Category: blog

All our fashions, in those days, were imported from America.

is a British historian who has written lots of reviews in the New York Review of Books, including a recent one of Niall Ferguson’s book…

Like Paul, I have been thinking a lot about what makes a good model and what makes a bad one. In physics or even biology,…

I suggested in a recent blog that people in the financial supply chain be paid in PIKs, in the illiquid securities they participate in creating,…

Names are destiny, as I’ve observed in a previous blog. The building my son lived in recently “retained the services of Mr Jonathan Flothow, the…

I just returned from 6 days in Florence and then 2 days in London. In Florence I saw lots. It rained every single day there,…

I am in Florence for a few days, having taken a very convenient Delta flight from JFK to PIsa on Thanksgiving evening. On the plane…

In 1990 when the cold war ended it was fashionable to think about the end of history and the triumph of the benign two-cheers-for-democracy capitalist…

In the current New Yorker, John Lanchester marks the publication of Black-Scholes as the start of modernism in finance, and then remarks: “It seems wholly…

Everything comes in flavors these days, even things you see while waiting in drugstores that you don’t want to think or talk about, and so…

I agree with Paul Wilmott’s latest blog: “For several years now I have been advising that potential investors in funds really need to take their…

I found the book cover at left on the internet. According to www.telegraph.co.uk/news/3255972/Harry-Potter-fails-to-cast-spell-over-Professor-Richard-Dawkins.html… Richard Dawkins is now worried about the effect of fables on children…

This is a picture of a rare useful expensive-looking corporate gift. See below. ________________________________________________________ Irritants: 1. Invitations to LinkedIn and email reminders that they’re about…

Financial Innovation Conference Vanderbilt University October 16, 2008^ Nashville The Law of Selective Gravity By Leo Melamed There is no way to sugar coat it:…

I’ve been catching up on the Nobel prizes. I was pleased to read about Nambu’s physics prize. He did profound and yet simple work on…

This is still on my mind. There is a coupling between marking illiquid securities and rewarding people for trading them; in both cases, you need…

For a while yesterday I felt like the market was finally hitting the bottom, and so I wasn’t surprised to see the recovery late in…

When I lived in South Africa in the ’60s, we used to buy Ayn Rand’s books when we traveled overseas, together with those of Henry…

Just some odd remarks. 1. Re Paul’s Name and Blame blog: I don’t think quants are the main mover behind the current crisis, which was…

Last night after I got home a colleague called to suddenly offer me a last-minute ticket to see a preview of The Seagull directed by…

There are sad things in addition to the continuing collapse of the visible financial world and I ran into two of them in the past…

For weeks the word ‘decimated’ has been appearing with increasing frequency in the financial press:’decimated banking industry’, ‘Lehman’s decimated mortgage portfolio’ etc. I remember hearing…

Stan Jonas once told me about aldaily.com…… and I made it my home page. Every day it has links to all sorts of new articles,…

I like swimming and track and field, but why should only swimmers be allowed to traverse the same distance via four different methods, and to…

Many years ago in the past, while running, I decided to try to shut my eyes and see how many steps I could take at…

when I came here came from one source, a fictional one: the novel “Marjorie Morningstar” by Herman Wouk. It’s the story of a young Jewish…

Ever since I read Camille Paglia’s “Break Blow Burn” in which she comments on 43 famous poems, I’ve admired her writing. Her commentary is completely…

I spent six days in Stockholm at the Nasdaq OMX Derivatives Week. It was a phenomenally well-organized conference, with only 4 or 5 speakers each…

There are a slew of books on happiness lately: www.nybooks.com…… Many years ago a colleague of mine, dissatisfied about the mismatch between his potential and…