This page has been archived and commenting is disabled.
I Lose a Bet, Start an Argument
Back on November 17, 2011 I penned a piece in response to Fed Governor Bullard's assertions regarding the collapse of MF Global. Bullard thought there was no lasting consequences to that blow-out: .
.
.
At the time, I thought that Bullard was full of crap, and that there would be significant consequences to the collapse of MFG. My words:
Okay, Mr. Bullard I'll make you a wager. A six pack of your favorite beer. Give the MFG story another month and it will be a problem. It will undermine markets. It will impact confidence in our financial system. It will impact liquidity. As those things will occur it will force both the Treasury and the Fed to take actions.
I was wrong, Mr. B was right. There were no consequences to the MFG disaster. No heads rolled. No one went to jail. There were no lasting economic consequences. There were were no regulatory changes. The MFG affair was buried. Bullard never accepted my bet, but I still feel I owe him. If he reads this and sends me a note I will forward his beer. He deserves it. He won. Unfortunately, we all "lost" as a result. Today we have yet another MFG in our laps. Perigrine Financial has followed the exact same path as MFG. The PFG bankers looted customer accounts.
.
.
I lost a bet for $12 worth of beer. Customers at Peregrine have lost $220m (so far). I can’t help wondering what would have happened had won the bet. If there had been hell to pay regarding the MFG affair, things might have turned out differently for Peregrine’s customer. But there was no market reaction, the CFTC ignored the signs, the SEC never lifted a finger. Nothing changed, so history has repeated itself.
Perigrine customers, looking at a loss today, might be warming up lawsuits against Bart Chilton and the CFTC. He clearly fell down on the job. I think he should be fired on the spot. Fed Governor Bullard is not responsible for the failure of Peregrine (or MFG), but his dismissing attitude is:
This is no big deal, it will blow over”
To that extent, he shares in the blame.
.
. .
+++
.
The markets are boring, so let's talk about global warming
.
I have absolutely no credentials or expertise to discuss matters related to climate change. I’ll do it anyway. I follow this topic and read what I can. In my opinion:
I) - Climate change is happening on a global scale. The evidence that this occurring is conclusive.
II) - I don’t know if humans are contributing to the rapid change, but I suspect they are.
III) - Even if there were conclusive evidence that human activity was contributing to global warming, I’m not at all sure that there is anything that can be done about it.
Consider these before and after pictures from NASA. These are images of the Beaufort Sea, north of Alaska.
.
May 13, 2012
..
One month later
.
Okay, so some ice melted. Is that a big deal? The folks at NASA and the National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC) think it is:
Sea ice retreat in June is typical, but the first half of June 2012 brought unusually rapid ice loss.
How unusual?
On June 19, 2012, NSIDC reported: “Recent ice loss rates have been 100,000 to 150,000 square kilometers per day, which is more than double the climatological rate.”
Double the rate? How much ice is melting every day in the Beauford Sea? About the size of the state of Illinois – big!
As of June 18, temperatures were above freezing over much of the sea ice in the Arctic, and snow had melted earlier than normal, leading to warming on land.
June 18? It has been hot as hell over the globe since then. This year’s arctic ice melt will set a record.
The rapid melt north of Alaska was part of a larger phenomenon. Sea ice across the entire Arctic reached record-low levels for this time of year. It was also lower than the extent in June 2007; Arctic sea ice reached its lowest extent ever recorded by satellite in September 2007.
This is not a record that we want to set. Now consider this number:
20,900,000,000,000
.
20.9 Trillion is the number of pounds of CO2 that humans sent into the atmosphere in the last 12 months. It’s hard to relate to a number as big as that. Think seven billion Hondas. But even that is a number that is hard to fathom, as there are only a billion cars in the world today. How could we be producing 7Xs the weight of all the cars, every year?
Is there a connection to the incredible output of CO2 and the rapid ice melt that is happening all over the world? I wish I knew the answer to this question. I do know that CO2 emissions are directly tied to population growth/economic activity. The question is how rapidly CO2 output will rise:
.
