Slashdot Mirror

http://www.zerohedge.com/article/two-thirds-wall-street-donations-now-go-republicans-democrats-get-least-contributions-may-20

The problem isn't detecting the loss after the event the problem is predicting 23 sigma moves.

http://www.zerohedge.com/contributed/ubs-and-big-trade
The trade was profitable until the SNB capped the CHF , capping the trade and trader in the process. At least that is a reasonable working hypothesis. Everything was fine until a week ago. What happened then? The Swiss National Bank announced a cap of their currency vs the Euro.

Why did he have such a large position ? That Risk & Management MUST have known about. And were OK with while it was a winner. When it became a loss, the trader was shafted.

A whole lot of effort in that post, and I still want HFT firms and the people who work there gutted. Good luck with that.

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/goodbye-high-frequency-trading-regulators-seek-secret-hft-codes

The requests for proprietary code and algorithm parameters by the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA), a Wall Street brokerage regulator, are part of investigations into suspicious market activity, said Tom Gira, executive vice president of FINRA's market regulation unit.

``It's not a fishing expedition or educational exercise. It's because there's something that's troubling us in the marketplace,'' he said in an interview.

The Securities and Exchange Commission, meanwhile, has also begun making requests for proprietary algorithmic trading data as part of its authority to examine financial firms for compliance with U.S. regulations, according to agency officials and outside lawyers.

The requests by SEC examiners are not necessarily related to any suspicions of specific wrong-doing, although the decision to ask for it can be triggered by a tip, complaint or referral.

Fucking scumbags is what HFT firms are.

http://www.zerohedge.com/article/channel-stuffing-gm
i.e. how to sell hundreds of thousands of cars :)

1. Can you offer any insights into what happens with these meltdowns? If that actually HFT related and what goes wrong? Is it amateurs in action of is there a more fundamental issue with market structure? Eg http://www.zerohedge.com/article/how-hft-quote-stuffing-caused-market-crash-may-6-and-threatens-destroy-entire-market-any-mom

2. Can you offer any suggestions as to how a retail investor might deal with the presence of HFTs and not get taken to the cleaners? Eg in the light of things like this "Evaluation of the 'Adaptive-Aggressive' Trading-Agent Strategy Against Human Traders in CDA: AA Wins" at http://lscits.cs.bris.ac.uk/docs/AAMAS_CAMERA_READY.pdf

.. and with inflation clearly on the horizon, I wanted to salute our wise helmsmen ( and all their mercenaries ) for making sure our debt problem is solved in such a satisfactory manner. It is pure genius. Massive inflation and suddenly the trillion $ debt it easy to pay off. Wait a second, wasn't it something China warned US not to do?

http://www.zerohedge.com/article/republicans-are-pushing-brief-default-china-warns-us-playing-fire

Such a shame its likely to harm all little schmuchks like me, but hey.. at least we will all be millionaires. Whoopee...

LulzSec's disabling of the CIA's website (CIA.gov) is currently being discussed on ZeroHedge: LulzSec Takes Down Cia.gov One thing is certain. The crackers in LulzSec are damned good, OR they have considerable "inside" help at the CIA and FBI. Or BOTH!!

http://www.zerohedge.com/article/guest-post-indiana-supreme-court-dispenses-magna-carta-constitution

It you want to say TV isn't a failure, then cut off CAFR funding for it. Cut off Obama's giveaway to the networks. Let's have the FCC panel made up of engineers who the public votes in, not the one's the POTUS appoints. Today you have to get your daily dose of propaganda BS along with your local news (which could possibly warn if a tsunami is on the way) what a nasty trade off, listening to how jobs are so good, and the economy is recovering, and OBL shot and dumped at sea, just to try to know if the rain might have nuclear fallout or if some earthquake has a 100' wave headed your way. Let us not forget the switch to DTV which sucks more money people don't have. Plus when it's really windy from the haarp technology mucking with the weather, the DTV packets break up. Where in analog, it was just snow and noise, now it's BSOD (black screen of death)

Ya want to talk about the telcos? Start with NSA fios splitters, move on to wiretaps, spying, and all the rest of the crap. You couldn't GIVE me a mobile phone.

