"The pen is mightier than the sword"I posted a bit earlier today about the forgotten religion of Monetarism in the context of my weekend at a conference in Chicago. I had not heard mention of the faith, nor seen anyone but myself doing analysis using the old tools for a long, long time
I blogged a bit back about Jim Chanos' critique on CNBC of the new Mark to Market 'requirements' and the artificiality of the Basel II reserve requirement target value, Chanos suggesting a relaxation to a transition value of say 1.5 percent to 'conform' to Basel II in the short term. Two weeks ago, I had mentioned 'A Monetary History of the United States' (Friedman, Schwartz) to a friend wanting to understand how we got where we are; yesterday evening, I was discussing the Nixonian repudiation of Bretton Woods and the need to revisit Basel II, as I saw a clear demonstration that Basel II is defective at the conference. I do not have my notes at hand, the slide decks are not up yet, but I believe it was in the mixed currency risk analysis (Austrian, Swiss, and back to Central Europe as to residential property loans), which I believe Rheinberger gave entitled: 'VEC and GVAR Models using R' which exposed quite clearly that the 'experts' are using simple additive risk summing in Basel II, seemingly oblivious of the concept of the non-linear nature of correlated risks
The afternoon's email brings a report that Anna Schwartz is still out there as well
The old craft will live so long as a single practitioner remembers them
"Hokey religions and ancient weapons are no match for a good blaster at your side, kid."The good fight continues; I'll keep swinging with the tools I know, thanks
p.s.: I do know the regular titles for the third and sixth released Star Wars films
