Re: [Vo]:Too Big to Fail movie portrays institutional disaster
about Enron, read http://www.princeton.edu/~rbenabou/papers/Patterns%20of%20Denial%204l%20fin.pdf it was sincere self delusion leading to perceived as rational honest fraud, and not simple scam. 2012/7/25 Terry Blanton hohlr...@gmail.com The equivalent to Enron's Smartest Guys movie about the 2008 collapse is Inside Job: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1645089/ However, it is more of a documentary than a drama. Tells the story well. T
Re: [Vo]:Too Big to Fail movie portrays institutional disaster
Great article. about Glass-Seagle act, it seems more complex. First of all, none of the crash that happens were linked to such mix explicitly. second it is no more possible to factually separate the two activities, since there are financial tools that allow to get around the regulation. Anyway the deregulation of that period, and all the globalization is behind that. like in LENR you have seen a globalization of criteria, of elite,of good practices, of media, that killed the bio-diversity, the speciation (creation of species). Like the pterosaure they over adapt to specific condition, and could not survive when the condition changed. it seems that to survive in that global competition banks had to all do the same short term paying, long term stupid decision. the few banks not doing so were called stupid (I'm in one, but one or our ex-subsidies I worked for get famous on the market for a huge crash - It is for them that I've learned that in finance products complexity, titrization, allow big actors to make margin and small actors, and that if you don't increase complexity, you die., in fact in both case you die.) it is the same in LENR for science. science have to follow the fashion to get funding, yet by doing so it prepare it's own death of ridicule, as it is happening. the choice is between dying today killed by the short term winners, or dying soon because of the facts that catch you back. All of that because pure and perfect global competition dis not allow bio-diversity in the economic/politic system. we should rebuild island when different species can optimize sub-optimal solutions. take the Italian science that crazily could develop research on LENR despite the blacklisting. take NASA or SPAWAR that could have a small yet non null budget to work on LENR. in a perfectly managed science administration THIS SHOULD NOT HAPPEN ! consensus and peer review is there to forbid it. democratic budget control should forbid it for the sake of efficiency. hopefully it happens. 8) of course there will be stupid research, pseudo-science, but at least we could criticize them even when they are mainstream. Eg: in France there is a big debate on the stupidity of Psychoanalysis about autistic troubles, after decades of underground critics on psychoanalysis as being an official pseudoscience. at last it is breaking, but it is decades that we use proved non working therapies, not to cure sick people. at the same time Cognitivo-Behavioral therapy are poorly financed, yet they work in a prooved way... And it is probably only because in US the culture is different that French dissenters can have access to data supporting CBT. 2012/7/24 Jed Rothwell jedrothw...@gmail.com I saw the HBO movie, Too Big to Fail, about the 2008 market crash. I recommend it. It is a dramatization with actors. Based on what I have read about the crisis it seems to be historically accurate. Regarding this history I recommend the book The Devils are All Here. I mention this movie here because in my view, the history of cold fusion has been one long disaster caused mainly by dysfunctional institutions, especially the physics establishment in the US. The two events are more similar than you might think. Both took a long time to develop. Both are still happening. The problems in the financial markets have not been solved. The closing scenes of the movie show that they have not even been addressed in many ways. The roots of the 2008 crash began in deregulation in the Reagan era, when the separation between banks and investment banks was first eroded and then later abolished. The Glass-Steagall act first establish this separation. It was weakened and then finally repealed in 1999. Many experts feel this was the proximate cause of the disaster. There were many other causes such as greed, stupidity and lax supervision. Complicated, large events in history tend to have many causes I think. What I find most frightening about the 2008 crash in the weightless for trade in this movie was not the actions of evil and stupid people, but rather what the good people did -- and did not do. They were conscientious, smart, skilled bankers and government officials who saw this coming who did nothing to prevent it. Others should've seen it coming but did not. Maybe it was just the movie, but I felt particularly sorry for Ben Bernanke. As he says in the movie, he spent his whole career studying the Great Depression. He knew how it came about. He was desperate to prevent something like this from reoccurring. But you have to ask: Given all of his knowledge and power, why didn't he see it was imminent? I have encountered many good scientists over the years who know something about cold fusion, yet who are unwilling to go out on a limb and recommend funding for it or tell their colleagues that there may be something to it and it is worth investigating. These are good people. They are ethical, hard-working and honest. They have
Re: [Vo]:Too Big to Fail movie portrays institutional disaster
Alain Sepeda alain.sep...@gmail.com wrote: about Enron, read http://www.princeton.edu/~rbenabou/papers/Patterns%20of%20Denial%204l%20fin.pdf it was sincere self delusion leading to perceived as rational honest fraud, and not simple scam. I agree it was self-delusion. I think that is more common that people realize. Con-men often con themselves. That is a really good paper. This is Appendix A: Patterns of Denial. Appendix A to what? Here is the main index of papers: http://www.princeton.edu/~rbenabou/papers.html - Jed
Re: [Vo]:Too Big to Fail movie portrays institutional disaster
2012/7/25 Jed Rothwell jedrothw...@gmail.com Alain Sepeda alain.sep...@gmail.com wrote: about Enron, read http://www.princeton.edu/~rbenabou/papers/Patterns%20of%20Denial%204l%20fin.pdfhttp://www.princeton.edu/%7Erbenabou/papers/Patterns%20of%20Denial%204l%20fin.pdf it was sincere self delusion leading to perceived as rational honest fraud, and not simple scam. I agree it was self-delusion. I think that is more common that people realize. Con-men often con themselves. That is a really good paper. This is Appendix A: Patterns of Denial. Appendix A to what? Here is the main index of papers: http://www.princeton.edu/~rbenabou/papers.html - Jed it is the appendices of http://www.princeton.edu/%7Erbenabou/papers/Groupthink%20IOM%202012_07_02%20paper.pdf Groupthink: Collective Delusions in Organizations and Marketshttp://www.princeton.edu/%7Erbenabou/papers/Groupthink%20IOM%202012_07_02%20paper.pdf, he have a collection of papers, based on his model... about belief in a just world (how two different stable state can emerge in EU, and US, despite similar systems), about belief in state or market,... it looks like a paper that says that you can be delusioned all the time, but in fact there are case where the realist side can be detected. delusion came from the impact of a change of beliefe on your estimated wealth. another factor is how the others delusioned can incur you cost. If you have no investment, no cost from others, you can afford to be realist. the behavior of Concezzi, let no doubt. When I was analyzing cold fusion the first time, I took a realist decision (in 92-93). Now I can be self delusionned. especially since I talk much on that subject. i have to watch myself. (NB: funny to see Total Recall movie advertized) When Celani, a skeptic, get into LENR experiment, and get his first success, he was realist. that is the problem with that theory. people are not realist by nature, but because of their own investment and their dependencies on others beliefs. independent, non demanding newcomers, are normally realists.
