Just for kicks, quickly examine who now owns the stadiums and arenas where the increasingly poor American can no longer afford to take his family. A really bad/good example: Barclays Center in Brooklyn, yes, the same Barclays busted for LIBOR fixing. The new home of the Brooklyn Nets (formerly NJ Nets). Remember families could go have fun watching their local teams in stadiums or arenas named only after the city or franchise and not a corporate sponsor? And it was affordable? But now it's impossible to attend a game just because of the ticket prices (not even including food, souvenirs, tolls, and parking). And the corporate boxes get more and more luxurious, the arenas carry the names of banks or other corporations, and the arenas get big tax breaks that the local communities have to fund through bond sales or other means (while also having to take care of traffic, police, and other issues). It's just another symptom, but one people can see whenever they watch a game from home.
Their goal is to gut (already achieved) and delete citizen protections against Bigness governing our lives, whether Big Business or Big Government---SAME DIFFERENCE---in the Constitution and, once that connective tissue is castrated, return the world to a newer improved high-tech feudalism (nearly achieved).
The present is composed of governments run by representatives from global corporations AGAINST the best interests of their citizens. The government is as if invaded and occupied by traitors doing their pirate council's bidding. There is no patriotism involved any more at any level above that of the citizen-dupe. Those are given, by their media, flags to wave as if the team is working for them, not against them, which the citizenry dutifully flies. It's fool-proof, in that fools are plentiful. If the fools awoke to realize they outnumber the traitors in and around government by a factor of 300,000 to 1, it would take 3 months to remove the cancer and bring back the Republic, currently dead. For that to come about, it would take leadership currently nonexistant, and the problems are metasticizing.
Wish you would tighten up your rhetoric, it could soar, instead of repetitively meandering into half-expressed asides that clog up its maneuverability.
Some of the studies out there nowadays won't even state the obvious cause of suicides to being unemployed and/or long-term unemployment. Because if they did that, that might actually make someone somewhere in power lose sleep for a second or two before they went back to dreaming about spending their bankster-funded vacation with their mistress in Baden-Baden. No, instead they play the cute game of "long-term unemployment is correlated to suicides, but doesn't cause them." I guess the same way jumping out of an airplane without a parachute doesn't cause actual death, but is correlated to it. The same way playing Russian roulette by yourself doesn't actually kill someone (that's the bullet entering the brain), but is correlated to it. The same way government politicians being corrupt slaves and puppets to corporate masters didn't destroy the US and our founding ideals, but is correlated to it.
Ah yes, like has been said before time and time again, companies simply cannot find qualified Americans no matter how hard they try (EP's automatic rejection article and 27,000,000 qualified unemployed Americans can attest to the lie that is). Yup, HR straight out of high school or college simply can't find any qualified Americans with degrees, or the necessary experience, or that can work well with others. And the college dropouts on Fox and elsewhere that can read teleprompters always tell us that we are uneducated and unskilled (and who are we to disagree with such stellar minds that aren't burdened by honesty or integrity or a brain). Simply can't train anyone anywhere. Sure, during WWII, tens of millions of Americans straight from farms or cities were taught to fight our enemies using every weapon under the Sun in a few weeks or months, fly planes, drive tanks, fight alongside resistance fighters across the globe, build tanks, planes, bombs, bridges, etc., etc., but that's simply too hard compared to working in an office under brainsurgeons/managers or flipping burgers (today's most prevalent job apparently). But wait, what's that, too many "overqualified" Americans too? If one still thought in America (and many of us still do), a thinking American would have to conclude, in all fairness, the people in charge are full of sh*t. Especially when the job destroyers and worst and dimmest in corporate boardrooms and their political whores constantly screw things up even worse, otherwise why the constant need for bailouts and covering up their crimes and horrific business records (e.g., bankrupting their own companies, losing billions and billions of dollars on criminal and incorrect bets on financial markets, etc.).
