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The Daily Bell -- Advisers Emphasize Calm as Global Depression Gathers

'Almost no modern advisers will admit that central banks fix the price of "money"... Central banking blows up economies regularly, and during economic contractions the middle class becomes increasingly unprosperous while more and more wealth is centralized in the hands of great Anglosphere banking families. These families then use their wealth to create dominant social themes – fear-based promotions featuring scarcity memes – that are intended to push Western middle classes into surrendering wealth and power to the globalist solutions (UN, IMF, WHO, etc.) that the familial elites have already prepared. One of the dominant social themes that was remarkable successful in America during the late 20th Century was the idea that various forces were conspiring to erode middle class wealth. The only way to address this potential ruination was through "investing" in a menu of pre-prepared investment solutions featuring rigid, fragile and highly controlled "public" money pools.'

centralbanking businesscycle finance bubble delusion from delicious
september 2011 by adamcrowe

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The Daily Bell -- Private Alternatives to Modern Banking

'It is very sad how much knowledge has been drained from the Western world regarding money, and in only a century or so. Prior to the current, mercantilist, central banking economy, there was a whole intricately developed private money system, complete with gold, silver, warehouse notes and Real Bills ("Bills of Exchange"). The powers-that-be behind the explosion of government-centric central banking in the 20th century have not only reduced this system to a dim memory, they have industriously scrubbed its existence from history books and educational texts. Today powerfully educated academics and financial magnates alike have no idea of how the world operated only a century since. The mechanisms of public banking and state involvement at all levels of finance seem normal to them. It is really incredible that not more than 10 or 12 decades ago there was a world-spanning private money-economy that the current system has supplanted – and ruinously so.'

economics money finance realbills bills
january 2011 by adamcrowe

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YouTube -- VPRO - Quants: The Alchemists of Wall Street

"It's a combination of the sublime and the ridiculous." -- Numbers numb -- Praxeological epiphany at 28:22: "I don't think you can use quantitative methods to explain markets... history doesn't repeat itself."

praxeology markets numbers finance financialization simulation algorithms blackboxes opacity simulacra virtuality documentaries from delicious
december 2010 by adamcrowe

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YouTube -- BBC Two: Tim Nice But Balding Enters The Dragons' Den

'Ex-banker Tim Nice But Balding is joined in the Dragons' Den by business partner Charlie Slick But Thick. The hedge fund managers offer the Dragons the opportunity of a life time, to invest in their "meaningless" piece of paper.' -- "We're both something in the City."

finance grifting mercantilism bailout lulz from delicious
october 2010 by adamcrowe

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The Automatic Earth presents: Stoneleigh's A Century of Challenges

Pay-walled. Recommended. -- When a pyramid scheme nears its inevitable end... "...the public insist on being handed the empty bag because they think they're going to make money, they want in on the game, everyone else has been making money, they feel left out so they insist on buying these things at the peak, and they are the ones who lose everything."

* civilization plutocracy wealth money economics oil energy finance reflexivity markets herd consensusreality pyramid ponzi bubble greaterfool peakoil credit inflation realestate speculation debt hologram deflation biflation negativeequity crackupboom greatestdepression collapse systems resilience communities localisation socialnetworking darknets NicoleFoss retribalization from delicious
october 2010 by adamcrowe

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YouTube -- James Burke: Connections E08: "Eat, Drink be Merry"

'Eat, Drink and Be Merry begins with plastic, the plastic credit card and the concept of credit then leaps back in time to to the Dukes of Burgundy, which was the first state to use credit.'

documentaries history technology plastic massproduction plannedobsolescence creditcards credit quantifiedself surveillance finance banking mercenaries knights pike musket bayonet war infantry preserves pasturization cannedgoods FMCG ice airconditioning refrigeration thermos rocketry from delicious
july 2010 by adamcrowe

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The Financial Services Compensation Scheme (FSCS)

'The FSCS is the compensation fund of last resort for customers of authorised financial services firms. If a firm becomes insolvent or ceases trading we may be able to pay compensation to its customers.' -- #Limits: Deposits: £50,000; Investments: £50,000; Home Finance (e.g. mortgage advice and arranging): £50,00; Insurance Business: unlimited; 90% of the claim with no upper limit; General insurance advice and arranging: unlimited 90% of the claim with no upper limit. -- #Important dates: For investment claims: If your claim relates to business conducted before 28 August 1988 we are unlikely to be able to help you, as there was no investor compensation scheme in the UK before this date. For home finance (e.g. mortgage) advice and arranging: If your claim relates to business conducted before 31 October 2004 we are unlikely to be able to help you, as these activities were not protected by the FSCS before this date.

uk bankruptcy finance
june 2010 by adamcrowe

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Vanity Fair -- Betting on the Blind Side

“I hated discussing ideas with investors,” he said, “because I then become a Defender of the Idea, and that influences your thought process." Once you became an idea’s defender, you had a harder time changing your mind about it. -- [Being diagnosed with Aspergers Syndrome] explained an awful lot about what he did for a living, and how he did it: his obsessive acquisition of hard facts, his insistence on logic, his ability to plow quickly through reams of tedious financial statements. People with Asperger’s couldn’t control what they were interested in. It was a stroke of luck that his special interest was financial markets and not, say, collecting lawn-mower catalogues. When he thought of it that way, he realized that complex modern financial markets were as good as designed to reward a person with Asperger’s who took an interest in them. “Only someone who has Asperger’s would read a subprime-mortgage-bond prospectus,” he said.'

economics finance subprime realestate bubble CDS hedgefunds investing aspergers MichaelBurry reflexivity
april 2010 by adamcrowe

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YouTube -- Warren Pollock: Goldman Fraud Charge Spiral Reaction

'After reading the SEC Goldman complaint I came to the conclusion that the "overview" fraud has not been addressed. Instead we have implications based on the "verbiage" of representations instead of the very structure of instruments which are no more than schemes. These pieces of paper are so toxic they cannot be netted without exposing fraud, and the loss of money. I then go over something I call a "spiral reaction" which is the process of compounding mistakes to cover up fraud and lies. My question is what event will trigger the next spiral.'

economics finance CDO junkbonds pumpanddump fraud GoldmanSachs
april 2010 by adamcrowe

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zero hedge -- Ratigan Presents Financial Fraud For Dummies (Literally)

'Dylan Ratigan and the Story Pirates have dumbed down the biggest generational theft in US history to the level where a Sesame Street fan can get it... Or is that a master ES trader with laser precision liquidity withdrawal reflexes? Anyway, it is somewhat sad to witness the transition of America from at least a passably respectable nation to one in which it is made plainly obvious to children, that to succeed in life one must cheat, lie and steal with the best of the the bankers.' -- Video inside.

economics finance fraud america corruption cronyism mercantilism regulatorycapture kleptocracy satire
april 2010 by adamcrowe

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The Market Ticker -- Now The Truth On Greece Comes Out