Re: [Vo]:Too Big to Fail movie portrays institutional disaster
There was actual fraud in the case of Enron from what I have seen. These guys manipulated the system to drive up energy costs. I am sure that there were many honest employees that had nothing to do with the deception, but this was not just ignorance at work. Dave -Original Message- From: Jed Rothwell jedrothw...@gmail.com To: vortex-l vortex-l@eskimo.com Sent: Wed, Jul 25, 2012 10:04 am Subject: Re: [Vo]:Too Big to Fail movie portrays institutional disaster Alain Sepeda alain.sep...@gmail.com wrote: about Enron, read http://www.princeton.edu/~rbenabou/papers/Patterns%20of%20Denial%204l%20fin.pdf it was sincere self delusion leading to perceived as rational honest fraud, and not simple scam. I agree it was self-delusion. I think that is more common that people realize. Con-men often con themselves. That is a really good paper. This is Appendix A: Patterns of Denial. Appendix A to what? Here is the main index of papers: http://www.princeton.edu/~rbenabou/papers.html - Jed
Re: [Vo]:Too Big to Fail movie portrays institutional disaster
what is said in the article is that Enron bosses where so sure theiy were right, while at teh same time acting like bandits, so that the both have stolen the pension fund, yet kept their shares in their bankrupted company. ins science I've recently seen similar fraud, for the sake of good,because we ar right and opponents are not honest... but we will finally win. and when they are toasted, the moan that they are victims of lobbies. in psychiatry there is a psychosis pathology called (french) Clivage (mean breaking cleanly, like a gem) that allow one person to ignore she is lying to herself, yet at the same time she do everything to avoid being confronted to the reality, including fraud and lies. 2012/7/25 David Roberson dlrober...@aol.com There was actual fraud in the case of Enron from what I have seen. These guys manipulated the system to drive up energy costs. I am sure that there were many honest employees that had nothing to do with the deception, but this was not just ignorance at work. Dave -Original Message- From: Jed Rothwell jedrothw...@gmail.com To: vortex-l vortex-l@eskimo.com Sent: Wed, Jul 25, 2012 10:04 am Subject: Re: [Vo]:Too Big to Fail movie portrays institutional disaster Alain Sepeda alain.sep...@gmail.com wrote: about Enron, read http://www.princeton.edu/~rbenabou/papers/Patterns%20of%20Denial%204l%20fin.pdfhttp://www.princeton.edu/%7Erbenabou/papers/Patterns%20of%20Denial%204l%20fin.pdf it was sincere self delusion leading to perceived as rational honest fraud, and not simple scam. I agree it was self-delusion. I think that is more common that people realize. Con-men often con themselves. That is a really good paper. This is Appendix A: Patterns of Denial. Appendix A to what? Here is the main index of papers: http://www.princeton.edu/~rbenabou/papers.html - Jed
Re: [Vo]:Too Big to Fail movie portrays institutional disaster
Terry Blanton hohlr...@gmail.com wrote: The equivalent to Enron's Smartest Guys movie about the 2008 collapse is Inside Job: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1645089/ However, it is more of a documentary than a drama. Yeah. I liked that one too. It was more factual than Too Big to Fail but Too Big . . . gives you a sense of what it was like on the inside, and how these people felt. It made me feel sympathy for people such as Paulson and Bernanke, and even for some of the bankers. They seem like smart, good people who accidentally brought about a disaster. There were some telling lines in the script which I suppose were taken from real life. It was fascinating seeing people trying to come to grips with something they never imagined possible. One that sticks in my mind was where two young men, who I suppose work for a bank and make huge sums, are going to the Federal Reserve Bank in New York on a Saturday morning to try to stop the growing disaster. One of them stops and says something like, I don't know if I can bring myself to do this . . . The other says: Hey, you are getting out of limo and going into the Fed. You are not getting out of a Higgins boat onto Omaha Beach. Stop feeling sorry for yourself. Well said! - Jed
Re: [Vo]:Too Big to Fail movie portrays institutional disaster
They seem like smart, good people who accidentally brought about a
disaster
They did it to make more money for themselves and the bank. They were
obviously ignorant to risk they created for everyone and we are all still
paying for it and will be for years to come. For that, they should have
resigned, been fired or at a minimum demoted. Plenty of jobs for them at
Walmart.
On Wednesday, July 25, 2012, Jed Rothwell wrote:
Terry Blanton hohlr...@gmail.com javascript:_e({}, 'cvml',
'hohlr...@gmail.com'); wrote:
The equivalent to Enron's Smartest Guys movie about the 2008
collapse is Inside Job:
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1645089/
However, it is more of a documentary than a drama.
