gdp's Comments

Paul Kedrosky: Infectious Greed : San Francisco Before the 1906 Quake

Wed, 13 Jul 2011 01:11:50 +0000

holy public transit batman! i'd say on average there was a cable car every 100 feet! also, super jealous of the people that got to turn left off of market street!

Paul Kedrosky: Infectious Greed : Trailer: Cave of Forgotten Dreams

Tue, 18 Jan 2011 22:17:46 +0000

the embedded video is down at the moment from a copyright claim, but the trailer still works at IMDB.com http://www.imdb.com/video/imdb/vi150641433/

Paul Kedrosky: Infectious Greed : Scientists are Now Cornuccopian Economists?

Wed, 29 Dec 2010 07:21:33 +0000

TED throttles the release of the talks so there is a continuous flow of "new" videos available. I'm sure PK will post when his talk is released. (I hope!)

Paul Kedrosky: Infectious Greed : Comparing News Site Reading Levels: USA Today vs NYT vs Cartoon Network

Mon, 13 Dec 2010 05:58:50 +0000

curious how paul.kedrosky.com rates!

Paul Kedrosky: Infectious Greed : SEC "Flash Crash" Report

Sat, 2 Oct 2010 20:06:04 +0000

So let me get this straight (I'm not in finance). A random mutual fund wanted to unload $4.1B worth of E-mini S&P500 futures contracts. The afternoon of the crash it decided to do so with a selling algorithm that only looked at trading volumes, not at price or times. So High-Frequency-Traders (HFT's) started trading these suckers back and forth within each other like crazy, which as I understand it is normal nowadays, but is apparently something this $4.1B algorithm did not expect (!!). The mutual fund saw the volume and started dumping shares like crazy thinking there was tons of liquidity. After ten minutes of this, the HFT's had accidentally built up positions in these contracts, which they don't actually want. So they went on a binge of selling (the SEC highlighted a 14 second window where the trading volume was over 100x the actual net amount of shares sold) for three minutes where 80,000 contracts were sold, and only 50,000 contracts were bought (in the passive SEC tone) leaving a "net fundamental imbalance of 30,000 contracts" which tripped the circuit breakers in the Chicago Mercantile Exchange. During this time, arbitrageurs were monitoring the price of the E-mini futures, the price of S&P500 ETF "SPY", as well as the individual S&P500 stocks. Whenever there was a discrepancy, they were stepping in to make a small spread, but that brought the 500 individual stocks into this high-volume game. The spike in volumes coupled with the 6% decline in the S&P500 triggered a lot of internal circuit breakers that apparently a lot of major market participants use. The aliasing of all these events created a time period where nobody wanted to buy (or sell) a specific stock. Now this is the best part. Market makers (or the actual exchanges on their behalf) have stub quotes permanently (?) floating out there with ridiculous prices, like $0.01 or $100,000 "in order to fulfill continuous two-sided quoting obligations even when a market maker has withdrawn from active trading." So where did the missing 30,000 contracts go? And whose idea was it to input default "live" quotes of $0.01 and who was on the sell side of those?

Paul Kedrosky: Infectious Greed : SEC "Flash Crash" Report

Sat, 2 Oct 2010 19:13:18 +0000

The Scribd imbed of the "Flash Crash Report" crashed my flash too! The link worked fine when I clicked through. Chrome 6.0 FWIW

Paul Kedrosky: Infectious Greed : How Soccer Changed the World. Or Vice-Versa

Fri, 25 Jun 2010 08:48:26 +0000

D; the USA is playing Ghana in a knock-out match on Saturday FYI. I'll admit, their chances don't look good though :)

Paul Kedrosky: Infectious Greed : Data Fun with Isner/Mahut Marathon Match

Thu, 24 Jun 2010 04:58:54 +0000

Isner had four match points (two were in a row); I don't think Mahut had any...

Paul Kedrosky: Infectious Greed : Data Fun with Isner/Mahut Marathon Match

Thu, 24 Jun 2010 00:03:49 +0000

Isner is an ace-machine, and Mahut is rising to the occasion and serving fantastically as well. Isner easily averages over 1.2 aces per game. edit: Isner has easily averaged over 1.2 aces per game before; no way that's his career average.

Paul Kedrosky: Infectious Greed : Michael Ruppert on Peak Oil, Collapse and Other Bedtime Fun

Sat, 22 May 2010 07:26:28 +0000

I didn't work for me either. It's on blip.tv though; -->http://blip.tv/file/3653298/

Paul Kedrosky: Infectious Greed : Sex! Drugs! (And a Tiny Bit of Off-Balance Sheet Accounting)

Thu, 11 Mar 2010 01:13:41 +0000

What! Frank talks about "a really good book called 'Infectious Greed' (2m19s)", which happens to be the name of your blog, and which Amazon says this Frank guy actually wrote himself! Holy brand confusion! I hope you guys are friends, haha.