'And surprise-surprise, it has nothing to do with the Euro - it is, once again, to bail out bad speculative bets made by banks: "If the country is not stabilised, the next problem will be the banks," Ackermann [Deutsche, CEO] adding that German banks had "billions in the fire." So once again we have banksters literally putting a gun to government heads and threatening them. When does this stop? It's not like Deutsche Bank (and the rest) didn't know Greece was cooking their books and holding debt off balance sheet! They sold them the swaps to enable the deception! These banksters knew damn well that the nation was in trouble long before there was any public notice of it. So why were they buying Greece's debt? Why didn't they sell it? Why are they stuck with it? Is it because their intention was to shove a gun up the nose of the governments in the Euro Zone - just as our banks did here - and threaten to shoot unless they get bailed out?' -- Classic Tiger Kidnapping scheme.

economics finance fraud tigerkidnapping extortion grifting KarlDenninger
march 2010 by adamcrowe

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zero hedge -- Michael Lewis Discusses Wall Street's Neverending Mass Delusions

'In this two-part special on CBS's 60 minutes, Michael Lewis continues on his crusade of exposing Wall Street's massive delusion that it provides a service of value to society. "This is where it gets a little creepy: People who create disasters get paid a lot of money for cleaning up the disaster because only they understand the disaster." -- "People see what they're incentivised to see. If you pay someone not to see the truth, they will not see the truth."' -- Video inside

economics finance subprime regulatorycapture kleptocracy perverseincentives incentives delusion
march 2010 by adamcrowe

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The Market Ticker -- Bombshell: We Now Know What Set It Off (2008)

'As early as July 31st it appears Citibank knew that Lehman in fact had no cash - nor any liquid collateral to post for repo transactions. Lehman was functionally bankrupt at that particular instant in time. It was trying to post less than $4 billion in collateral and couldn't come up with anything acceptable. Would you press a short bet knowing this? You damn sure would. Indeed, you'd be insane not to. -- By allowing this trash to remain on balance sheets with fantasy marks FASB and our government has set up a potential Lehman in every one of our large financial institutions. How long will it be before the next large financial institution goes to post a repo and has no good collateral? I have no idea. If we have another Lehman, we won't be able to cover it. The cost of a disorderly event will easily exceed $1.5 trillion for depositor claims alone, and we simply don't have the money and won't be able to raise it.'

economics finance accounting fraud insidertrading nakedshortselling LehmanBrothers KarlDenninger
march 2010 by adamcrowe

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Rolling Stone -- Wall Street's Bailout Hustle by Matt Taibbi

'It's "Greenspan times 10," jokes one hedge-fund trader. -- ...they took a short position [on toxic junk]. One month passed, and they lost money. Another month passed — same thing. Finally, the trader just shrugged and decided to change course and buy. "I said, 'Fuck it, let's make some money,'" he recalls. This is the very definition of bubble economics — betting on crowd behavior instead of on fundamentals. -- To sum up, this is what Lloyd Blankfein meant by "performance": Take massive sums of money from the government, sit on it until the government starts printing trillions of dollars in a desperate attempt to restart the economy, buy even more toxic assets to sell back to the government at inflated prices — and then, when all else fails, start driving us all toward the cliff again with a frank and open endorsement of bubble economics. -- Con artists have a word for the inability of their victims to accept that they've been scammed. They call it the "True Believer Syndrome."'

economics america mercantilism finance QE ZIRP fraud extortion bailout grifting truebelieversyndrome AIG JPMorgan GoldmanSachs MattTaibbi
february 2010 by adamcrowe

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Bullion Bulls Canada -- U.S. Economic Terrorism the New 'Winning Trade'

'When Wall Street planned and executed the U.S. housing-bubble (and all its related scams), it destroyed the lives of tens of millions of Americans. Then, when it subsequently 'crashed' global markets, it inflicted hardship on most of the world. But the Oligarchs were just getting started. As governments responded in a totally predictable manner, Wall Street began to collect on its interest-rate swap scam. With this scam the Oligarchs progressed from merely destroying companies and individuals to destroying schools, hospitals, towns and even states. However, as we are now finding out, those were merely Wall Street's “appetizers”. For their “main course”, the Oligarchs have moved up to destroying nations. -- Destroying entire nations for profit is a human abomination for which we lack even a proper term. It goes well beyond “greed”. It can't be described as “immoral”, since like all psychopaths, the Oligarchs are completely amoral. These are “crimes against humanity”...'

economics finance derivatives CDS predation psychopathy oligarchy
february 2010 by adamcrowe

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zero hedge -- The Ever Increasing Parallels Between AIG And Greece... And The CDS Puppetmaster Behind It All

'... Goldman itself has been instrumental in covering up Greece's catastrophic financial state and continues to be a critical factor in any future refinancing efforts on behalf of Greece. In essence, through its conflict of interest, its unshakable negotiating position, and its facility to determine collateral requirements and variation margin, Goldman can expand its previous position of strength from dictating merely AIG and Federal Reserve decision making, to one which determines sovereign policy! This is unmitigated lunacy and a recipe for financial collapse at the global level. This is yet another AIG in the making, with Goldman this time likely threatening to accelerate the collapse not merely of the US financial system, but of the global one, in order to attain virtually infinite negotiating leverage. Of course, the world will not allow a Greece-initiated domino, allowing Goldman to call everyone's bluff once again.'

economics finance CDS predation greece europe extortion tigerkidnapping grifting GoldmanSachs
february 2010 by adamcrowe

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TED Blog -- Q&A with Loretta Napoleoni: The ever-changing face of terrrorism

'The second step is to look at where the funds are coming from, and for sure narcotics today is one of, if not the most important source of revenue. So, I would legalize drugs. I know that this is never going to happen. I sit on so many committees on this issue and I can tell you that the world’s experts on narcotics, every single one, in private will tell you, “Yes, that’s the solution. We legalize drugs, we control the drugs, we tax them and we make sure that those who are being supported by drug revenue don’t get that money anymore.” But, the real issue is the moral issue. Which government is going to tell its citizens that it’s going to legalize drugs because this is the only way to create a safer world? They’ve used the argument that drugs destroy society for so long. This would require a completely different worldview and approach to politics. However, it would cut out a lot of these illegal revenues and therefore a lot of crime.'

criminology terrorism economics markets blackmarkets greymarkets networks finance credit crime moneylaundering drugs corruption
december 2009 by adamcrowe

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YouTube -- TED: Loretta Napoleoni: The intricate economics of terrorism

'Loretta Napoleoni details her rare opportunity to talk to the secretive Italian Red Brigades -- an experience that sparked a lifelong interest in terrorism. She gives a behind-the-scenes look at its complex economics, revealing a surprising connection between money laundering and the US Patriot Act.' -- "I wanted to know what turned my best friend into a terrorist and why she didn't try to recruit me."

criminology terrorism economics markets blackmarkets greymarkets networks finance credit crime drugs moneylaundering
december 2009 by adamcrowe

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The Observer -- Drug money saved banks in global crisis, claims UN advisor

