[y66]

Stephen Strasburg’s change-up is just plain ‘disgusting,’ and one of the best pitches in baseball. It's a treat to watch him pitch when he's in the groove which he was last night.

[Winstonm]

y66, on 2019-October-15, 09:06, said:

Stephen Strasburg’s change-up is just plain ‘disgusting,’ and one of the best pitches in baseball. It's a treat to watch him pitch when he's in the groove which he was last night.

The last pitcher I remember who made a living off of his change-up was Don Sutton when he was a Dodger.

[y66]

This guy had a job that comes pretty close to my idea of a dream job. No doubt there were downsides or why else retire. Come to think of it, you could semi-retire and telecommute from various coastal locations around the world while collecting more data to improve the model.

[Winstonm]

Quote

Gabriel Zucman
@gabriel_zucman
·
Oct 15

Because this is my lot in life, I must repeat that Medicare for All would cut taxes for the vast majority of workers

Why? Because it would replace insurance premiums (a private poll tax where the secretary pays the same as the executive) by taxes based on ability to pay

The WaPo chimes in, too:

Quote

And because capital is heavily concentrated among the rich, the U.S. government taxed earnings derived from capital at a higher rate than earnings made through labor for the entirety of the 20th century.

But that’s no longer the case, according to economists Emmanuel Saez and Gabriel Zucman of the University of California at Berkeley. In their new book, “The Triumph of Injustice,” they present data showing that in 2018, labor income was taxed at a higher rate than capital income for the first time in modern U.S. history.

This is the sort of thing that has led eventually to revolutions.

[y66]

Good discussion here of the merits of a wealth tax by Emmanuel Saez, Larry Summers and Greg Mankiw.

From Rich Miller's summary at Bloomberg:

Quote

Former Treasury Secretary Lawrence Summers lambasted proposals to tax the wealth of the richest Americans made by presidential candidates Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders.

Not only would the Supreme Court likely rule such levies unconstitutional, but they would raise far less money than advertised and do nothing to erode what political influence the wealthy have if implemented, he said.

“For that to be the defining element in the progressive agenda in the United States, it seems to me to potentially sacrifice an immense opportunity,” he told an event Thursday at the Peterson Institute for International Economics in Washington.

Summers argued that there were more effective ways to make the tax code more progressive, including increasing estate taxes and closing such tax breaks as carried interest.

“It would be reasonable to tax inheritances as income as a way of getting at large fortunes,” he said.

[cherdano]

y66, on 2019-October-20, 07:18, said:

Good discussion here of the merits of a wealth tax by Emmanuel Saez, Larry Summers and Greg Mankiw.

From Rich Miller's summary at Bloomberg:

https://twitter.com/...674714888024065

Quote

It’s interesting that out of all his wide-ranging economic policy interests, Larry Summers has chosen recently to focus a lot on criticizing wealth taxes and also unrelated he blames Elizabeth Warren’s opposition for spiking his chances of becoming Fed Chair.

(I don't remember whether it was Warren's fault by Yellen over Summers was obviously the correct choice at the time.)

[Zelandakh]

y66, on 2019-October-20, 07:18, said:

From Rich Miller's summary at Bloomberg:

Quote

The Warren proposal would have raised about a half trillion dollars from the 15 richest Americans if it had been place since 1982

This is a silly statement as clearly the 15 richest Americans would have handled their money differently since 1982 if the tax had been in place. When making any sort of estimation for a tax rake it is necessary to take account of avoidance strategies. That is particularly the case for the most wealthy individuals who have access to excellent accountants able to minimise their clients' tax liabilities.

[Cyberyeti]

Zelandakh, on 2019-October-23, 07:14, said:

This is a silly statement as clearly the 15 richest Americans would have handled their money differently since 1982 if the tax had been in place. When making any sort of estimation for a tax rake it is necessary to take account of avoidance strategies. That is particularly the case for the most wealthy individuals who have access to excellent accountants able to minimise their clients' tax liabilities.

And this is the issue with the Labour party's "fully costed" promises in the UK. If you push up a tax rate, the pie from which you take the larger slice shrinks, so how much you get can be more/less/the same. There was some research done which suggested that cutting the top rate of tax in the UK by 5% cost nothing. It actually initially suggested a large gain, but this was ascribed to people deferring income to pay the lower rate after the change. The labour party budgets that reversing this change will make them a load of money.

[y66]

Why Are You Pissing In Our Face?: Inside Warren’s War With the Obama Team (September 2019) by Alex Thompson at Politico explains Warren's feud with Obama, Summers and Geithner.

