified.

 

[Poi E]

Graduates attracted to pay. Did I miss something?

 

[darkfibre]

Weird... Tainter doesn't appear to have been mentioned on this site for 4 years. Here's a nice graph that demonstrates the complexity thing.

 

[phildwyer]

Phil is correct.

Not always, but I'm on fairly safe ground here. Kanda seems like a nice enough bloke, but I'm afraid I regard the employees of the financial sector as nothing more than slaves of Satan. I simply hate capitalists and greatly enjoy it when they suffer. Nothing personal like.

 

[darkfibre]

 

[phildwyer]

Come now, it is hardly irrational to hate capitalists is it? What with them stealing the world and that.

 

[butchersapron]

You wouldn't be able to type that if it weren't for them.

 

[phildwyer]

You wouldn't be able to type that if it weren't for them.

I was recently drinking at a bar in Pensecola, where there is a huge army base. I got talking to some kids who were just about to be shipped off to Iraq. I asked them what they were fighting for and they were predictably nonplussed. Eventually one of them gestured at the bar and said "you know, so that guys like us can do stuff like this..."

 

[8ball]

You wouldn't be able to type that if it weren't for them.

He would, but only in lower case.

 

[phildwyer]

Well obviously the more you have, the more you have to lose, but last time I checked I still needed to work and eat.

Yes, and the last time I checked messrs Visa and American Express seemed to think I owed them money, and that I should pay them a rate of usury that would have got them hung, drawn and quartered a couple of centuries ago. So if money turns out to not to be worth anything after all, I win.

 

[darkfibre]

The system is less likely to fail but more likely to fail catastrophicaly when it does.

I'm not sure that increases in complexity make 'failure less likely', so much as 'increase performance'.

John Robb made the following observation on the Mandelbrot / Taleb interview:

For the engineers and pilots out there, our current situation is akin to trying to fly an F-22 at the edge of its performance envelope with only cables and pulleys for control inputs. NOTE: cables and pulleys are the classic control system for 20th Century aircraft. The pilot inputs a control movement on a pedal or the stick and the cable/pulley system translates the input into a movement of the control surface (elevator, etc.). Direct pilot control is possible because the plane wants to fly -- i.e. is stable. In contrast, in order to get high performance, modern designs are made to be unstable. As a result, modern aircraft require control system inputs every 1/32 of a second or more, all of it done automatically. If these control inputs aren't made, the plane will rapidly exceed its design capacity and lose structural integrity.

One way to look at it: We are all Iceland now.

 

[butchersapron]

All these idiocies where there's 'a model' or where there's 'laws' or 'a system'. It's like some medieval chapbook.

 

[darkfibre]

All these idiocies where there's 'a model' or where there's 'laws' or 'a system'. It's like some medieval chapbook.

Everything is a 'system'. Atoms, economics, you. Holons.

Don't you think such ideas are useful? If only as platform from which to cheerlead the apocalypse?

 

[butchersapron]

It depends what you count in and what you count out of the 'system'. It's got no real meaning if it means 'everything'.