Never mind, I spy visa recipients and Foxconn workers overseas with no experience and no education that can replace fellow Americans. And the Chinese government can even force workers to work for free as interns building i-crap, just like American workers from 18-65 are now working for free as interns in private small and large businesses and government agencies. And if things ever go south for the corporate masters that have stated time and time again that they aren't "American" and only look out for themselves (again, not shareholders or other Americans, but CORPORATE BOARDS AND OFFICERS ONLY at the expense of shareholders and Americans), then the non-patriotic corporate boards and officers will demand that their whores in government send the Americans they despise and see as cannon fodder and/or consumers only to go protect their banana republic interests overseas. Now the Dutch East India Company is demanding you go serve the company overseas, no, sorry, the British East India Company is demanding you serve the company overseas, oops, I mean the US of Oligarchy is demanding you protect Apple and JPMorgan and Goldman Sachs overseas. And while you serve the oligarchs, ignore the fact that the oligarchs are also using the Fed to destroy any savings you might have by making the US Dollar worthless and taking direct payouts from the Fed as only the TBTF are allowed to do at 0% interest.
Ah yes, the average American gets blamed for everything, from not spending enough to not saving enough or not learning enough to being too smart and too experienced so he/she is now "overqualified." And these criticisms come from people that I wouldn't trust to watch my wallet for two minutes without stealing my cash or to house sit without burning down the entire neighborhood because of their lack of morals and brains.
Robert, I ws stunned to find, on a road trip across the long northern shore of Lake Superior, dozens of examples of shoes and clothing Made In Canada sold alongside items made in offshore sweatshops AT THE EXACT SAME PRICES, PRECISELY COMPARABLE TO PRICES IN THE US, which means we CAN make shoes and clothing in the US if the government weren't owned and operated by the ilk of the Bain capitalists protected by the Obama administration, and every administration since Reagan and his fascist friends co-opted the Democrats to go along with supply-side wreckonomics in 1981, when manufacturing was first allowed, nay, encouraged to leave the country virtually untaxed and unopposed by our now-multinationally-funded American-hating traitors occupying Congress, to be imported back here from slaves laboring in dirt cheap factories at the highest profit levels known to pigkind, so far.
Apple and Foxconn, deal with the repercussions of slave-labor and poor working conditions. Predictable, as always, by the thinking man and woman on the street, but far too much for corporate boards and their puppet politicians to care about. Oh, US Government and corporations and Chamber of Commerce and Fox News, if it's all about profit, profit, profit, then why are the Chinese workers so pissed off? Why don't they see the benefits of slaving away for profits? Don't they know they shouldn't share in your success, but rather their servitude is meant solely for their "betters"? And anyone who thinks the Chinese govt. doesn't have some hand in this and is doing its part to scare Apple and others into sharing even more IP and selling more foreign MNCs' goods as their own is a fool. The Chinese govt. is just reminding the foreign companies who really has control, and if Congress and multinationals ever forgot that for one second, than they really are incredibly dim.
US Government, I don't want to hear one word or see one thing done by you to protect Apple or Foxconn. These companies do nothing for the American worker (other than replace him/her at every turn) and they don't even support the USA through sharing the tax burden the average American does. They don't pay for the US State Dept. or Trade Representative, or State Department, or other activities they apparently enjoy for free (other than "lobbying fees" and "election contributions" aka bribes). No, these outsourcers and fake "American" corporations like Apple have screwed us at every turn, now as stated here repeatedly, let them enjoy the fruits of their labor. In fact, they repeatedly tell us they don't care about America, our ideals and freedoms, and they only care about profits. They repeatedly admit they aren't "American" corporations, but somehow still get the benefits of our bought-for politicians doing everything for them at the expense of actual American citizens. So let them see what happens when the Government ignores them, as they have purposely ignored our cries for help for years now. Next on the riot list? Oh, any spot where these companies don't care about people, America's founding ideals, democracy, or the rule of law. You think China is giving you problems now? Try things when places where the government has far less control get pissed off. Set up operations in Pakistan and see what happens when Apple's CEO is confronted by 100,000 people that simply don't understand why the US Congress and CEOs and corporate boards seem to hold them in such little regard. Is it that the average workers are actually brighter, harder working, and more honest than Congress, CEOs, and boards? Indeed.