Yeah. I liked that one too. It was more factual than Too Big to Fail but
Too Big . . . gives you a sense of what it was like on the inside, and
how these people felt. It made me feel sympathy for people such as Paulson
and Bernanke, and even for some of the bankers. They seem like smart, good
people who accidentally brought about a disaster.
There were some telling lines in the script which I suppose were taken
from real life. It was fascinating seeing people trying to come to grips
with something they never imagined possible. One that sticks in my mind was
where two young men, who I suppose work for a bank and make huge sums, are
going to the Federal Reserve Bank in New York on a Saturday morning to try
to stop the growing disaster. One of them stops and says something like, I
don't know if I can bring myself to do this . . . The other says:
Hey, you are getting out of limo and going into the Fed. You are not
getting out of a Higgins boat onto Omaha Beach. Stop feeling sorry for
yourself.
Well said!
- Jed
Re: [Vo]:Too Big to Fail movie portrays institutional disaster
Chemical Engineer cheme...@gmail.com wrote: They seem like smart, good people who accidentally brought about a disaster They did it to make more money for themselves and the bank. Well, not everyone in the story was a banker. Some were government officials. Paulson was an official who had been an investment banker. I get the impression he was an honest banker. He quit and sold his shares in Goldman before he became an official. I am not excusing these people. I want to know how this happened. Why it happened. Greed and stupidity are the cause, but people have always been greedy and stupid, yet Wall Street seldom collapses catastrophically because of it. These explanations are not sufficient; there has to be more. I say the institution itself was dysfunctional. Paulson and the others were in over their heads. They did not realize how little they knew. They did not realize things were out of control. They were obviously ignorant to risk they created for everyone and we are all still paying for it and will be for years to come. For that, they should have resigned, been fired or at a minimum demoted. Many have been fired. Many lost their own money. One of the main characters in the movie, Fuld of Lehman Brothers, had shares of Lehman worth about $1 billion. When Lehman declared bankruptcy his shares were worth $58,000. Others made out like bandits, unfortunately. I favor punishing the guilty, but we also need to find the root caused that allowed bad actors and fools to bring about the catastrophe in the first place. The same goes for every disaster, such as Fukushima and the wreck of the Titanic. On April 15, 1912 everyone in the world knew who was directly responsible for the Titanic disaster: Capt. Smith and his officers. But it went beyond that. The causes were deeper. People needed to reveal the causes and take steps to prevent this from happening again. That took a Congressional Investigation and many reforms and new regulations. Mainly, it took Sen. William Alden Smith, without whom the dead would have died in vain. There would have been many more preventable shipwrecks without him. We need someone like that to clean up Wall Street. Unfortunately, all efforts to do so have been blocked by the bankers and the Republican Party. They seem determined to cause another disaster. That is predictable. In 1912, the shipping interests made a tremendous effort to stop Smith from investigating and reforming their industry. They attacked him the newspapers. To this day, many accounts of the Titanic disaster portray him as a fool and useless person who accomplished nothing. No good deed goes unpunished! See: http://www.lenr-canr.org/acrobat/RothwellJcoldfusion.pdf - Jed
Re: [Vo]:Too Big to Fail movie portrays institutional disaster
At the most fundamental level, what makes capitalism work is trust. When a lender provides capital to a borrower he trusts that the borrower will repay the debt. Now a days, the lender takes out an insurance policy (credit default swap) to guaranty the payment of the debt from a well-capitalized and trustworthy middleman. On the black day when all the borrowers and the insurance providers are all seen to be untrustworthy, capitalism fails and the flow of capital stops; the economy no longer exists. What saved the day in 2008 was the US government. It became the insurer of last resort and guarantied payment of all debt throughout the world, all 100 trillion dollars’ worth. To make a political point, the tea party wanted to destroy the power of the US government to do this function. They wanted the US to default on its debt. The tea party will do so again if they get the chance. The tea party really wants to destroy the foundation of capitalism which is the perpetuation of global financial trust and the ability of the US government to supply trust in world capitalism. Cheers: Axil On Wed, Jul 25, 2012 at 2:10 PM, Jed Rothwell jedrothw...@gmail.com wrote: Chemical Engineer cheme...@gmail.com wrote: They seem like smart, good people who accidentally brought about a disaster They did it to make more money for themselves and the bank. Well, not everyone in the story was a banker. Some were government officials. Paulson was an official who had been an investment banker. I get the impression he was an honest banker. He quit and sold his shares in Goldman before he became an official. I am not excusing these people. I want to know how this happened. Why it happened. Greed and stupidity are the cause, but people have always been greedy and stupid, yet Wall Street seldom collapses catastrophically because of it. These explanations are not sufficient; there has to be more. I say the institution itself was dysfunctional. Paulson and the others were in over their heads. They did not realize how little they knew. They did not realize things were out of control. They were obviously ignorant to risk they created for everyone and we are all still paying for it and will be for years to come. For that, they should have resigned, been fired or at a minimum demoted. Many have been fired. Many lost their own money. One of the main characters in the movie, Fuld of Lehman Brothers, had shares of Lehman worth about $1 billion. When Lehman declared bankruptcy his shares were worth $58,000. Others made out like bandits, unfortunately. I favor punishing the guilty, but we also need to find the root caused that allowed bad actors and fools to bring about the catastrophe in the first place. The same goes for every disaster, such as Fukushima and the wreck of the Titanic. On April 15, 1912 everyone in the