It's amazing how our bloated financial industry doesn't even come close to its supposed goal of efficient capital and risk allocation, but it is instead a huge source of unnecessary risk through nonsense like this. However, it makes a few people a lot of money, which is all that matters.
If it's so inefficient, it should be pretty trivial to make superior risk-adjusted returns, no? The reality is that most markets are brutally efficient, as any trader would attest to. The notable exception (at least in my view) is VC.
Also, I wouldn't consider the financial industry bloated, at least not any more than other industries.
The brilliant thing about financial markets is that anyone can put their money where their mouth is. If you believe you've spotted some inefficiency, then put up some cash and enjoy your spoils.
That gets the definition of efficiency and risk completely wrong for thr context. It is the efficiency andnrisk of the /market/ not the outcome for any given participant who may do a stupid thing.
Price differences in iron ore by location stabilizing from buying high, selling low, and stockpiling some to prepare for supply disruption and variable input is promoting efficiency.
Preventing some idiot from getting drunk and buying $70 million worth of iron ore weighing many thousands of tons when he thought he was buying his wife a $70 iron has nothing to do with risk or efficiency.
I was listening to a podcast recently where a guy was joking about how felony Duis don't matter in the US. He said his company wanted to hire this girl but they said they wanted to know if she had any felonies to which she said yes, a DUI or something.
They laughed at it in the interview and then hired her right away. Goes to show people sorta understand when it comes to alcohol it's not really their fault in the couple one off scenarios.
It only increases the relative probability of a fatal crash by 6-20 times (as of the 1970’s, according to DOT, .10-.15 BAC). So it’s basically the same as taking multiple trips. If you take some care in route selection, or drive at 2:00 am when nobody is on the road, or drive from the pub around the corner, it’s less risky than that.
That is never the case in the US. Imagine half the population size of your country, then space out the distance between where you are and everything else by 10 or more. The reason we drive everywhere isn't because we want to, it's because we have to. Driving is our second pair of legs basically because everything is a minimum 10-25KM away from everything...if not greater.
It probably is the case that there is alcohol within walking distance (even for Americans) for at least 30% of the US population, even most suburbs. What Europeans consider "pubs"? No, because that's not the culture. Here, restaurants serve alcohol. There, pubs serve food.
Take a German, but make his road from the bar to his house 20-25 KM away. Multiply it by 100,000 people in the same scenario. Now eliminate their public transport.
How many Germans do you think will take the risk of a DUI to drive home as opposed to walking? Granted not everybody is driving over the limit here, but a large majority of them are teetering at it. I mean I've done it, but I knew I had to drive so I held off and waited for some of the affects to subside. Still, I gotta get home, and a cab is not an option often times.
It's a cultural thing that we'd gladly get rid of, if we could afford the alternative of a robust public transport system. But we don't, so it's a risk people often take.
Believe it or not, there are more cities under 10-20k in the US than there are large metropolitan areas. In the area I'm in, you can only get a cab in the city. Good luck getting one 15-25KM outside of it.
Also being America, home of what feels like the home of capitalism which a lot of Europeans make it out to be, since the law only prosecutes you if you get caught, people take the risk. Because there is that cultural precedent, cab's don't bother competing cause nobody pays for it anyway.
Also for reference, you're only getting a cab in an area that is within city limits no further than like 5-10km outside of it. Any further, you're on your own.
You'd think that there'd be a "thriving" cab market, but cabs literally only exist in major cities. They do not exist in the places 20-30km out. Why would I go to those bars? Well...weddings, events, parties, where people live, etc. Also cabs charge out the ass so risking a DUI is oftentimes worth it. If you take a cab, you're out like $30-$50 bucks sometimes in those rural areas. If you get a DUI, in my state, it's like $150 for a first time offense. So in essence people drive normally, avoid main highways or take backroads where cops don't camp out.
I can't see a situation where a DUI isn't your fault. I guess there's probably edge cases or whatever, but I think the vast majority of the time, it's your fault.
That being said, I don't think I'd hold a DUI against a person, mainly because the system is set up to fuck you. If you decline a breath-a-lyzer, then you suffer nearly the same fate as failing it. At minimum you lose your license, at worst you get arrested and they get a warrant to take a blood sample. It's completely possible to get punished for drunk driving without ever touching the stuff. I've been pulled over at night and experienced an officer absolutely trying to pin me for DUI despite clear evidence to the contrary.
Police love to brag about how expensive DUIs, I've seen lots of anti-drunk driving billboards that reference cost in some way. And knowing police forces in the US, well all know they are pocketing a healthy chunk of change from each DUI.
Now, if you have nine DUIs, that's a different story...
