The Hoover Institution is a think-tank, and we all know that think-tanks exist for the sole purpose of legitimizing ideologies that favor certain elites. Thiel may be a millionaire, but he's neither a deep thinker nor a great writer. His ideology is weak since it's not really an ideology, but rather a plan to maximize his wealth.
"It struck me that I am incredibly lucky to be a student at MIT, where I have never actually encountered blatant sexism. No one has ever groped me."
When you take a look at the author's photo, you realize she's not nearly hot enough to be worth a sexual harassment lawsuit. She's yet another PC narcissist from American academia who's in love with gender wars. Why should we even care?
How dare you allude to what someone actually did?! Don't you know that Americans like appearance more than content?
Seriously now: I upvoted you, and I wish I could upvote you twice. This myth that JFK was a saint has to die. He handled the Cuban Missile Crisis quite well, but he also escalated U.S. involvement in Vietnam, and had Diem executed (one of the greatest mistakes the U.S. ever made in Indochina). The fact that you're being downvoted for countering an admittedly pretty (yet meaningless) quote with facts is surprising. I thought HN'ers were truth-seekers, not flag-waving retards.
What makes you assume that one's profit / revenue / compensation is a measure of the value one created? There's no central authority accounting for the "value" being created. The whole notion of "value" is itself highly subjective. Personally, I find it distasteful when hedge funds justify their profits by claiming that they make markets more efficient. No, no, no. No one works 100 hours per week to make markets efficient nor to add any value to society. People work in order to make money, because having money is great, and the more money one has, the better it feels. It's legalized looting. It's not what you deserve, it's what you can take for yourself. No excuses, no regrets.
Not quite. Populist and pavlovian attacks are baseless. But intelligent ones are not. Personally, I not only distrust the SEC, but I also believe that "should" is a word to be left out of the discussion. What matters is what can be implemented, not what is morally right. It's like realpolitik applied to the context of Wall Street.
I am not against intelligent critique of GS, the government, whatever. In fact, such critique is required to ensure the proper functioning of the system, closing the feedback loop and providing the required checks. What I am against is Pavlovian unintelligent critique, and one sees a lot of that when the topic is Wall Street. And even though a lot of HN'ers are deeply knowledgeable about Finance, the majority is clearly clueless. This is HN, after all, not NucPhyn.
I am no GS'er, nor am I their useful idiot. They are merely maximizing their utility through whatever means necessary. The one difference between me and you guys is that I don't claim that I am a saint who would be uncapable of doing what GS is doing if I were on their shoes. It's easy to be full of virtue when one does not have the chance to do any evil. Business is hard, but the players in the financial market are voluntary participants. If GS has an information edge and rapes everyone else on a regular basis, maybe the prey should leave the market. It's a winner-take-all scenario, whether we like it or not.
Change the regulation, they will find a new way of gaming the system. Increase taxes, and they will find a loophole. The only way of taming these hyper-motivated people is by eliminating all economic freedom, and I oppose that on ideological grounds. So, I am happier to have a market where GS pillages their counterparties than to have the alternative scenarios. No one said that the best of all worlds was ever attainable. It sucks. One could try to change human nature, but we all know how that worked in the past...
The joke is no longer amusing. Everyone is attacking GS, from utterly clueless uneducated morons to utterly devious dumb politicians with a private agenda. By attacking GS in such a gratuitous manner, one reminds others of such tragicomedy.
If you were going to burn $60, you could instead have gotten a 50 euro BJ in the Red Light District and then had an Heineken with your buddies. You probably would have sweeter memories of Amsterdam...
Well, when I learned Latin, the plural of -um was -a. Just like the plural of -us was -i. People say campuses, but they also say alumni (not alumnuses). One should be consistent, imho...
"This doesn't make sense to me. If sugar in soda leads to cancer, then why doesn't sugar in juice?"
Maybe because there are various types of sugars (e.g., glucose and fructose), and these are metabolized differently? That could explain it. Just speculating...
The article could have mentioned that more people have worked on this. The whole thing started while Parrilo and Prajna were Prof. John Doyle's grad students at Caltech / CDS. Yet once again, MIT's shameless self-promotion fails to give credit where credit is due...
Yet another article blaming the poor quants. Anyone with nonzero experience in finance knows that quants have no power and earn no respect. Of course quants know that models have limitations, but if you tell your boss that one should be conservative, the only thing you will attain is to get yourself fired. The ones to be blamed are the ones with decision-making power, and everybody knows that quants have as much decision-making power as the IT guys.
At least they talk about Aaron Brown. In any case, I was expecting more from the WSJ. They used to be better than this...
Interestingly, when Markowitz invested his own money, he invested 50% in stocks, and 50% in bonds. If the creator did not believe in his own creation, I don't think anyone should. BTW, Engle's work is kind of useless in the real-world...