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Particularly from this pathetic excuse for a president. But it seems that virtually all American politicians are abysmally ignorant of even rudimentary finance and economics. Wouldn't be in the least surprised if half of Congress had not hitherto heard of S&P credit ratings, or how this has...

In general, the British programs will be more theory-driven, more abstract, and with less emphasis on programming. If you've had a British undergraduate education, you will have no problem. There's demand for scientific programmers: people who can code fluently and efficiently but also know...

At Bloomberg: And Putin speaking out here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VvJmXnHssTU

It's not a priority for a budding financial engineer. It's a "nice to have": study of algorithms takes your understanding of programming deeper. You understand why some algorithms can be orders of magnitude faster or more efficient in resources than others. Your understanding of real code is...

It's extortion pure and simple: people have paid a portion of their wages into SS for years, decades -- and now they're going to be stiffed when they try to collect. This is not some freebie people are clamoring for. You just can't trust the US government worth a damn. This is no recent...

The real reason why cuts in Social Security are on the cards: (source)

Written by an economist friend of mine:

I'm not sure she was. Often they do. One can see the passivity throughout Africa and much of Asia. Or if solutions are sought, they're individual ones rather than collective. Which seems to be the case in the USA. On a side note, the causes of the French Revolution are interesting. It seems...

It is wrongly ascribed to her. First of all, it was said by someone 70 or 80 years before her. And secondly, it wasn't "cake," but a different kind of bread that was suggested.

That's taboo, strictly verboten. It's suicide (maybe even literally?) for a politician to bring this up. With exceptions that can be counted on a crippled hand, they are all assiduous in their devotion to the military-industrial cause and their financial overlords.

During all of the Middle Ages -- with the except of the Black Death -- life was generally better than in Victorian England for the majority of people. Better nutrition, better living conditions. The East India Company was an earlier example.

Name a single one of Russia's big "capitalists" who is not a criminal, not involved in massive bribery, not involved in swindling and corruption, and who does not have friends among the Russian mafia (if he does not belong himself). This is real capitalism, with no holds barred.

What made it the wealthiest country? Expropriating the land of the native Americans? Winning world wars? Military expansionism? All of this required a strong central state. That strong central state remains. This is the foundation of American "capitalism." American capital cannot function...

Yes, often they were starving. Not just the jobless but even the families of workers paid too little. This is, for example, what precipitated the Pullman strike of 1894. It seems you don't know American history at all and you have is an "Ayn Rand" rose-tinted conception of what the USA used to...

It's not the much maligned Repubs who are fighting for cuts. Neither Boehner nor Cantor asked for cuts in SS or Medicare. It came solely from Obama. There are several sources indicating this, for instance John Conyers (D-Mich): Blaming it on the Repubs is White House disinformation: Obama...

Jayati Ghosh of JNU writing at Monthly Review:

They went through their own periods of explosive growth. For instance, the population of Britan was around 3m at the time of Queen Elizabeth I (~1600). It was ~10m in 1800, and roughly quadrupled to around 38m by 1900 (despite emigration from Britain to the colonies). Europe's population was...

Can't. With or without jobs. All of South Asia is grossly overpopulated. If the USA had the population density of India, there would be over 3,000,000,000 people in the USA. The richly endowed USA could not give so many people a bare standard of living. I think the Neolithic revolution of...

It is a well-written article -- but it comes as no surprise to me. The neoliberal paradigm has been a resounding failure for ordinary people. Neither is the Chinese model one to emulate -- it's just a question of time before the overheated and bubble-driven Chinese economy comes in for a hard...

The Democrats don't put forward any policy ideas either -- it's all vague, mushy stuff. Either the "hope and change" BS of Obama, or the "we can do better" mantra of Kerry. As Nader pointed out, they're both dialling for the same dollars. The things about campaigns today is that they're not...

There are some differences in syntax but I don't think you will get confused. If you don't have prior exposure to things like functions, arrays, and pointers, then the prior course in C might be useful. The differences will be that C++ will also cover objects (and all that that entails) as well...

Not just "at the moment," but for umpteen years. The whispered message of the Democrats is, "Psst! We're ever so microscopically the lesser evil. Besides, do you want Sarah Palin/Michele Bachmann to be your next president?" To those who follow such puerile arguments I ask, "Tell me in what way...

The calls for cuts in Social Security and Medicare came from Obama, not the Republicans. Obama would like to use the Republicans' "demand for cuts" as the excuse for a "compromise," which he can try to sell to his Democrat base. But the thing is they're not asking for such a cut. They even...

