I guess the number of problem banks go up if you don't close any.

Hoocoodanode?

CalculatedRisk wrote:

It will be close to 1,000 by the end of the year

I think I see a second derivative!

Thanks Surferdude.

And besides _______ must be destroyed

Liz, I have had the opportunity to talk to a short sale department recently. And after due consideration that the extra time spent to train gerbils to do as good a job as the people I spoke to perform wouldn't pencil out.Close,though,real close.

Hang Loose, surferdude808.

Rajesh wrote:

I think I see a second derivative!

Every three months another 100. that's way too regular.

I know liz,but it would be nice to speak to someone who could pass the turing test.

Hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha.

And yet, some short sales seem to go through.

The only way you get someone with brain cells is if you get court-ordered mediation.

One of my clients is about to lose an "investment" house. The sale is nigh, and they are offering to pay him a couple of thousand for a deed in lieu. I don't think there is time, before the sales, but I told him to take the money and run if he could.

But this offer makes no sense.

There is no learning curve displayed.

House is worth less than 25 cents on the dollar.

speed racer wrote:

Outsourcing collections to India, I wonder how that is going?

Large loan mod/collector firm just closed their N CA shop 9/1 and is transferring 1000 jobs to India.

skk
speed racer
sdtfs
Tom Stone
Gnomester
Johnboy

Liz, I saw a place listed by a Marin Broker go from $985k to $685k in3 months,the listing expired and the "owner" decided to lease the place for enough to cover the nut. For some reason nobody wanted to pay 40% over market rates. the final figure was the loan amount. bought with 30% down in 2006,,,

lawyerliz wrote:

But this offer makes no sense.

Unless they can turn a profit from someone with a lot of money and no brains; I figure government, insurance, or pension fund scam. Let's see, maybe someone has cracked open the MBS and CDO stuff that the Fed is holding and trying to erase the mortgage from the pool, then they don't have to admit that the sale of these instruments were bogus?

POIC,field mice are usually quite unafraid of people,not having encountered many. I leave my door open on warm days and they sometimes wander in and stare at me. They can be quite playful,and so can my cat...maybe I'll change my Icon.

Tom, the mouse seemed to have a good attitude (:

Uggh, I've got a very large black/red/blue finger and soon to be lost finger nail after a hit from the hammer while pulling down the bathroom tile today.

Look who's holding the assets.

For the first time in U.S. history, banks own a greater share of residential housing net worth in the United States than all individual Americans put together.

Banks don't just have all the money - they have everything else too. That is, the banks deemed essential to the well being of our state.

Stdfs, dang that one hurt!! Holey moley was that throbbing for a few hours.

Haven't watched this documentary, but the subject is interesting and disturbing: The Bayesian Heresy: Dangerous Knowledge

"In this one-off documentary, David Malone looks at four brilliant mathematicians - Georg Cantor, Ludwig Boltzmann, Kurt Gödel and Alan Turing - whose genius has profoundly affected us, but which tragically drove them insane and eventually led to them all committing suicide.

The film begins with Georg Cantor, the great mathematician whose work proved to be the foundation for much of the 20th-century mathematics. He believed he was God's messenger and was eventually driven insane trying to prove his theories of infinity."

Sippn wrote:

Large loan mod/collector firm just closed their N CA shop 9/1 and is transferring 1000 jobs to India.

Name?

CalculatedRisk wrote:

It will be close to 1,000 by the end of the year - especially if they take too many weeks off.

What is the ETF to short the FDIC?

Mr Slippery wrote:

What is the ETF to short the FDIC?

Got ?

I keep reading that last line to mean that the FDIC will have to close 1000 banks by the end of the year.

Fat chance of that.

Please, Alan Turing knocked himself off because of persecution for being a homosexual. His mathematics wasn't part of it.

flaminia wrote:

His mathematics wasn't part of it.

Are you saying the story just doesn't add up?

