Where are we with the FASB these days? They are lassoed, silenced and now we have a hidden toxic brew which is bubbling through the surface through dedicated bloggers and leaks?
I mean here they realize engineers can make people a lot of money....when in fact engineers every day make people a lot of money in all sorts of ways. ;) Right now we have Microsoft, Intel and so forth trashing their engineers to the point I really wonder sometimes how Intel esp. is able to crank out any innovation at all. I guess they kept a few but corporations like HP, man they just dumped their best engineers right and left, many of them have.
I think I saw something about this in seasonal adjustments...that mysterious black box for unemployment and other data coming from the BLS. I just scanned the wiki and wow, you're right, that's going to be slow going.
I do not believe in PhD level Economists get into this level of advanced mathematics to parse some of these models and find the mathematical flaws.
The ind. event issue is somewhat violated but more the requirements of the correlation coefficient, i.e. invertible, 1:1 to the actual data they are using is invalid (as well as your points).
So, I guess EP has found another activity here since some of us do have the mathematical background to critique these models.
Very few are. I think zero hedge has Ritholtz and of course Taleb and Roubini.
I just get irritated when I at least can plainly see "bad math" yet those who cannot really dig through these claim it's all "behavior" as if mathematical modeling, just as a tool, a subject is somehow "all bad".
I suspect (but haven't shown) that a major problem is the assumption that the stochastic fluctuations are independent events. "Non-Gaussian" is rather like "non-Markovian" or "nonlinear" -- a statement of what it isn't rather than what it is, so there are no general solutions. It sounds like "behavioral economics" is an attempt at an end run around the problem, and whether it works any less well isn't clear to me.
The question above about volatility got me poking into GARCH models, specifically what is assumed about the distributions of the stochastic variables. Unfortunately I also have papers to write (completely unrelated) so it's been slow going...
My understanding is this is pure algorithmic manipulation to capture orders slightly before they are posted and trade accordingly. The only bummer is this employs some engineers to create such systems. Maybe they will hire engineers to monitor instead!
In the week ending Sept. 12, the advance figure for seasonally adjusted initial claims was 545,000, a decrease of 12,000 from the previous week's revised figure of 557,000. The 4-week moving average was 563,000, a decrease of 8,750 from the previous week's revised average of 571,750.
The advance seasonally adjusted insured unemployment rate was 4.7 percent for the week ending Sept. 5, an increase of 0.1 percentage point from the prior week's unrevised rate of 4.6 percent.
The advance number for seasonally adjusted insured unemployment during the week ending Sept. 5 was 6,230,000, an increase of 129,000 from the preceding week's revised level of 6,101,000. The 4-week moving average was 6,180,250, a decrease of 5,500 from the preceding week's revised average of 6,185,750.
See? Each week they revise, upward the past weeks claims, making it looks like initial claims are dropping more than they actually are.
See? Last week it was 550,000, now revised to 557,000, which makes the reported drop of 12k when it really is more like 5k.
I've been writing these and reading these weekly reports for a few months now and this pattern is consistent.
So, I'm finding these very misleading and will wait for the statistics to "solidify" more instead of just giving the DOL another misleading headline trying to imply the unemployment situation is better than it really is.
I haven't checked these numbers and I think ya all know by now that I believe the Stimulus wasn't going to work because it wasn't true Keynesian, they ignored a host of good infrastructure, money is pouring offshore, jobs are moving offshore and so on (w/ taxpayer funds).
But here are some economists from the conservative think tank Hoover institute, claiming it didn't work at all.
Read this New York Times piece trying to claim the derivatives models are flawed because they do not include "human behavior". That is so dead ass wrong and once again, these people do not understand mathematical models so they think the answer is outside of them...
when we have written over and over again, by the math, by the models themselves, they are wrong!
God. You cannot create some gambling chip based on an incorrect mathematical model and this has everything to do with incorrect mathematical assumptions, such as davet's post here on Gaussian distributions (mine is how CDSes violate the mathematical properties to even be used in a Copula).
This stuff drives me nuts. If they would realize it's the actual mathematics by itself that is incorrect we might get somewhere.
