Jᴀᴄᴜʀᴜᴛᴜ - Tʜᴇ Cᴀsᴛ Oᴜᴛ

Nebiros wrote:Since January of this year there has been a lot on a global economic crisis.
...

It's not fear just caution Yesterday I withdraw money from my savings account and paid the whole debt in my credit card, just for if something bad happens....

The US market seems to have recovered.

Freakzilla wrote:The US market seems to have recovered.

The promise of the "money fund" is apparently enough to succumb the down slide of the markets.

Nebiros wrote:I'm also hearing of a near crash on the stock market with all those nasty red arrows.

Dow Jones closed way, way up Friday. It was in all the papers.

Seriously, do have the slightest idea what you're talking about?

Ignore him Dkester, its totally nutso


Rob

Robbo, put down that bottle when you type, please?

(But he's right, Dkester, Nebby, while a source of amusement at times, is totally nutsy. )


(And Nebby, you know I say that will all due fondness. )

Ah, I didn't catch that the thread had been bumped. My bad.

I won't fuel the fire, then.

Lundse wrote:Speaking of the economy...

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

In short, 1/3 of your (US) and my (EU) economy is run by computer programs.

In case anyone was having doubts that we _do_ leave valuable decisions and thought-processes in the hand of machines...

Ready for that Jihad yet?

This has been a very interesting reading, not to mention a worrying one.

People make mistakes, but usually recognize the problem and try to correct it before it does more harm. A programmed machine will not recognize it "makes a mistake" and will continue to makes it again and again. the people using the machine don't recognize the problem because they aren't the ones that wrote the program ... I can foresee the first machine created market crash happening already ... by mistake or deliberately.

TheDukester wrote:

Nebiros wrote:I'm also hearing of a near crash on the stock market with all those nasty red arrows.

Dow Jones closed way, way up Friday. It was in all the papers.

Seriously, do have the slightest idea what you're talking about?

Nebiros was right when he posted that comment last Wednesday. The markets were in free-fall until Friday, when the US Treasury announced a scheme to take on the toxic debt of the banks. The details are being worked out, but it is likely to cost US taxpayers around one trillion dollars. The reason the US government has stepped in is because the consensus was that the markets were about to implode and the US economy would have completely collapsed. I don't know how much news coverage this is getting in the US, but saying the Dow Jones was way up on Friday is wrong, it is still down on its close from the week before, it has just made up some of the losses from last week. It was still faling, even after the US government nationalised AIG.

So the Repulicans, the party of "small government", have embarked on the biggest nationalisation programme in the US for the past 75 years (Fannie and Freddy Mac went for a song at around 5 trillion dollars of debt which is now backed by US taxpayers' money, and doubled the US national debt). What a mess. Standard & Poor's say this is just the first wave, expect more to come. The next phase could be governments dropping the US dollar as reserve currency, and even the most level-headed commentators are saying this is probably a turning point and will mark the end of the US's dominance, politically and economically.

Last year at the G8 meetings (a nice get together of the world's largest economies), countries like US, UK, France and Japan were trying to put pressure on third world countries who attended the meetings, trying to convince them to apply free-market type practices to their sovereign wealth funds. The third world countries ignored them. I think it's time for me to learn Mandarin.

Err, you'll welcome Chinese dominance?

You realize these guys won't be banning you from no forum if you get on their nerves.

chanilover wrote:

TheDukester wrote:

Nebiros wrote:I'm also hearing of a near crash on the stock market with all those nasty red arrows.

Dow Jones closed way, way up Friday. It was in all the papers.

Seriously, do have the slightest idea what you're talking about?

Nebiros was right when he posted that comment last Wednesday. The markets were in free-fall until Friday, when the US Treasury announced a scheme to take on the toxic debt of the banks. The details are being worked out, but it is likely to cost US taxpayers around one trillion dollars. The reason the US government has stepped in is because the consensus was that the markets were about to implode and the US economy would have completely collapsed. I don't know how much news coverage this is getting in the US, but saying the Dow Jones was way up on Friday is wrong, it is still down on its close from the week before, it has just made up some of the losses from last week. It was still faling, even after the US government nationalised AIG.