Rajesh wrote:

I think I see a second derivative!

will they sell CDOs on the Unfamous 1000! (an ancient, but now revived, greek military group, of reknowned valor (and plenty of money to pay for protection).

Please, Alan Turing knocked himself off because of persecution for being a homosexual""
...
made a nice edit (oops) Broadway play about poor Alan... but then what about put upon Werner in Copenhagen?

TJ and The Bear wrote:

Got Hi Ho Silver, Away! ?

, , and a little :platinum:

WTF with silver the last 2 weeks? Inflation?

rosethorn wrote:

Haven't watched this documentary, but the subject is interesting and disturbing: The Bayesian Heresy: Dangerous Knowledge

Thanks. Its there at the usual bay where the pirates hang out - both parts - 13 Seeds ! resolving the issue right now. I'll wait till I watch before I comment but the quick comment..
All committed suicide ? I knew Turing committed suicide ( a dreadful legacy of UK homophobia, IMO, cos he was convicted of {insert '50s crime that is no longer a crime} ) but checking Godel..yeah.. The other two.. OK I'll watch the program.

I have God's nose! Well,maybe not, but it is big enough...

JimPortlandOR wrote:

will they sell CDOs on the Unfamous 1000! (an ancient, but now revived, greek military group,

Speaking of homosexuality,...Any relationship to this group?

Sacred Band of Thebes - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Duke of Con Dao wrote:

the Brits never learned anything

it took like forever for the Brits to even say homosexual, queer or gay in public. It was the 'unspeakable' offense..

Just catching up on the comments...last thread had a comment about manual labor....and how it is NOT being done by our citizens these days. Small rural area here....we can find no young or able persons to do manual labor. All the young men are more concerned about driving their cars fast down the road. Here the women end up doing the hard work. Of course, this labor used to be done by illegal Mexicans. I think the men in these parts just got used to that being the reality. Manual labor is so lower class, you know. Lordy, this country is due for a rude awakening. What happens when the gas/oil runs out and men can no longer operate those large machines? Perhaps the women can withhold sex??? Don't know. But I think a radical reorganization of society will be taking place shortly.

It appears Cantor spent quite a bit of time in "sanatoria" (mental institutions). My thought on the subject is just that these people spent their lives out on the edge of their fields; perhaps that "edginess" if you will isn't compartmentalized. I don't know the answer.

Why is it called the Bayesian heresy ? Of course I know Bayesian statistics - but heresy ?

JimPortlandOR wrote:

it took like forever for the Brits to even say homosexual, queer or gay in public

Saw a quip from one of their lawmakers a few years back when they were about to legalize some aspect or another: " ...its not like we are French, for gods sake!"

POIC, I have had one very wealthy friend in my life,what you say about not being able to trust anyone not of your class has some truth,but misses the fact that many of those who are of your class are also untrustworthy. Old money seems to do better at having a decent quality of life.

"poic
do you consider Donald Trump to be a member of The Rich?"

neuvaux rich yes but definitely not old money.

Duke of Con Dao wrote:

do you consider Donald Trump to be a member of The Rich?

Doesn't matter if he is or isn't, it doesn't seem to do anything for that hair.

That's hair? I thought it was a small endangered species preserve.

'night all. I get to sleep in til 6! YAY!

GN, TS.

neuvaux rich yes but definitely not old money."
so, you answered my question.
what does he have to say about the Johnson Wax people?

(I do believe I saw this afterall...
did they talk about the old man hiring Frank lloyd wright?)

Bubblisimo...
I think you're missing the point but don't feel bad
so did Capote with Babe Paley

Don't worry Bubblissimo, I'm also missing the point

skk wrote:

Why is it called the Bayesian heresy ?

Still looking it up. If you find out, let me know. Seems to be a metonym type thing like Maxwell's Demon or Schodinger's Cat.

rosethorn wrote:

"Fan Gang is Professor of Economics at Beijing University and the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, Director of China’s National Economic Research Institute, Secretary-General of the China Reform Foundation, and a member of the Monetary Policy Committee of the People’s Bank of China. In a recent short article for Project Syndicate he argues that China’s unmatched “sustained rapid economic growth for 30 years without significant fluctuations or interruption” is due to its superior competence at “modern economics” compared to Western nations. By “modern economics” Gang means post-neoclassical economics, most especially Keynes."