world knew who was directly responsible for the Titanic disaster: Capt. Smith and his officers. But it went beyond that. The causes were deeper. People needed to reveal the causes and take steps to prevent this from happening again. That took a Congressional Investigation and many reforms and new regulations. Mainly, it took Sen. William Alden Smith, without whom the dead would have died in vain. There would have been many more preventable shipwrecks without him. We need someone like that to clean up Wall Street. Unfortunately, all efforts to do so have been blocked by the bankers and the Republican Party. They seem determined to cause another disaster. That is predictable. In 1912, the shipping interests made a tremendous effort to stop Smith from investigating and reforming their industry. They attacked him the newspapers. To this day, many accounts of the Titanic disaster portray him as a fool and useless person who accomplished nothing. No good deed goes unpunished! See: http://www.lenr-canr.org/acrobat/RothwellJcoldfusion.pdf - Jed
RE: [Vo]:Too Big to Fail movie portrays institutional disaster
Sanford Weill, of all people, has made the news today by advocating breaking up large financial institutions. Ex-Citi chief Weill urges bank break-up Financial Times http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/feaa9cf0-d65f-11e1-ba60-00144feabdc0.html#axzz21ejh0BPr This can could change the conversation regarding what happens in Washington DC. Mark Mark Goldes Co-founder, Chava Energy CEO, Aesop Institute 301A North Main Street Sebastopol, CA 95472 www.chavaenergy.com www.aesopinstitute.org 707 861-9070 707 497-3551 fax From: Jed Rothwell [jedrothw...@gmail.com] Sent: Wednesday, July 25, 2012 11:10 AM To: vortex-l@eskimo.com Subject: Re: [Vo]:Too Big to Fail movie portrays institutional disaster Chemical Engineer cheme...@gmail.commailto:cheme...@gmail.com wrote: They seem like smart, good people who accidentally brought about a disaster They did it to make more money for themselves and the bank. Well, not everyone in the story was a banker. Some were government officials. Paulson was an official who had been an investment banker. I get the impression he was an honest banker. He quit and sold his shares in Goldman before he became an official. I am not excusing these people. I want to know how this happened. Why it happened. Greed and stupidity are the cause, but people have always been greedy and stupid, yet Wall Street seldom collapses catastrophically because of it. These explanations are not sufficient; there has to be more. I say the institution itself was dysfunctional. Paulson and the others were in over their heads. They did not realize how little they knew. They did not realize things were out of control. They were obviously ignorant to risk they created for everyone and we are all still paying for it and will be for years to come. For that, they should have resigned, been fired or at a minimum demoted. Many have been fired. Many lost their own money. One of the main characters in the movie, Fuld of Lehman Brothers, had shares of Lehman worth about $1 billion. When Lehman declared bankruptcy his shares were worth $58,000. Others made out like bandits, unfortunately. I favor punishing the guilty, but we also need to find the root caused that allowed bad actors and fools to bring about the catastrophe in the first place. The same goes for every disaster, such as Fukushima and the wreck of the Titanic. On April 15, 1912 everyone in the world knew who was directly responsible for the Titanic disaster: Capt. Smith and his officers. But it went beyond that. The causes were deeper. People needed to reveal the causes and take steps to prevent this from happening again. That took a Congressional Investigation and many reforms and new regulations. Mainly, it took Sen. William Alden Smith, without whom the dead would have died in vain. There would have been many more preventable shipwrecks without him. We need someone like that to clean up Wall Street. Unfortunately, all efforts to do so have been blocked by the bankers and the Republican Party. They seem determined to cause another disaster. That is predictable. In 1912, the shipping interests made a tremendous effort to stop Smith from investigating and reforming their industry. They attacked him the newspapers. To this day, many accounts of the Titanic disaster portray him as a fool and useless person who accomplished nothing. No good deed goes unpunished! See: http://www.lenr-canr.org/acrobat/RothwellJcoldfusion.pdf - Jed
Re: [Vo]:Too Big to Fail movie portrays institutional disaster
Jed,
I realize they were not all bankers. At least arrest the bankers for
negotiating a worthless instrument(s)...
If they were a captain of a ship in the miliary that sank, they could call
for their own court martial:
Most navies have a standard court-martial which convenes whenever a ship is
lost; this does not presume that the captain should be suspected of
wrongdoing, but merely that the circumstances surrounding the loss of the
ship should be made part of the official record. Many ship captains will
actually insist on a court-martial in such circumstances.
On Wednesday, July 25, 2012, Jed Rothwell wrote:
Chemical Engineer cheme...@gmail.com javascript:_e({}, 'cvml',
'cheme...@gmail.com'); wrote:
They seem like smart, good people who accidentally brought about a
disaster
They did it to make more money for themselves and the bank.
Well, not everyone in the story was a banker. Some were government
officials. Paulson was an official who had been an investment banker. I get
the impression he was an honest banker. He quit and sold his shares in
Goldman before he became an official.
I am not excusing these people. I want to know how this happened. Why it
happened. Greed and stupidity are the cause, but people have always been
greedy and stupid, yet Wall Street seldom collapses catastrophically
because of it. These explanations are not sufficient; there has to be more.
I say the institution itself was dysfunctional. Paulson and the others were
in over their heads. They did not realize how little they knew. They did
not realize things were out of control.
They were obviously ignorant to risk they created for everyone and we
are all still paying for it and will be for years to come. For that, they
should have resigned, been fired or at a minimum demoted.
Many have been fired. Many lost their own money. One of the main
characters in the movie, Fuld of Lehman Brothers, had shares of Lehman
worth about $1 billion. When Lehman declared bankruptcy his shares were
worth $58,000.
Others made out like bandits, unfortunately.