I don't see how you can second guess the Obama team's initial priority to save the financial system from collapse which they did. In hindsight, it appears they blundered in failing to do more to heed Warren's warning: "Sure, big banks are important, but running this economy for American families is a lot more important". The answer to their question "we're saving the world, what the f*ck do you want with us?" seems obvious now: the job of saving the world doesn't end when you save the financial system -- one plan is not enough.

I suspect Warren is smart enough to realize that if Larry Summers says there are more effective ways to increase tax revenue than what she is proposing she and her team will take them seriously.

But is she smart enough to get herself out of the corner she has painted herself into by saying she will soon explain how she intends to pay for "Medicare for all"? I hope so.

[y66]

From Cade Metz at NYT:

Quote

SAN FRANCISCO — Google said on Wednesday that it had achieved a long-sought breakthrough called “quantum supremacy,” which could allow new kinds of computers to do calculations at speeds that are inconceivable with today’s technology.

In a paper published in the science journal Nature, Google said its research lab in Santa Barbara, Calif., had reached a milestone that scientists had been working toward since the 1980s: Its quantum computer performed a task that isn’t possible with traditional computers.

In this case, a mathematical calculation that the largest supercomputers could not complete in under 10,000 years was done in 3 minutes 20 seconds, Google said in its paper.

Scientists likened Google’s announcement to the Wright brothers’ first plane flight in 1903 — proof that something is really possible even though it may be years before it can fulfill its potential.

“The original Wright flyer was not a useful airplane,” said Scott Aaronson, a computer scientist at the University of Texas at Austin who reviewed Google’s paper before publication. “But it was designed to prove a point. And it proved the point.”

A quantum machine, the result of more than a century’s worth of research into a type of physics called quantum mechanics, operates in a completely different manner from regular computers. It relies on the mind-bending ways some objects act at the subatomic level or when exposed to extreme cold, like the metal chilled to nearly 460 degrees below zero inside Google’s machine.

One day, researchers believe, these devices could power advances in artificial intelligence or easily overwhelm the encryption that protects computers vital to national security. Because of that, the governments of the United States and China consider quantum computing a national security priority.

But first, scientists must prove such a machine can be built, and some researchers cautioned against getting too excited about Google’s milestone since so much more work needs to be done before quantum computers can migrate out of the research lab. Right now, a single quantum machine costs millions of dollars to build

[kenberg]

This quantum machine is getting publicity. WaPo had a good article , with a lot of overlap with the NYT. A couple of easy going comments from WaPo about the science involved:

Quote

In this quantum realm, electrons appear to leap from one energy state to another. Particles can exist in multiple states at the same time, a phenomenon known as "superposition." They can also stay connected across large distances, which Albert Einstein called "spooky'" and modern physicists call entanglement.

and after noting the potential power for quantum computing;

Quote

That is, if the quantum computer works. A faint noise or a glimmer of heat can alter a superposition, leading to errors. Measuring a particle, or disturbing it in any way, will cause the superposition to "decohere,"or collapse. The qubit becomes an ordinary bit. Add more qubits to a system, and decoherence becomes even harder to control.

On first hearing this news I had a couple of thoughts/questions:

1. If it really worked, the multi-million dollar price tag noted in the NYT article would be trivial. Surely (?) the machine could be used to guide stack market investments that would recover that investment with room to spare. But, I gather, it is not yet ready for such practical use.

2. Quantum theory has, so I understand, uncertainty built into it. The decoherence seems to refer to this.


It all seems a bit like science fiction, but it's reality. As the articles make clear, there is more work to be done, a lot more work. Fascinating.

[Winstonm]

kenberg, on 2019-October-24, 07:33, said:

This quantum machine is getting publicity. WaPo had a good article , with a lot of overlap with the NYT. A couple of easy going comments from WaPo about the science involved:

I

and after noting the potential power for quantum computing;

I

On first hearing this news I had a couple of thoughts/questions:

1. If it really worked, the multi-million dollar price tag noted in the NYT article would be trivial. Surely (?) the machine could be used to guide stack market investments that would recover that investment with room to spare. But, I gather, it is not yet ready for such practical use.

2. Quantum theory has, so I understand, uncertainty[font="georgia, Times New Roman, serif"] built into it. The decoherence seems to refer to this.


It all seems a bit like science fiction, but it's reality. As the articles make clear, there is more work to be done, a lot more work. Fascinating.

I thought you needed a broom to play qubit.

[y66]

From How Jim Simons Built the Best Hedge Fund Ever by Barry Ritholtz at Bloomberg:

Quote

The former code breaker and math professor figured out how to do one thing very well in markets.

Quote

Every now and again, a book comes along that is so compelling, filled with so many fascinating characters and new information, that it demands a review.