Whether or this 'better economists' meme is true, arrogance has Always been China's downfall and why they will never rule the world. Though it sounds harsh, no one likes them, even in Asia.

Paul Allen is a serial bankrupter too. A company named Diego, Charter Communications, threatened bankruptcy for the Rose Garden, home of the Portland Trail Blazers, which he owns.

Wish I was rich enough to not pay my bills!

purple wrote:

Though it sounds harsh, no one likes them, even in Asia.

Seems like everyone in Asia hates their neighbors.

if I say John McClone does that mean anything to you?
...
as for Truman he thought the Paleys and their ilk were the power centers in American culture...
he was dead wrong. why? because they don't let his type into the temple let alone those scalawags
the Paleys, Slim Keith et alia

Duke of Con Dao wrote:

if I say John McClone does that mean anything to you?

And his wife was Jane McClunt?

Paul Allen is a serial bankrupter too."
...
former boss of mine, trained as an architect at harvard
but somehow found her way into finance works for
him in a very high capacity at Vulcan... oh yes,,,
she's a woman and is formidable...

Duke of Con Dao wrote:

she's a woman and is formidable...

How do you end up with a small fortune?

Start with a large fortune.

Paul Allen and Vulcan have lost on all of their ventures, thank God Paul had Bill Gates and Steve Balmer to provide him with the large fortune!

rosethorn wrote:

I was talking to a relative yesterday who doesn't pay much attention to the news, but they brought up unprompted from me the deal where Citi is hiring thousands in India after receiving govt bailouts.

I've seen a few comments here and there that one problem we have is that economic recovery here is tending to create jobs in China and India. Proper thing to do is to kick the supports out from under housing and CRE and let prices fall to the point where rents are low enough to make American labor competitive. AKA if the Chinese won't revalue their currency on their end we'll do it on our end.

sdtfs wrote:

If at first you don't succeed,...

He succeeded at first, since then, not so much!

Interesting it's called Bayesian Heresy, given that Thomas Bayes of Bayes Theorem was a religious guy trying to prove existence of God using probability.

sdtfs wrote:

Seems like it refers to "inverse probability"? From pg. 130

The lady tasting tea: how statistics ... - Google Books

Neat ! That's a weird formulation by Salsburg - checked him out in the wiki ( reputable real math/science guy it seems, NOT a science "writer") ; here's what I've come across:
Adding Art to the Rigor of Statistical Science

In both cases, its not CAPITALIZED . I think that's what's bugging me. Its not a - whatdya call it - idiom is the word I'd use - until that blog and this documentary. Your example was well put - everybody and his dog, well ok, cat, has heard of Schrodinger's Cat - it was actually a real thought-experiment that described well a quantum conundrum.

Bayesian methods - well it was yeah, its cool, but a bit intractable, no, this other shit works too.

"Bayesian methods - well it was yeah, its cool, but a bit intractable, no, this other shit works too."

skk have you done anything with np-completeness and cook's theorum?

I took a course on computability and complexity in University and ended up having Dr. Cook as my Professor.

Lord am I glad I went into plain software programming. Way,way above my iq level.

Poured my glass of wine for the evening went over to CR to check out the Bank Failures.

What the hell ??

A couple more weeks of this and I'll be pouring whiskeys to get ready for the Banking Holiday coming up..

poic wrote:

skk have you done anything with np-completeness and cook's theorum?

Hell yeah. Done as in "Done" no - done as in groupie ( to use a slightly distasteful metaphor - perhaps jock sniffer is better.. errr perhaps not ) done as in "know" yeah - I followed the recent Deolalikar attempted proof ( P != NP ) - The P≠NP “Proof” Is One Week Old « Gödel’s Lost Letter and P=NP

pretty hard. I spent over 3 1/2 days on the attempted proof.

