Re: OT: Merchant bankers (Was: [gentoo-user] Any big gotcha's when update from several (5) mnths

[Mark Knecht]

On Sat, Sep 17, 2011 at 11:20 AM, Mick <michaelkintzios@×××××.com> wrote:
> On Saturday 17 Sep 2011 09:00:37 Pandu Poluan wrote:
>> On Sep 17, 2011 4:54 AM, "David W Noon" <dwnoon@××××××××.com> wrote:
>> > On Fri, 16 Sep 2011 20:49:03 +0100, Neil Bothwick wrote about Re:
>> >
>> > [gentoo-user] Any big gotcha's when update from several (5) mnths:
>> > > On Fri, 16 Sep 2011 08:02:27 -0700, Mark Knecht wrote:
>> > [snip]
>> >
>> > > > The world of trading is 99% boredom, 1% terror...
>> > >
>> > > Tell that to UBS...
>> >
>> > Don't go there!  I used to work for UBS, about 11 years ago.  I (and
>> > many others) was laid off when they lost a fortune on the dot-com
>> > bubble.  Then they were bankers to Enron.  Then they were bankers to
>> > Worldcom. [See a pattern here?] Then they bought sub-prime mortgage
>> > portfolios -- as hedge instruments.  Now they've been shafted by one of
>> > their traders.
>> >
>> > Of course, all of the directors are business geniuses, as all senior
>> > City folk are.
>>
>> So, the moral of the story is: don't trust a banker. Unless he's
>> well-versed in Gentoo :-)
>
> Since we're soooo [OT] I might as well ask Mark:
>
> How close are we to 1930's like depression given the state of European banks
> exposure to a Greek default (and how might this drag down the US with CDSs
> across the pond and what not)?
>
> PS. Yes, any bank(s)ters who don't use Gentoo are inherently suspicious
> entities ...
> --
> Regards,
> Mick
>

Mick,
   First, I apologize to anyone not interested. Possibly I should have
answered Nick offline with all the traffic the list has had recently.
I'm happy to converse with anyone about any topic concerning trading,
but going forward let's do this off list.

   WRT the depression question I have no training, background or
experience in trying to forecast that sort of thing. We are likely in
at least the 2nd worst time economy of the last 100 years. I have no
reason to hope it becomes the worst...

   WRT to the European problems, and they are legion with only 1 or 2
economies there actually doing moderately well right now, this feels
like the sort of environment wherein one really bad result in the EU
(Italy or Greece) could result in major issues here in the U.S.
financial sector at a minimum, and as we saw in 2008, when the U.S.
financial system shuts down the rest of the world, U.S. & otherwise,
pretty much shuts down also. At that point we're back into the sort of
problems we saw a few years ago but I suspect taking longer than 5
years to repair themselves.

   Of course, I'm a committed (read that word any way you like, as in
'should be') fan of the Kondratiev wave/Super Cycle ideas and started
positioning myself in 2001 for a major slowdown in the world economies
which, so far, has worked out to be the case. On 9/11/2011 the S&P 500
was within about .1% of where it was on 9/10/2001. The 'Lost
Decade'...

Here's a link:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kondratiev_wave

While I don't agree with the timing on the Wikipedia page - I see it
as more like 2000-2017 - I think the ideas have held for over 200
years and seem to be in play now. That cycle timing would support
another 5 years of these problems with a good economy from 2018-2034
or so.

   I had another good day Friday with 16 winners/6 losers. I hate that
it's in Windows, but I love that Windows only runs here in Virtualbox
VMs. I'd love to have a Linux-based trading environment that supported
everything I need to do but unfortunately nothing I've tried in Linux
really gets the job done for me.

   OK, over and out on the list. All other questions off list. Flames
-> /dev/null.

Cheers,
Mark