Now sit back and grab some popcorn and watch CEOs and their paid-for politicians and talking puppets on Bloomberg and CNBC and Fox drone on and on about how good the workers have it and why this violence is bad for business. Come on, working for Foxconn building i-crap for free as an intern is valuable "work experience" that young Chinese should pay for, or so I'm told by dolts that couldn't last 5 minutes on a Foxconn production line. Yawn.
If engineers are not in charge, usually through a CTO at the top,VP of Engineering, then team managers, team leaders, that is what I mean by treating engineers as pork bellies, just another commodity. It doesn't matter if they are paying $300k if they have no power over R&D, then it's usually a disaster.
You may sincerely doubt that there is a shortage of these folks yet they are paying 300k a year for those skills. Ipso facto, they are not plentiful - if they were, they would be paying prevailing wage of 100k.
Be that as it may, I am not disagreeing with you about what happens and that it is bad. What I disagree with you on is that the engineers are in control of it. They are not - it is management. Pure and simple.
But it is always easy to blame the folks at the coal face, versus those really running the show. It is symptomatic of what is wrong - the entry level folks get put to the sword, while those in charge dodge the bullet and take the payout. Remember, this is not about engineering practices, this is about making money. You can see it in other industries too - big pharma, big agriculture, big oil. It goes on and on.
As for engineering an airplane, check out the reference to Roger Boisjoly that I mentioned before. So much for engineers in charge, right?
Clearly they didn't "get that". Sorry, even if someone stumbles over for loops, they would know not to test their code in a live production environment.
asm + kernel, I sincerely doubt there is a shortage since anyone with a BS CE, soft focus, from a top school should have those base skills + plus the base statistics and probability theory.
Sure engineers are viewed as pork bellies, happens every day even with $100k+ base. Just look at the sad state of hiring with keyword rejection, bogus "gotcha" tests that people get the answers to beforehand. Here every day how these things reject the solid engineers and pass the bad.
Bottom line, this is no joke, you're talking about bad methodology and practice where trillions of dollars are vulnerable. This isn't a kernel panic, it's trillions of dollars.
This is a situation where every day you have a flash crash doing on. Bad code and bad algos are not a rarity, not a fluke here.
If they are using kernel mode and asm makes it even more obscene to do on the fly code changes. You don't test assembly on the fly, live or even write assembly past 20 lines w/o running a unit test. I'll bet money at this point these NFT firms did not take the time to build a simulator.
Engineering financial systems is the same as designing an airplane. If a company does short cuts and thousands of people fell out of the sky to their deaths as a result, you can bet we'd have laws and lawsuits for safety, regulations.
Yet when describing market disaster, we're seeing excuses here for what keeps being brought to light. It's simply very poor engineering practices.
"That said, I suspect finance thinks they can just get a bunch of foreign guest workers and it's all good, like buying a commodity, like pork bellies."
I believe you have a foreign guest worker jag going on here. Problem here is that for HFT firms it *may* apply, but only because what they are looking for is in high demand and short supply.
Put another way, I friend of mine works for a HFT firm in NYC. They pay 2x-3x the prevailing salary for a programmer with the right skills (Linux kernel and assembler language knowledge). They don't pay that kind of salary because they are 'like pork bellies' - and if they have to go overseas to get that they will.
Would they throw that engineer to the wolves for a screw up? Well, given the income of those higher up, you bet. The point is as always: follow the money.
Aha! A lurker! Thanks so much for the comment for on these more technical overviews of statistical reports, I know they are somewhat popular, have regulars but few leave feedback enough for me to know if I even made a mistake!
I'm not up on my technicals with QE to know if this is a top or not. . Clearly the markets are not in line at all with economy and these days, so many knew QE was coming, it was already priced in plus we have HFT and God knows what else. Things like Gold, even oil might be already done but other commodities I'm not so sure.
Bernanke left QE literally open ended and said the trick was to get employment up...well, the attitudes of U.S. business is any worker besides an American and any investment besides America as their motto...
so I don't see how much is going to change but with an open ended QE I think Wall Street should be "high" and now have a guaranteed fix for their addiction, unless of course some corporate schmucks get a conscience and hire a few U.S. citizens...(not!)
One thing we agree on is the divergence between the real, production economy and the markets.
I really like PMI and one of these days should run some correlations to see how it compares to IP long term. The problem with so many government statistics are the revisions, I mean we get really different GDP 3, 4 years after the fact. IP also is heavily revised.