Professor Cook huh ? Wow ! That's a big guy.

For all that - I'm in the discrete math camp. So a lot of what's proved using continuous math is anathema ( another religious word but I promise not to burn and torture if they promise not to do the same ) to me. And the discrete math camp is pretty empty - lots of opportunity.

There's something very satisfying about erecting an 8 foot tall billboard in the city square in the dead of night.

Hoopajoops LTD wrote:

There's something very satisfying about erecting an 8 foot tall billboard in the city square in the dead of night.

I'll be looking for it on tomorrow's news.

Hoopajoops LTD wrote:

If you strategically affix your billboard to fixtures owned by PG&E, Union Pacific, the City, AND the County, it takes a while to sort things out so it can be removed.

Excellent use of the JD!

Hoopajoops LTD wrote:

it takes a while to sort things out so it can be removed.

Aren't you placing an inordinate amount of faith in a system that exhibits more and more extra-legal solutions with each passing day?

sorry...
I was called away to discuss in this late hour the west bank of jerusalem
most specifically a certain mount that on a clear day you can see the Mediterranean.
...
as for vulcan and paul allen I agree... I just hope she signed a huge guaranteed deal and knowing her
I'm sure she did.

Aren't you placing an inordinate amount of faith in a system that exhibits more and more extra-legal solutions with each passing day?

In order for them to cut through the red tape, the people responsible for removing the signs have to care enough to take on the responsibility that comes with it. Before they can remove this billboard from the railroad's cross arm, they'll need to contact PG&E to get permission to get their little crane within ten feet of high tension power lines above it, and in order to get the crane there in the first place, they'll need permission to shut down the city street... Mmmmm

Just food for thought...

Hoopajoops LTD wrote:

Did you know that there are only four patrol cars for our entire town, and with one officer per patrol car, it only takes two callouts, each requiring two officers, to completely incapacitate our police force for a half hour?

Looking forward to how this turns out. Does your town's hoosegow have WiFi?

poic wrote:

As a layman watching Born to be Rich I thought the choice of people who were interviewed was spot on.
Nothing else was needed other than to let them speak on camera to see the vacuousness, pettiness, out of touch and useleness of much of the upper class nowadays.

If you'd like another dose, see 'Mondovino'. The American vintners in it are aware they're being filmed. The movie is mostly a pleasure, though the California segments can become very hard to watch.

Can we dump the whole i thing, too? I tuned out of math at age 14 when that one came up. I'm still annoyed.

An afterthought: If you're not especially keen on wines, the film is one of the best introductions I've seen - maintains interest without presuming the viewer is an enthusiast.

Make it** 845** institutions , not 844 - this is two day old but utter gold - rereading it again, ooo the irony, the pathos, bathos - and whatever words Monty Python used - KD /mish should do one of their brilliant inliner comments on this. I"ll just do one. " In which proud populace, corrupt leadership nation have I seen this before ?"

President Hamid Karzai's brother calls for US to guarantee deposits amid fears collapse would threaten police and army salaries

Didn't Paulson threaten collapse ?

The stand-off came as the bank's third-biggest shareholder, Mahmoud Karzai – the elder brother of President Hamid Karzai – called for a US bailout of the stricken bank.

The central bank on Tuesday ordered that the chairman and chief executive of Kabul Bank, who are both large shareholders in the bank, should step down from their positions and a government official be appointed to manage the bank.

But western officials with intimate knowledge of the financial drama said the US treasury wanted to see much stronger action. That would include bringing the bank into line with international norms, not least the appointment of a fully independent board capable of standing up to overmighty shareholders.

Such independence would risk bringing to light allegations that members of the country's business and political elite have, for years, apparently got away with using deposits of thousands of ordinary Afghans to fund lavish lifestyles. The bank's funds are said to have been used to invest in loss-making enterprises and, allegedly, the re-election campaign of President Karzai.