You want to talk about the internet and law? Miserable failure. *.AA , DMCA, streaming stations, copyright/patent trolls, SEO blackhats, the intelligence community spying, Chamber of Commerce, facebook. You can't look me in the eye and tell me that's not a failure for the US Constitution which is now intermittent.

When the monetary system financial terrorism come to fruition and mark to market is realized and the funding sources are added up, and the financial terrorists are prosecuted, these technologies will be a failure. It's just that it isn't measured this way currently because of the corruption and payola.

Watch: sock puppet / trolls will vote this message off the radar they don't like the truth.

It'll make US's debt crunch look like a drop in a bucket.

China has state-owned banks. That means it owes the debt to itself.

The U.S. has privately-owned banks. That means we owe our debt to our financiers, who create money in the fractional-reserve monetary system by making loans.

Big difference.

Libya has a publicly owned bank, which may be why the imperial faction has targeted it for regime change: Libya: All About Oil, or All About Banking?

Why invest in expensive robots when you can use glow slaves?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=92fP58sMYus
Some images and vids http://www.zerohedge.com/article/must-see-tepco-releases-unmanned-helicopter-drone-video-destroyed-fukushima-reactors

France, UK, US and Canada have the right idea - just dont track it. Any issues are in the distant past and shrouded in national security, nation building, export deals, patriotism and commercial secrets.
If the press still keeps on digging, the patients privacy kicks in to stop any questions about epidemiology. Still having issues? Stop offering/teaching so much about epidemiology.
Back to simple industrial toxicology, long term old people get sick... any detectors that spike are faulty and get removed for servicing for a few weeks.
With no hard data its your expert vs nothing.
If your still interested read and watch http://www.zerohedge.com/article/tellurium-129-presence-proof-inadvertent-recriticality-fukushima
"Newly released TEPCO data provides evidence of periodic chain reaction at Fukushima Unit 1"
http://vimeo.com/21881702
The hard data is been released, the press is just not very good. http://cryptome.org/0003/fukushima-areva.zip
http://www.zerohedge.com/article/attempt-pour-concrete-fukushima-pit-crack-generating-1-sieverthour-fails-new-unmanned-drone-

France, UK, US and Canada have the right idea - just dont track it. Any issues are in the distant past and shrouded in national security, nation building, export deals, patriotism and commercial secrets.
If the press still keeps on digging, the patients privacy kicks in to stop any questions about epidemiology. Still having issues? Stop offering/teaching so much about epidemiology.
Back to simple industrial toxicology, long term old people get sick... any detectors that spike are faulty and get removed for servicing for a few weeks.
With no hard data its your expert vs nothing.
If your still interested read and watch http://www.zerohedge.com/article/tellurium-129-presence-proof-inadvertent-recriticality-fukushima
"Newly released TEPCO data provides evidence of periodic chain reaction at Fukushima Unit 1"
http://vimeo.com/21881702
The hard data is been released, the press is just not very good. http://cryptome.org/0003/fukushima-areva.zip
http://www.zerohedge.com/article/attempt-pour-concrete-fukushima-pit-crack-generating-1-sieverthour-fails-new-unmanned-drone-

Might help http://www.hps.org/publicinformation/ate/faqs/radiation.html
"The SI system uses the unit of becquerel (Bq) as its unit of radioactivity. One curie is 37 billion Bq. Since the Bq represents such a small amount, one is likely to see a prefix noting a large multiplier used with the Bq as follows .." see web page for more
Then think about
http://www.zerohedge.com/article/summary-key-health-threats-fukushima-radioactive-substances

Some news newest first
http://www.zerohedge.com/article/fukushima-raised-level-6-ines-scale-now-officially-more-serious-3-mile-island
http://www.zerohedge.com/article/radioactive-iodine-fukushima-seawater-highest-ever-reactors-5-and-6-now-leaking-too
http://www.zerohedge.com/article/run-rated-fukushina-radiation-release-par-and-some-cases-greater-chernobyl
http://www.zerohedge.com/article/japan-nuclear-agency-radiation-level-fukushima-reactor-no-2-its-highest-level-recorded-so-fa (has neutron beam details)
http://www.zerohedge.com/article/fukushima-smoking-gun-emerges-founding-engineer-says-reactor-4-has-always-been-time-bomb-exp (how reactor 4 was "created")
http://www.zerohedge.com/article/fukushima-update-reactor-1-core-now-380-celsius-80-more-normal-running-temporature
A search with Google news shows many quotes for the cesium-137 "73% and 60% respectively of the amounts released from the 1986 Chernobyl accident"

