The Goat Pen

And not hear what they don't want to hear...

who said that?

Interesting read on trading and crime.

http://m.vanityfair.com/business/2013/0 ... programmer

The federal government is incapable of successfully implementing or managing major program effectively.

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/13/us/a- ... =5065&_r=1&

Not sure how this is going to affect anything, if somebody gets upside down on a huge trade, their margin is wiped out anyway. It's what they lose over and above that that I'm worried about...

Derivatives traders should be prepared to lose the initial margin they post at clearinghouses if it’s needed to prevent a financial crisis, global markets regulators said.

The “margin is likely to constitute a very large pool of assets which would, if it can be used, provide a high degree of loss-absorbency” to help stabilize a central counterparty, or CCP, the International Organization of Securities Commissions and the Committee on Payment and Settlement Systems said in a joint report published today.

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-08-1 ... s-say.html

This is why if you are going to have a "to Big to Fail" mentality then you need Glass-Steagle to protect banking. The jabronis who want to engage in derivatives are on their own.

7th coldest but 8th warmest? These people have no idea what is going on

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration recently released its “State of the Climate in 2012” report, which states that “worldwide, 2012 was among the 10 warmest years on record.”

But the report “fails to mention [2012] was one of the coolest of the decade, and thus confirms the cooling trend,” according to an analysis by climate blogger Pierre Gosselin.

“To no one’s surprise, the report gives the reader the impression that warming is galloping ahead out of control,” writes Gosselin. “But their data shows just the opposite.”

Although the NOAA report noted that in 2012, “the Arctic continues to warm” with “sea ice reaching record lows,” it also stated that the Antarctica sea ice “reached a record high of 7.51 million square miles” on Sept. 26, 2012.

And the latest figures for this year show that there’s been a slowdown of melting in the Arctic this summer as well, with temperatures at the North Pole well below normal for this time of year. Meteorologist Joe Bastardi calls it “the coldest ever recorded.”

The Associated Press had to retract a photo it released on July 27 with the caption, “The shallow meltwater lake is occurring due to an unusually warm period.”

“In fact, the water accumulates in this way every summer,” AP admitted in a note to editors, adding that the photo was doubly misleading because “the camera used by the North Pole Environment Observatory has drifted hundreds of miles from its original position, which was a few dozen miles from the pole.”

NOAA also reported that the “average lower strastospheric temperature, about six to ten miles above the Earth’s surface, for 2012 was record or near-record cold, depending on the dataset” even while the concentrations of greenhouse gases, including carbon dioxide, continued to increase.

"Even with all this data manipulation, the trend is down as shown by this Hadley global plot," writes Joseph D'Aleo, former director of meteorology at The Weather Channel. (See D'Aleo - Real Story About Temps.pdf)

"Last year was the 8th warmest but 7th coldest since 1998. They explain it away with the predominance of La Ninas or a solar blip, but say it was the warmest decade nonetheless, so stop questioning us," he said.

On August 7th, the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten quoted Irish solar expert Ian Elliott predicting that lower levels of sunspot activity over the next few years “indicates that we may be on the path to a new little ice age.”

“If you think scientists just couldn’t get any more incompetent, then think again. NOAA scientists even appear to believe that cold events are now signs of warming,” Gosselin points out.

“When one carefully reads the report, we find that the NOAA findings actually do confirm precisely what the skeptics have been claiming all along:

1. The Earth has stopped warming.

2. The climate models exaggerated future warming [caused by] CO2 climate sensitivity is much lower than we first thought.

“That’s the real issue at hand,” he added.

The water down here has been warmer than usual for August. That seems to mean more sharks & jellyfish closer to the shore.

hedge wrote:Not sure how this is going to affect anything, if somebody gets upside down on a huge trade, their margin is wiped out anyway. It's what they lose over and above that that I'm worried about...

Derivatives traders should be prepared to lose the initial margin they post at clearinghouses if it’s needed to prevent a financial crisis, global markets regulators said.

The “margin is likely to constitute a very large pool of assets which would, if it can be used, provide a high degree of loss-absorbency” to help stabilize a central counterparty, or CCP, the International Organization of Securities Commissions and the Committee on Payment and Settlement Systems said in a joint report published today.

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-08-1 ... s-say.html

The Dodd Frank rules regarding clearing (some) derivatives in a Clearinghouse form is a very good thing for transparency on exposure and pricing. I definitely don't have a problem with it. The costs are higher, obviously, so the big question becomes what do foreign banks do. They have no clearing rules in those markets yet, so if they avoid US banks (good luck, but not impossible) as counterparties in their derivative strategies then they are clear of Dodd Frank. That may hurt the bottom line of some US banks...potentially.

Knowing Europe, though, they will come out ultimately with regulations that look like French tax rules and make everyone rush back to the US structure.

BTW, the story I posted on the Goldman trader was fascinating. The guy's mindset is either extremely healthy...or totally broken from logic. I can't figure out where I fall on it, yet. Maybe because he is Russian, he is just to being shat on expected to take it, or else things will be worse.

Goldman is a gangster, though.

