Are present contracts specific enough? Can the average regulator pick up a contract, read it, and know what it implies?
How hard is it to tie a security to its underlying asset? Can I find out enough to drive to call up the guy whose mortgage backs a security?
Can regulators ask to see any random security owned by anyone?
I don’t the know the answers to these questions, and so can’t say what kind of regulation would have prevented the current crisis. If contracts are unintelligible (or unintelligible at a large scale), I would recommend constraining the language used. A subset of a strongly-typed programming language might do the trick. You can solve new problems in a sufficiently powerful programming language without knowing what those problems are ahead of time (many economists writing about regulation fear a response that would prevent the specific problems that led to this crisis while neglecting the problems that will cause the next crisis). The main advantage of using a formal language to describe contracts would be that machines could reason about such contracts. (This checking would appeal to The Economist, which can’t resist mentioning that talented people work on Wall St. and bozos work for the SEC).
Formalizing contracts doesn’t address the human element, however. What happens when people lie? Or don’t perform due diligence? How many random contracts do you have to check before you can assess the credulity of particular actors?
I ask these questions because I refuse to believe that investment banks don’t ‘understand’ the securities they own.
The window washers came yesterday. I had no idea they were coming. I woke up to the sound of clanging balcony furniture. I hid under the covers. Having random people show up at random times to do your chores is one of the perks of our building.
I didn’t notice the effect until this morning. Dust no longer coats the skyline. For today, at least, the sun came in clearly.
I also noticed that the sun rises to the north. It used to rise just behind the Sears Tower. If I wake up at the right time tomorrow morning, I should be able to catch it as it rises behind Skybridge.
My dad called yesterday. He’s looking for someone who understands marketing and the web to quintuple sales on his company’s web site. I couldn’t think of anyone who would do that. The closest analogue in the tech world is an ‘evangelist.’ I have no idea how you hire for that job, especially if you yourself don’t spend time on the web.
I ended up telling him that anyone who had the business and the technology skills he wants has already started a company. By ‘business and technology skills’, I mean someone who’s articulate, can code, and has a sense of what people want.
It’s odd to not know whom to hire. I can think of jobs that already exist and wonder how you get them. Just the other night Caroline asked me if I’d ever thought of joining a political campaign. I told her I pay a fair amount of attention to politics but suspect that it’s mostly dumb. I also said that if I could do nothing but make speeches all day, I’d be a happy man. I love talking in front of crowds. At least, I love talking in front of crowds when I get to write what I’ll say. When you know where you’re going, it’s easier to take detours. Anyhow, neither of us knows how you become a speechwriter or a speaker.
I can think of specific people and wonder what it would take to get them to leave whatever they’re doing. I’ve made one brief run at starting a company. Unfortunately, most everyone smart I know works at Google. Between this summer and next summer all the options should vest. Until then, it’s a real problem.
I’ve never heard a job description and thought, “I don’t know how you’d hire for that.” My dad’s looking for passion. That’s the one thing you can’t interview for. You can fake enthusiasm. You can’t fake a portfolio, but just because you’ve done good work in the past doesn’t mean that you’ll like what you have to do in a new job.
We’ve been back from Hawaii for two weeks now. It was seventy degrees and humid the morning we landed. Chicago has seen a few cold days since then, but nothing like before we left. The moisture has moved in. If it’s at all warm, expect a thunderstorm around 5:30 p.m. If you can step outside in shorts, you might as well wear a rain jacket.
I liked Hawaii more than I expected. We consider it our first successful vacation. Iceland and Norway were intriguing but stressful and expensive. We picked the right itinerary for this trip: three days in the tourist strip of Honolulu, three days camping on Kauai, and three days at the Grand Hyatt resort. At the end of each part of the trip, we were happy to move on. Camping also alleviated my guilt for staying at a resort. It may have helped us score a sweet room, too. Caroline told the guy at the desk that we had spent one night at Haena and two nights on Polihale. He chatted us up and then gave us a top-floor, ocean-view room. We paid for the garden view.
I didn’t touch a computer or turn on my cell phone for ten days. I didn’t read a newspaper either (though I did cheat on the way home and read the Pennsylvania primary results on a paper lying upside down). I felt liberated. I used to think that procrastination hurt in two ways: you lost the time spent reading useless stuff on the web and you split your productive time in two. But that’s not the whole story. You think about whatever you read. So if you kill time reading about politics, you’re going to spend some of your time away from the computer thinking about politics. The secret to not wasting time thinking about useless stuff is to read less useless stuff.
We can know when personal software is right, in exactly the same way we know
when a theory is right, when a painting or a sentence is right.
— NeoVictorian computing by Mark Bernstein
Mark’s posts made me smile. I do yearn for personal software. I think the word ‘enterprise’ sounds clumsy. You can have an intuition for detail. You can only guess at the whims of markets. (Besides, the real way to win a market is to build what people love.)
I feel less violently Romantic than I did as a teenager. Tortured geniuses don’t seem that cool anymore. But I still idolize anyone who creates.