They would be blasted as socialists by today's Democrats as well. Obama and Bill Clinton are way to the right of a Republican president like Nixon (let alone Eisenhower). Both parties have shifted massively to the right. Who would they be? Not today's Democrats. As I'm fond of saying, there's...

Buit if they are not white, a lot of white Americans start to get uneasy, and ask questions about assimilability. Many Americans look back nostalgically to the relatively ethnically homogeneous '50s. They're uncomfortable with a multicultural USA, as are many Germans. And as are many Norwegians...

"Hispanic" is a loose term. And not to be confused with "looking like a Spaniard." Spaniards and Italians are treated as whites. It's Mexican Mestizos -- who have a large element of native American Indian blood -- who are treated as "Hispanic." It's a euphemism in PC America for "Mestizo."

I'm a subject of Her Majesty the Queen.

They have to get special and temporary permission to carry firearms -- e.g., a suspected imminent terrorist or violent criminal threat. This permission is restricted to trained squads. The policeman on the beat carries no firearm.

Neither do British policemen. The party is FrP (Progress Party). A couple of my friends are members. It is stridently anti-immigrant and anti-Islamic. It is also pro-Israel and economically neoliberal (a la the Austrian School). It's the second largest party in the country. Jens Stoltenberg's...

The pseudo-code of the (current) 3rd edition of Cormen, et al is C-like. If you're going to implement the algorithms you should ideally know enough about C (or equivalently C++) to code them -- basics like functions and arrays, and later on things like linked lists. The introductory course on...

Most of the construction jobs illegal Mexicans were doing have gone. In other areas -- e.g., agriculture -- American citizens are now willing to do the low-pay backbreaking work only illegal workers were willing to do a few years earlier. And immigration enforcement has become more rigorous as...

It is complex. The boundary line between what is legal and illegal keeps changing with time, seems to be arbitrary, and determined by political pressure. The illegals are wanted in the US because of the combination of skills they offer and the low wages and bad working conditions they're willing...

Incidentally, advertising phantom jobs to collect resumes is not confined to finance: it's endemic among IT recruiters as well.

They're "generic" job postings -- the jobs don't exist and the HHs -- presumably for lack of anything better to do -- are just collecting resumes.

It's the curse of our modern era that everything has been reduced to numbers. Our intelligence (IQ), our scholastic potential (SAT, GRE), our academic achievement (GPA). And these numbers are so misleading. Yet these are what are used to assess our suitability for further "education," and our...

The grade inflation is directed at HR departments -- personnel, computers, and sifting algorithms. If you're personally interviewing two or three candidates, and one candidate can't respond intelligently or coherently, you're going to strike him off regardless of his GPA. The grade inflation...

In Britain there is such a degree and it's called an "M.Phil." You take some courses, and you write a little dissertation -- but it need not contain anything original. It merely has to show deep reading and understanding of a particular area. Ph.D. students typically start as M.Phil students and...

After WW2, yes. Then gradually it became an associate's degree, then a bachelor's degree, now a master's degree. And I'm not convinced that the extra credentialing and extra time spent is making those undergoing the process more "educated."

Article in the Guardian: Rush Limbaugh on the other hand is eloquently arguing (here) that the heat index is a government conspiracy.

They're either morons or oil industry shills. All sorts of records for heat, flooding, and erratic weather are being established this year, in the US and worldwide. Yet TV weathermen are not allowed to utter the taboo words, "climate change." It remains "controversial."

Don't know about more serious but even more violent and a lot of bad language, if the Youtube bits are any indication.

Amazingly someone has put the whole film on Youtube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p2BEyn3qq0U The best part for me is the few minutes after 1:25:00, when the protagonist goes to jail for his own safety. You'd think he's checking into a 4-star hotel from the servile way the police treat him...

Did you see Hrithik Roshan in Luck by Chance? Apaharan is a good serious film. It shows the nexus of politics, business, and organised crime: corruption starting from the ordinary policeman right upto ministerial level. No songs, no dances, no romance, and I don't think the protaganist (Ajay...

Anyone seen the Bollywood film, "Apaharan?" Not half bad. I'm tempted to buy it.

The bozo is White House Press Secretary -- that's what you'd expect him to say.

Maybe in Staten Island.

On a side note, I found Robert Ringer's Winning through Intimidation to be an effective antidote to groundless positive thinking. The book's long been out of print but there are doubtless used copies floating around. The author used to stand in front of a mirror every morning and try to pump...

