WaltFrench

WaltFrench

68p

187 comments posted · 0 followers · following 0

7 years ago @ The Reality-Based Comm... - The Oakland Warehouse ... · 0 replies · +1 points

This tragedy certainly arose from people struggling to live/work in substandard conditions. Our City Administrator recently told a group that a half million new jobs have happened in the Bay Area, with only about one-tenth that number of housing units, so of course there have been sharp cost increases that may take decades to sort out.

But this tragedy ALSO happened because dozens were crammed into a space that never should've been a party/club environment. That has nothing to do with housing costs, but rather the fact that so many younger adults have so little income to afford better locations.

Oakland has many clubs; they're not particularly geared at the rich but AFAICT, are reasonably inspected & safe. This location shouldn't have been one of them.

7 years ago @ The Reality-Based Comm... - The Oakland Warehouse ... · 1 reply · 0 points

Yes, I agree. You should have edited before posting.

And, I suggest, ALSO thought about how your hobby-horse issue is –>at best<– trivial vs the concerns of dozens of people dying after packing themselves into a deathtrap because they're inured to the risks of a debased environment.

8 years ago @ Atlas Sound Money Project - Interest rates, profit... · 0 replies · +1 points

“Interest rates are low because the demand to borrow has fallen.”

The writer apparently is not of the “supply side” school*. There is the little matter of our Central Bank, which has been trying desperately to jumpstart economic activity so that there WILL BE stronger demand for borrowing.

* Yes, a joke. But what only talking about demand is a joke.

10 years ago @ http://ecorner.stanfor... - Stanford\'s Entreprene... · 0 replies · +2 points

“…if Apple does things differently than the way you're teaching it and if Apple is the most successful, most admired, most valuable company in the world, shouldn't you at least be asking the question, are we teaching the right thing and should we be paying more attention to the way Apple does things?”

Maybe even more importantly, the way that Apple does things (today) is more or less what transformed them from near-bankruptcy to the top of American business. It's not just how your chauffeur drives your Rolls, it's how to navigate your Prius until you've made it.

10 years ago @ EconoMonitor - We Can See Our True Se... · 0 replies · +3 points

Also, canaries are not people! What miner should care if canaries are dropping over dead?

It's all propaganda, folks! Perfectly safe and no reason to worry.

10 years ago @ Wonkette - Our Irrational Gun Opt... · 1 reply · +11 points

Submit it to the Darwin Awards people.

11 years ago @ EconoMonitor - Romancing Alpha (α), ... · 0 replies · +2 points

@R ik has a correct, buy IMO minor complaint.

Mine is where you said something not incorrect, but misleading — and key to whether your thesis is correct.

You wrote, “We use a scale of 0-1. Let’s say your benchmark is the S&P500 — it has a β = 1. Something uncorrelated does what it does regardless of what the SPX does, and its Beta is = 0.”

First, betas can have, and for active portfolios often do have betas above 1.0: for every X% the S&P rises/falls (more than cash), you'll rationally expect your own portfolio will rise/fall maybe 1.4X%. Of course, excepting futures or options portfolios, (a) it'll seldom be EXACTLY what the beta would predict, and (b) your estimate of the beta is only a forecast, too: two different analysts WILL come up with two or more different beta estimates.

Now to the bigger point: it's only for the very unusual case of a portfolio truly, completely uncorrelated to the S&P — that beta disappears. A halfway savvy portfolio manager can target beta pretty much how he likes (if allowed futures, margin, etc), but even portfolios with lots of “different drummer” return — ups and downs with very low correlation to the S&P that are meant to be alpha — beta is still there. It's actually pretty darn hard to find a long stock portfolio with truly zero beta.

Alpha and beta are often confused in long histories of performance, where generally upward market returns are compared to even stronger portfolios. That could be alpha, or it could be beta above 1.0. Most individual investors are ill-equipped to analyze which, and even less to estimate the steadiness of the alpha, which is the only way you'd get any confidence that it wasn't just the one model portfolio the manager ran that had a good enough return history that people would want to buy it.

11 years ago @ Wonkette - Try California Senator... · 0 replies · +9 points

Has Wonkette ever been picked up by a Chinese news service, repeating all the opinion verbatim? (I especially enjoyed wondering whether “ GROBBLEFLURMENSTARM” would be treated as a loan-word from German, or perhaps a really long acronym.)

Generally, Representatives Ought Be Biased Libertarians Enjoying Firearms Like Unemployed, Rioting Militiamen; Especially Nuking Sharia Terrorists (who are) All Reading Marx.

11 years ago @ Wonkette - Great GOP Hope Marco R... · 0 replies · +4 points

Meanwhile, a recent chart from the IRS on non-compliance shows small businesses hiding income is the biggest single element of ~ 15% underpayment of legal tax. Not as if Rubio is exposing anything new here.

11 years ago @ Wonkette - Tea Party Learns Its P... · 0 replies · +12 points

WSJ's “CEO Council” features video of Joe Lieberman (!) telling Republicans that “47%” type attitudes by R's painted *themselves* as against upward mobility. Yes, the Obama campaign was willing to help. So even Asians — who (stereotypically and in my personal experience) are aggressively interested in succeeding through hard work — voted sharply against Romney's exclusive club.

Certainly the Tea Party mobilizes the Left to turn out and vote heavily, but I'd agree that as a way to win an election, losing self-described “Moderates” by 15 points and Asians by 45 needs something more than weird and mean-spirited wedge issues such as echo around Tea Party rooms.