The people who know the most about finance are the people who work in it.
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Category Archives: Ethics
The Climate Gate scandal highlights the modus operandi of the academic mafia.
Required reading this Friday:
– How to Manufacture a Climate Consensus –- About expelling the non-believers from the academic journals publishing on climate science
– The Dog Ate Global Warming –- About the destruction of raw temperature data of Planet Earth
More info on climate change.
How they shut up the free press at Copenhagen
Ayn Rands influence on Alan Greenspan is responsible for the 2008 financial crisis.
Or so is PBS’-s thesis in “-The Warming”-.
Pretty convincing.
ADDENDUM
Brooksley E. Born is an American attorney and former public official who, from August 26, 1996 to June 1, 1999, was chairperson of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), the federal agency which oversees the futures and commodity options markets. During her tenure on the CFTC, Brooksley Born warned Congress and the President of the need to regulate financial instruments known as over the counter (OTC) derivatives, but her warnings were disregarded. Lack of regulation ultimately led to the crash of the derivatives market, and helped trigger the economic and financial crisis in the fall of 2008.
Terrance Watanabe managed to lose nearly $127 million during a year-long gambling binge at the Caesars Palace and Rio casinos in 2007.
How Yves Saint Laurent and Pierre Berge made life miserable for Tom Ford in Paris, France
I don’t even remember much about my time at Yves Saint Laurent, though I do think some of my best collections were [there]—other than that black-and-white initial one. That one wasn’t very successful and wasn’t very good. But being at Yves Saint Laurent was such a negative experience for me even though the business boomed while I was there. Yves and his partner, Pierre Berge, were so difficult and so evil and made my life such misery. I’d lived in France off and on and had always loved it. I went to college in France. It wasn’t until I started working in France that I began to dislike it. They would call the fiscal police, and they would show up at our offices. You are not able to work an employee more than 35 hours a week. They’re like Nazis, those police. They’d come marching in, and you had to let them in and they’d interview my secretary. And they can fine you and shut you down.
Pierre was the one calling them. I’ve never talked about this on the record before, but it was an awful time for me. Pierre and Yves were just evil. So Yves Saint Laurent doesn’t exist for me.
Wow.
TRAFIGURA: The Guardian was served with a gagging order forbidding it from reporting parliamentary business.
Why you wont hear Robin Hanson et al. about the Chicago Olympics prediction market disaster
– Because they are not interested in telling you the truth about prediction markets.
– They are interested in propagating a myth, rather.
– Don’-t pay $400 for a vendor phone-booth conference on prediction markets, where their merits are hyper inflated to serve commercial purposes. Stay at home and read Midas Oracle.
Previously: Will Chicago get the Olympics? Dona€™t bet on it. Too risky.
Who tell you the truth about the prediction markets? -> Midas Oracle.
– Look at Jed’-s post and the 4 comments below his post: “-CrowdClarity is magic, and the prediction markets are magic.“- —- {Surprise, surprise: All those people but one are selling prediction market services. –->- $$$}
– The only people who have a deep analysis are on Midas Oracle: “-Unless we know why the prediction markets were successful at CrowdClarity, it is hard to get excited. There are too many examples of prediction markets that are not significantly better than traditional forecasting methods. This one could be a fluke.”-
Previously: The truth about prediction markets
Get Rich Quick – InTrades new marketing trick
Buy John McCain at the end of 2007 (at around 5), sell high in 2008 —-and get rich quick. That is what Bethan and her husband (Jonathan) did.
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Today, InTrade CEO John Delaney is trying to milk out this get-rich-quick story (or a similar enough story). His message: You, too, can get rich quick…- —-what it takes is just registering your credit card with InTrade. 
What the InTrade CEO doesn’-t tell you is that luck was a factor in Bethan’-s sudden enrichment. Nothing wrong with tapping chance —-but honesty should have prompted John Delaney to mention it. And you will notice the absence of information for the x axis (the time). Marketing and honesty are 2 words that don’-t mix well in Ireland.
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ADDENDUM:
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