Did Janet Yellen say something new yesterday? I wasn’t paying attention. Oh, and our morning train reads:
• The Worst Mutual Fund in the World (Fund Reference)
• Advisers’ Stock Recommendations Drag Down Clients’ Portfolios, Study Finds (WSJ) but see How Financial Advisers Can Help Close the Behavior Gap (CFA Institute)
• Uber’s Phantom Cabs (Motherboard)
• Donald Trump Is The Nickelback Of GOP Candidates (FiveThirtyEight)
• Deal with it — Tom Brady and the Patriots are cheaters (Boston Globe)
Using Math to Obfuscate — Observations from Finance
The usual narrative suggests that the new mathematical tools of modern finance were like the wings that Daedalus gave Icarus. The people who put these tools to work soared too high and crashed.
In two posts, here and here, Tim Johnson notes that two government investigations (one in the UK, the other in the US) tell a different tale. People in finance used math to hide what they were doing. ….
FiveThirtyEight should know better than doing arithmetic with 5’s!
When the Patriot Cheating Investigation began, I heard a former ’85 Bear player on WGN radio say “if you aren’t cheating, you’re not trying hard enough to win.” I think the attitude is pervasive in the NFL.
WRT cheating to win the honchos of banking and finance could probably teach the NFL a thing or three.
That cell phone destruction pretty much nailed it – he is a cheater and a soft ball player.
Can anyone explain why the NFL lawyers didn’t subpoena Brady’s texting records from his phone carrier? I’m pretty sure that they have to keep records of everything that goes through a phone for years, per government edict.
well probably cause they would need to be in court suing about some thing. which they werent
“So Mitt Romney’s tweet today said, ‘Gosh, this rhetoric is not helpful,'” Cruz said. “John Adams famously said, ‘Facts are stubborn things.’ Describing the actual facts is not using rhetoric; it is called speaking the truth.”
http://www.businessinsider.com/ted-cruz-mitt-romney-obama-iran-terror-sponsor-2015-7
Hilarious how these Republican blow hards conflate facts with their predictions.
You may think shutting down government, not insuring more Americans, and not building infrastructure are the right approaches. But you can’t claim your predictions are facts.
If anyone actually believes that all the data we share with overseas contractors (from corporate to personal) is secure, you are out of your mind. .
————–
Robert X. Cringely
Who is your IT outsourcing firm working for?
July 30th, 2015
While the U.S. Government has been remarkably opaque about the recently discovered security breach at the Office of Personnel Management (OPM), we know that personal information on at least 21.5 million present, former, and prospective federal employees was lost. The Feds claim Chinese hackers are at the bottom of it, which is disputed by the Chinese government. This, to me, raises a number of questions, especially about the possible role of IT outsourcing firms and implications for organizations beyond OPM. Does IT outsourcing make your data more vulnerable? Yes, I believe it does.
…
http://www.cringely.com/2015/07/30/who-is-your-it-outsourcing-firm-working-for/
As long as we can save a few bucks on labor costs, it is worth it.
doesnt even have to be IT, it could also be the call center, accounting, personnel, and many others
but it does make it easier if you can ‘infiltrate’ IT first
I love the term “they don’t give a damn about governing conservatives”
http://www.vox.com/2015/7/30/9074761/conservative-media-republican-party
As much as I have enjoyed the rise of Trumph and his destruction of the GOP connections to all but the angry old white men demographic, I have also been puzzled and asked myself are they really that stupid?
Some poor bastard got to binge read 8 books (2,212 pages) by His Trumpness. I think I can hardly wait to see his “Art of the Deal” in action with Congress and the 50 governors.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/book-party/wp/2015/07/30/i-just-binge-read-eight-books-by-donald-trump-heres-what-i-learned/?tid=pm_pop_b
in defense of the car
http://www.theverge.com/2015/7/29/9060175/in-defense-of-the-car
while some areas (ultra urban areas can do without one, a lot areas couldnt. as going any where would measured in miles, not blocks)
carried interest payments?
http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2015/07/private-equity-shills-resorting-to-ludicrous-arguments-to-try-to-deflect-carry-fee-reporting-scandal.html
there are no phantom Uber cabs, it’s network latency, sync issues
the real car often arrives before the app car, your own private smart-phone time warp
drivers use the rider app and see their own app cars, sometimes, it arrives a little late