I favor punishing the guilty, but we also need to find the root caused
that allowed bad actors and fools to bring about the catastrophe in the
first place. The same goes for every disaster, such as Fukushima and the
wreck of the Titanic. On April 15, 1912 everyone in the world knew who was
directly responsible for the Titanic disaster: Capt. Smith and his
officers. But it went beyond that. The causes were deeper. People needed to
reveal the causes and take steps to prevent this from happening again. That
took a Congressional Investigation and many reforms and new regulations.
Mainly, it took Sen. William Alden Smith, without whom the dead would have
died in vain. There would have been many more preventable shipwrecks
without him.
We need someone like that to clean up Wall Street. Unfortunately, all
efforts to do so have been blocked by the bankers and the Republican Party.
They seem determined to cause another disaster. That is predictable. In
1912, the shipping interests made a tremendous effort to stop Smith from
investigating and reforming their industry. They attacked him the
newspapers. To this day, many accounts of the Titanic disaster portray him
as a fool and useless person who accomplished nothing. No good deed goes
unpunished!
See:
http://www.lenr-canr.org/acrobat/RothwellJcoldfusion.pdf
- Jed
Re: [Vo]:Too Big to Fail movie portrays institutional disaster
Chemical Engineer cheme...@gmail.com wrote: I realize they were not all bankers. At least arrest the bankers for negotiating a worthless instrument(s)... Unfortunately, most of them were not committing any crime. CDOs were not subject to any oversight or regulations in 2008. You cannot make laws retroactive. That is unconstitutional. If they were a captain of a ship in the miliary that sank, they could call for their own court martial: . . . Many of these people were called before Congress and raked over the coals. On the other hand, they were paid $50 million a year and they they got to keep the money. This is infuriating. But what worries me about the future is that the problems have not been corrected. The situation is likely to recur. The institutions are still too big to fail. Risky trading and moral hazard still abound. The people who caused the problems and the Republican Party together have prevented meaningful reforms. I'm sorry to introduce political subjects here but it is a fact that Romney says he wants to do away with the the reforms that have been implemented. It is not like he is hiding his agenda. He says the continuing economic weakness is caused by the reforms. I assume that Romney and the so-called masters of the universe are sincere. From my point of view, they want another chance to destroy the economy. They think they are the experts and it must be someone else's fault, or it was caused by too many regulations, even though CDOs were not regulated. Only a few of the top people, such as Greenspan, expressed remorse for their roles. People who cause terrible problems are seldom aware of what they have done. They are seldom repentant. World War I British generals who were responsible for the disasters at the Somme, Gallipoli and elsewhere never felt they made a mistake. Why would they? They were promoted, made into knights of the realm, and Lord This or That. The highest surviving officer from the Titanic, Lightoller was appalling. He admitted no personal responsibility. He defended the system to the hilt. To the end of his life he attacked Sen. Smith, because Smith reformed the system. (See my essay for details.) Needless to say, this applies to cold fusion in spades. The people who took leading roles in suppressing it were praised by the mass media and by the establishment. They often boast about their historic role in doing this. As far as I can tell, not one of them has ever read the literature. It has never crossed their minds that cold fusion might be real, and they may have made a mistake. (Mike McKubre disagrees with me about that. He thinks several of these people are aware of the facts and running scared. He knows the situation better than I do.) Whether these people know the facts or not, they never say cold fusion might be real so maybe we should look into it. They never say that suppressing research and destroying the careers of scientists is unethical. Park and others think this is how science is supposed to work. They say cold fusion is fraud and lunacy and it must be suppressed to preserve the integrity of science. Naturally, I think they are wrong. My point here is not to reiterate what everyone knows I think, but rather to point out that there is a *tremendous* gap in perception between people on different sides of this dispute. There seems to be no common ground. No grounds for discussion, or compromise. We do not even agree about the basic principles of the scientific method, such as the idea that experiments overrule theory. Look at Huizenga's book for proof of that. We do not agree about the definition of replication or whether it is necessary for an experiment to be easily replicated before you can believe it. Or whether it has to be controlled, or explained in theory before you can believe it. Some of the 2004 DoE reviewers sincerely think that an experiment that is not explained by theory cannot be believed. This is not a minor quarrel about technical details. It is not as if they have some doubts about the calorimetry in this experiment, or the mass spectroscopy in that one. The discussion never gets that far. It is not about technical issues. We define the scientific method one way, and they define it in other ways that are radically different and utterly incompatible with our definition. This is true of many other monumental disputes. There was no common ground between the WWI generals and people such as Winston Churchill who opposed them. There were no grounds for negotiation between Lincoln and the secessionists of 1860. In the Titanic dispute, Sen. Smith wanted to make it a rule that sailors assigned to lookout posts high on a mast would be issued binoculars. Who would argue with that? The testimony revealed that if lookouts on the Titanic had been given binoculars, the accident would have been avoided. What sane person would want to save the cost of few pairs of binoculars at the risk of wrecking a ship worth hundreds of millions of
Re: [Vo]:Too Big to Fail movie portrays institutional disaster
