

Man vs. Machine; Wall Street cuts trading staff for algorithms - danso
http://www.nypost.com/p/news/business/man_vs_machine_kcKBB0HkdpQr4jtAUprbIK

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e3pi
Never underestimate the power pure mathematics applied, and know the history
of dangerous consequences when misapplied. For example, LTCM's Black-Scholes'
Black Swan catastrophe.

~~~
brisance
They know all this, and this bad behavior will not be corrected as long as
moral hazard exists.

~~~
hga
I think the word you're looking for is perhaps "curbed", not "corrected". Even
without moral hazard big financial institutions are perfectly capable of
screwing up big time. E.g. a few days ago I looked up the decline and fall of
the Medici Bank
([http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medici_Bank#Decline](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medici_Bank#Decline))
back in the 15th Century, and there are plenty of recent examples.

~~~
e3pi
That is an interesting wikip link I'd never think to branch on, say, in my
past personal history interest of Florentine family rivalry. If you are
particularly versed of European banking, would you know of what banks have had
a long run, or the most durable? I understand Baring's had been around awhile,
until their recent demise.

BTW, I read once, the Beretta family, Brescia, Italy, has been making guns,
privately owned, for some 500 years, perhaps the most enduring privately held
company surviving today.

~~~
hga
Afraid I'm not well versed in European banking history, just the highest of
highlights, e.g. I know the names Medici and Rothschild, of the Credit-Anstalt
failure and various of the current names. (This is a very post-WWI American
attitude per
[http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0375412301/](http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0375412301/))

But I _am_ something of a domain expert on firearms, and yes, the Beretta
family has been privately making guns since 1526
([http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beretta](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beretta)):

" _The Beretta company was established in 1526, when gunsmith Maestro
Bartolomeo Beretta of Gardone Val Trompia (Brescia, Lombardy, Italy) was paid
296 ducats for 185 arquebus barrels by the Arsenal of Venice. The bills of
sale for the order of those barrels are in the firm 's archive._"

And I know their post-WWII quality is very good, my father is big on them for
smaller stuff since he'd left handed and they're big on being adjustable for
lefties, even ejection direction in carbines (!). They got the contract for
the US military's "new" handgun---well, as of 1985, I carry the previous 1911
design since it fits my hands _perfectly_ \---and of course they set up
production in the US.

I bring this up because they made the mistake of doing that in Maryland, prior
to this year perhaps the most tolerable of the viciously anti-gun states in
the US. Once it started going over the top post-Newtown, one of the family
members came over, talked to the governor, etc., to no avail, and now they're
expanding outside of the state and eventually moving production. They of
course took it as among other things a personal insult, and no doubt deeply
understand the vicissitudes of politics.

