Year: 2012

What Is The Difference Between A Broker And A Psychopath?

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The answer appears to be, “psychopaths are much better for the rest of us“:

What makes individual stockbrokers blow billions in financial markets with criminal trading schemes? According to a new study conducted at a Swiss university, it may be because share traders behave more recklessly and are more manipulative than psychopaths.

Two weeks ago, yet another case of rogue trading shocked the financial world when UBS trader Kweku Adoboli was arrested for allegedly squandering some $2.3 billion with a risky and unauthorized investment scheme. The 31-year-old, who had been based in London for the Swiss bank, remains in jail. The bank’s chief executive Oswald Grübel, meanwhile, has resigned over the scandal — the third major embarrassment to rattle the institution in just a few years.

…………

According to a new study at the University of St. Gallen seen by SPIEGEL, one contributing factor may be that stockbrokers’ behavior is more reckless and manipulative than that of psychopaths. Researchers at the Swiss research university measured the readiness to cooperate and the egotism of 28 professional traders who took part in computer simulations and intelligence tests. The results, compared with the behavior of psychopaths, exceeded the expectations of the study’s co-authors, forensic expert Pascal Scherrer, and Thomas Noll, a lead administrator at the Pöschwies prison north of Zürich.

…………

“Naturally one can’t characterize the traders as deranged,” Noll told SPIEGEL. “But for example, they behaved more egotistically and were more willing to take risks than a group of psychopaths who took the same test.”

So, Dr. Noll, could you explain to me why we cannot, “characterize traders as deranged?”

It seems to me that if there is any lesson of the past few years, it is that traders are deranged.

Here’s Some Insanely Great Tech

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It looks like someone has come up with a method of simultaneously transmitting different signals in the same frequency:

A team of Italian radio boffins – and one Swede – have one-upped their pioneering countryman Guglielmo Marconi by demonstrating a method of simultaneously transmitting multiple signals on the same frequency.

“This novel radio technique allows the implementation of, in principle, an infinite number of channels in a given, fixed bandwidth, even without using polarization, multiport or dense coding techniques,” the team explains in a paper in the March issue of the New Journal of Physics.

If refined and commercialized, the technique developed by Fabrizio Tamburini and his team could radically increase the carrying capacity of today’s cramped bandwith of radio, television, Wi-Fi, and wireless telecommunications.

Essentially, it appears to be some sort of phase/geometry trick:

The breakthough achieved by Tamburini and his crew is based on adding orbital angular momentum to the signal-carrying mix, essentially twisting the directed signal in a way that offsets multiple signals in the same frequency.


The signal-spinning Venetian antenna

The team “spun” the signal in their successful demo by simply slicing one radius of a conventional parabolic antenna and raising one end of the slice above the other. Doing so gave the part of the transmitted signal from the elevated section of the antenna a small “head start” on the part from the lower segment.

The sent beam was then encoded with two separate signals timed to occupy opposite angles of the spin, and antennas were set up to receive each of them. Theoretically, much more discrete signal-slicing could fit more signals into the same transmitted frequency.

One beam, two signals received by antennas on either side of the signal’s centerpoint

Team member Bo Thide of Swedish Institute of Space Physics first conceived the orbital angular momentum idea in a 2007 paper focussed on radio astronomy, but in which he wrote that the concept “paves the way for novel wireless communication concepts.”

I’ve heard of some other techniques that will provide similar capabilities, and I would hope that if we do see a massive expansion in the carry capacity of wireless capacity, that much of this delta would be directed away from the incumbent carriers.

If there is any lesson to be learned about the history of data transmission, wired, and wireless, it is that incumbent monopolies, and near monopolies, are the enemies of innovation, not its source, because their profit margins are driven by preserving their monopolies.

Makes Matt Taibbi Look Like a Wimp

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“If you sit quietly at the edge of a river, eventually you will see the bodies of your enemies float by.”