...smart, good people? smart, maybe. Good, NO way. Henry Paulson was Goldman top brass for a long time, being CEO of GS from 1998 to 2006. Net worth: $700million. A company where five managing directors call their clients muppets in the past year. according to whistleblower Smith. ...Muppet is a British slang term for idiot... Read the story eg on wsj. This is a pack of wolves in sheep's clothings, which they have to, because they have to maintain the ILLUSION OF BEING TRUSTWORTHY. There is a negative selection going on here, as to who reaches the top, see Deutsche Bank Ackermann, Breuer, Jain, who are criminals not in the legalistic sense, but by common sense. Non-bankers are kept in line by forward-corruption. See Clinton, John Mayor, Blair , Schroeder etc. Clinton was by some $10 mio negative after Lewinsky, now he is worth some $70 mio. Why? Not because he is a honest person. Enron was one of the rare cases, where this mindset was uncovered. This is a closed system. You cannot get into the top brass of those structures if You don NOT have this mindset. (Tis is different from mafia 'omerta', which applies to ALL members. ) It was two women who mainly did that. Think about that. In times where the LIBOR is found to be manipulated by six major banks, with the consent of the FED and the Bank of England, I find it difficult to find some crumbs of -ahem- naive honesty among this lot. Self-delusion is just one ingredient in the cocktail. The main being narcissism, as sense of grandeur and utter contempt for the ordinary folk. Guilty until proven innocent. Guenter Von: Chemical Engineer cheme...@gmail.com An: vortex-l@eskimo.com vortex-l@eskimo.com Gesendet: 21:11 Mittwoch, 25.Juli 2012 Betreff: Re: [Vo]:Too Big to Fail movie portrays institutional disaster Jed, I realize they were not all bankers. At least arrest the bankers for negotiating a worthless instrument(s)... If they were a captain of a ship in the miliary that sank, they could call for their own court martial: Most navies have a standard court-martial which convenes whenever a ship is lost; this does not presume that the captain should be suspected of wrongdoing, but merely that the circumstances surrounding the loss of the ship should be made part of the official record. Many ship captains will actually insist on a court-martial in such circumstances. On Wednesday, July 25, 2012, Jed Rothwell wrote: Chemical Engineer cheme...@gmail.com wrote: They seem like smart, good people who accidentally brought about a disaster They did it to make more money for themselves and the bank. Well, not everyone in the story was a banker. Some were government officials. Paulson was an official who had been an investment banker. I get the impression he was an honest banker. He quit and sold his shares in Goldman before he became an official. I am not excusing these people. I want to know how this happened. Why it happened. Greed and stupidity are the cause, but people have always been greedy and stupid, yet Wall Street seldom collapses catastrophically because of it. These explanations are not sufficient; there has to be more. I say the institution itself was dysfunctional. Paulson and the others were in over their heads. They did not realize how little they knew. They did not realize things were out of control. They were obviously ignorant to risk they created for everyone and we are all still paying for it and will be for years to come. For that, they should have resigned, been fired or at a minimum demoted. Many have been fired. Many lost their own money. One of the main characters in the movie, Fuld of Lehman Brothers, had shares of Lehman worth about $1 billion. When Lehman declared bankruptcy his shares were worth $58,000. Others made out like bandits, unfortunately. I favor punishing the guilty, but we also need to find the root caused that allowed bad actors and fools to bring about the catastrophe in the first place. The same goes for every disaster, such as Fukushima and the wreck of the Titanic. On April 15, 1912 everyone in the world knew who was directly responsible for the Titanic disaster: Capt. Smith and his officers. But it went beyond that. The causes were deeper. People needed to reveal the causes and take steps to prevent this from happening again. That took a Congressional Investigation and many reforms and new regulations. Mainly, it took Sen. William Alden Smith, without whom the dead would have died in vain. There would have been many more preventable shipwrecks without him. We need someone like that to clean up Wall Street. Unfortunately, all efforts to do so have been blocked by the bankers and the Republican Party. They seem determined to cause another disaster. That is predictable. In 1912, the shipping interests made a tremendous effort to stop Smith from investigating and reforming their industry
Re: [Vo]:Too Big to Fail movie portrays institutional disaster
Yeah, therefore it is important to have the legislative and the jurisdictive on the payroll. The fact that it is not corrected, tells You a lot about how rotten the 'system' is. Bill Black calls this whole syndrome within the financials 'control fraud', but it is bigger than that. Think of parasites. Why are they parasites, and what distinguishes them from symbionts? Lots of them reprogram their host. Just as an arbitrary citation: http://m.animalplanet.com/s/4756/166?levelVal=2assetKeyVal=471003masterKey=monsterscatKey=monsters_howsubCatKey=childKey= At the societal level it is mostly about hijacking society's essential memes. I am quite astonished, that You, Jed, are not aware of that. Having worked for about 7 years in behavioral physiology and biological cybernetics in an earlier life this is not news for me. Guenter Von: Jed Rothwell jedrothw...@gmail.com An: vortex-l@eskimo.com Gesendet: 23:15 Mittwoch, 25.Juli 2012 Betreff: Re: [Vo]:Too Big to Fail movie portrays institutional disaster Unfortunately, most of them were not committing any crime. CDOs were not subject to any oversight or regulations in 2008. You cannot make laws retroactive. That is unconstitutional. Many of these people were called before Congress and raked over the coals. On the other hand, they were paid $50 million a year and they they got to keep the money. This is infuriating. But what worries me about the future is that the problems have not been corrected.