In the words of one foreign official, the US treasury is anxious to "rip the lid" off the cowboy capitalism that has been allowed to flourish at Kabul Bank.

But sources close to the negotiations say the central bank is under intense pressure to resist US demands.

"What [the US treasury is] asking for is not completely unreasonable, from a prudential regulatory perspective," said one official. "But there are lots of assets off the books. The hunch is that shareholders would like to continue to use bank assets how they want, rather than bring it into line with international best practice."

The central bank's spokesman could not be reached by phone today.

Earlier in the week Abdul Qadir Fitrat, the bank's governor, said the removal of Sher Khan Farnood as chairman and Khalilullah Frozi as chief executive had been a long-planned decision to bring to an end the situation where the two largest shareholders controlled all the operations.

But western officials and banking industry sources say the government was forced to clean up the bank's suspected dubious practices after infighting between the two men threatened the bank's future. The collapse of the institution that manages the salaries of the country's police and army would create havoc, as well as hitting the Afghan economy.

Mahmoud Karzai, a minority stakeholder with 7% of the shares, said he welcomed a full audit of the bank and that he was concerned about three problems that may have occurred under Farnood and Frozi: lending over the bank's limits, lending to shareholders and investing outside the country in "risky businesses".

When asked whether he thought anyone should go to jail if fraud is uncovered he said, "I don't think so because that would create chaos. Maybe there should be fines or something like that."

But he said he would never let the bank be taken over: "It's an independent bank owned by the shareholders and we will not allow the government or anyone else to take it over."

Karzai had earlier told the Boston Globe that "America should do something" and the US treasury should agree to guarantee the bank.

But when contacted by the Guardian he was anxious to sound a note of confidence, and said that with the bank's $400m in cash he did not think a bailout would be necessary. He said he only floated the idea of the US paying money because he held the American embassy and US newspapers responsible for starting the panic when they reported Kabul Bank had made $300m in losses, which he strongly denied.

But Karzai conceded that it had already suffered a bank run, with almost $160m withdrawn in the last two days alone – a huge amount considering Afghanistan's tiny banking sector. Despite efforts by Karzai and the finance minister to assure customers, the test will be whether the panic continues when banks open tomorrow. With so many of the bank's assets unlikely to be easily sold for cash a bailout could be huge, perhaps requiring $600m, in the estimate of one bank executive.

The financial scandal is a huge embarrassment for Afghanistan, with many leading figures linked to the unorthodox bank whose brazen business practices were allowed to flourish despite a modern banking law drawn up by foreign experts.

In a country that lacked any banking infrastructure in late 2001, the bank mushroomed into Afghanistan's largest financial institution by attracting depositors who had never had bank accounts before, allegedly in part by running a lottery system where account holders had the chance to win large prizes.

Sources claimed those deposits were then used to fund enterprises belonging to shareholders or their families, while investors wanting to set up legitimate businesses often got nowhere.

Afghan officials resist clean-up of Kabul Bank as scandal engulfs elite | World news | The Guardian

I'm comfortable with "Io" for the first person singular, and Jamaicans do fine using "me" in the nominative case.

unirealist wrote:

Digital (on/off) is a dimensional reduction from oscillation, which is a dimensional reduction from sine waves, which is a dimensional reduction from helixes. All are periodic motions, expressed in 0,1, 2, or three spatial dimensions.

But with every reduction in number of representative spatial dimensions, more information is lost. Representing the world in digital form is convenient, but it also robs the world of virtually all meaning.

Just saying.

With respect, I for one am not talking just 0/1 - I'm talking of a terminated sequence of 0 and 1. ( and being 0, 1, there is always one of those there initiating the sequence).

We commonly, relax the condition of "terminated" sequences and use that to describe and completely compute stuff of which you speak -periodic motion.