Why is it either/or? In chess, "positive thinking" (i.e., overrating the possibilities of your position) means you go down in flames. This happens quite a bit with American players, who assess only their possibilities and ignore the positional, defensive, and counter-attacking resources of the...

You are right. And something similar has been happening in Britain in terms of decline in quality. The scams directed at foreign students came under the spotlight about a year and a half back and quite a few got closed. Don't know what's happening now, though. Maybe some latter-day Spengler...

Seems to be more the foreign student's dream: get a student visa for the US, and somehow manage to stay on (hopefully with an American qualification), get a job, get a Green Card. Hundreds of thousands have done this from the mid '60s onwards (i.e., from when Congress changed the immigration...

Not completely useless. It's handy in areas like PDEs, where it gets much of its motivation from (along with quantum field theory and von Neumann's Hilbert-space formulation of quantum mechanics) But it's definitely back-burner stuff: ars longa, vita brevis. What's needed for an MFE student is...

Interesting story in Mercury News.

If by functional analysis, you mean the study of Banach and Hilbert spaces -- which are infinite-dimensional vector spaces -- that is a mistaken suggestion. For example, the spectral theorem for compact operators in Hilbert space has an altogether different and more abstract approach than the...

You are confusing different things. The bailout funds have been set against Greek debt obligations -- e.g., about 6.5bn euros worth of bonds were redeemable this month alone, and maybe about the same again next month. That the Greek govt is still running fiscal deficits is another matter. The...

Just being barely a millionaire (i.e., net worth between $1m and $5m) doesn't mean much in major cities like NYC and London. I doubt such a millionaire could afford a Porsche. Someone -- I forget who -- came up with classification of $1m-10m as affluent, $10m-100m as middle-class rich and...

What do you think they are doing? Do you think Greece sees one red cent of the bailout money? It goes straight to the German and French banks.

This is an article in the NYT going back over two years. Hasn't lost its relevance, though.

In what sense? I'd rather choose a city like Amsterdam or Berlin.

The first "Don't" is: Don't move to NYC. Oops, too late for that.

Countries have defaulted in the past without all these things happening. Argentina defaulted about 10 years back. Sure, it makes deficit financing more difficult -- but that is preferable to the alternative of "austerity" programs, and selling off state and other public assets. To my mind, it is...

The Europeans consume less energy per capita, they use less energy for each euro of output, and they are implementing plans for alternative energy. Their governments are more accountable to the people. They are not squandering resources on imperial wars and a military-industrial complex. Their...

Not abort the EU but reconfigure it along Nordic European lines -- Germany, Austria, Benelux, Scandinavia, France. I've been saying this for five years.

Why should they go bust? You are using terms without examining them. They will default first. They only go "bust" if they play by the rules of a crooked financial game that has been rigged in favor of financial speculators and oligarchs. That downgrade is meaningless. Perhaps you're not...

Anthony is making a legitimate point: those stockpiling gold are not doing so in the expectation of a transition from paper money to gold in an economy that otherwise remains the same; rather, they're betting on an utter collapse of the economy. When that occurs, a rifle, ammunition...

Why? Let the banks that lent them money take the losses. The "bailout" money is going straight to the banks. Unlike the US, Europe has a history of upheavals and revolutions; the people are willing to take to the barricades. So what has played out in the USA is unlikely to work there. The scenes...

I'm going off-topic by discussing these books but his book on Galois Theory is just another treatment along the lines of Artin's classic text and has some errors in it (if memory serves, in the chapter on ruler-and-compass constructions, when I had to use another book). The book on algebraic...

No Western university has four years of undergraduate topology. If they did, they would have covered areas like complex cobordism, crystalline cohomology, spectral sequences, and elliptic cohomology by the end. Usually there is one, maybe two, undergraduate courses in topology. The first may...

Correct. And you don't need four years of math to do an American MS in math.

Ron Paul is making a general point about the fiat dollar. I presume he's against fiat money. Bernanke's contention that gold is not money is true in the sense that I can't (yet) pay for a meal or a supermarket purchase with a gold or silver coin; I have to use dollars in the USA. Paul's...

The Mercer study is not reliable. Furthermore it concentrates on an executive standard of living. So Luanda is going to be the most expensive city in the world -- if you want to live like a Western executive. Agree that Mumbai is probably more expensive that Delhi -- at least real estate is. A...