.
Any thoughts?
.
.
»
- advertisements -
Obscure units? Shows me what you know... the SI unit of temperature is Kelvin.... look up absoulute zero and get back to us
Close to nothing eh? You are full of shit...
Here, you might learn somthing
http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/aggi/
Pay attention to the table that summarizes the change in global radiative forcing yearly since 1979....
So what if it's the SI unit of measure? How fucking often do you see it discussed in a public forum? Like, never, unless it's from some blowhard trying to sound like he knows more than the other side of the debate.
And I stand by my statement with respect to what the effects a 35% increase will be, regardless of your assholian response. As a Geologist with 20+ years in the environmental industry along with some pretty damn obvious direct observations I know that:
A) I am right.
B) The Earth will go on.
C) If there is reincarnation, or a non soul destroying means of conciousness preservation, or we both inhabit a similar afterlife, I will do an "I told you so" victory dance and rub your nose in it 25,000 years from now...
Face it, You have been pwned...
Having a strong opinion on AGW and not knowing that scientists measure temperature in K tells me all I need to know..
Hint: A degree C is the same as a degree K... it has to do with the baseline...
Yes, the Earth goes on whether we are along for the ride or not....
Sorry, if you can't follow a very simple NOAA page on radiative forcings....
I am not a conservative. I am a Constitutional Libertarian. And IMO right-wing radio is 95% bullshit propaganda.
You want to know the truth? Follow the money.
Start with who profits from global warming legislation.
ok so do we burn that 85 million barrels of oil per day or not? and isnt that a new development in terms of human history? so do u really think it has no impact?!!
No, I just think it's clear it's impact isn't statistically relevant.
Where you just "think" and pull an opinion out of your ass, there are other that measure and calculate and cross check everybody elses work...
BTW, you are such a blowhard, you fail to realize that Cap N" Trade was the Republican solution to AGW, just like Obama care is a rehash of the Republican counter plan to Hillarycare...
PS I do agree that Cap N' Trade is a scam....
Ok... the Human species benefits..
Now, one for you, connect the dots between AGW denial and the FF industry, in particuler the Kochs...
I really don't give a damn about your political philosophy, I am however, appalled at your techical ignorance and your ability to override science with ideologically based arguments...
Here you go, asshole:
----
Some fearmongering to get you to accept Wall St's solution:
Carbon markets “will die, and the temperature on the planet will go up by a couple of degrees, more than it would have otherwise, and we’ll be really sorry about it,” Winters said. "
From http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=a82qt5fzM7Co
-----
Excerpted from The Great American Bubble Machine
BUBBLE #6 Global Warming
...The new carbon-credit market is a virtual repeat of the commodities-market casino that's been kind to Goldman, except it has one delicious new wrinkle: If the plan goes forward as expected, the rise in prices will be government-mandated. Goldman won't even have to rig the game. It will be rigged in advance.
Here's how it works: If the bill passes, there will be limits for coal plants, utilities, natural-gas distributors and numerous other industries on the amount of carbon emissions (a.k.a. greenhouse gases) they can produce per year. If the companies go over their allotment, they will be able to buy "allocations" or credits from other companies that have managed to produce fewer emissions. President Obama conservatively estimates that about $646 billion worth of carbon credits will be auctioned in the first seven years; one of his top economic aides speculates that the real number might be twice or even three times that amount.
The feature of this plan that has special appeal to speculators is that the "cap" on carbon will be continually lowered by the government, which means that carbon credits will become more and more scarce with each passing year. Which means that this is a brand new commodities market where the main commodity to be traded is guaranteed to rise in price over time. The volume of this new market will be upwards of a trillion dollars annually; for comparison's sake, the annual combined revenues of all electricity suppliers in the U.S. total $320 billion.