Hi Robert, I've been reading your articles for a few months now and I must say you do a great job of explaining things! Very educational and insightful!!! So over the past few months I've become increasingly bearish on the US economy. With the Euro zone in recession, China slowing down I expect it to spill over into the States. With ISM contracting for 3 months, 3 month retail sales dip to me it looks like it already has. ECRI has been saying this since last September...
As you know US stocks are at multi-year highs, euphoria over QE infinity while leading indicators such as FedEx and UPS lower forecasts. Just like many other companies that have started reporting earnings, revenues are light and their outlooks are grim. Fundamentals are out the window, stocks keep climbing, technical analysis is pretty bearish. This is indicative of a market top to me.
That is my stance in a nut shell. My question to you is do you think we are in a recession? Keep up the good work, I will be back to read up on September's PMI number! Thanks!
Wouldn't be the first time some idiot forced some engineers to do some really unsafe stupid shit. You can tell just by the investigations, once again, the engineers are considered "the help", disposable, as if an "after thought" and that is a huge part of this problem.
That said, if a head were to roll on the engineering side, you can bet it will be the poor schmuck who wrote the code, not the people who made her/him. That said, I suspect finance thinks they can just get a bunch of foreign guest workers and it's all good, like buying a commodity, like pork bellies.
"It's rare I ever claim an engineer is negligence that this has to be one of those times, to put untested code, on the fly, out to ravage the open markets, electronic trading systems really is."
If you believe the sign-off on putting untested code on servers is down to the engineers, you are letting the real folks behind this off the hook.
It's all about management - you can bet that the culture of such practice is to not only let it happen, but dollars to donuts it will be *encouraged* to happen. The folks making the money out of this go all the way to the top, and after all, they are betting with other peoples money.
If you believe engineers can stand up to management, you are misguided. Check out Roger Boisjoly. Remember, if an engineer refuses to do something because it is stupid, he/she can be replaced. Or paid enough to hold his or her nose.
Because OMG, if one first tests their algo in a simulator, with regression tests, then they might "lose the edge" on the competition.
Think about that. There are trillions of dollars flowing through these systems that are being put at risk simply because someone needs to be "first".
It's also false, one should have, in house, a simulator, an offline testbench, not using the live, real markets, with real money that affects real people and real economies, as their testbench.
Same problem with the "bad math" CDSes, but doing that, putting new code out live, on the fly onto the markets is obviously not only playing with fire, has systemic risk.
Such practices should be banned, from a technology standpoint, for everyone.
It's rare I ever claim an engineer is negligence that this has to be one of those times, to put untested code, on the fly, out to ravage the open markets, electronic trading systems really is.
The nature of the environment does not allow for proper engineering practice. Algorithmic changes are only good till the next guy or his computer catches on. If you spend a few days testing the tiny anomaly you are trying arbitrage will be gone. The whole system is fundamentally unstable and uncontrollable. Allowing to-big-to-fail financial institutions to operate in an fundamentally chaotic environment is a recipe for disaster. The questions are when will disaster strike, how much will it cost us, and how much will the people running the show make off with before it does.
The only fair share is no taxes for anyone at all.....for now. The system is broken. It can not be fixed. we need to start over. The only thing the Banksters, corporate criminals and Washington thieves understand is money. If we all stop giving it to them maybe we can get some stuff done.
The only reason we pay taxes at all is because we think we have to. We give our own authority to tax collectors. They work for us people. What if we just don't authorize them to collect taxes anymore?
Good question and I strongly suggest reading the exhibit and watching this hearing.
Also, Citizens for Tax Justice has some posts which break down the tax code is easier to understand terms (but still detailed).
I have Snow Crash on my shelf, I'll have to go crack it now.
I feel the way you do, it seems it's "anybody but the U.S. citizen", "anybody but the U.S. worker" and it does feel like hatred towards Americans and by those in power in this country no less.
Sure seems that way, why anyone would put this in the tax code, either a liberal wanting to play games with foreign policy through corporate dominance or yet another lobbyist, corporate favor.
