How Wall Street Lied to Its Computers

People make computers out to be these repositories of knowledge that can do so much in comparison to our small little brains, but in reality, computers are only as smart as we allow them to be.

Most Wall Street computer models radically underestimated the risk of the complex mortgage securities, they said. That is partly because the level of financial distress is “the equivalent of the 100-year flood,” in the words of Leslie Rahl, the president of Capital Market Risk Advisors, a consulting firm.

But she and others say there is more to it: The people who ran the financial firms chose to program their risk-management systems with overly optimistic assumptions and to feed them oversimplified data. This kept them from sounding the alarm early enough.

Top bankers couldn’t simply ignore the computer models, because after the last round of big financial losses, regulators now require them to monitor their risk positions. Indeed, if the models say a firm’s risk has increased, the firm must either reduce its bets or set aside more capital as a cushion in case things go wrong.

“There was a willful designing of the systems to measure the risks in a certain way that would not necessarily pick up all the right risks,” said Gregg Berman, the co-head of the risk-management group at RiskMetrics, a software company spun out of JPMorgan. “They wanted to keep their capital base as stable as possible so that the limits they imposed on their trading desks and portfolio managers would be stable.”

The Ambition Defect

Scott Adams (the cartoonist for Dilbert) has an interesting take on ambition:

I think ambition is a genetic defect. You can’t have ambition unless you think there is something wrong with the way you are. Ambition is a state of feeling perpetually flawed.

I always thought of ambition as striving for something better. It never occurred to me that it’s trying to cover up all your flaws. Perhaps those of us in Christ have a different perspective, because we already know that we are flawed, and our ambition and striving are to draw closer to Christ Jesus, and all the good things that happen to us are simply added blessings along the way.

Hackers Rig Stock Prices

This is probably something you don’t want to read about with Wall Street in turmoil:

Here’s the latest way to score big in the stock market. First, hack into dozens of online traders’ brokerage accounts. Next, buy hundreds of thousands of shares of selected stocks using your hacked accounts, a move that largely moves up the stock price. Then sell your own shares of the same stock that you already owned and profit millions.

It’s like stealing candy from a baby. The only problem with the plan — known as a “hack, pump and dump scheme” — is that it’s illegal in so many obvious ways. Just ask Thirugnanam Ramanathan, a 35-year-old man from India who was sentenced Monday to two years in prison by a U.S. judge for undertaking such a scheme after pleading guilty and agreeing to pay restitution and cooperate. Two others have also been indicted in the overseas conspiracy to defraud U.S. investors.

The trio is accused of stock manipulation via hacking into individuals’ accounts held by TD Ameritrade, Fidelity and, among others, E*Trade.

At least 60 online traders using nine brokerage firms were victimized from late 2006 through 2007, the authorities said.

Musician Ryan Adams’ Secret to Success

At a professional conference hosted by Indiana Wesleyan last winter, one of the workshops I attended challenged all of us to make a covenant with God that we would not go to bed unless we read the Bible for at least 5 minutes that day.

When you think about all the daily responsibilities and distractions you have in your life (such as work, school, family time, housework, yardwork, and entertainment), finding time to fit daily quiet time with God and prayer seems daunting. I know in my own life that I often burn the candle at both ends, going to bed late to get my work accomplished and trying to get up early to get my quiet time in, and it often seems that my quiet time is sacrificed for an extra hour of sleep.

But, when put in the context of 5 minutes out of your day, it doesn’t seem like such a big deal. You could read 5 minutes out of your Bible while waiting for your car to warm up in the morning, while waiting to pick up your children, while you’re in the drive-thru of a particularly slow restaurant… heck, even in the bathroom, and if you think it sounds sacrilegious to be reading the Bible on the toilet, keep in mind that our Creator not only designed us to use that toilet for that purpose, but He’s seen us in there plenty of times in our lives to know what’s going on there.

The real point is that when you make a consistent effort to be in God’s word every day, there will be some days where 5 minutes is all you can fit in and some days when 5 minutes is not enough. When you try to have a daily half-hour or hour-long devotional time every day, you will soon resent it and look at it as drudgery. When you expect a smaller amount of commitment to it from yourself, you will be able to refuse any excuse you have for not doing it.

Which leads into this article about laziness and looking at a task as one gigantic project instead of several small projects over the course of a few months. I know a lot of people who say, “I want to write, but I don’t have the time.” Well, I think this is a decent perspective on that common excuse:

Ryan Adams is one of the most prolific musicians in modern music. In the last eight years he averaged a release of one full studio album per year. In one year alone, he released three albums! Since 2000, he has contributed to dozens of other albums and movie soundtracks. One night I stumbled on one of his televised performances, which involved a question and answer session with the audience afterwards. One fan asked how he could write and release so many songs. His answer summed up his work philosophy, one we should all adopt if we want to be successful with our personal goals.

“What I do and what all musicians do is easy. All we have to do is sit down for a couple hours a week and write a song or two. That simple task is all the world asks of me, so I do it. The other musicians who don’t are just lazy, because again, we aren’t being asked to tar rooftops or clean out dumpsters. We just have to write a couple songs!”

Tell Me The Story

Stories impact our lives. You can lecture a class for 60 minutes until everyone’s eyes glaze over, or you can illustrate your main points by telling stories and connecting your listeners to the application of those points.

I’ve mentioned in previous classes about the Vacation Bible School ministry I’m involved in at church. I write a 5-day extravaganza based around a particular pop culture theme. In the past, we’ve done based our teachings around backdrops of reality TV, pirates, and superheroes. Next year, I’m planning on doing an Indiana Jones/time travel story where the main characters will actually go back to Biblical times and see some of the great stories of the Bible.

While researching people in the Bible that these kids could visit, I was amazed by some of the great stories. There are tales of adventure, romance, war, treachery, supernatural events… not only are these stories exciting to read about, but they’re also teaching points on how to follow Jesus and apply what He has taught us to our lives.

Now that I have grandkids, I’m back into the classic children’s Bible stories. Wide-eyed stories like David and Goliath, Noah’s ark, and Jonah and the big fish quickly capture a child’s imagination!

But there’s a danger here—not with the stories themselves but rather with our attitude toward them. If we view them simply as kids’ stories, kind of like the Grimm’s Fairy Tales of the Bible, we miss the point. The stories of the Bible were never meant to be outgrown. There are profound lessons to be learned from the amazing accounts of those who faced giants, floods, and fish!

These stories are about us. They mirror the tensions we face daily as we too seek to apply God’s will and ways to the realities of our lives. They teach us of the treachery of sin, our desperate need to trust God unflinchingly, and the importance of staying faithful and true to Him regardless of what happens.