Goldman wants this bill. The plan is (1) to get in on the ground floor of paradigm-shifting legislation, (2) make sure that they're the profit-making slice of that paradigm and (3) make sure the slice is a big slice. Goldman started pushing hard for cap-and-trade long ago, but things really ramped up last year when the firm spent $3.5 million to lobby climate issues. (One of their lobbyists at the time was none other than Patterson, now Treasury chief of staff.) Back in 2005, when Hank Paulson was chief of Goldman, he personally helped author the bank's environmental policy, a document that contains some surprising elements for a firm that in all other areas has been consistently opposed to any sort of government regulation. Paulson's report argued that "voluntary action alone cannot solve the climate-change problem." A few years later, the bank's carbon chief, Ken Newcombe, insisted that cap-and-trade alone won't be enough to fix the climate problem and called for further public investments in research and development. Which is convenient, considering that Goldman made early investments in wind power (it bought a subsidiary called Horizon Wind Energy), renewable diesel (it is an investor in a firm called Changing World Technologies) and solar power (it partnered with BP Solar), exactly the kind of deals that will prosper if the government forces energy producers to use cleaner energy. As Paulson said at the time, "We're not making those investments to lose money."
The bank owns a 10 percent stake in the Chicago Climate Exchange, where the carbon credits will be traded. Moreover, Goldman owns a minority stake in Blue Source LLC, a Utah-based firm that sells carbon credits of the type that will be in great demand if the bill passes. Nobel Prize winner Al Gore, who is intimately involved with the planning of cap-and-trade, started up a company called Generation Investment Management with three former bigwigs from Goldman Sachs Asset Management, David Blood, Mark Ferguson and Peter Harris. Their business? Investing in carbon offsets. There's also a $500 million Green Growth Fund set up by a Goldmanite to invest in greentech … the list goes on and on. Goldman is ahead of the headlines again, just waiting for someone to make it rain in the right spot. Will this market be bigger than the energy-futures market?
"Oh, it'll dwarf it," says a former staffer on the House energy committee.
Well, you might say, who cares? If cap-and-trade succeeds, won't we all be saved from the catastrophe of global warming? Maybe — but capandtrade, as envisioned by Goldman, is really just a carbon tax structured so that private interests collect the revenues. Instead of simply imposing a fixed government levy on carbon pollution and forcing unclean energy producers to pay for the mess they make, cap-and-trade will allow a small tribe of greedy-as-hell Wall Street swine to turn yet another commodities market into a private tax-collection scheme. This is worse than the bailout: It allows the bank to seize taxpayer money before it's even collected.
"If it's going to be a tax, I would prefer that Washington set the tax and collect it," says Michael Masters, the hedgefund director who spoke out against oilfutures speculation. "But we're saying that Wall Street can set the tax, and Wall Street can collect the tax. That's the last thing in the world I want. It's just asinine."
Cap-and-trade is going to happen. Or, if it doesn't, something like it will. The moral is the same as for all the other bubbles that Goldman helped create, from 1929 to 2009. In almost every case, the very same bank that behaved recklessly for years, weighing down the system with toxic loans and predatory debt, and accomplishing nothing but massive bonuses for a few bosses, has been rewarded with mountains of virtually free money and government guarantees — while the actual victims in this mess, ordinary taxpayers, are the ones paying for it.
It's not always easy to accept the reality of what we now routinely allow these people to get away with; there's a kind of collective denial that kicks in when a country goes through what America has gone through lately, when a people lose as much prestige and status as we have in the past few years. You can't really register the fact that you're no longer a citizen of a thriving first-world democracy, that you're no longer above getting robbed in broad daylight, because like an amputee, you can still sort of feel things that are no longer there.
But this is it. This is the world we live in now. And in this world, some of us have to play by the rules, while others get a note from the principal excusing them from homework till the end of time, plus 10 billion free dollars in a paper bag to buy lunch. It's a gangster state, running on gangster economics, and even prices can't be trusted anymore; there are hidden taxes in every buck you pay. And maybe we can't stop it, but we should at least know where it's all going.