In theory you can. No-one says "Oxbridge only, and the rest of you can bugger off." But it's interesting how the fast-track civil service jobs, the plum Foreign Office jobs, the merchant bank jobs, the fast-track corporate jobs, the plum academic jobs, go disproportionately to Oxbridge. I don't...

The Russell Group. "Cantab" is a grad of the U of Cambridge.

Interesting story.

The USA is a bad place to improve one's English.

Read papers like the New York Times and periodicals like Atlantic Monthly and Harper's. Watch news programs like Jim Lehrer's "Newsnight." Buy yourself a decent American dictionary -- Webster's? -- and whenever you come across a new word, look it up, write it down, and make a conscientious...

Which version? American or British?

Often the margin isn't there to cut prices -- it gets gobbled up in salaries whose recipients will take it amiss if they get paid less. And secondly it's not some commodity like handbags or shoes where you can announce "Sale! 30% Off! Hurry!" Reducing prices will rightly raise suspicion that the...

Very easy to get a math degree from Cambridge without having done any programming. As you say, Oxbridge grads have a sense of entitlement. The plum jobs go to them, the scraps to everyone else.

Part of this is because the job situation is complete sh!t in Britain these days. Even Oxbridge graduates are scrambling for jobs at the moment. The areas you mention have always favored people from privileged backgrounds but this has become exponentially worse because of the dearth of openings...

As you indicate in a subsequent post, it's harder for the poor than for the well-heeled to get into Oxbridge and the Russell Group of universities generally. It's not just in internships that the dice are loaded, that the playing field isn't level: inequality and inequity pervade all aspects of...

For the sake of argument, suppose that unpaid internships were outlawed. The large firms are already paying for interns and will continue to do so. Those with rich parents who could afford to pay top whack for expensive educations at prestigious schools, and who furthermore have contacts with...

Brzezniak and Zastawniak are in the math fin department and I can vouch for their excellent books on finance and probability. But there seems to be no detailed course description for their MSc. The program is reasonably priced (12,000 pounds for the whole MSc). Goes without saying the...

Very true. Putting yourself in situations where you get exposed to the right kind of people -- whether in a gym, club, conference, seminar, or professional society -- can only do you good. It gives them a chance to be exposed to you in low-stress situations without being in a high-stress...

Interesting article, originally published in the NYT, on Obama's $35,800 a plate dinner in Manhattan: That's the way the system works: stump up cash and get political favors in return. Investing in American political campaigns affords the highest ROI in the world. Politicians listen to their...

Mostly politicians (congressmen and senators) don't arrive with any ideals or illusions. To get elected in the first place they need a war chest and that only comes with agreeing to do certain, er, political favors for moneyed interests. The US political system is based on cash for political...

Because you might like each other. But this doesn't occur in a vacuum; it is more likely to occur with shared outlooks, values, and interests. If it worked, I would tell you to do it. But with this mercenary approach, he will see you as one more importunate salesman trying to get something out...

Age and time perform their miracles. I've been through thousands of books. I'm no spring chicken, alas. :(

Reminds me of something Linh Dinh wrote last year: The election next year will change nothing -- i.e. the outcome is immaterial. As I'm fond of saying, a bunch of old grannies making X marks on their ballot papers will not affect the deployment of an aircraft carrier task force in the Persian...

If you programmed your numerical algorithms in C++, that's a big plus and you can cite it, perhaps go into a bit of detail. Scientific programming in languages like C++, R, Python, and MatLab has meaning. The other plus you have is you don't need a visa for the UK

Quite so. But to be genuinely interested, you have to have some depth of character and knowledge yourself. I run into nincompoops who feign interest in the things that interest me -- but they don't know anything. The enthusiasm and interest is fake and superficial and I've nothing to say to...

You have to find out their real interests (if they have any), which can often be something far removed from the world of work. And you have to be able to hold your own with regard to those interests, be able to talk about them, be able to share in them. It could be rock-climbing, it could be...

What ideas? She can't think. Ron Paul is at least capable of a coherent outlook (even if I don't agree with his libertarian outlook, which I consider is nostalgia for a past that never really existed and can in any case not be re-created). The Tea Party started with a nostalgic appeal to...

My friend, you need to incorporate yourself (perhaps in some offshore tax haven). Then you will be represented without taxation. The ROI on investing in American politicians has got to be the highest of any possible investment in the world. Obama is already out with his begging bowl, hoping to...

Obama is running for the Democrats. I don't think there will be a serious challenge in the party to his nomination. For the Repubs, we have some idea -- Romney, Bachmann(?), ....