That would be a good argument if DUIs were a victimless crime, but DUIs regularly put innocent bystanders into an early grave. It serves the public interest to treat DUIs very seriously, as they have a measurable impact on everyone.
Now if you want to argue that the system is ineffective at reducing DUIs, that’s a different argument.
Yes absolutely and nobody is arguing that. What is an issue with the US is that we're a motor vehicle country and there is virtually no public transportation. Hell even cabs or ubers are non-existant in a large portion of the rural areas. So DUI's are kinda you're only option.
I actually live in Wisconsin where I probably can't count how many times I've seen on the news someone getting pulled over for their n'th DUI. It doesn't even phase me and the funny part is they never get jail time, major fines, or felonies.
US 11/15 along the Susquehanna upriver from Harrisburg has a stretch where there are at least a couple of billboards from lawyers advertising "aggressive DUI defense". These have always seemed to me to be good indicators I don't want to drive that stretch of road on Friday or Saturday nights.
i'm really curious what state this was in. some states are quite lax both legally and in terms of public opinion (e.g. Wisconsin) but most are pretty harsh.
The podcast didn't mention where she got here DUI in. She was just applying to a company in California.
However I am from Wisconsin and I can vouch for that. DUI's are like misdemeanors, no matter how many felonies of them you've gotten. So long as "DUI" is after it and you're not doing a driving job, nobody cares.
You can reduce nearly any action of consequence to sound trivial in this way. "Changing some bits," "writing some words," "rearranging a few atoms." It doesn't add much understanding.
> Beginning at 1:22 a.m. (UTC+1) on 30 June 2009, while still blacked-out, Perkins traded 7 million bbl (1.1 million m3), worth $500 million (£340 million); at times this represented 69% of the volume of oil then being traded[1][2] and ten times the average trade volume. He made his last trade at 3:41 a.m., approximately two and a half hours later.[3]
My intuition is that a disproportionate amount of stupid decisions in the world take place between Midnight and 6 AM local time.
I knew a guy who used to work for a european market-making bank.
He said a major part of is job had been helping the overnight traders in New York unwind their trades when they sobered up.
The Guardian story cited on this page says he made the trades whilst drunk at home. Regulators now demand that controlled functions are performed from a registered premises and controls need to be in place to prevent remote activity.
Interestingly, in the current crisis many regulatory authorities are waiving these rules.
The problem is that alcohol and financial offices are quite a common mix. My former trading company employer regularly provided enough free wine at the tastings to make driving home a non-option.
Of course, they also had fitness for duty rules that forbade us from working after having a drink, which is good.
There's an important lesson there for all of us: the guy screwed up majorly, but the systems in place let him. If our own systems don't protect our company from a drunk senior dev at 2AM pushing code to the master branch and deploying it, then we're really no better than his employer was.
I used to dislike how restrictive some policies can feel. Now I can appreciate that at least some of those policies protect me by making it hard for me to exercise poor decision making without my coworkers signing off on it.
(Note: "some". "Security theater" is still very much a thing, but turns out that not all pain-in-the-neck controls are there just to be annoying.)
I once brought this up to someone because the databases we used for testing were sitting in our organization's resource group to be modified globally, and I wanted to ensure there was a backup in case we messed up something, or at least restrict access to our team. The data went back years and there was no clear way if reproducing it if something went wrong.
He said no, and didn't allow me to, on the basis that you're being trusted to work here, so you're also being trusted not to mess with anything you don't need to. Therefore we didn't have to limit access to anyone.
I felt that was missing the point since there could also be accidents.
Early in my career, I wanted "root" on every system I could possibly have it on, and often bristled if I didn't get it.
Late in my career, when someone asks me if I want "root", I often decline. There's a lot to be said for limiting one's exposure to those risks and having solid plausible deniability if someone hoses some crucial system. (Not to mention being "unable" to access a lot of systems at 3am to help fix messes someone else made.)
I found out I still had access to my account for a previous employer on some random industry website when my 1Password autofilled the login and it worked. I contacted my old boss and asked him to immediately remove my access, and confirmed that I couldn't get in anymore. The last thing I want is for something to change or break, and for them to say "hey, that's funny, our old employee is still logging in..."
I actively don't want to have access on things I don't need.
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[ 3.5 ms ] story [ 127 ms ] threadWhat is the risk illustrated here? A trading firm losing a few million dollars isn't a big deal in terms of the overall global economy.
Also, I wouldn't consider the financial industry bloated, at least not any more than other industries.
How would you like the industry to be structured?
With equal access to market opportunities, maybe.
Price differences in iron ore by location stabilizing from buying high, selling low, and stockpiling some to prepare for supply disruption and variable input is promoting efficiency.