'Antonio Maria Costa, head of the UN Office on Drugs and Crime, said he has seen evidence that the proceeds of organised crime were "the only liquid investment capital" available to some banks on the brink of collapse last year. He said that a majority of the $352bn (£216bn) of drugs profits was absorbed into the economic system as a result. "In many instances, the money from drugs was the only liquid investment capital. In the second half of 2008, liquidity was the banking system's main problem and hence liquid capital became an important factor," he said. Some of the evidence put before his office indicated that gang money was used to save some banks from collapse when lending seized up, he said.'

economics banking finance credit crime moneylaundering blackmarkets greymarkets drugs
december 2009 by adamcrowe

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Times Online -- I'm doing 'God's work'. Meet Mr Goldman Sachs

Weeding out the sociopaths from the pack of pure blood psychopaths: 'Insecurity is hard-wired into the system. You feel it even before you are hired. Most applicants are interviewed at least 20 times before they are made an offer and some more than 30 times. Once hired, each staff member is constantly and confidentially reviewed by those they work with. There’s a metric for every aspect of performance and each staffer is measured against their department and the firm as a whole. Every year, staff are put into one of four quartiles by the Human Capital Management department. Note the "Capital". At Goldman, people are money. The top are richly rewarded, while the fourth quartilers? Who cares? They won’t be around much longer. It’s up, or out. "We say goodbye to the bottom 3-5% every year [about 1,500 people]."' -- Legalised larceny.

economics fraud finance racketeering larceny GoldmanSachs psychopathy pathocracy
november 2009 by adamcrowe

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Gladwell -- Blowing Up

'Taleb buys options because he is certain that, at root, he knows nothing, or, more precisely, that other people believe they know more than they do. -- ...we're more willing to gamble when it comes to losses, but are risk averse when it comes to our gains. That's why we like small daily winnings in the stock market, even if that requires that we risk losing everything in a crash. At Empirica ... every day brings a small but real possibility that they'll make a huge amount of money in a day; no chance that they'll blow up; and a very large possibility that they'll lose a small amount of money. -- "We cannot blow up, we can only bleed to death," Taleb says, and bleeding to death, absorbing the pain of steady losses, is precisely what human beings are hardwired to avoid. -- What the normal trader gets from his daily winnings is feedback, the pleasing illusion of progress. At Empirica, there is no feedback.'

* psychology finance derivatives options trading strategy probability blackswans risk loss selfcontrol pragmatism NassimNicholasTaleb
september 2009 by adamcrowe

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Socionomics -- Herding Impulse

'When do people herd? They herd when they are uncertain. In contexts of uncertainty, the herding impulse drives social behavior. The herding impulse is based in the amygdala, a part of the brain’s limbic system. It is non-rational, unconscious, endogenously-regulated and impulsive. By “non-rational” we mean that the herding impulse is not based on reason, but is not necessarily “irrational.” ccording to socionomic theory, not all synchronized group action is herding behavior. We only recognize herding when the behavior is non-rational and performed in the context of uncertainty.'

socionomics economics finance culture herd #socialization
september 2009 by adamcrowe

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The National Newspaper -- Money never sleeps

'“On Wall Street,” writes Ho, “‘smartness’ means more than individual intelligence; it conveys a naturalised and generic sense of ‘impressiveness,’ of elite, pinnacle status and expertise, which is used to signify, even prove, investment bankers’ worthiness as advisers to corporate America and leaders of the global financial markets.” Sheer cognitive capacity is only part of it, for smartness also involves “being impeccably and smartly dressed” and possessing “quickness, aggressiveness, and vigour” in the “continued aggressive striving to perpetuate [one’s] elite status.” Doubtless the people creating formulas for new financial products could appreciate the mathematical brilliance of Stephen Hawking, but he might lack the flair, adrenalin and cupidity to count as really “smart”. -- Wall Street’s decisions are smart because smart people made them – and necessary, since no other player in the economy is really capable of judging otherwise.'

economics finance ethnography cults status mythology ideology delusion hubris narrativefallacy
august 2009 by adamcrowe

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Taibblog -- Goldman Busted Again

Cramer: "Karen explained to me that the analyst game was a game of sponsorship. Analysts like to get behind stocks and bull them. You have to get in on the ground floor when they start their sponsorship campaign. When I asked her how we could find out about all of these wonderful things when I was jut a little hedge fund manager, she said one word: ‘commish.’… Commissions, she explained, determined what you are told, what you will know, and how much you can find out. If you do a massive amount of commission business, analysts will return your calls, brokers will work for you, and you will get plenty of ideas to make money, on both a short- and long-term basis… Commissions greased everything."

economics finance fraud bribery insidertrading
august 2009 by adamcrowe

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YouTube -- Max Keiser feels like Oppenheimer with the HSX Hollywood Stock Exchange
economics finance markets
july 2009 by adamcrowe

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Ars Technica -- The Matrix, but with money: the world of high-speed trading

'It sounds like something out of The Matrix: a giant, world-spanning electronic network where high-powered machines, some of them using GPUs to gain a speed advantage, run secret, rapidly-evolving software algorithms that battle it out for profits in a high-stakes game of cat-and-mouse, attack-counterattack, that yields some $21 billion a year for the winners and can spell ruin for the losers. Except that it's not The Matrix—it's the stock and commodities markets, and the fact that these markets mainly consist now of computers trading against one another has been brought closer to the public's attention by last month's alleged theft of Goldman Sachs' proprietary trading code. -- It could be that this fast-moving system as a whole could quickly and dramatically fail in some unforeseen way, due to a combination of an external shock and unseen internal fragility; or, it could be redundant and robust enough to keep humming along in the face of anything we (or Mother Nature) throw at it.'

economics finance markets automation bots blackboxes algorithms statistics sentiment arbitrage parasitism frontrunning fraud
july 2009 by adamcrowe

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YouTube -- Michael Milken: Leveraging big ideas to make change

Feb 2001: 'Michael Milken talks about using your own particular set of skills to make real change in the world. In his case, the energetic mind that once created exotic junk bonds is now driving the "Manhattan Project of cancer" -- with lifesaving results.' -- Financial technologies. More californian techno-utopianism.

economics finance leverage theamericandream technoutopianism MichaelMilken
july 2009 by adamcrowe

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Rolling Stone -- The Great American Bubble Machine by Goldman Sachs

'The first thing you need to know about Goldman Sachs is that it's everywhere. The world's most powerful investment bank is a great vampire squid wrapped around the face of humanity, relentlessly jamming its blood funnel into anything that smells like money. In fact, the history of the recent financial crisis, which doubles as a history of the rapid decline and fall of the suddenly swindled dry American empire, reads like a Who's Who of Goldman Sachs graduates.' -- Well worth reading and bookmarking again.

economics finance fraud markets manipulation oligarchy GoldmanSachs MattTaibbi
july 2009 by adamcrowe

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Zero Hedge -- Guest Post: Manipulation? by Joe Saluzzi