Some news newest first
http://www.zerohedge.com/article/fukushima-raised-level-6-ines-scale-now-officially-more-serious-3-mile-island
http://www.zerohedge.com/article/radioactive-iodine-fukushima-seawater-highest-ever-reactors-5-and-6-now-leaking-too
http://www.zerohedge.com/article/run-rated-fukushina-radiation-release-par-and-some-cases-greater-chernobyl
http://www.zerohedge.com/article/japan-nuclear-agency-radiation-level-fukushima-reactor-no-2-its-highest-level-recorded-so-fa (has neutron beam details)
http://www.zerohedge.com/article/fukushima-smoking-gun-emerges-founding-engineer-says-reactor-4-has-always-been-time-bomb-exp (how reactor 4 was "created")
http://www.zerohedge.com/article/fukushima-update-reactor-1-core-now-380-celsius-80-more-normal-running-temporature
A search with Google news shows many quotes for the cesium-137 "73% and 60% respectively of the amounts released from the 1986 Chernobyl accident"

Some news newest first
http://www.zerohedge.com/article/fukushima-raised-level-6-ines-scale-now-officially-more-serious-3-mile-island
http://www.zerohedge.com/article/radioactive-iodine-fukushima-seawater-highest-ever-reactors-5-and-6-now-leaking-too
http://www.zerohedge.com/article/run-rated-fukushina-radiation-release-par-and-some-cases-greater-chernobyl
http://www.zerohedge.com/article/japan-nuclear-agency-radiation-level-fukushima-reactor-no-2-its-highest-level-recorded-so-fa (has neutron beam details)
http://www.zerohedge.com/article/fukushima-smoking-gun-emerges-founding-engineer-says-reactor-4-has-always-been-time-bomb-exp (how reactor 4 was "created")
http://www.zerohedge.com/article/fukushima-update-reactor-1-core-now-380-celsius-80-more-normal-running-temporature
A search with Google news shows many quotes for the cesium-137 "73% and 60% respectively of the amounts released from the 1986 Chernobyl accident"

Some news newest first
http://www.zerohedge.com/article/fukushima-raised-level-6-ines-scale-now-officially-more-serious-3-mile-island
http://www.zerohedge.com/article/radioactive-iodine-fukushima-seawater-highest-ever-reactors-5-and-6-now-leaking-too
http://www.zerohedge.com/article/run-rated-fukushina-radiation-release-par-and-some-cases-greater-chernobyl
http://www.zerohedge.com/article/japan-nuclear-agency-radiation-level-fukushima-reactor-no-2-its-highest-level-recorded-so-fa (has neutron beam details)
http://www.zerohedge.com/article/fukushima-smoking-gun-emerges-founding-engineer-says-reactor-4-has-always-been-time-bomb-exp (how reactor 4 was "created")
http://www.zerohedge.com/article/fukushima-update-reactor-1-core-now-380-celsius-80-more-normal-running-temporature
A search with Google news shows many quotes for the cesium-137 "73% and 60% respectively of the amounts released from the 1986 Chernobyl accident"

Some news newest first
http://www.zerohedge.com/article/fukushima-raised-level-6-ines-scale-now-officially-more-serious-3-mile-island
http://www.zerohedge.com/article/radioactive-iodine-fukushima-seawater-highest-ever-reactors-5-and-6-now-leaking-too
http://www.zerohedge.com/article/run-rated-fukushina-radiation-release-par-and-some-cases-greater-chernobyl
http://www.zerohedge.com/article/japan-nuclear-agency-radiation-level-fukushima-reactor-no-2-its-highest-level-recorded-so-fa (has neutron beam details)
http://www.zerohedge.com/article/fukushima-smoking-gun-emerges-founding-engineer-says-reactor-4-has-always-been-time-bomb-exp (how reactor 4 was "created")
http://www.zerohedge.com/article/fukushima-update-reactor-1-core-now-380-celsius-80-more-normal-running-temporature
A search with Google news shows many quotes for the cesium-137 "73% and 60% respectively of the amounts released from the 1986 Chernobyl accident"