Bklyn wrote:BTW, the story I posted on the Goldman trader was fascinating. The guy's mindset is either extremely healthy...or totally broken from logic. I can't figure out where I fall on it, yet. Maybe because he is Russian, he is just to being shat on expected to take it, or else things will be worse.

Goldman is a gangster, though.

Paulson was a piece of work.

Climate change predicts warmer summers and worst winters with bigger storms as a result. That's why Gore's documentary was so bad. He confused global warming with climate change and a bunch of people took it to be the be all and end all.

Climate change/global warming...no difference, both are the fault of man and I can save you if you're stupid enough to send me money....... that's Gore's message. Nothing new, started by Malthus carried on by Ehrlich, Gore and others.

Owlman wrote:Climate change predicts warmer summers and worst winters with bigger storms as a result. That's why Gore's documentary was so bad. He confused global warming with climate change and a bunch of people took it to be the be all and end all.

its more than that - you don't start ranting about the end of the world due to Global Warming and then when your cause starts getting holes poked in it you change your description to Climate Change but keep beating the drum.

that's the point. Most scientist always called it climate change. It's only been a change to politicians.

Owlman wrote:that's the point. Most scientist always called it climate change. It's only been a change to politicians.

'
climate change is a given though - that's been happening long before man was burning fossil fuels on the planet. In the 70's as a little kid I was taught we were heading for an ice age so for anyone my age at least, its tough to set myself on fire and run down the street screaming about the end of the world because of climate change - mostly due to the scale of change being so small over such a long period of time.

eCat wrote:

Owlman wrote:that's the point. Most scientist always called it climate change. It's only been a change to politicians.

'
climate change is a given though - that's been happening long before man was burning fossil fuels on the planet. In the 70's as a little kid I was taught we were heading for an ice age so for anyone my age at least, its tough to set myself on fire and run down the street screaming about the end of the world because of climate change - mostly due to the scale of change being so small over such a long period of time.

Yes, but there is a definite acceleration. Now, whether that is manmade or not is a question, but there is a definite acceleration. Whether manmade or not, is there something that can be done about it and should it?

Bklyn wrote:

hedge wrote:Not sure how this is going to affect anything, if somebody gets upside down on a huge trade, their margin is wiped out anyway. It's what they lose over and above that that I'm worried about...

Derivatives traders should be prepared to lose the initial margin they post at clearinghouses if it’s needed to prevent a financial crisis, global markets regulators said.

The “margin is likely to constitute a very large pool of assets which would, if it can be used, provide a high degree of loss-absorbency” to help stabilize a central counterparty, or CCP, the International Organization of Securities Commissions and the Committee on Payment and Settlement Systems said in a joint report published today.

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-08-1 ... s-say.html

The Dodd Frank rules regarding clearing (some) derivatives in a Clearinghouse form is a very good thing for transparency on exposure and pricing. I definitely don't have a problem with it. The costs are higher, obviously, so the big question becomes what do foreign banks do. They have no clearing rules in those markets yet, so if they avoid US banks (good luck, but not impossible) as counterparties in their derivative strategies then they are clear of Dodd Frank. That may hurt the bottom line of some US banks...potentially.

Knowing Europe, though, they will come out ultimately with regulations that look like French tax rules and make everyone rush back to the US structure.

I don't see how transparency changes the risk because, as we have seen, nothing can be enforced even if known. I know American banks would probably lose profits to Euros, but they also lose the risk. Besides, what Europe is going through with their banks I would be surprised if they don't have some regulation themselves when it is all said and done with.

Knowing Europe, though, they will come out ultimately with regulations that look like French tax rules and make everyone rush back to the US structure.

and

Besides, what Europe is going through with their banks I would be surprised if they don't have some regulation themselves when it is all said and done with.

Owlman wrote:

eCat wrote:

Owlman wrote:that's the point. Most scientist always called it climate change. It's only been a change to politicians.

'
climate change is a given though - that's been happening long before man was burning fossil fuels on the planet. In the 70's as a little kid I was taught we were heading for an ice age so for anyone my age at least, its tough to set myself on fire and run down the street screaming about the end of the world because of climate change - mostly due to the scale of change being so small over such a long period of time.

Yes, but there is a definite acceleration. Now, whether that is manmade or not is a question, but there is a definite acceleration. Whether manmade or not, is there something that can be done about it and should it?

IMO, on the whole no, and not because I'm unsympathetic to the fallout of accelerated change, but I think it will be addressed by technology. There is going to be some pain - I think we're seeing that in the Southwest as people come to realize that you can't keep expanding in arid parts of the country and expect to have water for agriculture , green lawns and golf courses. I don't agree that we need to ratchet up the costs of fossil fuels to install scrubbers in a power plant and then next week some volcano in Iceland dumps blows up and drops the planet's temperature .5 celsius. But I do agree that we'll address the climate change in more local ways for example by creating more drought resistant crops.

But inflating numbers and creating fear among the masses should not be the driver of change from Science. Its not just politicians who are driving an agenda on questionable hypothesis, there is no shortage of scientists producing bias data.