A billionaire explains the middle class

There are numbers in those models. Meanwhile, smartness doesn't have reliable numbers.

Long time labor-friendly business leaders should normally be the most well-connected especially when there is a democrat White House. A talk with them couldn't hurt for verification.

But still, you are guessing though. To make sure, you should be talking to people a lot smarter than you and I who've both advised and consulted on that specific issue for many years.

You've got to know for certain.

That will never change, so work starting from that point is needed.

Not his, which are mostly business applications, but he says there is a lot of academic research in applying complexity theory to econometric models. He touched on it in grad school but he doesn't use it.

Equilibrium models are the basis for business applications, and Real Analysis is the highest-level math that's ordinarily called for. Sometimes they're trying to find converging series' when building models:

It's too exotic for me. I never got that far in math.

Well, they never could, perfectly. What they're seeking is models that

It's like statistical sampling, in which you're looking for plus-and-minus values at a certain level of confidence. Or engineering: you may never know when an aircraft wing will fail from fatigue, but you can produce a good enough answer to keep your plane from crashing.

Most financiers are not involved in manipulating, but rather in predicting where markets are going.

Kinda like global warming computer models, eh?

"It's Official: "The Worldwide Bail-ins Are Coming. "On November 16,

an important decision. The world's megabanks now have official permission to pledge depositor accounts as collateral to make leveraged derivative bets. And if they lose a bet, the counterparty to the contract has first dibs on your money."

The next big thing will be to allow banks to invest in gambling in Vegas, I suppose. "Perfectly safe." they say...

Both are kinda like chemistry before 1800, when the best minds continually struggled to update their observation-based theories to fit embarrassing new discoveries.

-jsw

He needs to maintain his open hand in order to repeatedly slap himself on the forehead at his own stupidity, mike. As to the other hand, who knows where that thumb has been...

Now let's stop giving these jerks airtime, OK?

So do you want to live i na country where wages are $2.40/hr.?

Some people (like Hamei, our former NG participant) like living there. We talk about it once or twice per year, and I realize I would not.

We will neither tax imports nor work for $2.40 per hour. What will happen is that the labor costs and transportation costs, plus numerous other problems in dealing with China, will bring their delivered costs up to approximate parity.

Pessimist.

The per-vehicle-mile death rate in the US is less than one-third of what it was in the 1970s. There are a lot of people who should be glad that we "worried about that."

It's always a little surprising to me to hear people talk about how bad things are today, without thinking about how much better they are, in most ways, than they've ever been before.

I'm rather enjoying the speculation. Sure beats all the drive-by namecalling that happens in most threads. Kinda like yours 4 lines up.

I was gonna suggest that the rich ones are. But financiers may not be the right word. I was fixated on the people manipulating the stock market to suck every bit of money they can out of it.

No, those models *do* use complexity theory.

There are enough of those to make the whole system unstable and to line the pockets of the manipulators. Fortunately, the legitimate ones don't like it and may yet reform the system.

I'm not holding my breath, but I'm hopeful.

Don't try to confuse me with the facts!!!!! My mind is made up!!!!

You may find the following of interest:

In many cases "economics" does not appear to be required, only a good memory. For example, limiting companies to a size small enough to fail [without bringing the entire economy down], and preventing people from gambling [speculating] with other peoples' [depositors'] money.

Other restrictions from the insurance industry such as not allowing a homeowner to insure their house multiple times, or prohibiting someone with no interest in a house from insuring it, would seem to apply to derivatives. For example, why should more credit default swaps be sold/traded than the amount of underlying debt?

Why should futures trading contracts in excess of the available physical quantity for the contract period be allowed? [This is an invitation to a "short squeeze"]

Why should organizations which are neither consumers or producers be allowed to engage in commodity hedging, thus promoting speculation/manipulation?

The RCM motto!

Oh, my! They did hold some interesting theories before him, and some after. Remember when going faster than 25mph would make your blood boil?

Who do you think I am? Barney Oldfield?