Some news newest first
http://www.zerohedge.com/article/fukushima-raised-level-6-ines-scale-now-officially-more-serious-3-mile-island
http://www.zerohedge.com/article/radioactive-iodine-fukushima-seawater-highest-ever-reactors-5-and-6-now-leaking-too
http://www.zerohedge.com/article/run-rated-fukushina-radiation-release-par-and-some-cases-greater-chernobyl
http://www.zerohedge.com/article/japan-nuclear-agency-radiation-level-fukushima-reactor-no-2-its-highest-level-recorded-so-fa (has neutron beam details)
http://www.zerohedge.com/article/fukushima-smoking-gun-emerges-founding-engineer-says-reactor-4-has-always-been-time-bomb-exp (how reactor 4 was "created")
http://www.zerohedge.com/article/fukushima-update-reactor-1-core-now-380-celsius-80-more-normal-running-temporature
A search with Google news shows many quotes for the cesium-137 "73% and 60% respectively of the amounts released from the 1986 Chernobyl accident"

Certificates it's what's not for dinner. Especially on my rack
XP graduates to cloned, offline built, air-gap-ed-hood
7 graduates to cyber nanny infested, wrongful accused, business killing, ad network for anyone left with money much longer
NETBSD and LINUX users scratch their heads or asses wondering if consequences mean restrictions on data, speed, ports, commerce, content

Certificates as an idea, vision, and framework is another fiat terrorism (TM) "DHS/TSA" for small business, journalists, media, artists, bands, or people who just want to have a server and host things non profit.

The heck with working on the predictable tcp packet sequence problem
or ipv4 or ipv6 or ipv4/6(mix em and matchem) firewalling right?

You break a big rule in my book, you've make it not fun to be here.

You've made your "problem" into something which could quite literally backfire on everyone, including you and do even worse damage to the economy if it be maliciously foisted on an already hurting, paranoid from legal abuse, bankster, mortgage, bailiout, theft and vague false flag laws, unacceptable unconstitutional tos/aup and spied(1) on rotting unless part of the mix of Orwell 1984 + sky net infrastructure with rapidly worse choices of points of entry. You've also threatened everyone with "consequences" , do you think we are all your slaves. Are you really that insolent. Your likely one of those idiots who don't understand chain of custody and public oversight is the problem with internet voting, not which crypto is best(2). You probably think NFLX should be able to foist it's bandwidth problem on everyone else. But like crypto since the mid 90's not much have changed with all that dark fiber and this retarded-ness we call communications ran by a public hating fcc board who our financial and sometimes very physical life depends on. We are called customer, not US citizen(3). Everything is broken you better wake up. It's past time to start nipping these fascist framework visions in the bud.(4)

1. cryptome.org - Online Spying Guides
2. blackboxvoting.org - (USA) 1/11 - TOWARDS A MORE EFFECTIVE APPROACH TO FIGHTING INTERNET VOTING - by BEV HARRIS
3. I am Not a US Customer, I am a US Citizen

4. The Ben Burnank, Bill Gates, BLS, Corruption, CPI, Credit Crisis, Crude Oil, Federal Reserve, Fractional Reserve Banking, Hyperinflation, Meltdown, National Debt, Quantitative Easing, Recession, recovery, Reserve Currency, Unemployment, World Bank, The Sheeple

The majority of stock activity is exactly this electronic noise, it's the rule, not the exception. The whole equities market (and other ones) is a turbo-hyperactive instant messaging system of bid/ask channels and they are all basically crapflooded now at about 60-70% of daily trading volume. The "Carbon Market" is another huge scam handy for passthru moneylaundering & fraud operations. Unknown binaries have been lodged in key NASDAQ systems. The messaging "order flow" is arbitrarily frontrun (i.e. man in the middle message intercept).