So the Repulicans, the party of "small government", have embarked on the biggest nationalisation programme in the US for the past 75 years (Fannie and Freddy Mac went for a song at around 5 trillion dollars of debt which is now backed by US taxpayers' money, and doubled the US national debt). What a mess. Standard & Poor's say this is just the first wave, expect more to come. The next phase could be governments dropping the US dollar as reserve currency, and even the most level-headed commentators are saying this is probably a turning point and will mark the end of the US's dominance, politically and economically.

Last year at the G8 meetings (a nice get together of the world's largest economies), countries like US, UK, France and Japan were trying to put pressure on third world countries who attended the meetings, trying to convince them to apply free-market type practices to their sovereign wealth funds. The third world countries ignored them. I think it's time for me to learn Mandarin.

You said that better than what I was going to put. To think that the US market improved itself on it's own is totally incorrect, and to think that it's actually doing good is a joke. The problem is that the recent improvement isn't the result of anything real, it's a result of people hearing a crazy promise from the gov (which they probably will go through with) and thinking this is a good time to buy in - that said I feel pretty confident that it is possible (in theory) to bullshit your way right out of a recession with just the correct use of propaganda. So maybe the US gov has the right idea on some levels, just keep telling people that you're fixing the economy, they'll believe you and start spending money again, which will in turn help the economy. Wheeee!

Time to learn Mandarin and Hindi. I with you on that.

Xianzai women kaishi xuexi Zhongwen!

Dhanyavad!



(Now we will begin to study Chinese!

Thank you!)

SandChigger wrote:Xianzai women kaishi xuexi Zhongwen!

Dhanyavad!



(Now we will begin to study Chinese!

Thank you!)

Bloody show off!

Rob

...And to think i was content with french and english...

On topic : Can Congress block the 700 billions bail out and what would be the impact? I hear there are not enough safeguards for taxpayers? (Not sure what this means)...

Robspierre wrote:Bloody show off!

Nah.

I can get myself into trouble in Mandarin/Putonghua, but the only Hindi I know besides dhanyavad is a few Indian dish components (alu means potato, saag is spinach?) and thik-thak, thik-thak, said while bobbing your head from side to side. I think it means something like "I don't know, I don't know!"

SandChigger wrote:and thik-thak, thik-thak, said while bobbing your head from side to side. I think it means something like "I don't know, I don't know!"

Sounds like Brian Herbert!

SandChigger wrote:

Robspierre wrote:Bloody show off!

Nah.

I can get myself into trouble in Mandarin/Putonghua, but the only Hindi I know besides dhanyavad is a few Indian dish components (alu means potato, saag is spinach?) and thik-thak, thik-thak, said while bobbing your head from side to side. I think it means something like "I don't know, I don't know!"

I also learn my Hindi from menus! I think you're right on saag, obviously paneer is cheese, gobi is cauliflower, dal is lentil, I could go on all day. But I won't because it's already boreing.

If India's economy keeps rising it's really going to ruin my plan to retire there (not that I'd wish ill of an entire nation just so I can retire in my dreamland ).

A Thing of Eternity wrote: If India's economy keeps rising it's really going to ruin my plan to retire there (not that I'd wish ill of an entire nation just so I can retire in my dreamland ).

Wuss.

Looks like it's droping again pending the details of the bailout.

Serkanner wrote:

Lundse wrote:Speaking of the economy...

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

In short, 1/3 of your (US) and my (EU) economy is run by computer programs.

In case anyone was having doubts that we _do_ leave valuable decisions and thought-processes in the hand of machines...

Ready for that Jihad yet?

This has been a very interesting reading, not to mention a worrying one.

