Robert Oak's blog

Friday Movie Night - The Ascent of Money Edition

 It's Friday Night! Party Time!   Time to relax, put your feet up on the couch, lay back, and watch some detailed videos on economic policy!

 

This week is Economist and Historian Niall Ferguson's 6 part PBS documentary The Ascent of Money. Niall Ferguson goes through the history of finance and also shows globalization is not new, but simply a very old game, revised. Dr. Ferguson has a book of the same title.

A Break in the Ranks at the Fed - A Most Important Speech

The Kansas Federal Reserve President, Thomas Hoenig, representing himself, just gave one hell of a speech, Too Big Has Failed. Calculated Risk, (who found this gem), said this is a call for nationalization. Is it?

In the speech, Hoenig states:

we have not defined a consistent plan and not addressed basic shortcomings and, in some cases, the insolvent position of these institutions.

Hoenig then acknowledges while the United States is trying to avoid nationalization, it's happening anyway, slow, painful and piecemeal. He also suggests the current series of actions are adding to market uncertainty.

Hoenig describes current actions on the financial crisis, the results and offers a road map of policy suggestions.

The Fed's Funky Formula - Public and Congress Don't Compute

Senator Bernie Sanders to Fed. Reserve Chair Bernanke - Show Me the Money!. This is a must watch clip and note the condescending attitude, the expression of disdain, from Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke on Sanders basic question of who is getting $2.2 trillion dollars in short terms loans from the Fed.

Sunday Morning Comics - Consumerism Edition

Sponsored by The Debt Collector's Job Creation Program - Our Economy is 70% shopping. To qualify, for retraining, shop with your favorite failed bank credit card and in a few months new debt collection jobs will be created!
Cup O' Joe

 

Good Morning! Rise and Shine! Get that Cup O' Joe...
break out the O.J....hang out with the pooch...time to check out the Funnies!

 

Friday Movie Night - Bad Math Edition

 It's Friday Night! Party Time!   Time to relax, put your feet up on the couch, lay back, and watch some detailed videos on economic policy!

 

Earlier this week I took a first pass look at a flawed probability model behind various types of derivatives.

With that in mind I went looking for information on further mathematical follies which resulted in economic collapse.

Two films goes over Black–Scholes as well as the hedge fund debacle Long Term Capital Management and it's use of mathematical models, bounds and assumptions, which caused it's demise.

The Budget of 2010

Oh here we go. The headlines scream the biggest budget in history, it is wealth redistribution and on and on.

So, let's find out what is in the Obama administration Budget Proposal of 2010. Firstly the actual budget is on The White House website. Secondly, here is the total cost:

government outlays for this year will end up at $3.94 trillion, up 32 percent from a year ago. That would yield a record deficit of $1.75 trillion in the year ending Sept. 30, equal to about 12 percent of the nation’s gross domestic product, the highest since World War II.

Here are some hard numbers discovered so far that might be of interest:

  • E-verify legal worker: $110 million
  • TARP II: $750 billion
  • Bush Tax Cuts expire: -$318 billion

We want the formula, we want the formula, the actual equation of CDOs

Like the scene from the The Return of the Secaucus 7, earlier I was asking for details on the actual mathematics upon which derivatives, CDOs (Collateralized debt obligations) are based.

Wired Magazine has answered the call in the article Recipe for Disaster. This article outlines the actual mathematical formula, a Gaussian copula, upon which so many derivatives are based.

In 2000, while working at JPMorgan Chase, Li published a paper in The Journal of Fixed Income titled "On Default Correlation: A Copula Function Approach." (In statistics, a copula is used to couple the behavior of two or more variables.) Using some relatively simple math—by Wall Street standards, anyway—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.

You must read the entire article, yes they mention mathematics, but they are explaining it all in layman's terms.

One thing I did not know, pointed out in the article, is that there are no limits on the number of CDS (credit default swaps) that can be issued against one borrower. CDSes are literally unconstrained by are subject to mark-to-market.

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