—Mark “Chopper” Read

Matt Taibbi called Breitbart a Douche, but his former partner at the Russian newspaper The Exile, Mark Ames has a truly evocative take-down of said douche:

Last autumn, Andrew Breitbart picked a fight with me. Breitbart bragged to the world about how he was going to destroy me. Breitbart went after me on behalf of the Koch oligarchy, who’d launched a multimillion-dollar PR counter-offensive to smear journalists who investigated them, including Jane Mayer of the New Yorker. Breitbart got the contract on me, and he had no doubt in his little pea brained mind he was going to destroy me. Breitbart was so sure he was going to ruin me, he bragged about it to everyone. He even told a journalist to tell Taibbi, “Breitbart is about to destroy your former eXile partner Mark Ames.” He was gloating in-advance. Then the very morning he attacked me, I hit back. And he tucked tail and fled like a bitch.

Now Andrew Breitbart is dead. Gee, whod’ya think won that little war?

Tough question: Maybe we should ask Breitbart what he thinks. Oh shit, dang, turns out I can’t ask Breitbart. He’s, well—he’s not doing well, dealing with those “natural causes” and all.

And that’s just the first 3 ‘graphs.

It’s Bank Failure Friday!!!!

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It’s a two week update, because of my mother-in-law entering hospital last week (she’s doing a lot better now).

And here they are, ordered, and numbered for the year so far.

  1. Charter National Bank and Trust, Hoffman Estates, IL
  2. SCB Bank, Shelbyville, IN
  3. Central Bank of Georgia, Ellaville, GA <== Last week
  4. Home Savings of America, Little Falls, MN <== Last week
  5. Global Commerce Bank, Doraville, GA

Full FDIC list

And here are the credit union closings:

  1. A M Community Credit Union, Kenosha, WI

Additionally, the People for People CDCU​, in Philadelphia, which had been put under conservatorship in January, has been liquidated.

Full NCUA list

So, here is the graph pr0n with last years numbers for comparison (FDIC only):

And here is the detail, since it is early in the year:

Our Military-Industrial Complex in a Nut Shell

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So, the USAF decides to buy a few dozen Global Hawk Block 30 drones to replace its existing inventory of U-2 spy planes, and finds out that they are more expensive and less capable than the 5y year old platform, so they are mothballing the drones:

It has been quite an expensive week for the US Air Force. Not only did Congress halt funding on a surveillance blimp project that they already invested $140 million in, but now the Pentagon says $3 billion worth of drones could be canned as well.

The United States military has already ordered a dozen unmanned surveillance drones at a combined cost of $3 billion, but realizing that the stealth, high-tech spy crafts aren’t as capable as the antiquated, old-school planes already in their arsenal, the Pentagon is pulling the plug in terms of acquiring any more.

In addition to ending the acquisition of Global Hawk Block 30 drones that the military had planned for, the Air Force will take the 18 they’ve already received, leaving them to hang around the hangar for now.

Air Force Gen. Norton Schwartz and Air Force Secretary Michael Donley told a Senate committee this week that between acquiring any more drones and maintaining upgrades and repairs on those and the ones already purchased, the military would practically go bankrupt. Gen. Schwartz says that the new plan will save the Pentagon $2.5 billion, but will also lead the Defense Department to let the $3 billion worth of surveillance drones already under their command to just collect dust from now on.

“This was a choice [where] we had an asset that can do the mission as it’s currently specified and could do it overall at much less cost,” Schwartz said before the Senate this week. “Sustaining the U-2 was a better bet.”

So, they spend billions on a system that is more expensive and less capable than its predecessor, and somehow or other, the contractor will sill get paid for the unusable crap that they delivered.

Signs of the Apocalypse: Rush Limbaugh Edition

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He has apologized for calling a 30-year old contraception advocate and law student a slut, and suggesting that she should post sex tapes to the internet:

US radio host Rush Limbaugh has apologised for calling a law student a “slut” for her views on contraception.

In comments on his radio show earlier this week, Mr Limbaugh suggested Sandra Fluke’s testimony to a US congressional committee made her “a prostitute”.

In a statement released on his website, Mr Limbaugh apologised to Ms Fluke “for the insulting word choices” and said he “did not mean a personal attack”.

I think it had more to do with something like a dozen of his sponsors dropping his white, flabby, pimpled ass.

On to the November Referendum

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Martin Omalley has signed Maryland’s gay marriage bill into law:

Amid cheers and camera flashes from a crush of onlookers, Gov. Martin O’Malley signed into law Thursday his bill legalizing same-sex marriage in Maryland — legislation that raises his national profile and, advocates say, gives momentum to those pushing similar measures in three states.

