Whoops

Merkle:

It is not the first, nor the last time that a bank will get hacked. In this day and age of cyber crime lackluster IT infrastructure and horrible security precautions by financial institutions, it is only a matter of time until the next heist happens. For the Russian Central Bank, that has already happened, although criminals were not entirely successful in their attempt.
To be more specific, the central bank has been targeted by cyber criminals looking to steal nearly 5 billion rubles. That attempt was not successful, even though they succeeded in transferring just under half the intended sum. With US$31m worth of rubles missing, the central bank has a lot of figuring out to do in the coming weeks.
Preliminary investigation results indicate that the hackers had managed to fake a client’s credentials. It remains unknown how this is possible to begin with, although it seems plausible that a social engineering attack was used in the past. Another possibility is that this theft could be an inside job, although it is too early to tell if that is the case.

Zero Hedge tells Californians we owe an extra 97k per person

Californians would have to watch Facebook ads forever, 24/7, if Zuckerberg is going to pay our pension bills. Any chance Texans could pitch in?

Mankiw forgot to mention the large jolt

Want to Rev Up the Economy? Don’t Worry About the Trade Deficit

Economic View

The most important lesson about trade deficits is that they have a flip side. When the United States buys goods and services from other nations, the money Americans send abroad generally comes back in one way or another. One possibility is that foreigners use it to buy things we produce, and we have balanced trade. The other possibility, which is relevant when we have trade deficits, is that foreigners spend on capital assets in the United States, such as stocks, bonds and direct investments in plants, equipment and real estate.

In practice, these capital inflows from abroad have been large. Net foreign ownership of American capital assets has risen to about $8 trillion from $2.5 trillion at the end of 2010. American companies moving production overseas get a lot of attention, but this data shows that capital has, over all, moved in the opposite direction.

Then Greg goes on assuming we ate a compressible fluid.

We are not, we left and re-entered the old standard twice, one per each of two generations since 1929. We will do it again, and all of Greg's assumptions will be forced into one generational adjustment, followed by years of repricing costs..

Fixed amortization of loans and the risk

When the loan is repayed in timed series.
The borrower has control of the default event, even when publicly stressed, the borrower can still choose the default moment. The payment contract bars enforcement until payments stop.  So, a bunch of loans under stress, generally the uncertainty of default is greater than any other uncertainty.  The note holder has sudden, unpriced  risk.

I can't see how to trade time, yet.

We bet the hurricanes and earthquakes and the bad drivers

The global insurance industry is worth nearly $5 trillion, and insurance companies are at risk of losing a share of this valuable market to new entrants. That's because these legacy players have been even slower to modernize than their counterparts in other financial services industries. This has created an opportunity for a group of firms known as insurtechs. These startups are leveraging new technology and a better understanding of consumer expectations to increase efficiencies in the insurance industry. Some are helping incumbents deliver better end products, while others are directly competing with legacy players.

Simple enough. I have to think it over.  But the insurance company wants to bet the number of hurricanes in the gulf, then just cover those. It needs a probability distribution of land fall conditional on housing value. Then show everyone the map, and tell them the game. The insurance company allows homeowners in the zone to bet their risk, or down load the app to do it.  The insurance company distributes the proceeds according to damage.  But a surplus runs into the next season.  The insurer gets a fixed fee from the surplus.  A low probability disaster allows smooth bankruptcy of the insurance company.

The hurricane insurance business is ripe for a phd weather guy to set up. But the game is all about educating folks about their risk because of he homeowners get it right, then you get a long term insurance business.  But focus on a specific type of risk that every homer owner of a class understands, like hurricanes in the gulf, tornadoes in the mid west.  When the purchaser knows what he is buying, then all the lights go amber, that means a long term stable insurance business.  It is like selling auto insurance to hood drivers.

Doable, all 4T of it, especially with Secure Smart Card, think of the honesty involved in driving insurance, while remaining anonymous.  The card ID keeps you anonymous, but you use it as an authorization, allowing the insurance company to get an anonymous measurement of your driving tickets. Your own personal identity remains anonymous.