Preventing some idiot from getting drunk and buying $70 million worth of iron ore weighing many thousands of tons when he thought he was buying his wife a $70 iron has nothing to do with risk or efficiency.
Amazing that changing bits in some databases can change one's life dramatically.
It’s a bit more than just some bits changing, trades with real money happened on an exchange.
They laughed at it in the interview and then hired her right away. Goes to show people sorta understand when it comes to alcohol it's not really their fault in the couple one off scenarios.
Last decade? We all make mistakes when we're young, so who am I to judge.
Last week? Yeah, no way in hell I'm hiring you.
How many Germans do you think will take the risk of a DUI to drive home as opposed to walking? Granted not everybody is driving over the limit here, but a large majority of them are teetering at it. I mean I've done it, but I knew I had to drive so I held off and waited for some of the affects to subside. Still, I gotta get home, and a cab is not an option often times.
It's a cultural thing that we'd gladly get rid of, if we could afford the alternative of a robust public transport system. But we don't, so it's a risk people often take.
Frankly walking the 20 miles should be your last option, not driving it.
Also being America, home of what feels like the home of capitalism which a lot of Europeans make it out to be, since the law only prosecutes you if you get caught, people take the risk. Because there is that cultural precedent, cab's don't bother competing cause nobody pays for it anyway.
Also for reference, you're only getting a cab in an area that is within city limits no further than like 5-10km outside of it. Any further, you're on your own.
You'd think that there'd be a "thriving" cab market, but cabs literally only exist in major cities. They do not exist in the places 20-30km out. Why would I go to those bars? Well...weddings, events, parties, where people live, etc. Also cabs charge out the ass so risking a DUI is oftentimes worth it. If you take a cab, you're out like $30-$50 bucks sometimes in those rural areas. If you get a DUI, in my state, it's like $150 for a first time offense. So in essence people drive normally, avoid main highways or take backroads where cops don't camp out.
That being said, I don't think I'd hold a DUI against a person, mainly because the system is set up to fuck you. If you decline a breath-a-lyzer, then you suffer nearly the same fate as failing it. At minimum you lose your license, at worst you get arrested and they get a warrant to take a blood sample. It's completely possible to get punished for drunk driving without ever touching the stuff. I've been pulled over at night and experienced an officer absolutely trying to pin me for DUI despite clear evidence to the contrary.
Police love to brag about how expensive DUIs, I've seen lots of anti-drunk driving billboards that reference cost in some way. And knowing police forces in the US, well all know they are pocketing a healthy chunk of change from each DUI.
Now, if you have nine DUIs, that's a different story...
Now if you want to argue that the system is ineffective at reducing DUIs, that’s a different argument.
I actually live in Wisconsin where I probably can't count how many times I've seen on the news someone getting pulled over for their n'th DUI. It doesn't even phase me and the funny part is they never get jail time, major fines, or felonies.
However I am from Wisconsin and I can vouch for that. DUI's are like misdemeanors, no matter how many felonies of them you've gotten. So long as "DUI" is after it and you're not doing a driving job, nobody cares.
It doesn't even phase me anymore to be honest.
This takes it to a whole new level!
My intuition is that a disproportionate amount of stupid decisions in the world take place between Midnight and 6 AM local time.
Interestingly, in the current crisis many regulatory authorities are waiving these rules.
Of course, they also had fitness for duty rules that forbade us from working after having a drink, which is good.
I used to dislike how restrictive some policies can feel. Now I can appreciate that at least some of those policies protect me by making it hard for me to exercise poor decision making without my coworkers signing off on it.
(Note: "some". "Security theater" is still very much a thing, but turns out that not all pain-in-the-neck controls are there just to be annoying.)
He said no, and didn't allow me to, on the basis that you're being trusted to work here, so you're also being trusted not to mess with anything you don't need to. Therefore we didn't have to limit access to anyone.
I felt that was missing the point since there could also be accidents.
Late in my career, when someone asks me if I want "root", I often decline. There's a lot to be said for limiting one's exposure to those risks and having solid plausible deniability if someone hoses some crucial system. (Not to mention being "unable" to access a lot of systems at 3am to help fix messes someone else made.)
I found out I still had access to my account for a previous employer on some random industry website when my 1Password autofilled the login and it worked. I contacted my old boss and asked him to immediately remove my access, and confirmed that I couldn't get in anymore. The last thing I want is for something to change or break, and for them to say "hey, that's funny, our old employee is still logging in..."
I actively don't want to have access on things I don't need.
(My Series 7, though, doesn't recommend doing anything like what they're doing.)