People make mistakes, but usually recognize the problem and try to correct it before it does more harm. A programmed machine will not recognize it "makes a mistake" and will continue to makes it again and again. the people using the machine don't recognize the problem because they aren't the ones that wrote the program ... I can foresee the first machine created market crash happening already ... by mistake or deliberately.

Foresee? The first machine created market crash happened in 87. I wasn't even alive, and I know that.

The market recovered the next day, because the crash wasn't a real crash, just an electronic hallucination.

The current situation just shows you why banks normally only give loans to people who, you know, can actually pay them back.

The markets didn't rally because of bailouts, it rallied because the SEC banned short-selling on financial stocks. I'm sure the bailouts helped, but the short-selling ban did more to reassure stockholders.

It'll be interesting to see what will happen in the long run on this; it's the biggest economic problem since 1929.

SandChigger wrote:

Robspierre wrote:Bloody show off!

Nah.

I can get myself into trouble in Mandarin/Putonghua, but the only Hindi I know besides dhanyavad is a few Indian dish components (alu means potato, saag is spinach?) and thik-thak, thik-thak, said while bobbing your head from side to side. I think it means something like "I don't know, I don't know!"

I have a brother and sister from India who I supervise, gonna have ot have them teach me some stuff o nthe slow nights.

Rob

Serkanner wrote:I can foresee the first machine created market crash happening already ... by mistake or deliberately.

Sounds paranoid to me, but whatever.

It was only machines (executing code developed by humans, of course) that prevented even worse things from happening during domestic economic crises in the late 80s and in the fall of 2001 (specifically, algorithms that only allow certain indictors to fall so far before the whole process is shut down).

This particular crisis has very little to do with machines. It's actually the human concepts of greed and getting something for nothing that have led to the current situation. It wasn't machines that tried to use smoke and mirrors to turn shit into gold.

Considering that machines will never (probably) be able to pull off quite the level of sheer idiocy that the general public does on an on-going basis it would be very hard for the machines to cause a problem bigger or faster than the ones we can come up will all on our own.

Look at the whole sub-prime situation. A fucking cheese eating high school kid could look at the idea and tell the banks that the whole thing was guaranteed to crash and burn hard - and I'm sure the banks (and stock brokers) knew it was certainly going to blow up, but they wanted their money now and just ignored the obvious stupidity of what they were doing with a "we'll fix it later" attitude.

Greed is good. Greed is what drives humanity to improve. Greed + indifference to others = disaster. Greed + Stupidity = disaster. Unfortunately too many people have these exact combinations of attributes.

TheDukester wrote:

Serkanner wrote:I can foresee the first machine created market crash happening already ... by mistake or deliberately.

Sounds paranoid to me, but whatever.

It was only machines (executing code developed by humans, of course) that prevented even worse things from happening during domestic economic crises in the late 80s and in the fall of 2001 (specifically, algorithms that only allow certain indictors to fall so far before the whole process is shut down).

This particular crisis has very little to do with machines. It's actually the human concepts of greed and getting something for nothing that have led to the current situation. It wasn't machines that tried to use smoke and mirrors to turn shit into gold.

Paranoid or not, it is a fact that more and more trade is trusted to automation.

It is not too big a stretch that the most greedy people will find ways of influencing trade just a tad bit more with automated systems then they could before ( an example is the influence of interpreting news issues one second faster then your competitor ).

I am not afraid of the machines, but am worried about the people behind them.

A Thing of Eternity wrote:Greed is good. Greed is what drives humanity to improve. Greed + indifference to others = disaster. Greed + Stupidity = disaster. Unfortunately too many people have these exact combinations of attributes.

"The point is, ladies and gentlemen, that greed, for lack of a better word, is good. Greed is right. Greed works. Greed clarifies, cuts through and captures the essence of the evolutionary spirit. Greed, in all it's forms; greed for life, money, love, knowledge, has marked the upward surge of mankind and greed...you mark my words, will not only save Teldar Paper, but that other malfunctioning corporation called the USA. Thank you very much."

*cue Frank Sinatra*