---
http://hockeyschtick.blogspot.com/2011/07/global-collapse-of-cap-and-tra...
excerpt:
Finally, if your view is we should set up a Canadian cap-and-trade market regardless of what the U.S. does because we need to save the planet from global warming, keep in mind cap-and-trade in Europe has done nothing to lower emissions.
Why? Because however much politicians try to spin it, cap-and-trade is not an environmental program designed to reduce industrial carbon dioxide emissions.
It’s a stock market designed to make money, primarily for giant energy and utility companies and speculators, while raising consumer prices on almost everything.
---
Go fuck yourself.
Where in this cut and paste rant is anything to do with the science of global warming?
Your ideology is leading you to a classic fallacy, "Argument from Consequences"... I am very sorry that you are such a selfish narcissist that you are blinded to reality...
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2171973/Tree-ring-study-p...
Not to mention the Viking settlements across Greenland.
Funny how it was warmer back then, isn't it?
Oh, I'm sorry...
I thought you wanted me to connect the dots between Wall St. and global warming legislation.
YOU wanted me to connect the dots between "Deniers" and the Koch bros.
My bad!
Oh and go fuck yourself.
there have always been war profiteers too, doesnt mean war isnt real, and man made.
Sell stupid crazy fucked up nonsense somewhere else. Religion is the only thing I've ever heard that was as nonsensical.
"The fact is that CO2 is not a pollutant. CO2 is a colorless and odorless gas, exhaled at high concentrations by each of us, and a key component of the biosphere's life cycle. Plants do so much better with more CO2 that greenhouse operators often increase the CO2 concentrations by factors of three or four to get better growth. This is no surprise since plants and animals evolved when CO2 concentrations were about 10 times larger than they are today. Better plant varieties, chemical fertilizers and agricultural management contributed to the great increase in agricultural yields of the past century, but part of the increase almost certainly came from additional CO2 in the atmosphere."
Science?
On the one hand, as scientists we are ethically bound to the scientific method, in effect promising to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but — which means that we must include all the doubts, the caveats, the ifs, ands, and buts. On the other hand, we are not just scientists but human beings as well. And like most people we’d like to see the world a better place, which in this context translates into our working to reduce the risk of potentially disastrous climatic change. To do that we need to get some broadbased support, to capture the public’s imagination. That, of course, entails getting loads of media coverage. So we have to offer up scary scenarios, make simplified, dramatic statements, and make little mention of any doubts we might have. This ‘double ethical bind’ we frequently find ourselves in cannot be solved by any formula. Each of us has to decide what the right balance is between being effective and being honest. I hope that means being both. -- Dr. Stephen Schneider, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (Quoted in Discover, pp. 45–48, Oct. 1989.)
What you stopped peddling out completely fabricated quotes that I called you out on?
I suggest you google "Argument from Consequences Fallacy"....
As I noted above the quote by Dr. Schneider appeared in Discover, pp. 45–48, Oct. 1989. I did not fabricate it.
But yours was a fine attempt at lying in order to be "effective" just as Dr. Schneider instructed. You get an A for effort. But I really would like to know why you and Dr. Schneider believe that one should feel the need to lie in an effort to promote the "science" of global warming.
Provide any evidence of any Climate scientist deliberately lieing about the science....
You can't, but I can come up with all kinds of mistruths and lies by the denialistas...
You would be much better off if you paid closer attention to the lies peddled by shills on the Koch payrolls....
It;s called being intellectually honest, try it sometime..
Did you sleep through climate gate?
Nope, but you certainly slept through the followups....
Hint: a new analysis in 2010 only confirms the Mann result from 1999.....
BTW, what exactly was the issue in "ClimateGate"?
Dude, you lied about the Schneider quote being fabricated. A liar can not re-establish his credibility by calling the one who exposed his lie a liar. If you want to work on regaining trust then please explain why you said the quote was fabricated and what you hoped to achieve by telling that lie. Then apologize to me and to the board in general.
Fuck you!
I callled you out on citing a selectively edited version of the quote in question and for peddling a completely fabricted quote attributed to Folland...