This one is. But look at presidents like Johnson and Nixon. They were not figureheads. Nixon created the EPA, increased arts and science funding, started a rapproachement with China, pushed for affirmative action.

Why isn't there an alternative? Why just two parties, which are almost indistinguishable on things that matter -- foreign policy, war, taxation, economic policy (or lack thereof), "free trade"? As Governor Wallace said forty years ago, there isn't a dime's worth of difference between the two...

Of course there's a "doubt." In the old days -- say the fifties and sixties -- a single paycheck was enough to pay the mortagage on a house, rear a family, pay for the children's college, and have a bit set aside for retirement. The fake "prosperity" of the last two decades has taken place...

The argument is baloney and those pushing it -- if indeed anyone still is -- should be stood against a wall to face a firing squad. If 5m factory workers lose their jobs, trust me -- 5m new jobs paying the same kind of money will not be created in "services." Assuming such workers could be...

If Bagwatti wrote this, what a complete load of bullsh!t it is.

Veering off-topic, but while there are always reasons for failure, dwelling on them morbidly to no good end is futile, a waste of time, and sets you up for future failure. Learn what you can from each failure and then move on. An improving chessplayer, for example, keeps losing at the same time...

I think the Irish blogger is talking more about the former than the latter. If the internship involves some real training, real learning, real exposure, I'm all for it -- regardless of whether or not it leads to a job at the end. If it involves none of these things, if the intern is treated as a...

Good video here. By the way, I think I just saw some footage of a Baruch graduation ceremony about 30 minutes into the video.

An Irish blogger explaining the realities of unpaid internships here. I think he's describing the Irish scene but it probably holds with equal force in the US of A.

Anything but Ross's "First Course in Probability."

That's why the wage and benefits package is known as "compensation" -- compensation for giving up your time and free will. The wage slavery is often euphemistically referred to as a "career" but -- hehe -- don't kid yourself.

The money the ECB, EU and IMF release (about 13bn euros) will play for the bond redemptions and coupon due in the middle of July (about 7bn euros). And there's a comparable payment to make in August. Then what? The austerity program and privatisations will buy a bit of time. After which? Greece...

Rephrase the question: what are the origins of the state? Then look back thousands of years to the first states (Babylon, Sumeria, Akkadia, Assyria, Egypt) for the answers. There has to be some sort of agricultural surplus to begin with, which can be expropriated (either by force or through the...

The Greek "big con," according to Charles Hugh Smith:

Cheers, mate. But as Alexei points out, if you're not a subscriber you have to go through Google to read it.

Article in the FT by Gillian Tett on the recent growth of shadow banking.

Which cannot be said of the book by Steve Krantz, which is full of sensible advice for the (math) grad student.

Benninga's "Financial Modeling" (3rd edition).

Bill Gross: "College is Worthless"

Michael Hudson on the "banality of financial evil" (paraphrasing Hannah Arendt) a propos Greece.

Depends on what "survive" means. The Greek people will survive, as will the land on which they live. There will continue to be a Greek government (though not necessarily the present one). The non-Greek bankers are concerned with the survival of the financial status quo, which is unsustainable...

Greek tax avoidance 101.

It's like putting off a painful yet necessary visit to the dentist. Bondholders aren't willing to take a "haircut" (each time Merkel has diffidently broached the idea, she's been attacked). The debt is literally unpayable. The politicians are but kicking the can down the road. On a side note...

I'm not really keen on communicating with an obvious twit like you. On top of which I stopped posting in this thread as I was going off-topic. And googling and finding an NYT article running counter to my thesis of increased crime (which I explicitly mentioned is not reflected in the official...

It's a racket that allows IT billionaires in both the US and India to make even more super-profits while packing Indian coders eight and ten to small apartments in the US at increasingly dismal wages. The Indians are willing to work for such wages meekly and docilely for long hours. The losers...

There are enough American (and European) IT workers -- many of them unemployed. The visa racket -- aided and abetted by giant firms like Microsoft -- has always been about exerting downward pressure on US wage levels and benefits and strengthening the bargaining hand of employers.

When people -- especially youngsters -- are alienated and isolated in an atomised society where one is told one is individually responsible for one's problems, street crime -- drug pushing, robberies, thefts, carjacking -- is what occurs. Eventually, as US society becomes more polarised, the...

Crime rates are going up -- I just don't think they're necessarily reflected in the official stats. Also, the crimes seem to be becoming more violent, at least in my neck of the woods. If one lives in a gated community or in an expensive 'burb with vigilant police, one may be insulated from...