Just for kicks, quickly examine who now owns the stadiums and arenas where the increasingly poor American can no longer afford to take his family. A really bad/good example: Barclays Center in Brooklyn, yes, the same Barclays busted for LIBOR fixing. The new home of the Brooklyn Nets (formerly NJ Nets). Remember families could go have fun watching their local teams in stadiums or arenas named only after the city or franchise and not a corporate sponsor? And it was affordable? But now it's impossible to attend a game just because of the ticket prices (not even including food, souvenirs, tolls, and parking). And the corporate boxes get more and more luxurious, the arenas carry the names of banks or other corporations, and the arenas get big tax breaks that the local communities have to fund through bond sales or other means (while also having to take care of traffic, police, and other issues). It's just another symptom, but one people can see whenever they watch a game from home.
Their goal is to gut (already achieved) and delete citizen protections against Bigness governing our lives, whether Big Business or Big Government---SAME DIFFERENCE---in the Constitution and, once that connective tissue is castrated, return the world to a newer improved high-tech feudalism (nearly achieved).
The present is composed of governments run by representatives from global corporations AGAINST the best interests of their citizens. The government is as if invaded and occupied by traitors doing their pirate council's bidding. There is no patriotism involved any more at any level above that of the citizen-dupe. Those are given, by their media, flags to wave as if the team is working for them, not against them, which the citizenry dutifully flies. It's fool-proof, in that fools are plentiful. If the fools awoke to realize they outnumber the traitors in and around government by a factor of 300,000 to 1, it would take 3 months to remove the cancer and bring back the Republic, currently dead. For that to come about, it would take leadership currently nonexistant, and the problems are metasticizing.
Wish you would tighten up your rhetoric, it could soar, instead of repetitively meandering into half-expressed asides that clog up its maneuverability.
Some of the studies out there nowadays won't even state the obvious cause of suicides to being unemployed and/or long-term unemployment. Because if they did that, that might actually make someone somewhere in power lose sleep for a second or two before they went back to dreaming about spending their bankster-funded vacation with their mistress in Baden-Baden. No, instead they play the cute game of "long-term unemployment is correlated to suicides, but doesn't cause them." I guess the same way jumping out of an airplane without a parachute doesn't cause actual death, but is correlated to it. The same way playing Russian roulette by yourself doesn't actually kill someone (that's the bullet entering the brain), but is correlated to it. The same way government politicians being corrupt slaves and puppets to corporate masters didn't destroy the US and our founding ideals, but is correlated to it.
Ah yes, like has been said before time and time again, companies simply cannot find qualified Americans no matter how hard they try (EP's automatic rejection article and 27,000,000 qualified unemployed Americans can attest to the lie that is). Yup, HR straight out of high school or college simply can't find any qualified Americans with degrees, or the necessary experience, or that can work well with others. And the college dropouts on Fox and elsewhere that can read teleprompters always tell us that we are uneducated and unskilled (and who are we to disagree with such stellar minds that aren't burdened by honesty or integrity or a brain). Simply can't train anyone anywhere. Sure, during WWII, tens of millions of Americans straight from farms or cities were taught to fight our enemies using every weapon under the Sun in a few weeks or months, fly planes, drive tanks, fight alongside resistance fighters across the globe, build tanks, planes, bombs, bridges, etc., etc., but that's simply too hard compared to working in an office under brainsurgeons/managers or flipping burgers (today's most prevalent job apparently). But wait, what's that, too many "overqualified" Americans too? If one still thought in America (and many of us still do), a thinking American would have to conclude, in all fairness, the people in charge are full of sh*t. Especially when the job destroyers and worst and dimmest in corporate boardrooms and their political whores constantly screw things up even worse, otherwise why the constant need for bailouts and covering up their crimes and horrific business records (e.g., bankrupting their own companies, losing billions and billions of dollars on criminal and incorrect bets on financial markets, etc.).