The real question is what miserable slice of the activity actually represents rationally allocated capital, rather than this message crapflooding. My fave site for this topic http://zerohedge.com/ consistently nails so many anomalies, flash crashes, order stacking rule loopholes (which bids are bumped off to 'dark pools' under less than optimal logic) etc.

It would be better if there was a 5ms 'quanta' for market prices, at least that would set a minimum time-to-live for price quotes. It becomes less 'rational' as the time horizon asymptotically approaches zero.

The worst crime in history is allowing DHS to exist in violation with the constitution in the first place,, which has now digressed to the crimes (each one is separate) committed by banksters with no oversight. While reading, keep this fact about DHS vs Constitution in the top of your mind, everything comes from 911 and DHS and the missing 2.3 trillion the day before

(From that pdf let's just get right to it then)
STATEMENT OF
JASON WEINSTEIN
DEPUTY ASSISTANT ATTORNEY GENERAL
CRIMINAL DIVISION
BEFORE THE
COMMITTEE ON JUDICIARY
SUBCOMMITTEE ON CRIME, TERRORISM, AND HOMELAND SECURITY
UNITED STATES HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
ENTITLED
“DATA RETENTION AS A TOOL FOR INVESTIGATING INTERNET CHILD PORNOGRAPHY AND OTHER INTERNET CRIMES”
PRESENTED
JANUARY 25, 2011

My opinion is this all has gone too far back when the nsa fios splitters were found out. This is another attempt at an "Internet ID" , a man in the middle attack. It's another cog in the end game, which is to shut up the truth while tyranny reins in. Clearly they need this cog to build lists to round people up.

... Hand me the taser, I smell that nasty camel nose in the tent again.

Cell phones to find or trace voice prints or numbers of interest ie state and city techs get to play NSA.
How soon before the bankrupt states/cities with a need need to 'confiscate" and IRS go Greek and think of looking for "expensive" things they cannot see from the road?
http://www.zerohedge.com/article/greek-tax-avoidance-101-cover-your-swimming-pool-tarp-fool-satellite
Are you living and upgrading your property beyond the local average poverty level/tax return and have unknown extra funds to invest in a real pool?
Add in under taxed farms, expensive cars, water use, expensive new solar ect.

Warren Buffett and Ahmadinijad agree!

2009 http://www.zerohedge.com/article/here-why-dollar-now-effectively-worthless

2008 http://www.marketwatch.com/story/warren-buffett-says-us-dollar-worthless-if-account-deficit-persists

2007 http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/21870271/ns/business-world_business/ ...

2003 http://www.indiadaily.com/editorial/12-16g-04.asp

Hey, if I had that many double-consonants in my full name, would I be rich, too?

Does that liquidity remain when the market collapses as it did in May because of high frequency trading? Hell no, those HFT firms are the first to hit HF STOP into their console when shit gets real.

http://www.zerohedge.com/article/how-hft-quote-stuffing-caused-market-crash-may-6-and-threatens-destroy-entire-market-any-mom

Real market makers maintain liquidity during a crisis. HFT firms are parasites.

Bernanke's QE2?

Hackers want to know.

Yours In Minsk,
K. Trout

Clickable.

Posted AC to not karma whore. PS, is anyone else not getting any text on the post anonymously box?

The SEC findings are contested by the Chicago Mercantile Exchange.

ZH coverage

http://www.zerohedge.com/article/sec-releases-final-flash-crash-report-waddell-and-reed-blamed-selling-catalyst
has a good easy to understand news on this.
then news like this http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2010/09/first-nyclondon-cable-in-a-decade-promises-sub-60ms-latency.ars
hints at "just to give its high-frequency trading customers a few milliseconds of advantage over the competition."

      from Zerohedge.

Yours At Liberty 33,

ES6753

I suggest you read the source of this article: http://www.zerohedge.com/article/its-not-market-its-hft-crop-circle-crime-scene-further-evidence-quote-stuffing-manipulation- Have a nice day.

It would kill not only HFT, but also make front-running less profitable.

I know "tax" is a verboten word in this land of corporate-libertarianism, but doesn't this kind of market restraint simply make sense?

...right here. One commenter had some interesting things to say about "quote stuffing":

Just because the folks at Nanex can't figure out why a system was entering orders and cancelling them frequently does not mean that they were being "stuffed" to thwart competitor's systems.

