<r>Check out the US Coinage Act of 1792, Statute 1 Section 19: Penalty on Debasing Coins (<URL url="http://nesara.org/files/coinage_act_1792.pdf">http://nesara.org/files/coinage_act_1792.pdf</URL>). This is when we took our currency seriously.As to, "I do partly agree with you that sometimes central...

<t>What's been said is accurate. But your problem may be with your equity portfolio.If you have a, say, 5 stock portfolio then your firm specific risk is fairly large relative to your market risk. You hedge the market risk but are left with still volatile returns.If your portfolio is diversified the...

Why limit yourself to trading correlation? Are they cointegrated? I don't know if this is a general question, however if you happen to be looking at a particular pair make sure there isn't a good reason for the drop in correlation (for example one of the firms is an acquisition target).

<t>And have not your 'real targets' been saved from the brink? May we not now reestablish the sensible rule that security speculation must be done with privately arranged funds? You may make the argument (as you have done) that allowing GS to be a commercial bank may have served as an expedient in e...

<t>"This is exactly why Paul Volcker wants to separate them as before. He thinks that Greenspan destroyed sound banking system with his risky 'innovations.'"Maybe true. However the catalyst for the proposed separation is investment banks (GS for example) becoming commercial banks during the credit c...

<t>"I see nothing wrong in it from an economic point of view."What's wrong with it is the rate at which you borrow from the Fed is not adjusted for the risk you are taking in your prop trading. In a sound market based economy, the required return on your financing should be increasing in the risk yo...

Trading (or owning PE firms) isn't being banned. You just can't borrow from the government if you want to trade. If you want to prop trade, or have a buyout fund, then sell bonds or issue equity (in other words finance it yourself and stop using fed funds - the old fashioned way).

If you could convert into a good deal of stock, then I suppose you may want to convert to have the voting power (say you want to put someone on the board). Beyond that, there may be step ups in conversion price which can cause you to convert.

<t>"This is a delightfully - though probably not consciously, ironic statement. Leaving the gold standard made it possible for government debt to be LESS of a "Ponzi" scheme through a very simple mechanism: if you can print money, you need never default on your internal debt. And there have been MAN...

<r>Hamilton (1989) is the original paper on the topic. However google regime switching models and you'll see quite a few extending Hamilton's work such as this working paper: <URL url="http://research.stlouisfed.org/wp/2003/2003-015.pdfTo">http://research.stlouisfed.org/wp/2003/2003-015.pdfTo</URL> ...

Sovereign debt became a ponzi scheme in '71. Fiat money was born from fiscal recklessness (Nixon broke from the gold standard because he couldn't maintain it with the war and 'great society' spending), so why would it lead us anywhere else.

Maybe India thinks Pakistan's CDS spread is too wide.Pakistan's CDS spread narrows => investors take more developing market risk => US dollar falls and gold rises.

<t>Infinitely many for sure. What I meant was that there exists some natural number X, such that for all k > X no one knows (there is no way to tell) if p = 6k + 1 is prime.In other words, as far as I know (which is limited certainly) there is no way to mathematically describe "all prime numbers of ...

Just to clarify, prove p^2 divides a(n) for only those p where p = 6k+1 is prime for some natural number k? The only issue here may be, who knows how many of those p are prime?

<t>I use R and not S-PLUS, so am not familiar with the unitroot() function. If you type ?unitroot into the command line you should get the help file. If you posted the argument description (the different arguments "stasistic=" may take and what each means) here I, or others that don't use S=PLUS, ma...