February 17, 2013

#YouMightBeARepublican

If you think a background check for gun buyer is an assault on liberty, but an unnecessary transvaginal probe is A-OK

More at https://twitter.com/search?q=%23YouMightBeARepublican&src=tren

February 16, 2013

Trading Shares in Milliseconds

If Manoj Narang is about to bring down the markets, he’s certainly relaxed about it. Narang, who wears a goatee and wire-frame glasses, is casually dressed in a brown shirt and dark gray sweatshirt. Sitting on a swivel chair with one leg tucked under the other, he seems positively composed, especially for a man who has just bought and sold 15 million shares with a total value of $600 million. For Narang, however, such volume represents just the start of a normal day. Though it’s about noon on a Friday morning, he has barely begun.

Narang is the head of Tradeworx, a hedge fund and financial-technology firm that makes purely automated trades; all decisions are reached and acted on at near light speed by computers running preprogrammed algorithms. “Actually, we run two businesses,” he says. “The first trades in and out of shares in about a second and holds them for an average of two or three days. That’s the medium-speed fund. The high-speed fund could make thousands of trades a second and holds them for a matter of minutes.”

By the end of the day, his computers will have bought and sold about 60 million to 80 million shares, with the heaviest activity in the last hour of trading, from three to four in the afternoon. Tradeworx and similar firms around the country will race to close billions of bets that hinge on things like tiny differences between the prices of shares in an exchange-traded fund holding the S&P 500 and the individual shares that make up the same index. The profits go to the company with the fastest hardware and the best algorithms–advantages that enable it to spot and exploit subtle market patterns ahead of everyone else. At the end of a typical day, the Tradeworx high-speed business holds no shares at all. Come Monday, Narang will look to trade millions more shares. It seems like a lot, and it is, but Narang estimates that he’s probably only somewhere in the middle of the top 50 traders by volume.

Just five years ago, automated trades made up about 30 percent of the market, and few of those moved as quickly as today’s trades do. Since then, however, automated trading has become much more widespread, and much quicker. Narang acknowledges starting his ultrafast group as a defensive maneuver when he began to notice faster traders eroding the performance of his medium-speed strategy. Now the medium-speed fund is adopting the techniques he developed in the ultrafast fund.

http://www.technologyreview.com/featuredstory/416805/trading-shares-in-milliseconds/

This is an article dated 4 years ago ... trading is now in nanoseconds .... do you really think you have a chance in these markets ...?

February 14, 2013

democracy = people+power

Lifting the Veil of Mirage Democracy in the United States

"Democracy" demokratia = demos+kratia; or democracy = people+power.

The "greatest democracy on Earth" is how the United States is portrayed to its people and the world. The hallowed words "We the people" and "Of, by and for the people" echo in the minds of Americans to characterize the United States. But do they accurately describe the "democracy" we have?

In reality, a constant conflict that has existed throughout US history, indeed throughout the history of democratic states, is present between the elites and the people. Justice Louis Brandeis said it well when he stated, "We may have democracy, or we may have wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, but we can't have both."

Over the past 40 years, income inequality in the United States has exploded from its lowest level in 1978 . What kind of democracy exists under these circumstances? And is real democracy possible for a global empire? How does nation-state democracy exist within the new globalized economy that serves transnational corporations?

http://www.truth-out.org/news/item/14489-lifting-the-veil-of-mirage-democracy-in-the-united-states

February 9, 2013

An oligarchy run by capitalists ....

Very fortunate that we are not paying for the air we breathe ...

February 7, 2013

Even with brain damage ...

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February 2, 2013

325 Army suicides in 2012 a record

(CNN) -- The U.S. Army reported Thursday that there were 325 confirmed or potential suicides last year among active and nonactive military personnel.

"Our highest on record," said Lt. Gen. Howard Bromberg, deputy chief of staff, manpower and personnel for the Army.

The grim total exceeds the number of total U.S. Army deaths (219) and total military deaths (313) in Operation Enduring Freedom in Afghanistan, according to figures published by the military's Defense Casualty Analysis System.

For all of last year, 182 potential active-duty suicides were reported, 130 of which have been confirmed and 52 of which remain under investigation, it said.

And 143 potential not-on-active-duty suicides were reported (96 Army National Guard and 47 Army Reserve), 117 of which have been confirmed and 26 remain under investigation.

http://www.cnn.com/2013/02/02/us/army-suicides/index.html

February 2, 2013

The Myth of American Living with Robert Reich

January 28, 2013

If automobile, tobacco, pharmaceutical and other companies ..

can be prosecuted for killing people with their products ....

SO CAN GUN MANUFACTURERS

January 26, 2013

If Dimon likes the new nominee we are still in trouble ...

Mary Jo White, Obama's new nominee to head a key financial regulatory agency, has quite a reputation: Sen. Chuck Schumer has called her "tough as nails," and when the president announced the pick yesterday, he warned, "You don't want to mess with Mary Jo." But when it comes to policing the big banks, is she really such a hard nose?

Many financial reformers are psyched the president chose White, the first female US attorney in Manhattan, to head the Securities and Exchange Commission, one of the federal agencies that oversees financial markets. They say that choosing someone with fierce prosecutorial experience and success in cracking down on white-collar crime signals Obama's intention to follow through on the liberal agenda he laid out in his inauguration speech Monday, and keep banks on a tight leash. At the same time, though, White has also defended Wall Street execs in private practice, and has the backing of big shots on the Street.

http://www.motherjones.com/mojo/2013/01/mary-jo-white-sec-obama-nomination-wall-street

January 25, 2013

smalley made a choice to bring deadly force to a fistfight ...

like bringing a hand grenade to a 5 year old's birthday party .. heh daddy what is this pin for ...

it was much worse than a bad choice, it was premeditated use of deadly force

classic second degree murder ...