The logic on the machines placing those orders (HFT or otherwise) may have been severely screwed up by the craziness of 5/6 and the latency on data feeds - but there is no way to profit by spewing lots of quotes.

First, everyone in the HFT space has plenty of headroom to process the full raw feeds (rather than the SIAC consolidated feeds Nanex is looking at). A few thousand extra quotes per second is not meaningful to systems that can process millions of quotes per second.

More to the point though, each exchange gives each participant a port on which to send their order flow. Those ports are rate limited. That means that if you send thousands of spurious quotes that are not going to hit, the only harm you cause is to your own trading strategies, since when you finally did want to execute a trade at a price where the execution was remotely likely, you are going to have that order queue behind all of your other orders on the same port.

So it might not be the big advantage that Nanex sees it as.

I don't think it does much for market irrationality. It does provide liquidity, though, which is good in reasonable amounts:

Wrong. Here's a citation: http://www.zerohedge.com/article/34-billion-asset-manager-says-market-prices-are-manipulated-accuses-nyse-intellectual-proper

I know it's tough to read beyond the headlines but you should give it a shot. If you actually read the report (which you claim to have done), you'd notice that the majority of jobs were census, temporary, or created out of thin air by a computer model (birth-death adjustments).

It's funny. A group of mathetically inclinded people on Slashdot are totally unable to look beyond deeply ingrained politcal beliefs.

http://www.zerohedge.com/article/non-farm-payrolls-come-226k-after-census-411k-temporary-31k-and-birth-death-adjustment-215k/.

Oddly, there are even cities that are all buildings and completely devoid of people.

Wow, we are sinking to new levels of idiocy now.
The MSM would have you believe that the tremendous sell-off in the markets was just a trading error. If it was a trading error, then these markets SUCK! Are you telling me we put TRILLIONS of dollars, including our retirement savings, into a system that can be completely thrown into chaos because a single guy hits the wrong button on a single transaction? It’s a good thing Faisal Shahzad isn’t still working on Wall Street anymore, or he could have just pushed a button and caused a lot more damage that way than he did with a faulty car bomb
This is financial terrorism, folks, retail traders were stopped out and margined out while the pros made Billions picking up the pieces. Don’t worry though, if you are rich enough and connected enough, the Nasdaq will reverse your losses but if they really wanted to make amends, they would cancel the day’s trading for ALL traders.
This market didn’t just sell off because of a trading mistake. Whatever really happened, it happened because there were no real buyers when the selling came - something I have been warning would happen during the last 3 months of low-volume run-ups. I keep using the house of cards/Jenga metaphor and that’s exactly what we have so be very careful when the same idiots who have been telling you BUYBUYBUY are now telling you to "come back in - the water’s fine."

and here:

Having seen the capitulation unfold second by second and then listen to CNBC come up with every excuse under the sun just got under my skin. I've decided to chart some of our one second analytics charts of the capitulation unfolding on our screens. The chart below (more to follow) captures the moment of the final capitulation, before the reversal today. The idea that it was a 'fat finger' error is ludicrous; unless the fat finger hit every market in the world virtually simultaneously. Liquidity simply left the world financial markets for about four minutes this afternoon. The bids just vanished. And what else vanished? Remember the vaunted supplemental liquidity providers, led by Goldman Sachs. Remember that they are paid to "provide liquidity" through their predatory high-frequency algos, they are not required to do so. So when the S@#$T hit the fan they just disappeared. In one second more or less someone (and yes, under these circumstances, human beings take control of the machines) made the decision to pull the bids on every equity in the S&P, every financial futures contract, every FX contract in every market in the world. This kind of thing just doesn't happen in a pure auction environment; there just isn't a tight enough communication link between the parties to allow the decisions to propagate within the same second -- even with HFT algorithms. No. Some human made the decision to pull the bids; all of them, all at once. If that is not a condemnation of the concentration of financial power and the systematic risk it engenders I don't know what is.