Never mind, I spy visa recipients and Foxconn workers overseas with no experience and no education that can replace fellow Americans. And the Chinese government can even force workers to work for free as interns building i-crap, just like American workers from 18-65 are now working for free as interns in private small and large businesses and government agencies. And if things ever go south for the corporate masters that have stated time and time again that they aren't "American" and only look out for themselves (again, not shareholders or other Americans, but CORPORATE BOARDS AND OFFICERS ONLY at the expense of shareholders and Americans), then the non-patriotic corporate boards and officers will demand that their whores in government send the Americans they despise and see as cannon fodder and/or consumers only to go protect their banana republic interests overseas. Now the Dutch East India Company is demanding you go serve the company overseas, no, sorry, the British East India Company is demanding you serve the company overseas, oops, I mean the US of Oligarchy is demanding you protect Apple and JPMorgan and Goldman Sachs overseas. And while you serve the oligarchs, ignore the fact that the oligarchs are also using the Fed to destroy any savings you might have by making the US Dollar worthless and taking direct payouts from the Fed as only the TBTF are allowed to do at 0% interest.
Ah yes, the average American gets blamed for everything, from not spending enough to not saving enough or not learning enough to being too smart and too experienced so he/she is now "overqualified." And these criticisms come from people that I wouldn't trust to watch my wallet for two minutes without stealing my cash or to house sit without burning down the entire neighborhood because of their lack of morals and brains.
Robert, I ws stunned to find, on a road trip across the long northern shore of Lake Superior, dozens of examples of shoes and clothing Made In Canada sold alongside items made in offshore sweatshops AT THE EXACT SAME PRICES, PRECISELY COMPARABLE TO PRICES IN THE US, which means we CAN make shoes and clothing in the US if the government weren't owned and operated by the ilk of the Bain capitalists protected by the Obama administration, and every administration since Reagan and his fascist friends co-opted the Democrats to go along with supply-side wreckonomics in 1981, when manufacturing was first allowed, nay, encouraged to leave the country virtually untaxed and unopposed by our now-multinationally-funded American-hating traitors occupying Congress, to be imported back here from slaves laboring in dirt cheap factories at the highest profit levels known to pigkind, so far.
Apple and Foxconn, deal with the repercussions of slave-labor and poor working conditions. Predictable, as always, by the thinking man and woman on the street, but far too much for corporate boards and their puppet politicians to care about. Oh, US Government and corporations and Chamber of Commerce and Fox News, if it's all about profit, profit, profit, then why are the Chinese workers so pissed off? Why don't they see the benefits of slaving away for profits? Don't they know they shouldn't share in your success, but rather their servitude is meant solely for their "betters"? And anyone who thinks the Chinese govt. doesn't have some hand in this and is doing its part to scare Apple and others into sharing even more IP and selling more foreign MNCs' goods as their own is a fool. The Chinese govt. is just reminding the foreign companies who really has control, and if Congress and multinationals ever forgot that for one second, than they really are incredibly dim.
US Government, I don't want to hear one word or see one thing done by you to protect Apple or Foxconn. These companies do nothing for the American worker (other than replace him/her at every turn) and they don't even support the USA through sharing the tax burden the average American does. They don't pay for the US State Dept. or Trade Representative, or State Department, or other activities they apparently enjoy for free (other than "lobbying fees" and "election contributions" aka bribes). No, these outsourcers and fake "American" corporations like Apple have screwed us at every turn, now as stated here repeatedly, let them enjoy the fruits of their labor. In fact, they repeatedly tell us they don't care about America, our ideals and freedoms, and they only care about profits. They repeatedly admit they aren't "American" corporations, but somehow still get the benefits of our bought-for politicians doing everything for them at the expense of actual American citizens. So let them see what happens when the Government ignores them, as they have purposely ignored our cries for help for years now. Next on the riot list? Oh, any spot where these companies don't care about people, America's founding ideals, democracy, or the rule of law. You think China is giving you problems now? Try things when places where the government has far less control get pissed off. Set up operations in Pakistan and see what happens when Apple's CEO is confronted by 100,000 people that simply don't understand why the US Congress and CEOs and corporate boards seem to hold them in such little regard. Is it that the average workers are actually brighter, harder working, and more honest than Congress, CEOs, and boards? Indeed.
Now sit back and grab some popcorn and watch CEOs and their paid-for politicians and talking puppets on Bloomberg and CNBC and Fox drone on and on about how good the workers have it and why this violence is bad for business. Come on, working for Foxconn building i-crap for free as an intern is valuable "work experience" that young Chinese should pay for, or so I'm told by dolts that couldn't last 5 minutes on a Foxconn production line. Yawn.