'Most interesting in this following statement by Assisitant US, Attorney Joseph Facciponti: “The bank has raised the possibility that there is a danger that somebody who knew how to use this program could use it to manipulate markets in unfair ways,” -- Is this an admission by Goldman Sachs that there is the possibility of manipulation in the market? Does anyone think that this is the only program in the world that can “manipulate” markets? With all the programmers in the world, we can only imagine how many more manipulative programs are out there. Where do you think these “many millions of dollars” are coming from? They are coming from you—the average retail investor and the large institutional investor. These programs are taking advantage of real order flow and are siphoning off small profits throughout the day that belong in the pockets of the retail investor and the traditional money manager. So, who is out there to protect you from these “machines” and their army of programmers?'

economics finance arbitrage blackboxes markets manipulation
july 2009 by adamcrowe

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True/Slant -- Matt Taibbi: On The ‘Everyone Was Doing It’ Excuse

'According to Steven Gandel of Time, the problem with my piece is that it is—get this—too specific. According to the above passage, focusing on Goldman in particular when attempting to explain (in general) the crimes of Wall Street to ordinary readers is somehow a distraction from the “real problem.” I’ve been shocked by how many grown adult people seem to have swallowed this argument, that the argument against Goldman’s behavior during the bubbles of recent decades is invalid because “everyone was doing it”—and other banks, like for instance Morgan Stanley, were “just as bad” as Goldman. Goldman now reigns supreme in the area of insider advantage. To pick any other bank to tell the story of the rapidly growing influence of Wall Street on politics and the blurring of public and private roles would be a glaring journalistic oversight, and surely even Goldman’s biggest supporters would admit this. ...what they didn’t say about this piece is that it was wrong. They didn’t deny any of it.'

economics fraud finance GoldmanSachs MattTaibbi journalism rhetoric
july 2009 by adamcrowe

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FT Alphaville -- The Cold War in high frequency trading

'This quote from Rick Bookstaber, with its overtones of Cold War mutually-assured destruction, seems eerily prophetic given recent events involving the alleged theft of Goldman Sachs’ proprietary high-frequency trading code: "... high frequency trading is embroiled in an arms race. And arms races are negative sum games. The arms in this case are not tanks and jets, but computer chips and throughput. But like any arms race, the result is a cycle of spending which leaves everyone in the same relative position, only poorer." -- Goldman Sachs is already claiming it stands to “lose millions” because of the alleged theft. From Bloomberg: “The bank has raised the possibility that there is a danger that somebody who knew how to use this program could use it to manipulate markets in unfair ways,” Facciponti said, according to a recording of the hearing made public yesterday.' -- Somebody *else* could manipulate markets in unfair ways. Classic!

economics finance arbitrage blackboxes GoldmanSachs
july 2009 by adamcrowe

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Max Keiser -- [1045] The Truth About Markets: New Zealand

Speculates that Goldman Sach's source code 'theft' was a false flag operation (suicide-code-bombing) to allow them to go dark on NYSE's daily program trading reports.

economics finance blackboxes arbitrage GoldmanSachs MaxKeiser
july 2009 by adamcrowe

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Zero Hedge -- Is A Case Of Quant Trading Sabotage About To Destroy Goldman Sachs?

'...given that program trading accounted for 49% of all NYSE trading last week, and Goldman as recently as one week ago represented about 60% of all principal program trading, will this be called an issue threatening the National Security of the United States. Shouldn't all market participants be aware that there is some rogue code in cyberspace that can be abused by the highest bidder, who very likely will not be interested in proving the efficient market hypothesis? What will happened when said bidder goes about trying to front run none other than the "Financial Institution" [GS]?'

economics finance blackboxes GoldmanSachs espionage
july 2009 by adamcrowe

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Reuters -- A Goldman trading scandal?

'Did someone try to steal Goldman Sachs’ secret sauce? While most in the US were celebrating the 4th of July, a Russian immigrant living in New Jersey was being held on federal charges of stealing top-secret computer trading codes from a major New York-based financial institution—that sources say is none other than Goldman Sachs. The allegations, if true, are big news because the codes the accused man, Sergey Aleynikov, tried to steal is the secret code to unlocking Goldman’s automated stocks and commodities trading businesses. Federal authorities allege the computer codes and related-trading files that Aleynikov uploaded to a German-based website help this major “financial institution” generate millions of dollars in profits each year. The case against Aleynikov may explain why the New York Stock Exchange moved quickly in the past week to stop reporting program stock trading for its most active firms. Goldman often was at the top of the chart–far ahead of its competitors.'

economics finance blackboxes GoldmanSachs espionage
july 2009 by adamcrowe

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YouTube -- Goldman Sachs' economic false flag attack

"Max Keiser talks to Stacy Herbert about Goldman Sachs economic false flag attack recorded on June 27th 2009"

economics finance falseflag fraud GoldmanSachs MaxKeiser
july 2009 by adamcrowe

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Google Video -- Bloomberg News: Phantom Shares

"News special on naked shorting."

economics finance fraud shortselling markets manipulation
july 2009 by adamcrowe

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BasherBusters -- The Stock Manipulators Disinformation Handbook

'The following is an actual handbook that is used by stock manipulators to disseminate false information in an effort to mislead individual investors. In an Information Combat Campaign there are principles which need to be adhered to be successful -- #Confusion: Make it so the opposition does not know which way to turn. #Demoralization: Make it so they do not want to fight. #Disabling: Removing opposing capability. #Discipline: Train the troops. #Division: Divide and conquer. #Distraction: Make them look the other way. #Fear: Make it so they do not want to fight you. #Generosity: Be kind to them so they are kind in return. #Intelligence: "The side that knows most wins." #Overwhelm: Show and use far greater force. #Provocation: Make them angry so they act impetuously. #Sacrifice: Pay any price for success. #Seamlessness: Present no chink in your armor. #Speed: Be quicker than them. Be able to react fast.' -- FTW

economics finance fraud misinformation guerrilla griefing tactics war
july 2009 by adamcrowe

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BasherBusters -- Securities Fraud Dictionary

'Stock fraud can vary in size from multi-million dollar deals to penny stocks, but all sizes of fraud have one thing in common: they intentionally disregard the financial situation of customers in order to further personal profit for the broker. Most forms of market manipulation involve gaining control of the market by purchasing significant volumes of certain stocks at artificially set prices. This is also called "cornering" the market and can be followed by either increasing or decreasing the prices of the stocks to desired levels. The more illiquid the stock, the easier it is to gain control of that stock and manipulate the market.'

economics finance fraud markets manipulation
july 2009 by adamcrowe

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YouTube -- People & Power: Rigged Markets 1/2 by Max Keiser