“The way forward is always found through greater respect for the equal rights of all,” said O’Malley, giving brief remarks before signing the legislation. “If there is a thread that unites all of our work here together, it is the thread of human dignity. … Let’s sign the bill.”

Opponents are already collecting signatures for a referendum, but I really think that they will lose the vote.

The public views on gay marriage are shifting with remarkable speed.

I’m Thinking that T Rex Was a Largely A Scavenger

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Some scientist simulated the bite of a Tyrannosaurus Rex, and determined that it had one of the strongest ever:

The tyrant lizard, also known as Tyrannosaurus rex, had the strongest bite of any known land animal, new research suggests.

“Our results show that the T. rex had an extremely powerful bite, making it one of the most dangerous predators to have roamed our planet,” study researcher Karl Bates, of the University of Liverpool, said in a statement.

………

The new estimate of bite force is higher than past estimates that relied on indent measures in which they pressed down the skull and teeth onto a bone until they got the imprints that matched those on fossils. In the new study, the researchers created a computer model of the dinosaur’s jaw by first digitally scanning skulls from an adult and juvenile T. rex, an allosaurus, an alligator and an adult human. They used these scans to model each animal’s bite.

“We took what we knew about T. rex from its skeleton and built a computer model,” Bates said. “We then asked the computer model to produce a bite so that we could measure the speed and force of it directly.”

The force exerted at one of T. rex’s back teeth would have been between 7,868 and 12,814 pounds-force (35,000 and 57,000 newtons). This force would be akin to having a medium-size elephant sit on you.

There has always been a debate about T. Rex, and whether they were primarily predators or scavengers.

The interesting thing is that, at least amongst today’s mammals, scavengers have stronger jaws, the hyena, for example, despite being less than half the size of a lion, has a stronger bite.

Basically, when you come late to the party, you need jaws that can pulverize bone to get the table scraps.*

So, I’m thinking that this extreme jaw strength, and the associated costs of maintaining that capability to the species, imply that the king of the dinosaurs was frequently dining on someone else’s left-overs.

*Yes, I am aware that the Hyena is actually a highly successful predator, and frequently, when you see them circling when the lions are eating, the hyenas have made the kill, and the lions have taken it over. It still means that they are going to eat what the lions leave after they have had their fill.

Dan Savage on Rick Santorum

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Glad not to be named Rick!

Dan Savaged is, of course, the genius who coined the nelogism for Santorum, “The frothy mixture of lube and fecal matter that is sometimes the by-product of anal sex.”

Well, all I can say is that everyone in the United States named Rick is desperately hoping that he stops hating on the gay.

Dallas Fed President calls for Big Bank Breakup

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I’m stunned that someone at this high a level in the financial establishment would suggest breaking up the mega-banks. I don’t know what is leading to this, but he’s off Tim Geithner’s Christmas list:

The five biggest banks in the United States are too powerful and should be broken up, Dallas Fed President Richard Fisher said on Wednesday.

The financial crisis has left the five biggest banks even more powerful than before, he said at an event in Mexico City.

The five biggest U.S. banks are: JPMorgan , Goldman Sachs , Morgan Stanley , Bank of America , and Citigroup .

“After the crisis, the five largest banks had a higher concentration of deposits than they did before the crisis,” he said. “I am of the belief personally that the power of the five largest banks is too concentrated.”

The U.S. Dodd-Frank reform and consumer protection act includes mechanisms for regulators to break up large financial companies, but imposes high hurdles for such action.

“The purpose of Dodd-Frank was to reduce the concentration of power and we have a term called ‘too big to fail’… perversely, these banks are now even bigger, they are too ‘bigger’ to fail than before.”

Last month a group of consumer advocates, academics and economists said they wanted to end “too-big-to-fail” banks, starting with Bank of America.

Fisher continued his U.S. assessment by focussing on consumer demand, which he said is driving a pick-up in the economy although risks remain.

A welcome, if unexpected, development.

My guess, and I could be talking out of my ass, is that this is an artifact of the fact that he’s one of the most extreme inflation hawks at the Fed. 

Basically, I think that he thinks that Bernanke is keeping rates at the zero bound in order to allow the too big to fail banks to dig themselves out of their holes, and he is concerned that this will set the stage for inflation.

If I am right in my analysis, his statement is actually less shocking than it appears at first glance.

H/t Chris in Paris.