Re: [Vo]:Too Big to Fail movie portrays institutional disaster
*I assume that Romney and the so-called masters of the universe are sincere. From my point of view, they want another chance to destroy the economy. They think they are the experts and it must be someone else's fault, or it was caused by too many regulations, even though CDOs were not regulated.* In the simplest of terms here is how it all works. At its heart, the reason behind the LIBOR scam is an attempt to avoid capital reserve regulations imposed by the government. The reason why regulation is something that financial managers try so hard to avoid at all costs is that it limits the financial leverage they can bring to bear on a deal. If they can use 2% of their money and 98% of your money, they make a great profit on their 2% investment. If they lose in this type of high leverage deal, they only lose their 2% and you lose 98% of your money. Government regulation (Dodd Frank) requires the financial institution maintain a prudent level of capital reserve when they do a deal so the deal looks like this: If they are required to use 50% of their money and 50% of your money, they make a diminished profit percentage on their 50% investment. If they lose in this type of low leveraged deal, they lose their 50% of their money and you lose 50% of your money. In this restricted regulatory environment, the appetite of the deal makers for risk is greatly lowered. High leverage deals have been and still remain the key strategy in making vast riches with little risk to their own money. Use the money of the Muppets to do the deal and if something goes wrong the Muppets are wiped out. Romney likes this way of doing business, he grew up in this business environment and became successful using leverage and he wants to get back to the wild west of freewheeling risk taking with other people’s money. Only put a token amount of private equity capital at risk and keep all the profit and transfer the entire risk to the Muppets” for the smallest portion of the reward that is possible. This is why Romney wants to remove the Dodd Frank financial regulation legislation. Cheers:Axil On Wed, Jul 25, 2012 at 5:15 PM, Jed Rothwell jedrothw...@gmail.com wrote: Chemical Engineer cheme...@gmail.com wrote: I realize they were not all bankers. At least arrest the bankers for negotiating a worthless instrument(s)... Unfortunately, most of them were not committing any crime. CDOs were not subject to any oversight or regulations in 2008. You cannot make laws retroactive. That is unconstitutional. If they were a captain of a ship in the miliary that sank, they could call for their own court martial: . . . Many of these people were called before Congress and raked over the coals. On the other hand, they were paid $50 million a year and they they got to keep the money. This is infuriating. But what worries me about the future is that the problems have not been corrected. The situation is likely to recur. The institutions are still too big to fail. Risky trading and moral hazard still abound. The people who caused the problems and the Republican Party together have prevented meaningful reforms. I'm sorry to introduce political subjects here but it is a fact that Romney says he wants to do away with the the reforms that have been implemented. It is not like he is hiding his agenda. He says the continuing economic weakness is caused by the reforms. I assume that Romney and the so-called masters of the universe are sincere. From my point of view, they want another chance to destroy the economy. They think they are the experts and it must be someone else's fault, or it was caused by too many regulations, even though CDOs were not regulated. Only a few of the top people, such as Greenspan, expressed remorse for their roles. People who cause terrible problems are seldom aware of what they have done. They are seldom repentant. World War I British generals who were responsible for the disasters at the Somme, Gallipoli and elsewhere never felt they made a mistake. Why would they? They were promoted, made into knights of the realm, and Lord This or That. The highest surviving officer from the Titanic, Lightoller was appalling. He admitted no personal responsibility. He defended the system to the hilt. To the end of his life he attacked Sen. Smith, because Smith reformed the system. (See my essay for details.) Needless to say, this applies to cold fusion in spades. The people who took leading roles in suppressing it were praised by the mass media and by the establishment. They often boast about their historic role in doing this. As far as I can tell, not one of them has ever read the literature. It has never crossed their minds that cold fusion might be real, and they may have made a mistake. (Mike McKubre disagrees with me about that. He thinks several of these people are aware of the facts and running scared. He knows the situation better than I do.) Whether these people know
Re: [Vo]:Too Big to Fail movie portrays institutional disaster
On Wed, Jul 25, 2012 at 7:49 AM, Alain Sepeda alain.sep...@gmail.comwrote: that is the problem with that theory. people are not realist by nature, but because of their own investment and their dependencies on others beliefs. I am reminded of Upton Sinclair's remark that it is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it. Eric
Re: [Vo]:Too Big to Fail movie portrays institutional disaster
BIG QUOTE ! exactly what I have observed in finance, research, and IT. what Roland Benabou said is even harder since the quote might be : it is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his perceived wealth depends upon his not understanding it. 2012/7/26 Eric Walker eric.wal...@gmail.com On Wed, Jul 25, 2012 at 7:49 AM, Alain Sepeda alain.sep...@gmail.comwrote: that is the problem with that theory. people are not realist by nature, but because of their own investment and their dependencies on others beliefs. I am reminded of Upton Sinclair's remark that it is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it. Eric
Re: [Vo]:Too Big to Fail movie portrays institutional disaster
I wrote: What I find most frightening about the 2008 crash in the weightless for trade . . . No idea what that means. I think voice input intercepted a conversation on the telephone and I did not notice. That is to say, I forgot to turn off the mic when someone called. - Jed
Re: [Vo]:Too Big to Fail movie portrays institutional disaster
That is to say, I forgot to turn off the mic when someone called. Good thing it wasn't your girlfriend! ;-) T
Re: [Vo]:Too Big to Fail movie portrays institutional disaster
LOL! That was funny! 2012/7/24 Jed Rothwell jedrothw...@gmail.com I wrote: What I find most frightening about the 2008 crash in the weightless for trade . . . No idea what that means. I think voice input intercepted a conversation on the telephone and I did not notice. That is to say, I forgot to turn off the mic when someone called. - Jed
Re: [Vo]:Too Big to Fail movie portrays institutional disaster