'Free markets are meant to be fair, but are they really? People & Power investigates. -- "Cheque-hiding, Bear-rating, Front-running, Back-dating, Lookback-trading, Pump-and-dumping, Wash sales, Matched sales, 'Blank cheque IPOs', 'Parking stock', 'Painting the tape', Market-timing, Late-trading, Sheering, Spring-loading, Bullet-dodging, Naked short-selling."' -- LOL

economics finance accounting markets manipulation fraud MaxKeiser
july 2009 by adamcrowe

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YouTube -- People & Power: Rigged Markets 2/2 by Max Keiser

'Free markets are meant to be fair, but are they really? People & Power investigates. -- "... riskless, profit-guaranteed trading thanks to the 'Plunge Protection Team. -- What we're left with is 'Casino Capitalism'"

economics finance accounting markets manipulation fraud MaxKeiser
july 2009 by adamcrowe

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Rolling Stone -- The Great American Bubble Machine by Matt Taibbi (Video Version)

'In Rolling Stone Issue 1082-83, Matt Taibbi takes on "the Wall Street Bubble Mafia" — investment bank Goldman Sachs. The piece has generated controversy, with Goldman Sachs firing back that Taibbi's piece is "an hysterical compilation of conspiracy theories" and a spokesman adding, "We reject the assertion that we are inflators of bubbles and profiteers in busts, and we are painfully conscious of the importance in being a force for good." Taibbi shot back: "Goldman has its alumni pushing its views from the pulpit of the U.S. Treasury, the NYSE, the World Bank, and numerous other important posts; it also has former players fronting major TV shows. They have the ear of the president if they want it." Here, now, are excerpts from Matt Taibbi's piece and video of Taibbi exploring the key issues.'

economics accounting finance bubble fraud GoldmanSachs america oligarchy government corruption MattTaibbi
july 2009 by adamcrowe

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True/Slant: Matt Taibbi -- Is Goldman Legally Frontrunning Its Clients?

'"You acknowledge that we may monitor your use of the Services for our own purposes (and not for your benefit). We may use the resulting information for internal business purposes or in accordance with the rules of any applicable regulatory or self-regulatory body and in compliance with applicable law and regulation." -- That a company as rich and powerful as Goldman would stoop to peering through the web version of a locker-room peephole to make a few extra pennies front-running random trades shows how compeltely and utterly morally absent this company is. There is not an ill-gotten dollar they will not chase — not anywhere, no matter how small or insignificant the sums might be.'

economics finance frontrunning fraud GoldmanSachs MattTaibbi
july 2009 by adamcrowe

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Max Keiser -- [1042] The Truth About Markets (27 June 2009)

On twitter stampedes feedbacking volatility markets. -- Subscribe to the herdfeed. Bringing you falseflags daily.

* economics finance twitter sentiment information misinformation news feedback volatility markets reflexivity realityprogramming standalonecomplex herd falseflag manipulation MaxKeiser retribalization
june 2009 by adamcrowe

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Zero Hedge -- Goldman Sachs: "Engineering Every Major Market Manipulation Since The Great Depression"

Text version here: http://bit.ly/WnRd6 -- "If America is circling the drain, Goldman Sachs has found a way to be that drain - an extremely unfortunate loophole in the system of Western democratic capitalism, which never foresaw that in a society governed passively by free markets and free elections, organized greed always defeats disorganized democracy. The bank's unprecedented reach and power have enabled it to turn all of America into a giant pump-and-dump scam, manipulating whole economic sectors for years at a time... All that money that you're losing, it's going somewhere, and in both a literal and a figurative sense, Goldman Sachs is where it's going: The bank is a huge, highly sophisticated engine for converting the useful, deployed wealth of society into the least useful, most wasteful and insoluble substance on Earth - pure profit for rich individuals.'

economics accounting finance bubble fraud GoldmanSachs america oligarchy government corruption
june 2009 by adamcrowe

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China View -- George Soros: CDS are truly toxic

'Soros explained that going short on bonds by purchasing a CDS contract carried limited risk but almost unlimited profit potential. By contrast, selling CDSs offered limited profit and practically unlimited risk. What's more, the asymmetry between purchasing and selling, was reinforced by the fact that CDS were traded and so tended to be priced as warrants, which could be sold at any time, and not as options. "People buy a CDS not because they expect an eventual default but because they expect them to appreciate in response to adverse developments," added by Soros. He also explained the reason of the collapse of American International Group (AIG). "AIG thought it was selling insurance on bonds and as such CDS were outrageously overpriced. In fact AIG was selling bear market warrants and it severely underestimated their value."'

economics finance risk cds GeorgeSoros
june 2009 by adamcrowe

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The Daily Star -- A financial crisis letting us unmask deceit; but whose deceit?

"... fashions in other academic disciplines and also in the general culture contributed at least as much to a willingness to engage in absurd risks and to provide and accept valuations of complex and inherently unfathomable securities. The general cultural developments are sometimes termed post-modernism, which involves the replacement of reason by intuition, feeling, and allusion. The recent era of global finance differed from the financial surge of a century ago. Its cultural manifestations also appeared to be novel. It was playful, allusive, and edgy - in short, post-modern. It treated tradition and history not as a constraint, but as a source of ironic reference. When incomprehension no longer produces new heights of prosperity, but rather economic collapse and failure, it is not surprising that it turns to anger. Finding out who is to blame becomes more and more like the late medieval and early modern search for witches: a way of making sense of a disorderly and hostile universe."

economics finance simulacra postmodernism fake
june 2009 by adamcrowe

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Marginal Utility -- Blaming everyone and no one

'James argues that financial innovation, political cowardice, and postmodernism all worked together so that “every sort of value - including financial values - came to be seen as arbitrary and fundamentally absurd.” But just because philosophers may have been exploring the possibility that there was no “there” there with regard to Western values doesn’t mean they advocated the idea that fictitious values should be actively created to artificially inflate asset values, or that derivatives whose notional value far exceeded the assets from which they were derived should be written. Just because both critical theory and quantitative finance are hard for laypeople to comprehend does not make them morally equivalent. And the fact that a postmodern analysis could be used to elucidate the techniques of finance (the building something out nothing aspects of it anyway) revealed how awry finance had become; it didn’t supply a justification for it. Greed did that.'

economics finance financialization simulacra postmodernism fake philosophy
june 2009 by adamcrowe

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Newsweek -- One Math Geek's Plan to Reform Wall Street

'Over the past decade, and increasingly since the crash, Wilmott has cultivated a loyal following of truth-seeking converts from the failed school of thought that the entire world can be turned into Greek symbols, plugged into equations, priced and predicted. He's especially critical of the notion that math can forecast human behavior, essentially the basis of finance. "This," says Wilmott, "is absolute rubbish." To rectify the situation, he's started his own training program, the Certificate in Quantitative Finance, or CQF. It's the gem of his empire, the key, he hopes, to saving the quants from themselves, not to mention all of us from their future destruction. -- [Wilmott is] stunned by the lack of outrage over the financial mess. The violence that erupted at this year's G20 summit wasn't anywhere near what he thought it should've been. "Where the hell was everybody? If people aren't angry now, they'll never be."'

economics finance financialization mathematics risk modelling derivatives
june 2009 by adamcrowe

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n+1 -- Interview With a Hedge Fund Manager

"#n+1: A big black box? #HFM: Actually I think it's gray, and it's not in our main office, it's off-site. And we made sure it has no arms or legs or anything it could use to enslave us. But we had a loss over the course of like three days that was like a ten-sigma event, meaning, you know, it should never happen based on the statistical models that underlie it. Why? Because the model doesn't assume that everybody else is trading the same model as you are. So that's sort of like a meta-model factor. The model doesn't know that there are other black boxes out there." -- Retagged, this part cracks me up every time :D

economics finance hedgefunds statistics blackswans blackboxes artificialintelligence trading
may 2009 by adamcrowe

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Channel 4 Dispatches -- Crash: How Long Will It Last?

