I'm considering it but fear it will be dominated by the usual socialist fools

There seems to be a continual witch hunt to pin blame for the crises over the years on someone or some group, and typically end up lynching the messenger.1929 was the bucket shops & brokerage houses offering excessive leverage. 1987 was "futures" and portfolio insurance programs run by rubinstein & others that "caused" the crash.This time round it is either the greedy banks originating low quality loans, packaging them up, slicing and dicing with CDO's CDO^2's, throw in a CDS & get a AAA rating. - Li's copula & Credit rating agency's lack of understanding what they were rating and using inappropriate assumptions in an inappropriate model.Hang on a moment, what about the creation of excess liquidity from the late 90's - Starting from the asian contagion, LTCM debacle, .com bust, 9/11, each time the market was not allowed to have a healthy & natural correction because Greenspan did not want another market correction on his watch (he assumed the position of chairman of Fed shortly before '87 crash), and Gordy Brown had already discovered the holy grail of "No more Boom & Bust" These clowns provided too much liquidity to the system in the first place. The (capitalist) free market simply did its job trying to find the best use for this excess liquidity - the housing market, as Equity was overpriced - consider long term PE ratios!, credit spreads were already at historic lows, so the last option was relatively safe & secure property. Sure the whole thing was overdone, but was it the "fault" of quants using poor models & assumptions, was it regulators asleep on the job, excessive bonus's for originating toxic waste loans (subprime) - well I guess they all played a part, AFTER the central bankers provided the catalyst of excessive liquidity.Was this provision of excessive liquidity for a fundamentally sound reason, or for political / ego purposes that there will not be a market downturn on their watch?

@Vegawizard: I agree and they're trying the same thing again now. There is no political leadership anymore, just timidity. They do not have the will to stop taking the easy route of ever more ad hoc bailouts and pouring ever more money down the financial black hole. There is no political will to take the necessary painful and radical action. This can only end one way - catastrophically.

QuoteOriginally posted by: PaulAnyone here going on the demonstrations starting April, and the May Day one?PWrong forum - created social_unrest forum - long time ago i saw this one coming!!

QuoteOriginally posted by: PaulAnyone here going on the demonstrations starting April, and the May Day one?PWhen I get my Yohji Yamamoto-designed Can'T Calculate Hero T-shirt in time.

QuoteOriginally posted by: CuchulainnQuoteOriginally posted by: torontosimpleguySince David Li used CreditMetrics approach here comes two outcomes,1. One can't blame him for losses because it's not purely "his" model.2. It explains why industry easily adopted "his" model.1 and 2 are clear; but that was not my point. How did it get so far to enable such models to be accepted in the first place?The answer I guess is that financial industry (and regulators) has to have mathematicians who understand economics/finance.Then they right away would identify that something was wrong with application of Gaussian copula theory since it "eliminated" undiversifiable systematic (market) risk, which contradicted both to "economic common sense" and market reality.