Matt Levine – Use my marker

Pop-news analogy excellence

I doubt you’ve come across a better analogy today:

This is like, a taxi driver flies on United Airlines from New York to Miami, and in Miami he picks up a guy who owns a boat and drives him to the marina, and then the guy with with boat transports bags of cash for a drug dealer, and you hold United responsible.

Fund Conflicts and Tax Napkins, April 27, 2017, at 03:37 PM

It’s a valid analogy, though. And on a very valid point of criticism:

J.P. Morgan Chase & Co. prohibits banks it transacts with from dealing with virtual-currency exchanges, according to an internal document seen by The Wall Street Journal.

The concern here is that JPMorgan might transfer money for another bank, and that other bank might transfer money for a bitcoin exchange, and that bitcoin exchange might transfer money for a drug dealer. Which, in the eyes of the law, means that JPMorgan might as well be dealing drugs itself.

Focus.

Soyez réglé dans votre vie et ordinaire comme un bourgeois, afin d’être violent et original dans vos œuvres.

Be regular and orderly in your life like a bourgeois, so that you may be violent and original in your work.

Gustave Flaubert – Wikiquote, April 27, 2017, at 03:40 PM

Inevitability of the trolls

Mat Honan wrote on Tuesday about Facebook, Inc.’s new augmented reality tools:

“Yes, someone can create a virtual painting, meant to beautify the city, or leave a virtual note to a loved one that reaches them at just the right moment, in just the right place. But someone else will probably leave a swastika. Because if there is anything to be learned about the modern internet, it is that if you build it, the Nazis will come.”

Juice Machines and Red Flags, April 22, 2017, at 08:23 AM

Contracts & social media

Tyler Cowen thinks notes that “due to social media it will be increasingly difficult to write and enforce retail contracts with legal meanings very different from their ‘common sense’ meanings.”

Airline Shares and Whistleblowers, April 13, 2017 at 11:24AM

Volatility & options

Bond investors want creditworthy companies, and stock investors want growing companies, but convertible arbitrage investors want volatile companies, because volatility increases the value of an option.

Happy Meals and Glass-Steagall, April 7, 2017, at 11:03 AM

Counter-argument: Synthetic CDOs were good

There is a theory that the pre-crisis mortgage bubble would have been worse in the absence of synthetic collateralized debt obligations on mortgage-backed securities: If banks didn’t have synthetic CDOs to sell to investors who wanted mortgage exposure, they’d have had to originate even more risky mortgages.

Governance, Advisers and Derivatives, January 26, 2017 at 12:02AM