"In the second half of this special two-part Dispatches, economist and author Will Hutton continues the definitive insider's account of how Britain's economy went from boom to bust. ... what will it take to lift the UK out of the biggest recession in living memory?"

economics debt fraud finance derivatives ponzi hologram uk documentaries
april 2009 by adamcrowe

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Channel 4 Dispatches -- Crash: How the Banks Went Bust (Video)

"Just before he became Prime Minister in 2007, chancellor Gordon Brown congratulated the city on their ingenuity and creativity during his tenure: 'An era that history will record as the beginning of a new golden age for the city of London'. He couldn't have been more wrong. Now, thanks to the financial crash, Britain is facing economic catastrophe. The debts the UK is incurring will take generations to pay off. But how did the economy get from boom to bust? In this two-part special, economist and author Will Hutton gives the definitive insider's account of what went wrong. Talking to the key players in government, Wall Street and the City, Hutton unveils the true extent of the greed, ambition and reckless risk-taking that is now carrying the economy into the worst recession for a century. Is it really true that no one saw it coming? Or could the recession have been prevented?"

economics debt fraud finance derivatives ponzi hologram uk documentaries
april 2009 by adamcrowe

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Google Video -- Adam Curtis: 25 Million Pounds

"25 Million Pounds a study of Nick Leeson and the collapse of Barings Bank. Won the Best Science and Nature Documentary in the 1998 San Francisco International Film Festival."

economics finance markets gambling NickLeeson documentaries AdamCurtis
april 2009 by adamcrowe

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StockTwits.com -- Real Investors. Real Ideas. Real Time.

"StockTwits is an open, community-powered investment idea and information service. You can think of it as Bloomberg for the little guy and gal. Eavesdrop on what traders and investors are talking about RIGHT NOW or contribute to the conversation and build your reputation and following as a savvy market wizard."

economics finance stocks realtime investment information twitter
april 2009 by adamcrowe

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Umair Haque -- The Finance 2.0 Manifesto

'Today's bankers, investors, and traders will never build a better finance. Why does Wall St's business as usual seem to be gaming the rules, gambling away other people's money, and cooking the books to hide the losses? Because Wall St's operating system has a single instruction: my job is to rip your face off. Those who can rise swiftly to the top. Wall St, in other words, selects economic Jack the Rippers, rewarding and empowering those who prey on society, communities, and people. Finance 1.0 cannot power growth 2.0. Yesterday's finance cannot power tomorrow's prosperity. Bailouts, taxes, nationalization, regulation are what your discussions this week are focused on. These can limit the depth and intensity of the crash. But what they cannot do is build a radically more efficient, productive, and effective financial system. -- Let's end finance 1.0's abusive relationship with the world. Here are nine paths to igniting the next financial revolution: ...'

economics ethonomics manifesto finance growth sustainability ethics markets networks communities information transparency opensource UmairHaque
april 2009 by adamcrowe

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Daily Kos -- The Most Important Financial Crisis Article You Haven't Read

'The CDSs determined the value of the CDOs. And no one is touching CDSs with a thousand foot pole right now, and with very good reason. -- Li came up with an ingenious way to model default correlation without even looking at historical default data. Instead, he used market data about the prices of instruments known as credit default swaps. If your eyes didn't just bulge out of your head and plop on the keyboard, they should have. This genius decided that the underlying value of the loans really was irrelevant: what was really relevant was what the market decided they were worth, on the basis of the value of the CDS insurance hedges against them. The infinitely traded, completely unregulated, massively speculative pool of CDS bets against the CDOs that now contained the entire economy's lifeblood. You can't make this shit up... nobody has any idea what these things are worth. No one EVER DID. ...that's why the credit markets are frozen, and aren't coming unfrozen any time soon.'

economics finance mathematics gaussiancopulafunction risk derivatives CDS delusion numbers temes blackboxes blackswans
april 2009 by adamcrowe

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New York Magazine -- How Michael Osinski Helped Build the Bomb That Blew Up Wall Street

'I have been called the devil by strangers and “the Facilitator” by friends. I wrote the software that turned mortgages into bonds. I never would have thought, in my most extreme paranoid fantasies, that my software, and the others like it, would have enabled Wall Street to decimate the investments of everyone in my family. Not even the most jaded observer saw that coming. I can’t deny that it allowed a privileged few to exploit the unsuspecting many. But catastrophe, depression, busted banks, forced auctions of entire tracts of houses? The fact that my software, over which I would labor for a decade, facilitated these events is numbing. Is capitalism inherently corrupt? I don’t think the free flow of goods in and of itself is the culprit. No, it’s the complexity masked by thousands of unseen whirring widgets that beguiles people into a sense of power, a feeling of dominion over the future.'

economics finance securitization derivatives risk control #complexity prediction software numbers simulation virtuality blackboxes
march 2009 by adamcrowe

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Edge -- The Forth Quadrant: A Map of The Limits of Statistics by Nassim Nicholas Taleb

'Statistics can fool you. In fact it is fooling your government right now. It can even bankrupt the system (let's face it: use of probabilistic methods for the estimation of risks did just blow up the banking system). I want this to stop, and stop now— the current patching by the banking establishment worldwide is akin to using the same doctor to cure the patient when the doctor has a track record of systematically killing them. And this is not limited to banking—I generalize to an entire class of random variables that do not have the structure we [think] they have, in which we can be suckers. And we are beyond suckers: not only, for socio-economic and other nonlinear, complicated variables, we are riding in a bus driven a blindfolded driver, but we refuse to acknowledge it in spite of the evidence... the good news is that we can identify where the danger zone is located, which I call "the fourth quadrant", and show it on a map with more or less clear boundaries.'

epistemology economics finance mathematics statistics literacy probability risk predictions criticism rearviewmirror fallacy myopia blackswans NassimNicholasTaleb
march 2009 by adamcrowe

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YouTube -- What Caused the Financial Crash (1 of 4)

