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| | Tavakoli Structured
Finance, Inc. |
| | "Of
course, there is still much work to be done. That means honestly confronting
the crisis of Islamic extremism and the Islamists and Islamic terror of all
kinds." -- President Trump in Riyadh
"Where are you headed, Europe? Rise from your knees
and from your lethargy, or you will be crying over your children every
day." -- Polish Prime Minister Beata Szydlo
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| | Go All the Way!
Should California split from the USA?
Some in California are pushing CalEx, the idea that
California should secede from the USA. There is support for this idea in
California. If a majority of Californians vote CalEx, and if the rest of the
USA agrees, it is a possibility. CA notes it is the sixth largest economy in
the world.
The GDP of the USA is $18.57 trillion and a population of
323.4 million; California has a GDP of $2.448 trillion (13.18% of the USA) and
a population of 39.54 million (12.2% of the USA).
If this should come to pass, the rest of the USA should
stipulate there will be no foreign aid, and strong border control on our side.
The Central Bank of California
The California Central Bank, combined with liberal policies,
will make the state even more like Venezuela, while its revenue generators and
taxpayers seek to move to the USA.
California may go if it wishes, but we must be clear there
will be no waltzing over the border and no foreign aid. We will employ extreme
vetting for ceded Californians who wish to become residents of the USA.
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| | Portfolio Growth in 2018?
No one can time the market, and given the persistent
decline in what the dollar buys, everyone's portfolio needs real growth. Morgan
Stanley is predicting three Fed rate hikes in 2018, but nothing close to where
real rates, much less nominal rates, would be in a fair market. In a
manipulated rising stock market, we all look as if we're investment geniuses,
even though bubblenomics drives the S&P. Where we'll end up is anyone's
guess. Today's investment landscape looks very far away from value investing.
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| | Decisions: Life and Death on Wall Street
Amazon has again chosen Decisions for its Prime Reading program. Members of Amazon Prime read it for free. Tell your friends!
Janet Tavakoli's brief Wall Street memoir of personal and professional decisions that reshaped financiers' lives, drove some to suicide, and changed the landscape of global finance.
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| | Citi Resurrects Synthetic CDOs, Bane of the Credit Crisis
Sridhar Natarajan, Dakin Campbell and Alastair Marsh of Bloomberg authored an excellent take on Citi's claims (September 26, 2017) "Citi is Bringing Back One of the Most Infamous Bests of the Credit Crisis." The bottom line is that the risk is mispriced. Oh, but Citi claims this structure is safer.
Here's an excerpt:
“There is a whole generation
of people in finance who never knew or forgot what the problems were with synthetic CDOs,” said Janet Tavakoli, a 30-year veteran of the financial markets who runs a consulting firm and has written books on structured credit and CDOs. “Just as derivatives can lever up the upside, they can lever up the downside.” |
| | USA's Constitutional Crisis of the Century
The Wall Street Journal's editorial board wrote a mea culpa,
admitting it was wrong to criticize President Donald Trump when he made
the shocking allegation that his campaign had been wiretapped by the
Obama administration. It turns out that President Trump was correct, and
this is the Constitutional Crisis of the century.
In an unprecedented abuse of power, the Obama administration abused government power and resources, spied on its political opposition, and apparently manufactured a ludicrous fake report as the pretext for getting a FISA court warrant to do it.
WSJ is now demanding answers.
You'll recall that many people spoke up to deny President Trump's allegation. Either they didn't know what they were talking about—yet tried to undermine the President, anyway—or they lied, hoping their lie would never be revealed for what it is. These people all owe President Trump an apology and some of them may deserve to be prosecuted. They include (I'm probably missing many): Speaker Paul Ryan (third in line to the presidency), Senator Richard Burr, Senator Mark Warner, former CIA Director James Clapper, Senator Kamala Harris, former U.S. Attorney General loretta Lynch, and former FBI Director James Comey. The latter lied under oath.
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| | Better Than Money
If you want to help your country, instead of contributing money to politicians, why not contribute a solution to one of your country’s problems?
I sent my paper, “Importance of Data Preservation in the Application of Set Theory to Counterterrorism,” to a former instructor at the National Defense Intelligence College who subsequently forwarded to colleagues. (This paper is not available to the public.)
My method compares lists of associates of organizations to quickly identify high probability persons of interest using set theory techniques. There is no need to know in advance whether alternate spellings of targets’ names or aliases exist, as long as association records are kept as complete as possible. A subsidiary goal was to support efforts to gain inter-agency cooperation in the compilation and preservation of data, since operatives of the Obama administration actively destroyed useful records.
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