The first one will get the opponent to invoke Godwin's law. This is unfortunate because Nazi Germany is the perfect setting to convey the absurdity of legal positivism.
This act was ILLEGAL, free speech is NOT protected by the Afghan law. Why should he get a get out of jail card ? What part of ILLEGAL don't you understand ?
Sadly, this argumentation is common on Slashdot when the topic isn't free speech or DRM circumvention. Oh the different standards.
Let this be a reminder that laws can be stupid and evil, and do not define right and wrong.
I don't see what the big deal is with voting fraud. So what?
True, ballot has a weak check and balance effect on some government actions, but in these cases the rigging has to be completely obvious, not stealth.
The rest of the times elections are just a propaganda tool giving an illusion of control to the voters, making government psychologically more bearable. Voting fraud is merely a small inefficiency within the government.
If you care about voting fraud, you believe voting makes a difference. If you believe that, you are truly naive.
The US government has no right to prevent drug trafficking or immigration, not matter what it claims. The only aggression going on is that of customs and DHS against drug transporters and immigrants.
1. Offer to sell electricity at a fixed rate by the hour 2. Broadcast the price through the outlet 3. Let appliances display the current (ahah) hourly rate
It's the political power in the first place. Why expect to put power over other people life and property in the hand of someone and assume he will not profit from it. It's not about putting "the right people" in place, or about the right government, it's about the incentives.
The relevant short rate is LIBOR, not Fed Funds. LIBOR is a market rate which is neither set or targeted by the Fed. While it may respond to Fed open market activities, as the current freeze indicates, the Fed cannot make it budge when the market doesn't want to move it.
The crisis didn't happen overnight, I am pointing at the buildup of leverage on MBS. During this period, LIBOR and Fed funds were not disconnected, which only happens rarely.
The Fed didn't magnify the errors of quantitative modellers. They don't have that ability. It was leverage.
The fed has the ability to maintain the price of leverage cheap, even when everyone is buying some, that is the base of my argument.
But the market, which is smarter than the models, told them anyone who could listen there is a reason that if these things have returns greater than other AAA securities. That is they are riskier, and probably not safe to lever up 30 times.
In conclusion -- less math, more financial economics.
My post was solely concerned with financial economics while acknowledging the shortcomings of mathematical models. Have you even read it ?
What do you mean "no" ? Look at the correlation between libor and fed funds... do you think the money doesn't eventually pour into the libor market ? Your explanation is correct, but the key is, why didn't the arbitrage raise libor by 45 bp ?
You're missing the point, the federal reserve affects the magnitude of the error. What is specific about this crisis is its magnitude, not the fact that it deals with correlation sensitive products.
How about you judge my arguments instead of doing simple ad hominem ?
Imagine a team of engineers are asked to come up with plans for a boat. They come up with the plans, but they make an error and the boat has a flaw. At this point the government decides to build 200,000 of these boats and too load as much people as possible on them. All the boats sink killing hundred of million of people.
Engineers are to blame for the flaw, but government is to blame for the tragedy.
I am a quantitative analyst. True, there were many modeling flaws with the way ABS and MBS were priced, which made it appear that they were very safe and had good returns. Now when that happens what do you do ? You borrow short at a low rate, and invest in that secure product which produces a higher rate.
On a free market, this will quickly rise the short term interest rate (demand increase and the supply of saving is finite) and slowly drive down the return on mortgages as more house are being built.
On the US market it will not rise the short term interest rate because it is set by the FOMC, it will instead create inflation. Thus, the money used to invest in those mortgages will not be lended by someone, it will be printed. There is no direct mechanism by which the lending dry itself out... the guys at the FOMC have to figure there's going to be inflation.
So yes, there have been many mistakes in modeling, but such mistakes are bound to happen, in any industry, and they will have bad consequences (they're mistakes!) The problem is the federal reserve system which magnifies the effect of financial mistakes by a few order of magnitude by disconnecting the interest rate market from reality.
Well, you know....cash worked pretty darned well for a few thousand years before the advent of credit cards. We didn't have so many people living beyond their means back then as we do now.
a) People didn't have internet access for thousand of years either... so ?
b) Grandparent makes no mention of credit. Electronic payment != credit. In most parts of the world the cards are debit cards.
The grandparent has a very good point about the trail, this is the #1 reason I almost never use cash. I want to know how much I spent on movies, restaurants, etc.
Of course I'd rather have perfectly anonymous transaction with cryptographic cash. But that's just not yet.
Didn't look at it, but the article says it's optimized for
- Rigidity (and NO it's not just, offset every row by 1/2, that's perfect rigidity, you're looking for a tradeof here !) - Resemblance (int this case the way to go is NOT to try to match a dithered image but rather to compare the distance of a blurring of your candidate image to a blurring of the original image, at different blur width.
If a mugger leaves you your underwear, is that a mug-break ? A tax-break is not a gift.
Even though the government might have been involved, the correct direction is to steer capital away from government and towards the private sector. In this case, net neutrality legislation is clearly a step backwards.
By the way, the morons who want government involved with regulating internet (because this is what net neutrality is) are the SAME guys who claim that government decision making is corrupted by lobbyist and corporations. When do they learn ?
To make myself clear, if the government decides to decapitate mormons and you're a mormon, it's ok to lie in court. And you emphatically shouldn't be prosecuted for it.
All perjury should be punished. It's always a serious crime to knowingly screw up the legal system with lies
You jump from the legal system to ethical claim. Implicitely it seems you're assuming every legal crime should be punished. Fortunately, apart from Hobbesian psychopaths, no one believes that.
Slashdot Mirror
The first one will get the opponent to invoke Godwin's law. This is unfortunate because Nazi Germany is the perfect setting to convey the absurdity of legal positivism.