"Midas Formula/Trillion Dollar Bet. How do derivatives work...and why would brilliant people take on too much debt? It all started with an almost magical formula that was touted as the answer to volatility and risk in the markets but ended up being at the heart of a huge financial crash, over ten years ago. One that damaged the reputations of two of its inventors. After the collapse of their own hedge fund, LTCM (the subject of this film) regulators feared the ecoomic system was going into meltdown so relaxed credit rules and lowered interest rates to fuel demand...leading first to the dot com boom and then the housing bubble...so much for the elegant mathematical formula that hoped to change capitalism and the world for the good."

economics psychology mathematics finance risk modelling hedging derivatives options prices documentaries
march 2009 by adamcrowe

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Columbia Journalism Review -- Derivatives Echo Chamber

"What role did the press play in diffusing financial warnings in the years leading up to the current crisis? ...we can offer an example for your consideration: the press’s supremely insufficient response to an important 1994 report by the Government Accountability Office, the investigative arm of Congress, warning about the dangers of derivatives—those largely unregulated financial instruments that have played such a central role in the current collapse." -- "One of the reasons we don’t see economic collapse coming is that we would prefer to see ourselves as on track, rather than spinning wildly out into the ether. To that end we, perhaps understandably, sometimes fit the facts to our sensibility, rather than the other way around. But one job of the press is to be better seers than everyone else, less willing to be lulled into false contentment."

economics finance derivatives journalism criticism
march 2009 by adamcrowe

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NYTimes.com -- They Tried to Outsmart Wall Street

'Asked to compare her work to physics, one quant, who requested anonymity because her company had not given her permission to talk to reporters, termed the market “a wild beast” that cannot be controlled, and then added: “It’s not like building a bridge. If you’re right more than half the time you’re winning the game.” There are a thousand physicists on Wall Street, she estimated, and many, she said, talk nostalgically about science. “They sold their souls to the devil,” she said, adding, “I haven’t met many quants who said they were in finance because they were in love with finance.”' -- 'Nigel Goldenfeld, whose company sells derivatives software: "Because the math is really complicated people assume it must be right."' -- Numbers numb

economics finance mathematics derivatives risk modelling simulation simulacra numbers nonholonomic systems reflexivity
march 2009 by adamcrowe

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MarketWatch -- The $700 trillion elephant in the room

'Derivative contracts total about three-quarters of a quadrillion dollars in "notional" amounts, according to the Bank for International Settlements. These contracts are tallied in notional values because no one really can say how much they are worth. [For comparison] The total value of all the stock markets in the world amounts to less than $50 trillion, according to the World Federation of Exchanges. Few know what derivatives are worth. I spoke with one derivatives trader who manages billions of dollars and she said she couldn't even value her portfolio because "no one knows anymore who is on the other side of the trade."' -- Keyser Söze? (Check the comments)

economics finance derivatives shadowbankingsystem fake simulacra virtuality hologram quadrillion
march 2009 by adamcrowe

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mi2g -- The Eight Bubbles: What are the Numbers suggesting? (8th November 2008)

"There is a rising myth of the single bubble which suggests that The Great Unwind -- manifest as the global credit crunch -- is essentially about subprime mortgage default, a USD 1.5 trillion challenge. The truth is that there are as many as eight bubbles at play which are in the process of bursting, taking the form of deleverage on an unprecedented scale: #1 Subprime Mortgage linked Loans and other Assets (USD 1.5 trillion); #2 China, India, Eastern Europe and other Emerging Market Loans (USD 5 trillion); #3 Commodities (Commodity Derivatives at about USD 9 trillion); #4 Corporate bonds (USD 15 trillion); #5 Commercial (USD 25 trillion) and Residential property (USD 50 trillion); #6 Credit Cards Outstanding Debt (USD 2.5 trillion); #7 Currencies (Foreign Exchange Derivatives at about USD 56 trillion); and #8 Credit Default Swaps (USD 58 trillion) as a subset of all Derivatives (USD 1,144 Trillion). -- The GDP of the world is USD 50tr. USD 1,144tr. is 22 times the GDP of the world."

economics financialization bubble derivatives junkbonds finance
march 2009 by adamcrowe

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mi2g -- The Four Scenarios: Debt Deflation, Hyperinflation, Quadrillion Play and Muddle Through (15 November 2008)

"Banks and brokers were, in effect, printing their own proprietary issues of "money" via complex securities and as a result their supply of money grew to exceed by at least one order of magnitude the money printed by central banks. ...quadrillion dollar worth private currencies - paper assets - have fuelled the globalisation process, massive and unprecedented world GDP growth, mergers and acquisitions, and large scale industrial / infrastructure projects, until natural boundary conditions kicked in, ie, the earth ran out of raw materials and natural resources in sufficient quantities. -- The power of central bankers may have been permanently eroded given that the centre of gravity has now shifted. It lies with the financial markets and their participators who transact the deflating quadrillion dollar plus paper asset equation of which fiat currency is a much smaller quantum."

* economics debt shadowbankingsystem leverage derivatives securitization ponzi inflation deflation money finance virtuality predictions quadrillion
march 2009 by adamcrowe

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The Economist -- Ignorance and the financial crisis: The spiral of ignorance

"The tide has gone out and, with a very few exceptions, Britain is swimming naked: almost nobody appears to know what [Evan Davis] is talking about. The havoc of the financial crisis has stretched and outstripped even most economists. The British political class is befogged. Ordinary people are overwhelmed. And just as the interaction between banking and economic woes is proving poisonous, so the interplay of public and political ignorance is damaging the country’s prospects." -- F that. READ: http://cynicuseconomicus.blogspot.com/2009/02/economic-crisis-underlying-cause.html

economics ignorance finance literacy uk
march 2009 by adamcrowe

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Wired -- Recipe for Disaster: The Formula That Killed Wall Street

'Bankers should have noted that very small changes in their underlying assumptions could result in very large changes in the correlation number. They also should have noticed that the results they were seeing were much less volatile than they should have been—which implied that the risk was being moved elsewhere. Where had the risk gone? They didn't know, or didn't ask. One reason was that the outputs came from "black box" computer models and were hard to subject to a commonsense smell test. Another was that the quants, who should have been more aware of the copula's weaknesses, weren't the ones making the big asset-allocation decisions. Their managers, who made the actual calls, lacked the math skills to understand what the models were doing or how they worked. They could, however, understand something as simple as a single correlation number. That was the problem.'

economics finance mathematics algorithms risk blackboxes
february 2009 by adamcrowe

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BBC -- The layman's finance crisis glossary

"Here is a guide to many of the business terms currently cropping up regularly, as well as some of the more exotic words coined to describe some of the social effects of the credit crunch." -- P is for Ponzi. F for Fraud? O for Over-The-Counter? S for Shadow Banking System? Inflation entry is misleading btw

economics finance glossary
february 2009 by adamcrowe

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BBC -- Mathematicians' role in market mayhem

"When I telephoned one fund to ask if we could interview some of their quants, the receptionist told me that I was unlikely to get permission, partly because of the secretive, commercially sensitive nature of their work but also, because many of them in that fund are autistic." -- Pattern, pattern, pattern, pattern...