Alpha Mike Foxtrot

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H/t JR at the Stellar Parthenon BBS  for the pic

Andrew Breitbart is dead. It appears to be natural causes.

Normally, this would be the place where I take the high road, and when someone has died, if you don’t have anything nice to say, then don’t say anything, followed by a couple of inches of white space.

But I remember what he said when Edward Kennedy died:

Andrew Breitbart, a Washington Times columnist who oversees Breitbart.com and BigHollywood.com, tapped into the anti-Kennedy vein in the hours after the senator’s death was announced, posting a series of Twitter messages in which he called Kennedy a “villain,” a “duplicitous bastard” and a “prick.”

“I’m more than willing to go off decorum to ensure THIS MAN is not beatified,” Breitbart wrote. “Sorry, he destroyed lives. And he knew it.”

So, I will follow his example, and note that the only thing that he ever did to make the world a better place was to leave it.

I hope Shirley Sharrod continues her suit, and manages to get his damn fillings.

Not Enough Bullets…

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Seriously, if I read one more story about these parasites complaining because they can’t do whatever they want whenever they want, I’ll go postal:

Andrew Schiff was sitting in a traffic jam in California this month after giving a speech at an investment conference about gold. He turned off the satellite radio, got out of the car and screamed a profanity.

“I’m not Zen at all, and when I’m freaking out about the situation, where I’m stuck like a rat in a trap on a highway with no way to get out, it’s very hard,” Schiff, director of marketing for broker-dealer Euro Pacific Capital Inc., said in an interview.

Schiff, 46, is facing another kind of jam this year: Paid a lower bonus, he said the $350,000 he earns, enough to put him in the country’s top 1 percent by income, doesn’t cover his family’s private-school tuition, a Kent, Connecticut, summer rental and the upgrade they would like from their 1,200-square- foot Brooklyn duplex.

“I feel stuck,” Schiff said. “The New York that I wanted to have is still just beyond my reach.”

The smaller bonus checks that hit accounts across the financial-services industry this month are making it difficult to maintain the lifestyles that Wall Street workers expect, according to interviews with bankers and their accountants, therapists, advisers and headhunters.

“People who don’t have money don’t understand the stress,” said Alan Dlugash, a partner at accounting firm Marks Paneth & Shron LLP in New York who specializes in financial planning for the wealthy. “Could you imagine what it’s like to say I got three kids in private school, I have to think about pulling them out? How do you do that?”

…………

If they feel so bad about driving a “Porsche 911 Carrera 4S Cabriolet (the Volkswagen of supercars.)”, or to go to a market in Brooklyn to score cheaper salmon, I have a suggestion for them, be the guy from Fight Club.

You know the one:

And this button-down, Oxford-cloth psycho might just snap, and then stalk from office to office with an Armalite AR-10 carbine gas-powered semi-automatic weapon, pumping round after round into colleagues and co-workers. This might be someone you’ve known for years. Someone very, very close to you.

Save one round for yourself, and you will do the world a favor.

F%$# Me!

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And not in a good way, because that fatuous preening faux Democrat Bob Kerrey has decided to change his mind and run for the Nebraska Senate:

Kerrey had announced earlier this month that would not try to return to the Senate, citing his family in New York City.

“Doing things the conventional way has never been my strong suit,” he said in a statement. “I came to realize that my previous decision was the easy one, not the right one. My commitment to serve Nebraska and America, and to be part of the debate about the challenges we face, was too strong to dismiss.”

His wife went from opposing to supporting the idea, according to a Democratic official, and that played a big role in his reversal.

“My family supports this decision 100 percent,” Kerrey said in his statement.

Just what we need, another Fox News Democrat who leads with cutting Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid.

Grover Norquist and the Club for Growth guys have it right, moving the dialogue in your direction is more important than winning any election, and when the party supports people who try to undermine core party values, the dicussion moves in the wrong way.

I have a Cat Infestation

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No, really.

The cat that beat me up when I attempted to adopt it has apparrently found a way to transit into the house, and score food from the cat dishes in the basement.

I’ve got to figure a way to co-opt it, because in a conflict, mano a gato, it will kick my butt, because it already has.

Catnip, I need lots of catnip.

BTW, this is the first time that I’ve ever used Windows Live Movie Maker.

This is chapter 3 of the tale of RP the Cat.