A simpler explanation of the bot system

Everything is the same as he current system in terms of finance, with one major changer.  Every number that we normally use, comes as a small dimensional, finite element probability distribution.  So, current stock price is a distribution.  Second, no time; time is derived, and traders make the categories by installing trading pits.  All the normal value added investing continues, except you have the option of staying completely in probability space. Ot, converty tyo mean values over time.

This works because every price goes through the trading pit, and they is why is does, compute finite probability distributions.  The most recent stock price, he exact last trade? You know it about as well as yhe other 40 bots trading the graph, it is a serial arrival, subject to queue uncertainty.

Is the human element gone? No, he is screwing around with his trading snippets, looking to try some new 'value added hold and keep Warren Buffet style investing? But, if the trader wants a 'rate' to bet against, it is easy to derive. Otherwise, drop some large digits into some corporate  bond tree, a precise enough tree, so everyone know you will be around a very long time.

How many Smart Cards per person?

Not sure. I would think each person has to emit in serial fashion, we would prohibit the idea of someone operating multiple identities in the pit.
If the card is the trading identity, and each human attaches to one card only; then security is much simpler.  Making high speed cards for web sites is easy. Buy, if we attach a person one to one with the card, we have given a big concession to government, and we might move the singularity along a bit faster; without either government or wealth pressing the scales.

The worst outcome is w are too liberal in he first batch of encrypting microprocessors. So, we get the fab up and running, and Soros comes in and buys the first one million chips.  We are stuck, forced to hard fork the guy/.  It is a tricky issue, because the trading pits likely can price up the cycle cost and equalize out any parallel advantage. But I hae to be in the worst case scenario, it would be like Soros owns the voting machine.

The solution might be two things, a banker consortium backs the standard, and hey have an accessible technical team that can work worth chip vendors.  The bankers can be free to license, up to a finite point.  Let the bankers recover costs and gain some by cooperating with the standard.

And we are supposed to trust our Reps to keep our digits secure?

Zero Hedge: On November 30, one week after the Washington Post launched its witch hunt against "Russian propaganda fake news", with 390 votes for, the House quietly passed "H.R. 6393, Intelligence Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2017", sponsored by California Republican Devin Nunes (whose third largest donor in 2016 is Google parent Alphabet, Inc), a bill which deals with a number of intelligence-related issues, including Russian propaganda, or what the government calls propaganda, and hints at a potential crackdown on "offenders."
A quick skim of the bill reveals "Title V—Matters relating to foreign countries",  whose Section 501 calls for the government to "counter active measures by Russia to exert covert influence … carried out in  coordination with, or at the behest of, political leaders or the security services of the Russian Federation and the role of the Russian Federation has been hidden or not acknowledged publicly.”

Politicians are a danger to our digital cash, they make Secure Smart Card mandatory.

The recent lowering/raising of IOR/one year whatevers....by Janet

Here iy is, all yhe stuff Janet was doing at the short end since 2015.

She was mostly busy lowering the one year (green) , while talking about the IOR, which she did raise  in late 2015, . She raised that sold the one year  but the one year rate dropped.  But only shortly, it then rose. The dip must have been quantization noise.

Then in the end she lowered the one year, but still rose so she gave up, and announced a December hike in the IOR.

She is playing the onl role she has, keeping the federal budget in balance by trying to meet the  borrowing requirements of federal programs.  If Janet can bnalance he plates for six months then giver he a prize.

Sounds like jury nullification

The jury in a South Carolina police officer's murder trial is unable to reach a verdict 14 hours into deliberation

This was the case of a cop shooting someone in the back. from 30 feet, all of it filmed. We have this once in a while here in Fresno, cops doing the occasional intentional murder.

When cops get a jury nullification, it makes them corrupt, and fair game. It makes all the South Carolina cops nervous. So the jury holdout may be cute, but he is likely to get a cop killed in revenge, it is nullification, known as open season.