Another interesting piece at vdare:

Interesting piece by Edwin Rubenstein.

I feel these days like the character Kai in the series Lexx, who, on a planet whose sun is about to go supernova, earnestly informs his fellow crew members that this is a "once in a lifetime spectacle" (the joke of course is that you pay with your life to see the spectacle of a star going...

Without derailing the thread in any way, the point perhaps is that it's not just Wall Street that's jittery about layoffs -- there's angst everywhere in the US today.

I'd like to continue talking about this but fear I'd be derailing the thread.

Yes. But the Chinese and other foreigners are not allowed to buy American companies with their dollar holdings. That's why there's a divide between US corporate profitability (which is excellent) and the poor returns on US Treasuries. If I were holding dollars and was told I could only park them...

Does this mean their naked backsides will be flayed with a cat 'o nine tails?

Not technically. The US authorities can keep arbitrarily raising the debt ceiling (which is what? -- $14.5 trillion?). In fact they have no alternative to raising the debt ceiling and engaging in repeated bouts of quantitative easing. That's the sum total of economic policy. What happens as a...

As you suggested yesterday, a very good programmer can always find a job. People need back-up plans, need not to put all their eggs in one basket. need to ask, "What if ...?" I am of the opinion that finance as a whole, at least in terms of employment the world over, will shrink. And a...

How does it work? Do they get hired for certain high-stress jobs? And who gets recruited? Commissioned officers like retired majors and colonels?

Publicity stunt to create good will?

I've ordered a copy of Paul Mattick's "Business as Usual: The Economic Crisis and the Failure of Capitalism." Here is an interview with the author: And a synopsis of the book is here:

All you're doing is further depleting your dwindling reserve of credibility. A google search turns this up a propos physics PhDs: And you go on to write: Derman's book was published in 2004. As far as we're concerned, that's the Jurassic period. Since 2008 all bets have been off. As Alain...

Seconded. Name names and make credible arguments or get lost.

The table of fees is here. For the year 2011-12, the fee for home undergrad students is 3,375 per year. For the new college it's to be 18,000 per year for undergrads. Compare like with like. The LSE fees will probably go up -- 6,ooo, 7,000, maybe even 10,000 a year. But no-one is talking of 18,000.

I'm not sure either. But I don't think SOAS and LSE are profit-making entities. For sure they're not charging (and will not be charging) 18,000 quid a year. But yes, they are moving in the same general direction. This new college is but an egregious example of a general tendency. Again not...

Unemployment rate is also high for "skilled professionals." The argument that there is a skills shortage is a specious one. Before the 2008 crash, the unemployment rate among American computer programmers over the age of 50 was 20%; it can only be worse now. The idea is to have a large pool of...

This blog post sheds a bit of light: And some coverage in the Guardian:

The degree-awarding authority is to be the University of London. And though this college is private, it would appear the students can use the facilities of the U of London -- the libraries, clubs, and bars. On the one hand the government is putting the squeeze on humanities budgets, on the other...

Article by Boris Johnson in the Telegraph:

He came here to a local Barnes and Noble a few years ago to give a talk. Mostly a crowd of middle-brow wishy-washy liberals with no idea of realpolitik, and who substitute moral outrage for real arguments. Anyway, I couldn't take more than five minutes of the talk. A book on my to-buy list is...

The VBA code in these books is meant to operate in an Excel environment.

I don't have the Justin London books so can't comment. The other three are all very good books. The Clewlow and Strickland book only gives pseudocode, true. But anyone with half a brain should be able to code it in his language of choice. Benninga is solely in Excel and VBA, and Brandimarte only...

It's not much but the 20 pages he devotes to Excel and VBA include the rudiments of creating functions and subroutines. I'm submitting each additional post on this thread with increasing reluctance because there are many excellent books on the market and it's easy to get carried away and buy...

The "industry standard." I have the 6th edition on my shelf but the 8th edition is the current incarnation. I personally prefer McDonald's "Derivative Markets," of which I have the 2nd edition (don't know what the current incarnation is). But perhaps it's because I find his style more congenial...

1) Financial Engineering and Computation. Lyuu. Cambridge 2) Paul Wilmott Introduces Quantitative Finance. Wilmott. Wiley

Both these countries are under the US security umbrella. Norway is a member of US-controlled NATO, and has sent troops to Afghanistan. In addition, on a per capita basis, Norway is the largest arms exporter in the world, and #11 in total sales (source). The point is that the global political...