You are guilty of every action you accuse others of....
You have nothing to bring to table, except lies...
Round and round we go and you still won't explain why Schneider says that climate scientists should consider lying in order to be "effective." Will you admit that Schneider said that and explain his reasoning or are you one of those Schneider is a self admitted liar deniers?
Where did he lie?
Can you perhaps tell us how one should interpret confidence levels?
oh christ another low information person with an opinion. What part of that amount of co2 dont you get? Humans do impact the environment, to say otherwise is ludicrous.
Fucking stupidity in this country is rising faster than the temp.
Here's an idea genius, how about YOU research the facts. Pull yourself away from the retarded right wing radio programs and go EDUCATE yourself.
I never cease to be amazed at how right many Libertariains are about the problems of crony capitalism and crony socialism but so stupid about climate change. Its as if they took off their scientific, objective and rational glasses that they use on the economy and put on rose colored psychadelic emotional, fundamentalist glasses when it comes to the environment and global warming. Somehow the opinion of 98% of climate scientists in the world does not count. Somehow the views of insurance companies that have to pay the bill for climate events does not count. Its as if our Libertarian friends are so in love with being in the minority and contrarian on the economy (and often correctly so) that they feel the need to take up this position in areas they know nothing about because the role is natural to them. God forbid that the conventional wisdom could be right in some fields. Anyway, perhaps at some point Libertarians will be thrust into the position of actually having to govern. In some ways I hope so. If that happens they are in for a rude awakening. That is if a tsunami or tornado dosen't get them first. Man I can't believe you guys love Chinese and Indian coal fired power stations so much. That's almost un American.
A valid observation to which I will add, the problem that AGW poses to the Libertarians is that it reveals the intellectual shortcomings of their worldview and philosphy... The Libtards cannot grok AGW...The fact that most Libtards reveal themselves to be selfish narcissists after a few modest questions also plays a role....
Their denial of AGW is almost a childish refusal to accept the consequences of collective actions....
Perhaps it's because much like economics, we actually studied ALL the evidence?
I frankly am amazed how many Liberals fail to recognize the failures of "The Great Society" and how many Conservatives have abandoned The Constitution.
Your ignorant.... do more research and not just looking to prove what you want to believe.
The first two words of your post are inherently hilarious.
Anybody who even casually examines that link I posted, and the absolute avalanche of information it provides, will be flatly floored at the ignorant irony of your stupendously stupid statement.
your shit is a joke, its LOW INFORMATION. Its a fucking joke but you dont or cant comprehend that.
Yeah it's like Stockholm Syndrome. "Please regulate me! I can't live without Jackbooted Thugs stealing my money and telling me I'm bad! I'm sending CO2 into the sky! TAX ME PLEASE!"
Anyway most atmospheric CO2 is absorbed by ocean water. Sorry to tell you.
And pray tell, what might be the consequence of that C02 being dissolved in the ocean at the rate it is occuring?
I'll give you a hint, google ocean acidification and "loss of phytoplankton"
Considering that there was a veritable shitload of diverse sea life when CO2 existed at levels 6 to 7 TIMES higher than it is now, I'll go with "nothing".
Could you perhaps discuss how fast those levels of C02 were changing then?
Changing 200 ppm over 1 million years is very different than 200 ppm over 150 years, or did you think Evolution was an instantaneous thingie?
exactly. The sheer ignorance on display in this comment thread just goes to show how fucked we are.
Well..one thing all sides ought to be able to agree on..it's way past time to start building seawalls around Miami, New, York, Boston, <fill in your favorite city>...
Jobs bitchez.
The US would be vastly improved if those cities you mention and their populations vanished beneath the waves.
Makes me want to hope for more warming...
Let Wall Street go underwater, just like so many homeowners' mortgages, and take the rest of NYC with it. I'd let Boston go under too, if only to hear the continuing arguments between Yankee and Red Sox fans: "We're deeper under water than you are!" "No you're not, WE are!"
Miami? It needs a flood to wash away the corruption.