Paul Kedrosky: Infectious Greed : The U.S.: An (immigration) Ponzi Scheme That Works

Thu, 24 Dec 2009 21:55:42 +0000

reading further, he also said "Once we can harness the power of the sun, oil is headed toward $0. Until then, supply, demand, and propaganda will keep it in play." which I think is nonsense, so take his views with a grain of salt I guess...

Paul Kedrosky: Infectious Greed : The U.S.: An (immigration) Ponzi Scheme That Works

Thu, 24 Dec 2009 21:46:13 +0000

Interesting quote predicting the contrary from 'Wall St. Cheat Sheet' in the Bespoke Roundtable you linked in your previous post, answering question 18; "I think the US will now follow all other mature empires like Italy, Spain, and England. Our people have lost a lot of their ambition, and we spend countless hours hating new waves of immigrants who come here with the determination and work ethic of our ancestors. That special spirit is alive in emerging markets. But I don't feel it so much at home. That's not to say there aren't any hard workers in the US. Clearly there are. I just think things have changed when we speak about the spirit of the nation."

Paul Kedrosky: Infectious Greed : Good Thing the U.S. is Getting Into Commercial Real Estate

Wed, 23 Dec 2009 09:51:41 +0000

super example of this from Al Jazeera about the new city of Ordos in China; the resource rich region built an entire city that can house up to 1M ppl, but it's mostly empty. Youtube link to 3 minute video --> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0h7V3Twb-Qk#t=1m15...

Paul Kedrosky: Infectious Greed : Doug Kass's 20 Surprises for 2010: Goldman Private, Gold Tumbles, etc.

Tue, 22 Dec 2009 01:55:29 +0000

link I posted earlier to Doug's 2009 list; http://www.thestreet.com/story/10455209/3/kass-20... link to the actual post i made earlier (but is now lost) to see if clicking on it will start an infinite loop melt the internet; http://paul.kedrosky.com/archives/2009/12/doug_ka...

Paul Kedrosky: Infectious Greed : Doug Kass's 20 Surprises for 2010: Goldman Private, Gold Tumbles, etc.

Mon, 21 Dec 2009 17:35:32 +0000

link to his 2009 list if you want to check it; this years list is more interesting at least! (Middle East war, Sarah Palin divorce, gold dropping) http://www.thestreet.com/story/10455209/3/kass-20...

Paul Kedrosky: Infectious Greed : Countering the Anti-Peak Oil Sorts

Tue, 8 Sep 2009 07:49:48 +0000

1. As an American, everything I use and take for granted depends on cheap oil (clothes I'm wearing, stuff I'm drinking, mug I'm drinking it out of, computer I'm typing on, chair I'm sitting in, etc.). 2. This oil will run out some day, but before that it will turn into a very scarce commodity. 3. We all realize this in the back of our mind, but don't want to change a single thing about our lifestyles to prepare for it. 4. A lot of money, careers and power depend on us maintaining the illusion, and thus we get articles like the four mentioned above. 5. I think this will end badly.

Paul Kedrosky: Infectious Greed : Destroying Market Overcapacity -- Literally

Wed, 19 Aug 2009 17:37:23 +0000

I probably have an old sightseeing file that google earth is seeing. I was able to find Chittagong and Gadani kmz files from google, and the number of ships there is crazy!

Paul Kedrosky: Infectious Greed : Destroying Market Overcapacity -- Literally

Wed, 19 Aug 2009 17:20:36 +0000

Paul, that sightseeing KMZ file starts off at Disney World and ends at the Googleplex!

Paul Kedrosky: Infectious Greed : Three Oil/Energy Graphs That Made Me Go, "Hmmmm"

Thu, 25 Jun 2009 07:35:53 +0000

Well, this "economic crisis" has done what I previously thought impossible; decreased consumption while oil supplies still exist. I still think we are driving towards a cliff with our foot on the accelerator though. I blame politics for our gleeful ride into what will surely be a disastrous geopolitical struggle. Who elects a pessimist right? But I often wonder if I'm being too credulous, and I should look deeper and place more blame on human behavior at its root. Are we destined to exploit and drain everything useful we come across? Maybe it's like trying to stop corrosion; you can only delay it. I'd like to hear peoples thoughts though, on where you think we'll be in 50 years. On Mars? Or in caves... also, EIA oil consumption chart --> http://www.eia.doe.gov/emeu/steo/pub/gifs/Fig5.gi...