It seems that the government has accepted moral hazard as a cost of doing business. The implicit policy is to resuscitate the banks by providing cheap liquidity until the spread has rebuilt their capital base. FDIC guarantees provide relatively cheap money, and rates stay down. CD rates quoted by major banks are about in line with Treasuries, but banks are going for all the fee income they can get. Guess who is paying for this?
Frank T.
and providing full coverage of non-interest bearing deposit transaction accounts. So, what was happening Citi would issue (Citi as debtor) unsecured debt with the FDIC guarantee. According to the most recent report posted above that there is still $307 billion of this debt outstanding. According to Bloomberg article Citi has issued $44.6 billion of FDIC-guaranteed debt. Here is another report showing the type of debt guaranteed:
and the U.S. taxpayer is at risk for > 73% of all debt bonds?
What exactly are these things?
You know if you wanted to go research it out and write it up as a blog post/tutorial on what this program is, what specifically is it guaranteeing, i.e. exactly what type of debt is this? Is is corporate bonds and/or is it MBS? Is it derivatives like CDOs based on various bundled loans?
I am trying to track down the actual numbers but here are some numbers:
But none of them are talking about leaving a Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. bond-guarantee program that benefits them much more. Goldman (ticker: GS) has issued $29 billion of low-cost debt through this FDIC program; Bank of America (BAC), $44 billion; and JPMorgan (JPM), $38 billion. In total, about $340 billion of debt has been sold under the six-month-old arrangement, called the FDIC Temporary Liquidity Guarantee Program (TLGP).
This was a super sweet deal - borrow at relatively low rates and invest in high rate (risky) investments.
of FDIC. Its borrowing costs would be much higher if they tried to issue the debt w/out the guarantee because they are probably insolvent. So, with the guarantee, their borrowing costs are a lot less. It is sort of a rating arbitrage - with the FDIC debt they get the highest debt rating.
And yes, it doesn't give a good impression. Again, unless Citi pays off all the guaranteed debt - we will be the hook for a huge portion of its debt if Citi can't meet its debt obligations which probably insures that we will continue to prop it up.
Where are we with the FASB these days? They are lassoed, silenced and now we have a hidden toxic brew which is bubbling through the surface through dedicated bloggers and leaks?
I mean here they realize engineers can make people a lot of money....when in fact engineers every day make people a lot of money in all sorts of ways. ;) Right now we have Microsoft, Intel and so forth trashing their engineers to the point I really wonder sometimes how Intel esp. is able to crank out any innovation at all. I guess they kept a few but corporations like HP, man they just dumped their best engineers right and left, many of them have.
I think I saw something about this in seasonal adjustments...that mysterious black box for unemployment and other data coming from the BLS. I just scanned the wiki and wow, you're right, that's going to be slow going.
I do not believe in PhD level Economists get into this level of advanced mathematics to parse some of these models and find the mathematical flaws.
The ind. event issue is somewhat violated but more the requirements of the correlation coefficient, i.e. invertible, 1:1 to the actual data they are using is invalid (as well as your points).
So, I guess EP has found another activity here since some of us do have the mathematical background to critique these models.
Very few are. I think zero hedge has Ritholtz and of course Taleb and Roubini.
I just get irritated when I at least can plainly see "bad math" yet those who cannot really dig through these claim it's all "behavior" as if mathematical modeling, just as a tool, a subject is somehow "all bad".
innovate in other fields!
I suspect (but haven't shown) that a major problem is the assumption that the stochastic fluctuations are independent events. "Non-Gaussian" is rather like "non-Markovian" or "nonlinear" -- a statement of what it isn't rather than what it is, so there are no general solutions. It sounds like "behavioral economics" is an attempt at an end run around the problem, and whether it works any less well isn't clear to me.
The question above about volatility got me poking into GARCH models, specifically what is assumed about the distributions of the stochastic variables. Unfortunately I also have papers to write (completely unrelated) so it's been slow going...
My understanding is this is pure algorithmic manipulation to capture orders slightly before they are posted and trade accordingly. The only bummer is this employs some engineers to create such systems. Maybe they will hire engineers to monitor instead!
this week
Now check out this pattern.