Bruno Santos besantos1...@gmail.com wrote: LOL! That was funny! It is one of the hazards of modern life, like having someone in the next stall in the bathroom chatter on a cell phone. When people like Clarke and Asimov predicted the future back in the 50s, they anticipated things like cell phones. They were enthusiastic about the bright prospects. They did not anticipate that people would use the damn things in public bathrooms and during movies. - Jed
Re: [Vo]:Too Big to Fail movie portrays institutional disaster
Don't know the movie, just read two comments by two people I value (sic!). Barry Ritholtz and Matt Taibbi. http://www.ritholtz.com/blog/2011/05/review-hbos-too-big-to-fail/ http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/blogs/taibblog/andrew-ross-sorkin-gives-goldman-a-rubdown-20110607 Ritholtz is sort of neutral, whereas Taibbi has this to say: ...The Sorkin piece reads like it was written by the bank's marketing department, which may not be an accident. In November of last year, the New York Times announced that Dealbook was entering into a sponsorship agreement with a variety of companies, including ... Goldman, Sachs. ... So it seems to be unclear whether Sorkin actually wrote an elaborate piece of propaganda, and I tend to side with Taibbi here, who has a lot of 'common sense', as is one of Your topics. Now the financial 'universe' seems to be constructed on different rules than the physical one: It is a human construct, based on belief, deception, self-deception and factoids, dumb people and smart people. (Cf the film Enron: the the smartest guys in the room, which I highly recommend, to recognize what is going on in the heads of the players.) What is shocking to me is, that 'hard' science wrt LENR seems to be so off-track. With the financial 'universe' not so much. It is one created by a bunch of compulsive liars as being the 'Creator'. And in this web of lies You are hopelessly lost. The drive is making money (financial) , not knowing the 'truth' (physical), whatever that maybe. In this context I highly recommend David Hume's Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion, which is a humorous as it is a classic. The 'gods of the financial universe' to paraphrase Hume, were/are a deluded bunch of idiots. Regarding the physical universe, this is still an open question. Guenter Von: Jed Rothwell jedrothw...@gmail.com An: vortex-l@eskimo.com Gesendet: 22:55 Dienstag, 24.Juli 2012 Betreff: [Vo]:Too Big to Fail movie portrays institutional disaster I saw the HBO movie, Too Big to Fail, about the 2008 market crash. I recommend it. It is a dramatization with actors. Based on what I have read about the crisis it seems to be historically accurate. Regarding this history I recommend the book The Devils are All Here. I mention this movie here because in my view, the history of cold fusion has been one long disaster caused mainly by dysfunctional institutions, especially the physics establishment in the US. The two events are more similar than you might think. Both took a long time to develop. Both are still happening. The problems in the financial markets have not been solved. The closing scenes of the movie show that they have not even been addressed in many ways.
Re: [Vo]:Too Big to Fail movie portrays institutional disaster
The PBS series Frontline did a 4 part series on the 2008 financial collapse
that was extremely well done. It is available online. Many bankers have
forgotten they work for their customers.
On Tuesday, July 24, 2012, Guenter Wildgruber wrote:
Don't know the movie, just read two comments by two people I value (sic!).
Barry Ritholtz and Matt Taibbi.
http://www.ritholtz.com/blog/2011/05/review-hbos-too-big-to-fail/
http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/blogs/taibblog/andrew-ross-sorkin-gives-goldman-a-rubdown-20110607
Ritholtz is sort of neutral, whereas Taibbi has this to say:
...The Sorkin piece reads like it was written by the bank's marketing
department, which may not be an accident. In November of last year, the *New
York Times* announced
http://www.thestreet.com/story/10912083/the-new-york-times-expands-dealbook-franchise-delivering-must-read-news-and-insight-for-players-at-all-levels-of-deal-community.htmlthat
Dealbook was entering into a sponsorship agreement with a variety of
companies, including ... Goldman, Sachs.
...
So it seems to be unclear whether Sorkin actually wrote an elaborate piece
of propaganda, and I tend to side with Taibbi here, who has a lot of
'common sense', as is one of Your topics.
Now the financial 'universe' seems to be constructed on different rules
than the physical one:
It is a human construct, based on belief, deception, self-deception and
factoids, dumb people and smart people.
(Cf the film Enron: the the smartest guys in the room, which I highly
recommend, to recognize what is going on in the heads of the players.)
What is shocking to me is, that 'hard' science wrt LENR seems to be so
off-track.
With the financial 'universe' not so much. It is one created by a bunch of
compulsive liars as being the 'Creator'.
And in this web of lies You are hopelessly lost.
The drive is making money (financial) , not knowing the 'truth'
(physical), whatever that maybe.
In this context I highly recommend David Hume's Dialogues Concerning
Natural Religion, which is a humorous as it is a classic.
The 'gods of the financial universe' to paraphrase Hume, were/are a
deluded bunch of idiots.
Regarding the physical universe, this is still an open question.
Guenter
--
*Von:* Jed Rothwell jedrothw...@gmail.com javascript:_e({}, 'cvml',
'jedrothw...@gmail.com');
*An:* vortex-l@eskimo.com javascript:_e({}, 'cvml',
'vortex-l@eskimo.com');
*Gesendet:* 22:55 Dienstag, 24.Juli 2012
*Betreff:* [Vo]:Too Big to Fail movie portrays institutional disaster
I saw the HBO movie, Too Big to Fail, about the 2008 market crash. I
recommend it. It is a dramatization with actors. Based on what I have read
about the crisis it seems to be historically accurate.
Regarding this history I recommend the book The Devils are All Here.
I mention this movie here because in my view, the history of cold fusion
has been one long disaster caused mainly by dysfunctional institutions,
especially the physics establishment in the US. The two events are more
similar than you might think. Both took a long time to develop. Both are
still happening. The problems in the financial markets have not been
solved. The closing scenes of the movie show that they have not even been
addressed in many ways.
Re: [Vo]:Too Big to Fail movie portrays institutional disaster
Chemical Engineer cheme...@gmail.com wrote: The PBS series Frontline did a 4 part series on the 2008 financial collapse that was extremely well done. See also: NPR, A Show Tune About A Hedge Fund: 'Bet Against The American Dream' http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2010/04/americandream.html This is hysterical. Step 1. We write a check to a Wall Street bank for $10 million and ask them to make us a CDO! Step 2. They create the CDO using . . . risky stuff! Very risky stuff! * Extremely* risky stuff! . . . - Jed
Re: [Vo]:Too Big to Fail movie portrays institutional disaster
The equivalent to Enron's Smartest Guys movie about the 2008 collapse is Inside Job: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1645089/ However, it is more of a documentary than a drama. Tells the story well. T