If engineers are not in charge, usually through a CTO at the top,VP of Engineering, then team managers, team leaders, that is what I mean by treating engineers as pork bellies, just another commodity. It doesn't matter if they are paying $300k if they have no power over R&D, then it's usually a disaster.
You may sincerely doubt that there is a shortage of these folks yet they are paying 300k a year for those skills. Ipso facto, they are not plentiful - if they were, they would be paying prevailing wage of 100k.
Be that as it may, I am not disagreeing with you about what happens and that it is bad. What I disagree with you on is that the engineers are in control of it. They are not - it is management. Pure and simple.
But it is always easy to blame the folks at the coal face, versus those really running the show. It is symptomatic of what is wrong - the entry level folks get put to the sword, while those in charge dodge the bullet and take the payout. Remember, this is not about engineering practices, this is about making money. You can see it in other industries too - big pharma, big agriculture, big oil. It goes on and on.
As for engineering an airplane, check out the reference to Roger Boisjoly that I mentioned before. So much for engineers in charge, right?
Clearly they didn't "get that". Sorry, even if someone stumbles over for loops, they would know not to test their code in a live production environment.
asm + kernel, I sincerely doubt there is a shortage since anyone with a BS CE, soft focus, from a top school should have those base skills + plus the base statistics and probability theory.
Sure engineers are viewed as pork bellies, happens every day even with $100k+ base. Just look at the sad state of hiring with keyword rejection, bogus "gotcha" tests that people get the answers to beforehand. Here every day how these things reject the solid engineers and pass the bad.
Bottom line, this is no joke, you're talking about bad methodology and practice where trillions of dollars are vulnerable. This isn't a kernel panic, it's trillions of dollars.
This is a situation where every day you have a flash crash doing on. Bad code and bad algos are not a rarity, not a fluke here.
If they are using kernel mode and asm makes it even more obscene to do on the fly code changes. You don't test assembly on the fly, live or even write assembly past 20 lines w/o running a unit test. I'll bet money at this point these NFT firms did not take the time to build a simulator.
Engineering financial systems is the same as designing an airplane. If a company does short cuts and thousands of people fell out of the sky to their deaths as a result, you can bet we'd have laws and lawsuits for safety, regulations.
Yet when describing market disaster, we're seeing excuses here for what keeps being brought to light. It's simply very poor engineering practices.
"That said, I suspect finance thinks they can just get a bunch of foreign guest workers and it's all good, like buying a commodity, like pork bellies."
I believe you have a foreign guest worker jag going on here. Problem here is that for HFT firms it *may* apply, but only because what they are looking for is in high demand and short supply.
Put another way, I friend of mine works for a HFT firm in NYC. They pay 2x-3x the prevailing salary for a programmer with the right skills (Linux kernel and assembler language knowledge). They don't pay that kind of salary because they are 'like pork bellies' - and if they have to go overseas to get that they will.
Would they throw that engineer to the wolves for a screw up? Well, given the income of those higher up, you bet. The point is as always: follow the money.
Love this. So true.
@Kurtz - although "Lang" would be a better handle, I just wanted to say Good on ya! Super rundown. What´s to do?
Aha! A lurker! Thanks so much for the comment for on these more technical overviews of statistical reports, I know they are somewhat popular, have regulars but few leave feedback enough for me to know if I even made a mistake!
I'm not up on my technicals with QE to know if this is a top or not. . Clearly the markets are not in line at all with economy and these days, so many knew QE was coming, it was already priced in plus we have HFT and God knows what else. Things like Gold, even oil might be already done but other commodities I'm not so sure.
Bernanke left QE literally open ended and said the trick was to get employment up...well, the attitudes of U.S. business is any worker besides an American and any investment besides America as their motto...
so I don't see how much is going to change but with an open ended QE I think Wall Street should be "high" and now have a guaranteed fix for their addiction, unless of course some corporate schmucks get a conscience and hire a few U.S. citizens...(not!)
One thing we agree on is the divergence between the real, production economy and the markets.