The Spitzer slip-up provoked the expected reaction: glee from the previously persecuted, questions of why private life should influence public life, calls for the legalization of prostitution, reminders that many prostitutes are abused as children. The scandal tied in neatly to the Democratic presidential campaign: while Obama parried charges that his race made him popular, the web displayed comments imploring people to elect a female president so that we don’t have to endure embarrassment again.
I deplore the popularity of personal stories over policy debates. But I refreshed nytimes.com frequently the past few days. People like stories. I like stories. They move quickly. Economics papers trudge along. You have to work through each sentence.
After a few beers, it’s tempting to say that most people are stupid and that politicians cater to the lowest common denominator. People like stories. They like the personal. We’re drawn to charisma. That’s why we hear about biography and character. When you go to the ballot box, you don’t put a check mark next to a list of policies. You pick a person. You don’t want to do that blindly.
I can understand how identity politics arises. It’s a shorthand for talking about biography. But it’s roundabout. Instead of saying ‘I have done this, this, and this under these circumstances,’ you start with, ‘Assume a population with these characteristics shares these common traits,’ and work from there.
Had to drive out to the western suburbs (Oak Brook) three days this week for work. I now understand why people complain about their jobs so much. If you have to drive anywhere from one to two hours per day in addition to working, you can’t get anything else done. You can’t write or run. Sitting in traffic doesn’t do you any good. Walking for fifteen minutes can clear your head.
Some of the people I talked to out there drove much farther than I did. They said they got used to it. If you collect enough podcasts and plug in your iPod to the car speakers, then maybe you don’t notice anything. I prefer to read, though. Several people agreed that they get more done on the train than they do in the office. What that says about offices is left as exercise for the reader.
Luckily I got along with the dude who drove me in every day.
Sitting in traffic reminded me of March of the Penguins. The penguins in the Antarctic stand for months without food or sunlight in order to protect their young. The process sucks for the penguins, but doesn’t kill enough of them off in order to force them to (a) change their ways or (b) go extinct. Many people put up with inconveniences like commuting. The inconveniences suck enough to make them complain, but not enough for them to change their ways. This is not a new idea, but it’s often said more bluntly.
This blog is an experiment in writing first and thinking second. I type for a while then click ‘Publish.’
After a few weeks of creating stuff just for the heck of it, I’m still in the flow. I don’t upload photos every day, but I do take them. In fact, by not forcing myself to upload them immediately, I’m more likely to snap a few at any moment.
The stuff I’ve written here has been crap. I’m particularly embarrassed about yesterday’s piece. It doesn’t say anything new or interesting. But at least I’m putting my half-formed thoughts into writing instead of letting them fly by.
I’m also much more focused on actually doing stuff. Given a few minutes, I’d rather write code or prose than read, and would rather read something interesting instead of a fluffy link on Reddit. When I go more than a few hours without making something, I feel specifically unsatisfied.
I don’t code as often as I’d like. When you know what you want to do, coding is easy. You just chip away at the program. Writing takes more effort. Good writing takes the most effort. But deciding what to program is the hardest task, requiring both ambition, humility, a sense of humor, and focus. It’s hard to pull all those qualities together for twenty minutes before running out the door to work.
It’s important to pay attention when people you like screw up. I read in a textbook on communication that people view their own actions as the result of personal choice mixed external constraints, whereas they see others’ actions as the result of character traits. In other words, if I cut you off in traffic, I think that I had to because the light was changing or because the sunset clouded my vision. If you cut me off, I think it’s because you’re an asshole.
You give yourself and your friends the benefit of the doubt. So if you want to understand what causes people to make mistakes, you have to look at yourself and people you like. It’s too easy to dismiss people you don’t know or already disagree with.
Obama’s taking flak for disparaging NAFTA. To trash the agreement in front of Ohio voters while moderating his position in private smacks of hypocrisy. It undercuts his image of being honest and straightforward.
A vague, unsubstantiated anecdote: in Afghanistan, NATO forces face a problem: guerrilla warriors threaten violence against civilian populations. No matter what the soldiers do, they’ll have a hard time winning over civilians unless they make that threat moot or threaten violence themselves.
In politics, if your opponent panders, you can either cry foul or match them. In a tight race, it could make a difference.
When politicians with whom we disagree pander, we assume they’re slightly evil or stupid. I like Obama, so in this case I can see the tightrope that he must walk. I don’t like it, but I can see it.
I ran a 5k on Sunday morning. Luckily the sun was out and the thermometer hit forty-five degrees Fahrenheit. Right after the race finished the wind picked up and the clouds blew in.
I drank six beers the night before, pounded three glasses of water before going to bed at two, and felt fine. The race was at ten in the morning.
I ran 20:06 by the clock, probably a few seconds faster by the chip. According to the calculator, that works out to a 6:29 pace. Slightly faster than I’ve been training. I ran the first mile in a little over six minutes. I didn’t mean to do that. It happens. The splits went something like this: 6:10, 7:00, 7:06 (last 1.1 miles). Slow by high school standards, but fast considering I’ve run no more than three times a week on the treadmill for the past few weeks.
Next up: banditing the Shamrock Shuffle. I hope to run 6:20 pace for five miles.