The world got to see the reality for a short time and then went back to sleep
http://www.zerohedge.com/article/day-market-almost-died-courtesy-high-frequency-trading
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=conewsstory&tkr=C%3AUS&sid=agW5_B0D1z9M
"CME Group Statement on Today's Market Activity:"
"does not appear to be irregular or unusual in light of market activity today"

No "Fat Finger" - this is market manipulation. Interestingly timed with the Senate's "Audit the Fed" vote.

MUST HEAR: Panic And Loathing From The SP 500 Pits
        May 7th, 2010

Mirror for audio file.

A car is one futures contract.

A handle is a full point.

Via: ZeroHedge:

Guys this is probably the craziest I have seen it down here ever. Here it is, memorialized for the generations and away from the now openly ridiculous disinformation propaganda of the mainstream media, just what a full market meltdown panic sounds like: straight from the epicenter, the SP 500 pits. Luckily open ouctry still exists, if at least for shock value. Click here for a first hand account of the most shocking 15 minutes in recent market history. Fat finger my ass.

Research Credit: dagobaz

This link is to a quick-time file of audio from the S&P trading pits. The "fat finger" hypothesis is a product of the american propaganda machine. The market REALLY dove yesterday.

due to some obscure overseas debt concerns

Greece is hardly an "obscure overseas debt concern". Greece going bankrupt will have a ripple effect through the eurozone. As it is, when the IMF bails out Greece, it's actually the US taxpayers who will be on the hook.

Here are some examples from today's headlines. And by today I mean this week!

http://thinkprogress.org/2010/04/17/alec-massey-mine/

Yesterday, the AP reported that Marlene Griffith, a widow of William Griffith, one of the 29 men killed in last week’s explosion at a coal mine in West Virginia, is suing Massey Energy, the owner of the mine. Griffith filed a wrongful death lawsuit in Raleigh County Circuit Court, arguing that Massey’s handling of work conditions at the mine plus its history of safety violations amounted to aggravated conduct that rises above the level of ordinary negligence.

...

Responding to the lawsuit, Nathan Coffey, the Public Affairs Coordinator of the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), took to Twitter yesterday to mock Marlene Griffith. Coffey posted a link to the AP story about Marlene Griffith, sarcastically commenting that “Everyone wants free money!”

http://www.businessweek.com/news/2010-04-18/goldman-s-staged-explosion-deserves-apology-roger-lowenstein.html

As only someone from Mars doesn’t know by now, Goldman allegedly sold collateralized debt obligation, or bonds backed by mortgage securities, to institutional investors without disclosing that the specific securities were handpicked by hedge-fund manager John Paulson. Paulson was betting on the securities to fall and, for that reason, structured the securities to include losers -- not winners.

http://www.zerohedge.com/article/yesterday-germany-today-uk-tomorrow-world-goldmans-response-lawsuits-everyone-q1-stub-bonuse

As expected, the line of people preparing to sue Goldman is now longer than the posers who bought the iPad on launch day. Reuters reports that British Prime Minister Gordon Brown, who himself has been in hot water over his much lamented decision to sell UK's gold despite protests from the BOE and likely under the guidance of Goldman and JPM, wants an investigation into the Goldman affair by the FSA, and is saying that impacted UK banks will be considering legal action. Furthermore, GB slammed Goldman after the TimesOnline reported that Goldman will pay $5.6 billion in bonuses for just three months work, including 600 million pounds for London-based staff.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnetar_Capital

According to reports by ProPublica/National Public Radio/This American Life that came out in early April 2010, Magnetar "sponsored" mortgage-backed collateralized debt obligations by agreeing to buy the worst tranche (portion) of the CDO, the "equity tranche". The reports claim that Magnetar then shorted (bet against) those CDOs by buying credit default swaps that insured the CDOs. If the CDOs failed, Magnetar would get back many times its initial investment in the equity tranche by receiving the insurance payoff.[2][4]

It makes sense to judge actions based on known outcomes, but what's the evolutionary advantage to being moral in the abstract?

It's not abstract. Consider the judgement being one of risk vs actual cost. An example is you cross the street and
mistakenly cut it very very close but you don't get hit. Do you want to do that again? Why not, you survived...

So the judgement is to the "risk" involved, not just whether you survive the experience...