See? Each week they revise, upward the past weeks claims, making it looks like initial claims are dropping more than they actually are.
See? Last week it was 550,000, now revised to 557,000, which makes the reported drop of 12k when it really is more like 5k.
I've been writing these and reading these weekly reports for a few months now and this pattern is consistent.
So, I'm finding these very misleading and will wait for the statistics to "solidify" more instead of just giving the DOL another misleading headline trying to imply the unemployment situation is better than it really is.
recessions (or chained recessions which equals a depression) correlate all assets.
Believe this or not, this WSJ post attacking the Buy America provision was put on the front page of HuffPo Business.
It's pure spin. Only at the end does it acknowledge Canada has had "Buy Canada" provisions since the 1990's.
I haven't checked these numbers and I think ya all know by now that I believe the Stimulus wasn't going to work because it wasn't true Keynesian, they ignored a host of good infrastructure, money is pouring offshore, jobs are moving offshore and so on (w/ taxpayer funds).
But here are some economists from the conservative think tank Hoover institute, claiming it didn't work at all.
They crank through a lot of numbers in the op-ed.
Read this New York Times piece trying to claim the derivatives models are flawed because they do not include "human behavior". That is so dead ass wrong and once again, these people do not understand mathematical models so they think the answer is outside of them...
when we have written over and over again, by the math, by the models themselves, they are wrong!
God. You cannot create some gambling chip based on an incorrect mathematical model and this has everything to do with incorrect mathematical assumptions, such as davet's post here on Gaussian distributions (mine is how CDSes violate the mathematical properties to even be used in a Copula).
This stuff drives me nuts. If they would realize it's the actual mathematics by itself that is incorrect we might get somewhere.
It turns out that Singapore isn't the only place for ghost fleets. It is happening all around the world.
It seems that the government has accepted moral hazard as a cost of doing business. The implicit policy is to resuscitate the banks by providing cheap liquidity until the spread has rebuilt their capital base. FDIC guarantees provide relatively cheap money, and rates stay down. CD rates quoted by major banks are about in line with Treasuries, but banks are going for all the fee income they can get. Guess who is paying for this?
Frank T.
and providing full coverage of non-interest bearing deposit transaction accounts. So, what was happening Citi would issue (Citi as debtor) unsecured debt with the FDIC guarantee. According to the most recent report posted above that there is still $307 billion of this debt outstanding. According to Bloomberg article Citi has issued $44.6 billion of FDIC-guaranteed debt. Here is another report showing the type of debt guaranteed:
RebelCapitalist.com - Financial Information for the Rest of Us.
and the U.S. taxpayer is at risk for > 73% of all debt bonds?
What exactly are these things?
You know if you wanted to go research it out and write it up as a blog post/tutorial on what this program is, what specifically is it guaranteeing, i.e. exactly what type of debt is this? Is is corporate bonds and/or is it MBS? Is it derivatives like CDOs based on various bundled loans?
RebelCapitalist.com - Financial Information for the Rest of Us.
I am trying to track down the actual numbers but here are some numbers:
This was a super sweet deal - borrow at relatively low rates and invest in high rate (risky) investments.
Goldman did pay a portion back (supposedly).
How Do You Spell Sweet Deal? For Banks, It's TLGP
RebelCapitalist.com - Financial Information for the Rest of Us.
used this program? I did not focus in on this one (there are so many!) to dig around.
Citigroup is one of the largest holders of toxic assets last time I looked at the TARP spreadsheet.
of FDIC. Its borrowing costs would be much higher if they tried to issue the debt w/out the guarantee because they are probably insolvent. So, with the guarantee, their borrowing costs are a lot less. It is sort of a rating arbitrage - with the FDIC debt they get the highest debt rating.
And yes, it doesn't give a good impression. Again, unless Citi pays off all the guaranteed debt - we will be the hook for a huge portion of its debt if Citi can't meet its debt obligations which probably insures that we will continue to prop it up.
RebelCapitalist.com - Financial Information for the Rest of Us.
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