I really like PMI and one of these days should run some correlations to see how it compares to IP long term. The problem with so many government statistics are the revisions, I mean we get really different GDP 3, 4 years after the fact. IP also is heavily revised.
Hi Robert, I've been reading your articles for a few months now and I must say you do a great job of explaining things! Very educational and insightful!!! So over the past few months I've become increasingly bearish on the US economy. With the Euro zone in recession, China slowing down I expect it to spill over into the States. With ISM contracting for 3 months, 3 month retail sales dip to me it looks like it already has. ECRI has been saying this since last September...
As you know US stocks are at multi-year highs, euphoria over QE infinity while leading indicators such as FedEx and UPS lower forecasts. Just like many other companies that have started reporting earnings, revenues are light and their outlooks are grim. Fundamentals are out the window, stocks keep climbing, technical analysis is pretty bearish. This is indicative of a market top to me.
That is my stance in a nut shell. My question to you is do you think we are in a recession? Keep up the good work, I will be back to read up on September's PMI number! Thanks!
Wouldn't be the first time some idiot forced some engineers to do some really unsafe stupid shit. You can tell just by the investigations, once again, the engineers are considered "the help", disposable, as if an "after thought" and that is a huge part of this problem.
That said, if a head were to roll on the engineering side, you can bet it will be the poor schmuck who wrote the code, not the people who made her/him. That said, I suspect finance thinks they can just get a bunch of foreign guest workers and it's all good, like buying a commodity, like pork bellies.
"It's rare I ever claim an engineer is negligence that this has to be one of those times, to put untested code, on the fly, out to ravage the open markets, electronic trading systems really is."
If you believe the sign-off on putting untested code on servers is down to the engineers, you are letting the real folks behind this off the hook.
It's all about management - you can bet that the culture of such practice is to not only let it happen, but dollars to donuts it will be *encouraged* to happen. The folks making the money out of this go all the way to the top, and after all, they are betting with other peoples money.
If you believe engineers can stand up to management, you are misguided. Check out Roger Boisjoly. Remember, if an engineer refuses to do something because it is stupid, he/she can be replaced. Or paid enough to hold his or her nose.
Because OMG, if one first tests their algo in a simulator, with regression tests, then they might "lose the edge" on the competition.
Think about that. There are trillions of dollars flowing through these systems that are being put at risk simply because someone needs to be "first".
It's also false, one should have, in house, a simulator, an offline testbench, not using the live, real markets, with real money that affects real people and real economies, as their testbench.
Same problem with the "bad math" CDSes, but doing that, putting new code out live, on the fly onto the markets is obviously not only playing with fire, has systemic risk.
Such practices should be banned, from a technology standpoint, for everyone.
It's rare I ever claim an engineer is negligence that this has to be one of those times, to put untested code, on the fly, out to ravage the open markets, electronic trading systems really is.
The nature of the environment does not allow for proper engineering practice. Algorithmic changes are only good till the next guy or his computer catches on. If you spend a few days testing the tiny anomaly you are trying arbitrage will be gone. The whole system is fundamentally unstable and uncontrollable. Allowing to-big-to-fail financial institutions to operate in an fundamentally chaotic environment is a recipe for disaster. The questions are when will disaster strike, how much will it cost us, and how much will the people running the show make off with before it does.
The only fair share is no taxes for anyone at all.....for now. The system is broken. It can not be fixed. we need to start over. The only thing the Banksters, corporate criminals and Washington thieves understand is money. If we all stop giving it to them maybe we can get some stuff done.
The only reason we pay taxes at all is because we think we have to. We give our own authority to tax collectors. They work for us people. What if we just don't authorize them to collect taxes anymore?
Good question and I strongly suggest reading the exhibit and watching this hearing.
Also, Citizens for Tax Justice has some posts which break down the tax code is easier to understand terms (but still detailed).
I have Snow Crash on my shelf, I'll have to go crack it now.
I feel the way you do, it seems it's "anybody but the U.S. citizen", "anybody but the U.S. worker" and it does feel like hatred towards Americans and by those in power in this country no less.
Sure seems that way, why anyone would put this in the tax code, either a liberal wanting to play games with foreign policy through corporate dominance or yet another lobbyist, corporate favor.
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