The Perkins book is interesting -- though so vague in places as to cast doubt on his credibility. The Bloom book still resonates with me, and my interpretation of it has been that it's (inadvertently) a commentary on the lack of a national culture.

This is what the learned Norton Grubb says: First, education is not delivering its expected returns -- or at least the returns that youngsters and their parents thought would be there. This is why there's been a spate of articles in the popular press examining the worth of college education...

So-called humanitarian interventions are always undertaken with ulterior motives. In the past it was called "white man's burden" and "bringing religion to the heathen." Now it's called bringing "freedom" and "democracy." If you can, get hold of a copy of Wallerstein's slim book, "European...

But often there's nothing for them to do in their own country -- unemployed, underemployed, or paid so little they have trouble making ends meet. In this sense it's difficult to decide whether the efflux of skilled people is a cause or an effect of a disintegrating society. The society from...

The courses are listed here. It seems to be a program in finance rather than quant finance. Specifically, no courses in programming (spreadsheets being as far they go), and no courses in hard core math (PDEs, numerical analysis, stochastic calculus). There is a small amount of overlap (a couple...

Only have the course titles to go by. And these suggest it's way too basic.

How do you know? A lot of people don't like mathematics because of the egregious way it's taught rather than any innate aversion (though being ignorant of the subject and of effective ways of teaching and learning it, they confuse the two). Likewise, courses on Java and C++ are likely to...

Insightful essay by Martin Feldstein (Harvard prof, Reagan advisor):

Tolkien painstakingly created the world of Middle Earth over decades. LOTR is halfway between the children's fairy tale titled "The Hobbit" and the epic "Silmarillion." The only thing that comes close are the short stories and novels of that great Hyborean hero, Conan. But several writers have...

I like Marsden's books on multivariable calculus and vector calculus, but many reviewers on Amazon appear not to like it.

It's a fine book. His "Introduction to Real Analysis" is more basic and also to be recommended to beginners.

It's an industry. It's also the oldest profession. With regard to setting up distinctions, it's like comparing a big mac to an expensive steak. At the bottom you've got crack whores. One level higher you've got truck stop girls and "exotic dancers" performing their miracles on some pole in a...

Not necessarily. These aren't truck stop girls servicing some redneck truck drivers. It's a mistake to conflate the two. Finance, with its high stress and long hours, breeds dysfunctionality.

Those aren't escorts then. They're street hookers. And the kind of men who can afford escorts and know how to treat them are unlikely to talk this way. Also keep in mind that escorts are often used just as escorts -- not for sex. A man may want an attractive and cultured woman to accompany him...

I don't see any incompatibility between professionalism and using an escort. "Prostitution" isn't quite the right word -- the agency supplies a girl for a fee: if she's any good, she will be a sharp dresser, an interesting conversationalist, have a college degree and at least a veneer of...

Agreed. A bland, colorless speeech that looks like it was drafted by a speechwriter.

You are right. Let us see what the future reveals. What I would be interested to know is if Indian companies are creating their own consortium to pioneer next-generation work. In the way Japanese organisations have done, with MITI providing overall coordination. Are the Indians going beyond...

I don't know about Ukraine, but I do know Latvia and Estonia (I've been there several times over many years). They are poor countries -- but their education system is top-notch and their coders excellent. If Ukraine is anything close, then the Ukrainians must be good coders. Everyone knows that...

Yes, it is almost everywhere. I have seen it in Africa, in Latin America, and I don't see how Club Med European countries like Greece and Italy are all that different. We are really using North European norms and standards -- and these are an anomaly.

Same in Pakistan. In the buildings the contractors always cheat on the sand-cement mixture (sand is cheap, cement expensive), and cheat on the metal girding. So occasionally new apartment buildings collapse even before being inhabited. I shudder to think what would happen if there was a major...

Though I have to say that if I drive in any big Indian or Pakistani city I will also get into an accident -- drive according to the formal rules there and this is what will happen. Hmmm ... I think this is a metaphor for life in general there: try to play by the rules there (driving, academic...

That's not correct. The reason they clump together is not ostracism but because 1) they form mutual self-help groups, 2) they don't understand the new society in which they live in terms of rules and mores, and 3) they're not comfortable with the language. The same holds for Indians...

I agree with you but they don't see it this way. And see it from their point of view as well: they lack foundations, both in English and in the subject they're studying. There's not much they can do to rapidly rectify years upon years of bad schooling (assuming they want to do something about it...

The universities accepting these Chinese students know full well the essays and recommendations are fabricated (though of course they'll feign ignorance and outrage). Furthermore they know the Chinese students are doing things like working together in groups (when the assignments are supposed to...