If a sea wall is to be built, however, I'll have my (Chinese) wife tell all her friends and relatives from back home to come on over here. I understand the Chinese have had experience building walls.
i think we add about .005% CO2 more than naturally occurs-BFD. now GS has some carbon credits they want to sell you-dumbass
you are absolutely right crawldaddy
You're all right. Each of is a low information person with an opinion. So where do you get on your high horse assuming you know everything about anything, asshole?
I happen to work in stats. I've looked at the shit they have passed off for AGW, and it wouldn't make it into any reasonable journal unless it had some sort of political or financial spin to it. The fact is the data do not prove any hypotheses at any reasonable level of significance. Their data and their conclusions do not agree. And their models are way off. They do the simplest of tests that make HUGE assumptions about underlying statistical distributions rather than using the most general of nonparametric tools that are available. Whenever you make an assumption, you must admit the bias. They don't have the decency to do this.
Now, do I know if AGW is reasonable or not? No, not at all. I have an opinion that none of you care about but that hasn't stopped anyone else. We're probably responsible for some of the warming, but I'm not so arrogant as to think that we are responsbile for the majority of it. I also think that these things are cyclical. We are probably having an effect and are at the top end of a global temperature cycle. When that cycle goes back to the middle, our effect may hold a larger percentage but it will go mostly unnoticed. And at the bottom end, someone will say people are responsible for global cooling for some political reason. I dare not guess which side nor what stupid excuse they'll offer. I cannot prove any of this, just like everyone else. I'm just an uninformed idiot (think Prince Myshkin) out here like everyone else.
I dont assume anything asshole, I listen to the people who have studied this. The vast vast VAST majority of scientist agree that this is real and humans are likley the cause. What part of high 90 percentile of scientist dont you get.
Work in stats, please, what do you do? zero out your burger king register at night?
The stupidity is everywhere, but than again I'm sure we have fucking creationist around here too.
While I think your 90% of scientists # is bullshit, I'll accept it for arguements sake with a response of "Since when has the scientific method ever given validity to the percentage of scientists believing in something".
Sweet mother of Marx, you guys teeth grind on "ignorance" and "creationists" and then utilize shit like that as "supporting" evidence???
So there are knuckledraggers like me around here and KoolAid drinkers like you. And the world keeps going around.
I've been published in several stats journals, have done much consulting work, and have a university position as a professor. I have taught stats to math students, finance students, engineers most recently, social scientists, etc. You have no idea whether I'm telling the truth or lying, but I'm actually as honest as they come.
And if you'd like to cite some surveys that show that high 90% of scientists agree on it, I'd love to see the internals on the survey. And I'd also like to point out that once 90% of scientists believed the Earth was the center of the universe and everything revoled around it. Now you are the one that believes that humans are the center of everything and all of the universe is affected by us. Who is the knuckle dragger again?
And as for the origins of the universe, why don't you tell us what to believe? You must have been there since you seem to know everything. Hell, you can't even handle someone saying that there are things we don't yet understand. The biggest idiot is the one who doesn't even realize the stupidity of his assumptions. If the shoe fits...and yes, I'm an idiot knuckledragging type. Seems pretty clear that only one of us is openminded enough to consider facts. And you're not going to be convinced by anything at all. You've made up your mind...the facts be damned.
Hey hoofie... did you get around to F&R 2011?
Sorry, at no point did 90% of scientists believe the Earth was the center of the Universe, in fact resolution of that question was instrumental in defining what a modern scientist was... Now, if you had said 99.9% of Church Hierarchy believed the earh was the center for dogmatic reasons, an no small fraction were willing to villigy those that questioned their belief system.....
BTW, I have a few publications in the Physical Review
Still nothing but your assertions, huh? Back smething up somewhere. Many others calling you out on this, yet you still remain silent.
Everyone knows that 74.2% of statistics are made up anyway...
I provided you with a published paper showing an elegant statistical analysis of the data... You claim to know your stats....
So, either you are fool or a liar.... Which one is it?