Our financial system is crumbling this week.

[pioneer98]

Does VITAL has opposable thumbs?

If so, we're screwed.

He could probably 3D print some.

It's great for VITAL but how are all the little word processors and spreadsheets supposed to make a living?

[pioneer98]

Regarding college...Today I learned there is a "University of Iowa School of Urban and Regional Planning" that has 25 professors (includes adjunct, emeritus, etc) and probably a couple hundred students in the program. I had no clue they had that big of a program. My guess is that there are probably only 15-20 cities in Iowa that even have a full-time urban planner on their staff, and that may be a stretch. There are other jobs they could do within government, too, but not a ton. How is this sustainable?

On the one hand, if the university doesn't offer the degree program, maybe a lot of these kids just go out of state to a college that does. But OTOH I bet there are tons of other kids studying the same thing in states that hire way more urban planners. No wonder these kids can't find jobs and end up in debt. Maybe they can become a professor later on.

[pioneer98]

Basically, inequality is almost all fueled by the stock market and how we tax capital gains at a lower rate than income.

http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/arc ... th/361620/

[pioneer98]

Random Financial Advice Generator

Arbitrage-free credit exposures: in the foreign currency marketplace, be sure to redistribute them.

In off-balance-sheet market segments, be sure to redistribute sequential-pay conduits.

[Freed Roger]

Random Financial Advice Generator

Arbitrage-free credit exposures: in the foreign currency marketplace, be sure to redistribute them.

In off-balance-sheet market segments, be sure to redistribute sequential-pay conduits.

ha ha. That's about right -it's all bull [expletive].

The smart trader nowadays will be sure not to cover lower-classed securities.

Uninsured commodities: in standardized markets, plan to hedge them.

[Freed Roger]

I didn't know that Intrade shut down last year. I should have bought a contract that it would fail.

As you are aware, Intrade the Prediction Market Limited ("Intrade") ceased offering trading services to customers via the website Intrade.com on March 10th, 2013.

It appears very unlikely now that Intrade will resume trading services in the way it had operated previously.

https://www.intrade.com/v4/home/

[pioneer98]

How corporate share buybacks are destroying America

The gist of it is that companies that buy back stock are no longer investing in growing their actual business (i.e. by investing in research or factories, or whatever). They have basically thrown in the towel and feel they can only increase stock price by buying back stock. Notice all this does is make their stock more scarce in the short-term. It does nothing to grow their revenues or anything in the long term. And companies have bought back like $2.4 trillion worth of stock. Also the CEOs who get stock options have big incentives to buy back stock - it makes their own stock worth more in the short term.

[pioneer98]

A real interesting take on why the extremely wealthy are against inflation, and why they always ask "Do you want to go back to the 1970s?" (which was actually a high growth decade)

http://www.interfluidity.com/v2/5561.html

Even if you are sure — and be honest my Keynesian and monetarist friends, we are none of us sure — that your “soft money” policy will yield higher real production in aggregate than a hard money stagnation, you will be putting comfortable incumbents into jeopardy they otherwise need not face. Some of that higher return will be distributed to groups of people who are, under the present stability, hungry and eager to work, and there is no guarantee that the gain to the wealthy from excess aggregate return will be greater than the loss derived from a broader sharing of the pie. “Full employment” means ungrateful job receivers have the capacity to make demands that could blunt equity returns. And even if that doesn’t happen, even if the rich do get richer in aggregate, there will be winners and losers among them, each wealthy individual will face risks they otherwise need not have faced. Regression to the mean is a [expletive]. You have managed to put yourself in the 99.9th percentile, once. If you are forced to play again in anything close to a fair contest, the odds are stacked against your repeating the trick. It is always good advice in a casino to walk away with ones winnings rather than double down and play again. “The rich” as a political aggregate is smart enough to understand this.

[doe_boy]

http://www.vox.com/2014/9/3/6098677/the ... e-rich-won

Here's the not-so-secret truth about America's political system: the people who run it are almost all rich. In January, the Center for Responsive Politics reported that the median net worth of members of Congress has reached a record high of $1,008,767. Millionaires make up just 3 percent of the country, but on Capitol Hill, they're firmly in the majority (and in the Senate, they're a super-majority). And Congress isn't alone: millionaires have a 5-4 majority on the Supreme Court and a man in the White House, too.

[pioneer98]