Sadly, this argumentation is common on Slashdot when the topic isn't free speech or DRM circumvention. Oh the different standards.
Let this be a reminder that laws can be stupid and evil, and do not define right and wrong.
You're missing the point, even if you can slightly influence which of the two candidate will win, it doesn't make a difference.
(let's thank the moders for the -1: Troll-because-I-disagree-democracy-is-kewwwll-I-was-told-so-in-democratic-school )
I don't see what the big deal is with voting fraud. So what?
True, ballot has a weak check and balance effect on some government actions, but in these cases the rigging has to be completely obvious, not stealth.
The rest of the times elections are just a propaganda tool giving an illusion of control to the voters, making government psychologically more bearable. Voting fraud is merely a small inefficiency within the government.
If you care about voting fraud, you believe voting makes a difference. If you believe that, you are truly naive.
The US government has no right to prevent drug trafficking or immigration, not matter what it claims. The only aggression going on is that of customs and DHS against drug transporters and immigrants.
Volunteered, volunteered, volunteered... Why does the summary insists on this ? For all I know many people would pay a lot of money for that.
Can't someone reverse engineer the enigmas, backtrack through the puzzles and 'win' the game ?
1. Offer to sell electricity at a fixed rate by the hour
2. Broadcast the price through the outlet
3. Let appliances display the current (ahah) hourly rate
How is that different from a tariff ?
Because the bad guys cannot steal cell phones.
It's the political power in the first place. Why expect to put power over other people life and property in the hand of someone and assume he will not profit from it. It's not about putting "the right people" in place, or about the right government, it's about the incentives.
The crisis didn't happen overnight, I am pointing at the buildup of leverage on MBS. During this period, LIBOR and Fed funds were not disconnected, which only happens rarely.
The fed has the ability to maintain the price of
leverage cheap, even when everyone is buying some, that is the base of my argument.
But the market, which is smarter than the models, told them anyone who could listen there is a reason that if these things have returns greater than other AAA securities. That is they are riskier, and probably not safe to lever up 30 times.
My post was solely concerned with financial economics while acknowledging the shortcomings of mathematical models. Have you even read it ?
What do you mean "no" ?
Look at the correlation between libor and fed funds... do you think the money doesn't eventually pour into the libor market ?
Your explanation is correct, but the key is, why didn't the arbitrage raise libor by 45 bp ?
You're missing the point, the federal reserve affects the magnitude of the error. What is specific about this crisis is its magnitude, not the fact that it deals with correlation sensitive products.
How about you judge my arguments instead of doing simple ad hominem ?
Imagine a team of engineers are asked to come up with plans for a boat. They come up with the plans, but they make an error and the boat has a flaw. At this point the government decides to build 200,000 of these boats and too load as much people as possible on them. All the boats sink killing hundred of million of people.
Engineers are to blame for the flaw, but government is to blame for the tragedy.
I am a quantitative analyst. True, there were many modeling flaws with the way ABS and MBS were priced, which made it appear that they were very safe and had good returns. Now when that happens what do you do ? You borrow short at a low rate, and invest in that secure product which produces a higher rate.
On a free market, this will quickly rise the short term interest rate (demand increase and the supply of saving is finite) and slowly drive down the return on mortgages as more house are being built.
On the US market it will not rise the short term interest rate because it is set by the FOMC, it will instead create inflation. Thus, the money used to invest in those mortgages will not be lended by someone, it will be printed. There is no direct mechanism by which the lending dry itself out... the guys at the FOMC have to figure there's going to be inflation.
So yes, there have been many mistakes in modeling, but such mistakes are bound to happen, in any industry, and they will have bad consequences (they're mistakes!)
The problem is the federal reserve system which magnifies the effect of financial mistakes by a few order of magnitude by disconnecting the interest rate market from reality.
a) People didn't have internet access for thousand of years either... so ?
b) Grandparent makes no mention of credit. Electronic payment != credit. In most parts of the world the cards are debit cards.
The grandparent has a very good point about the trail, this is the #1 reason I almost never use cash. I want to know how much I spent on movies, restaurants, etc.
Of course I'd rather have perfectly anonymous transaction with cryptographic cash. But that's just not yet.
(Wal-Mart are required by US law to maximise their shareholders' profits...)
Nope. The management has a contractual agreement with the shareholders.
Algorithm,
Didn't look at it, but the article says it's optimized for
- Rigidity (and NO it's not just, offset every row by 1/2, that's perfect rigidity, you're looking for a tradeof here !)
- Resemblance (int this case the way to go is NOT to try to match a dithered image but rather to compare the distance of a blurring of your candidate image to a blurring of the original image, at different blur width.
It's easy but no trivial.
If a mugger leaves you your underwear, is that a mug-break ? A tax-break is not a gift.
Even though the government might have been involved, the correct direction is to steer capital away from government and towards the private sector. In this case, net neutrality legislation is clearly a step backwards.
By the way, the morons who want government involved with regulating internet (because this is what net neutrality is) are the SAME guys who claim that government decision making is corrupted by lobbyist and corporations. When do they learn ?
Who said anything about breaking / not breaking the law ? I mean crime as a violation of natural rights.
Obviously whether a particular act is a crime or not is open to debate, but the case of net neutrality is pretty clear cut.
Routers are private property, back off. Debating whether to commit a crime or not is almost immoral in itself.
3L of coke = 1320 kCal. You claim this has no effect on obesity ? You must be joking.
To make myself clear, if the government decides to decapitate mormons and you're a mormon, it's ok to lie in court. And you emphatically shouldn't be prosecuted for it.
You jump from the legal system to ethical claim. Implicitely it seems you're assuming every legal crime should be punished. Fortunately, apart from Hobbesian psychopaths, no one believes that.