economics finance mathematics #specialization autism
january 2009 by adamcrowe

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BBC -- The maths of the credit crunch

'Since 2007, presenter and economist Tim Harford has been exploring and explaining the numbers which have contributed to - and have characterised - the global economic downturn. He met the mathematicians at the heart of the City - and found out why some say they are to blame for the financial crisis. He uncovered the flaws of the bankers' bonus system, and discovered a mathematical error which might have led the banks into trouble.' -- Numbers numb. Audio interviews inside.

economics finance mathematics risk derivatives modelling probability simulation blackboxes algorithms numbers myopia feedback
january 2009 by adamcrowe

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American Public Media -- Marketplace: Whiteboard

Senior Editor Paddy Hirsch explains various credit crunch concepts: CDOs, CDS, Leverage, 'Quantitative Easing', OTC Trades, Naked Shorts, etc, using a whiteboard, a balloon, and several tall towers of empty champagne glasses.

economics finance banking derivatives leverage hedgefunds explanations whiteboard drawing
january 2009 by adamcrowe

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n+1 -- Financial Meltdown

"At the end of the sub-prime orgy, it became difficult to place a lot of this debt. So the banks would end up warehousing it—you see, they didn’t know it was 10 minutes to midnight. They had a profitable business in purchasing and securitizing these assets, but it was 10 minutes to midnight and they didn’t know it. They thought they would be able to place it and securitize it when things calmed down. But it turned out the clock struck midnight and these assets turned into—pumpkins. And they couldn’t move them, and while all these assets were sitting on their books the real estate market started to deteriorate, and the value of these sub-prime mortgages started to deteriorate with it." --- Classic commentary on the subprime crisis. -- "...they were borrowing a lot of money, they used the capital they had, they borrowed outside money, they bought sub-prime mortgages. They were highly, highly leveraged. 50:1 leverage." -- LOL

economics financialization finance derivatives debt fraud leverage subprime ponzi hedgefunds
january 2009 by adamcrowe

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n+1 -- Interview With a Hedge Fund Manager

'The problem is that the DNA of a lot of these models is very, very similar, it's like an ecosystem with no biodiversity... And what happened is, in August, a few of these funds that have big black box trading books suffered losses in other businesses and they decided to reduce risk, so they basically dialed down the black box system. So the black box system started unwinding its positions, and every black box is so similar that everybody was kind of long the same stocks and short the same stocks. So when one fund starts selling off its longs and buying back its shorts, that causes losses for the next black box and the people who run that black box say, "Oh gosh! I'm losing a lot more money than I thought I could. My risk model is no longer relevant; let me turn down my black box." And basically what you had was an avalanche where everybody's black box is being shut off, causing incredibly bizarre behavior in the market.'

economics financialization finance derivatives hedgefunds hedging leverage blackboxes trading ecosystem selfsimilar #specialization
january 2009 by adamcrowe

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Virtuallnk -- Finance Icons Set

Assets Financial Error.png -- Bank Branch Delete.png -- Personal Finances Stop.png -- Money USD Stack Warning.png -- Money GBP Stack Warning.png -- Gold Bars Check.png -- Currency Conversion.png -- Savings Add.png

economics debt fraud finance icons
december 2008 by adamcrowe

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NYTimes.com -- The Reckoning - On Wall Street, Bonuses, Not Profits, Were Real

'“It’s always human nature,” said Mr. Lin, who lost his job at Merrill last summer... “You want to pull for the market to do well because you’re vested.”' -- Morons

economics finance credit bubble ponzi ignorance
december 2008 by adamcrowe

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vanityfair.com -- Wall Street Lays Another Egg: Politics & Power by Niall Ferguson

"This year we have lived through something more than a financial crisis. We have witnessed the death of a planet. Call it Planet Finance. Two years ago, in 2006, the measured economic output of the entire world was worth around $48.6 trillion. The total market capitalization of the world’s stock markets was $50.6 trillion, 4 percent larger. The total value of domestic and international bonds was $67.9 trillion, 40 percent larger. Planet Finance was beginning to dwarf Planet Earth... On Planet Finance, the securities outnumbered the people; the transactions outnumbered the relationships."

economics debt fraud history finance property junkbonds leverage inflation risk hedging wealth value psychology fear greed trust delusion denial depression numbers myopia herd conformity groupthink doublethink reality virtuality ponzi simulacra fake NiallFerguson recession
november 2008 by adamcrowe

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Web of Debt -- IT’S THE DERIVATIVES, STUPID! WHY FANNIE, FREDDIE AND AIG ALL HAD TO BE BAILED OUT

'What had to be saved at all costs was not housing or the dollar but the financial derivatives industry; and the precipice from which it had to be saved was an “event of default” that could have collapsed a quadrillion dollar derivatives bubble, a collapse that could take the entire global banking system down with it. The dominos go down in a cascade of cross-defaults that infects the whole banking industry and jeopardizes the global pyramid scheme. The potential for this sort of nuclear reaction was what prompted billionaire investor Warren Buffett to call derivatives “weapons of financial mass destruction.” It is also why the banking system cannot let a major derivatives player go down, and it is the banking system that calls the shots.'

economics debt derivatives finance fraud quadrillion shadowbankingsystem
september 2008 by adamcrowe

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Web of Debt -- The Secret Bailout of JPMorgan: How Insider Trading Looted Bear Stearns and the American Taxpayer

"The March series had only eight days left to expiration, meaning the stock would have to drop by an unlikely $45 a share in eight days for the put-buyers to score. It was a very risky bet, unless the traders knew something the market didn’t; and they evidently thought they did, because after the series opened on March 11, 2008, purchases were made of massive volumes of puts controlling millions of shares." -- !!!

finance options shortselling stocks fraud
september 2008 by adamcrowe

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Google Video -- Money As Debt

"Only the small secrets need to be protected. The big ones are kept secret by public incredulity." - Marshall McLuhan -- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fractional_reserve

banking money virtualworlds currency fraud loans debt finance politics economics documentaries
september 2008 by adamcrowe

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YouTube -- Perception from Wall Street

Gordon Gekko: "Money itself isn't lost or made it's simply transferred from one perception to another, like magic."

quotes money finance gametheory "capitalism"
september 2008 by adamcrowe

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New York Times -- Diamond and Kashyap on the Recent Financial Upheavals

"Surely the Fed cannot be called upon to provide backstop financing whenever a large member of the financial system runs into trouble. How does it prevent a replay of this scenario, and can it be done without stifling innovation?" -- The Fed (a private company) makes it's money by issuing loans. It seems economists still don't want you to understand the *business of economics*. The most useful of all the useful idiots. Read between their lines.

doublethink economics finance money loans fraud
september 2008 by adamcrowe

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Wired -- Wall Street on the Ropes

"Eager to ease fears and facilitate trading, the Federal Reserve took several steps to increase liquidity in the markets..." -- stop right there. FRAUD! Carry on...

hacks theft fraud finance credit money economics
september 2008 by adamcrowe

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