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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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| | Sunday in America
Santeria: Immigrants
in Texas were caught
in the act practicing Santeria. Yes, I’m
serious. (See the previous bolded link). It is as incompatible with Western
values as fundamentalist Islam.
PSYOP: You may
have read that the U.S. FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe was fired—for lying
to the FBI, among other things—just before he’d be eligible for a pension.
People asked why the government waited so long, and wasn’t that cruel? No, it
was a good PSYOP. Let him believe he might get away with his pension; keep him
and his co-conspirators guessing until the last minute. That way, one can watch
them and gather further evidence. Then, at the last minute, drop the hammer.
There’s finally a sheriff in town!
Votes: If you are
interested in another view of the electoral vote in the USA, I have a two compressed
views on my twitter feed. I also have a link to the compressed pdf. (At
home I have large clear blowups.) I believe you can read the names of the
states, the number of votes for each, and get a picture of the magnitude of differences.
Note that illegal immigrants have been concentrated in states with the most
electoral votes. That is why Hillary was so confident she’d win. I will
probably remove this in a day or so.
Hillary: She
could have toured the world as an elegant ambassador of good will and
charitable works. Instead we see her stumbling through India in shapeless
clothing talking about how she believes American voters are weak-minded. What
has she done; what has she accomplished, whose life has she graced, since she
lost the election?
President Trump:
No one cared if he had an affair with a dozen porn stars. No one cared if they
received payments to honor confidentiality agreements. (It’s the Wall Street
way!) It’s always the lying about the payment that will get one into trouble. The
lawyer said he independently made the payment. That raises the issue of whether
that could be considered an illegal campaign contribution.
But if the money came from Trump directly, as far as I know,
that isn’t illegal; it’s a payoff to a mistress, albeit there may be tax
implications, which were probably already sorted out. President Trump hasn’t
directly said anything about it, and if he must, the course of action is to
simply tell the truth.
(The three people who voted for President Trump on the understanding
that he is celibate, are absolutely DEVASTATED. h/t JBurtonXP)
Bill Clinton was impeached, because he lied about having an
affair with White House intern Monica Lewinsky. Had he not lied about it, it wouldn’t
have become grounds for anything except raised eyebrows from people who didn’t
know about his long predatory sexual history. |
| | | "Was not Plato perfectly right when he wished that his
pupils should be first of all well grounded in mathematics?" —Galileo, Two New Sciences,11 |
| A Revolution
Tucker Carlson Tonight presented a segment on the
crisis facing men in the USA—low testosterone levels, high suicide rates,
and more— due in part, to the demoralizing effects of ideological subversion.
This
is a devastating crisis for women, too. If our society were healthier, a women’s
march would protest against the causes of the destruction of our males (instead
the marchers seem to advocate the self-destruction of women, motherhood, and
marriage).
How do we remedy
this?
“If you have your children in a school, and they talk about
equity—and there’s class—diversity, inclusivity, white privilege, systemic
racism,--any of that—you take your children out of the class. They are not
being educated. They’re being indoctrinated. And there’s absolutely no excuse
for it.”
If we run out of schools in this country, Dr. Peterson
asserts, “that would be just fine. The sooner the better.”
An education revolution
is in order in the USA. Why are we paying high local taxes for school systems
that indoctrinate children, when many parents don’t want this at all? This is taxation without representation.
Parents who love their children—and who want them to grow up
in an intelligent and sane society—must take charge of their educations and
might consider becoming more active in local politics. |
| Bad Educations Harm Women, Too
Upon reflection, it was staggering--not funny-- to hear Cathy Areu, a Leftist "journalist," tell Tucker Carlson that a lot of people are offended by the use of the word "man." Purdue U. issued a guide of how to change words in the English language to be less "offensive."
Tucker asked if they'd dare tell Goldman Sachs to change its name, and she responded that they probably wouldn't shop there. (Tucker immediately let her know it is a bank, but apparently either she didn't hear him, or it went over her head.) She'd be happier if it changed its name to Goldperson Sachs. You can view the relevant part of the exchange is at 4:15.
This is what a bad education, a lack of intelligent curiosity, and poverty of general knowledge looks like.
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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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