Another example:

Cramer Defends His Citi Call, Says He "Has No Idea Really How Citi Is Doing"
Tyler Durden on 12/18/2009 11:03 -0500

http://www.zerohedge.com/article/cramer-defends-his-citi-call-says-he-has-no-ide
+a-really-how-citi-doing

Cramer's comment is:

                The main thing is the stupidity of the critics who keep
                calling it a bad deal. A bad deal is one that breaks print,
                not one that goes up after.

                Make judgments only about whether you make or lose money.
                That's what you can try to control. The rest is dross
                ginned up by people who need something to write or talk
                about.

This is terrible advice. If you make a trade with huge risk but
luck out and come out a profit it's good? So plunk down all your
capital on some number on roulette -- if it comes up it was a good
idea, right?

Risk matters and should be considered in the decision of what is a
good trade or not. Even if the actual trade turns out to be a loss.
[Although a loss which exceeds the original estimate of risk
indicates that the risk in the trade wasn't really understood].

PS: Remember, Cramer is the one who just lucked out on blowing up
        his hedge fund. This indicates he would do it again (at least
        until his luck runs out, at which point he won't have the money
        to do it again)...

You Sir are spot on: it is only fair that people should be compensated for their work. However I think you are presenting a false choice. The choice is not 1) the 'incredibly valuable service' of the NYT and 2) 'crappy blogers that can't spell.'

There are plenty of high quality sources of information that are still available for free online, including most major newspapers and media companies. Fortunately there are also quite a few blogs who are a good source of information, opinions, and independent research, and whose authors are quite well versed in their field, and include Nobel prize winners. For example, on economics and finance you have Calculated Risk, Greg Mankiw's blog, Becker and Posner, Zero Hedge. Really, when you think about it, NYT does not have an especially compelling offer.

An interesting article on this on zerohedge.
From the article:
 

So in our opinion, what all this posturing boils down to, is the fact that a new and dangerous war-front has opened up - one between the U.S. and China. Currently the war is economic, political and covert in nature. The U.S. government knows that the nations fiscal situation is abysmal and that China holds the trump card over its fate by being its largest creditor. In addition faced with rampant joblessness, a weakened U.S. consumer is more dependent that ever, on cheap goods manufactured in China. While cheap Chinese imports allow the Fed to keep a lid on domestic inflation, they do not alleviate rampant U.S. unemployment. Protectionist pressures are growing on a desperate U.S. government struggling to fix the unemployment situation. This tussle has led to the imposition of trade sanctions against Chinese companies on non-strategic sectors like certain steel and tire imports.

There is some rather damning (IMO) evidence of insider trading on this deal. Seems like a very short sighted move on HPs part since the market price for 3COM was 5.30/share.

It's time to bring some facts to this thread. Monetary policy is complicated, most people don't understand it,

including you!

For anyone whose interested, the Planet Money blog and podcast is a great place to start. Their reporting and research is done by actual economists rather than ideologues and talking heads, and they explain why things are the way they are and how they got there. Like I said, our current financial situation is kinda FUBAR, but approaching it with a level head and trying to understand what's really going on is better than getting angry and playing the blame game.

Planet Money started out good but they dumbed down their content too much. If you *really* want to know what's going on read Zero Hedge.

Citi, JPM And Nelnet were implicated in a huge student loan conspiracy to commit fraud. Not only do they make hand-over-fist on student loan interest, they were apparently engaging in fraudulent activity such that they made EVEN MORE money. That's what greed gets you...

http://www.zerohedge.com/article/nelnet-whistleblower-scandal-hits-wikileaks-jpm-citi-and-nelnet-implicated-massive-conspirat

Good point, I was thinking about reviews, but ended up writing about everything. My point is that full disclosure is generally a worthless charade. Even though this is specifically about investments it's the best explanation of the sham of full disclosure I've seen.

Thanks for the link. I think what concerns some people though, right up the investment alley, is what I heard a board member maybe the CEO of Whole Foods did some tyme ago. If I recall right Whole Foods was in talks to buy a competitor, and this person using an alias started badmouthing the competitor on investment boards so as to drive it's stock price down.

On the other hand if others are allowed to make entries on blogs the blog owner shouldn't be held liable over what a poster posts. Unless that is it is the policy of the blogger to approve posts before they're added.

Falcon