I claim that this in itself ( so long as you use infinite sequences) is not a lossy transform - its actually a continuous descriptor { assuming that continuous descriptors are accurate descriptors of "reality"). The difficulty starts by insisting on using terminated sequences.

greenchutes wrote:

The infrastructure to bring back purely analog work has been dead for a while.

http://i.imgur.com/9h8HU.jpg

Math . . or in the modern world computer stuff, reminds me of my youth when I played chess.

The winning position just seems to appear when you have 'sight of the board.'

Without that, though, you're just moving pieces around.

May those of you so engaged in that complex stuff always be enlightened by 'sight of the board.'

skk wrote:

The difficulty starts by insisting on using terminated sequences.

I love starting out with F≠Ma. Even the most rigorous tend to forget the other terms. Comes from an old boss who could perform computational fluid dynamics in his head.

Craigslist removes its controversial adult section » Breaking News | Wire Update News | News Wires -

How fast is this going to move to the offshore gambling sites?

Morning, Nice and cool weather in the Hills of the Bear on the Tennessee River this morning.

Good morning from just the other side of nowhere...

Back in the day, from the early 60's until the internet done showed up, there used to be a nationwide teletype just for coin and bullion dealers, pretty much the same concept as here, but limited to words and numbers, but not noise. If things were hopping, a day's worth of paper used, might be the size of a phone book, and the teletype was a electric high speed typewriter for all intents and purposes, so it sounded like a machine-gun spitting out bullets, constantly.

No Slumcasts, but it was a lot of fun...

After this scam hit the news, there were buy/sell spreads on gold spray-painted 2x4's, almost immediately on the teletype, as it was chock-full of jokers...

When William Leonard, a court-appointed attorney, opened the vault at IGBE's Fort Lauderdale headquarters he found that "like Old Mother Hubbard's cupboard, it was bare." Or almost bare. Leonard did find a small adding machine and a few wooden blocks painted to look like gold bars.

Fool's Gold - TIME

78F and sunny here in scenic South Carolina this morning.

Eric wrote:

Did it do Slumcasts? (Yeah, I heard you , you said "no noise").

The entire universe is composed of slumcasts, a few of which appear to our limited brainpower to simplify to logical and mathematical relationships... Only an infinite mind could perceive and understand all the slumcasts simultaneously, rendering the entire universe into purely an abstraction....

Now that calls for

Pretty stretch of river, Gnome.

Too bad it's getting messed up...

Juvenal Delinquent wrote:

Pretty stretch of river, Gnome.

Too bad it's getting messed up...

It is, JD.
I'm doing what I can to combat it but I am back to square one.
How do you influence people and convince them that littering is NOT the correct behavior without resorting to violence?

nova wrote:

The article says he has seen people "shooting up." How likely is that?

I've never seen it.
Nor have I found any syringes on my trash pick ups (I use a "pikstick" so no chance of pokes if I did)
Mostly beer drinkers.
Hell, I pulled a freaking charcoal grill off the rocks a few weeks ago.
It's just a bunch of folks that have no pride in their community.
So, how do you begin to build that sense of pride?

nova wrote:

I figured he was going for the drama of drug deviants to get the police interested

It probably goes on out there; I just haven't seen it.

HomeGnome wrote:

nova wrote:
The article says he has seen people "shooting up." How likely is that?

Junkies are mellower than redneck beer drinkers, and would be to involved with staring at their foot to litter much.
Just don't trust them with money.

Juvenal Delinquent wrote:

You wouldn't have a party @ home and just leave trash everywhere, where it falls, a few broken beer bottles, that bust into hundreds of fragment grenades splattered on the cement patio in the backyard, etc, would you?

I wouldn't; but I'm certain a few of these folks DO.

Juvenal Delinquent wrote:

The worst part about bad behavior, is it only takes one yahoo buying a huge house by taking on a mortgage he cannot possibly afford, and the next person sees it, and by the power of persuasion, thinks it's ok to do it as well, and so on.

Gnomenclature,

I think you have to decide what pride means to them.

For a good many of the revelers, it's the only natural experience many of them will have encountered, so they associate the near-wilderness as a place to trash, and not worry about.

Not sure how you change that?