Some real blood-sucking vampires out there .... I'm convinced the US government knows about this form of racketerring but does nothing except make token protests and half-hearted admonitions.

How casual?

The point is they can't serve as an introduction until he has at least a couple of years of university courses under his belt. At that time there will probably be the 9th edition of Hull (not that I recommend buying that overpriced telephone book to begin with). And there will be better and...

Be careful in the buying of books. I have the three above but I wouldn't recommend them as a priority. Frankly at this stage I wouldn't buy any books but just concentrate on general mathematics -- calculus, linear algebra, probability, differential equations. When the time comes to study quant...

I wish I could copy and paste this essay in its entirety. This is but a brief taste. It deserves to be read as a whole.

Difficult. In the early '70s the income-price ratio for property in NYC and London was at one level; today it's at another. Maybe on a national level one can -- though even then, the British ratio seems to have shifted upwards for good. The question should be: When national economies and the...

A pertinent blog post, beautifully written.

Because China is a far bigger economy, whose domestic problems will cause a global tsunami? In terms of nominal GDP, China must be about four times larger than India.

There are other texts around that can give Shreve a run for his money but they seem not to known. For example, for Vol.1 of Shreve, there's van der Hoek and Elliott's "Binomial Models in Finance," published by Springer. It looks a bit more accessible than Shreve, and seemingly covers some extra...

I just found one more introductory book on my shelf: 5) Introductory Real Analysis, by Dangello and Seyfried, published by Houghton-Mifflin. Haven't checked to see if it's still in print. Along with the books by Howie and Bressoud above, it's an excellent introduction for students who have...

The one by Simon Singh? The one by Hellegouarch ("Invitation to the Mathematics of Fermat-Wiles") is technical and doesn't pull its punches.

The film isn't half bad either. But among the books of Hesse my favorite -- indeed the favorite of many mathematicians -- is "The Glass Bead Game," which won him the Nobel Prize back in '46 (I think). The term "glass bead game" has even percolated down to semi-popular discourse, with one writer...

My comments was meant to be a joke. People react strongly to Rand: they're either fervent supporters of her ideas or vociferously against her.

Publish papers that win them tenure, increase their profile in their speciality, and lead to promotion. In addition, for the university it is of importance that the "research" be funded -- i.e., the scope and direction of investigation is set by outside agencies willing to write the cheques. And...

What threat of intellectual ostracism? You sound like a raving lunatic. And go and wash your mouth with soap.

You are indeed courageous to mention her name in polite society.

Essay on the recruiting tactics of for-profit "universities":

Well, I'll take a look at it. Most of the fantasy I see these days is poor quality compared to Tolkien's LOTR, Zelazny's Amber series, and the Conan novels and short stories.

If I were teaching analysis to a class of undergrad sophomores without much mathematical maturity I would use 1) Real Analysis by Howie, published by Springer and/or 2) A Radical Approach to Real Analysis by Bressoud, published by the Mathematical Association of America. If the class was a...

These are all okay texts, with Rosenlicht having the advantage of being published by Dover (I think) and hence inexpensive. Baby Rudin is too expensive for what it is -- unless one can get hold of one of the Asian reprints. Not sure Apostol is in print (haven't bothered checking). There are at...

The Eurozone was and is a half-baked idea. To work, it would probably need a federal structure like the US, with one central bank, and the ability to (centrally) tax and apportion funds. In my exceedingly humble opinion this is the only way this sort of currency union could have worked. It was...

Hindsight is always 20/20. In my opinion, Club Med shouldn't have been allowed into the Eurozone. Greece, for example, never fulfilled entry conditions but was allowed in with a nod and a wink.

It's a case of "see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil." While the property asset-bubble continued, with low interest rates, the German, French and British bankers were content. They turned a blind eye towards Greek corruption (which has been going for as long as I can remember) and Greek tax...

About 1m people applied for these McJobs, so they agree that a McJob is better than nothing. But it's not much of a choice if they have to choose between no job and a McJob that doesn't even pay the bills. The few jobs that are being created in the US are along the lines of these McJobs, while...

A piece at Channel 4 News: What a timid and craven lot, playing with words and playing with half-measures. At some stage they have to bite the bullet. The status quo of the last ten years is dead, is a zombie. Off topic, but if this account is at all reliable, it looks like Greek civil...

The NYT is full of drivel. From the article: and: The writer's a moron. And the NYT disseminates disinformation.