"The Man Who Solved the Market: How Jim Simons Launched the Quant Revolution" is just such a book. Written by Wall Street Journal reporter Greg Zuckerman, it is a history of Simons and the secretive hedge-fund firm he founded, Renaissance Technologies LLC. Zuckerman spent 2 1/2 years researching the firm, eventually speaking to more than 40 current and former Renaissance employees. Despite the misgivings and deep opposition to this (or any) book about his career, Simons eventually agreed to sit for more than 10 hours of interviews.

The result is the definitive examination of the enigmatic Simons, filled with page after page of previously unknown details about Renaissance Technologies. As a longstanding Simons fan, I had devoured everything public about him and his firm. Much of what is in this book is new.

Start at the end. In Appendix 1, Zuckerman painstakingly reconstructs the 30-year track record of the firm’s crown jewel, the Medallion Fund. Although rumors of its performance have long circulated on Wall Street and in the press, the actual numbers are even more mind-blowing: From 1988 to 2018, Medallion returned 66.1% annually before fees. Net of fees, the gains were 39.1%. Estimated trading profits during those 30 years amounted to $104.5 billion. About those fees: If the standard hedge fund management fee of 2% of assets under management, plus 20% of the profits sounds expensive, then what do you think of Medallion's “5 and 44”?

Simon’s personal net worth, according to Zuckerman’s calculations, is more than $23 billion. He got wealthy not on those fat fees but rather by having his own money invested in the Medallion fund. Simons figured the fund could not effectively manage more than $10 billion, so he returned outsider investors’ capital, allowing only employees to participate. Today, each Renaissance employee averages about $50 million each in the fund, though that number is skewed by the fund’s biggest holder, Simons.

In the early 1980s, long before Bloomberg terminals were ubiquitous on Wall Street trading desks, Renaissance bought lots of expensive computers, high-speed connections and giant data storage, none of it off-the-shelf tech. But what it provided was critical: a database of clean, live market prices that literally no one else in the investment world had. It may have been inordinately expensive, but it made all the difference.

Simons has had three distinct, successful careers. First, as a mathematician and code breaker, working for the Institute for Defense Analyses, which does work for the National Security Agency. Later, he was chairman of the math department at SUNY Stony Brook, which he built into a nationally ranked powerhouse. Last, he founded Renaissance, where rather than hire the usual analysts and economists, he hired mathematicians, physicists and computer scientists.

Simon’s other great, unheralded skill is his talent for building teams, first at IDA, then at Stony Brook and finally at Renaissance. He found the best people in their fields, doubled their salaries to get them to join, then gave them pretty much free rein to do their jobs. Access to the greatest money-making machine in history, the Medallion fund, is still a perk that helps Renaissance lure superior candidates.

"The Man Who Solved the Market" is filled with other fascinating characters, perhaps none more consequential -- to both Renaissance and the nation -- than former Chief Executive Officer Robert Mercer. It is a far more nuanced portrait of the conservative influencer than the ones usually found in the popular press. Mercer is a preternaturally calm and measured scientist, brilliantly rigorous and evidence-based in all things market-related. Yet outside of mathematics, he believes the wildest unfounded conspiracy theories, and buys into all manner of debunked nonsense. It is as if Mercer is an extreme version of everyone’s best and worst selves -- a brilliant and rational professional, but driven by biases and seething emotions in his political life.

The book reads more like a delicious page-turning novel than the usual finance tome. Yet the book delivers less than what its title implies. Simons did not “solve the market”; rather, he created a system conducive to extremely profitable trades. In markets worth tens of trillions of dollars, Renaissance was limited to trading merely a few billion dollars. If he had truly solved the market, the Medallion fund would have been able to grow much larger than $10 billion. Instead, Simons only solved one problem: how to make himself and his investment partners fabulously wealthy.

I plan to reread this book much more slowly when the hardcover version arrives Nov. 5. My advice: Put it on your holiday gift list for your favorite hedge-fund honcho.

[y66]

That was quite a performance by Boeing CEO Dennis Muilenburg today.

NYT summary: https://nyti.ms/2WpjVv3

If they ever make an aviation industry version of Wall Street, they should get him to play himself. Ditto for Senator Cantwell and some of her colleagues who did not mention their role in undercutting FAA oversight over the years or their oversight failures. Mr Muilenburg obviously isn't the only guy in that hearing room who needs to seriously rethink the way he does business but he is probably the only one who will during the short time he has left at Boeing.

[Winstonm]

y66, on 2019-October-29, 15:38, said:

That was quite a performance by Boeing CEO Dennis Muilenburg today.

NYT summary: https://nyti.ms/2WpjVv3

If they ever make an aviation industry version of Wall Street, they should get him to play himself. Ditto for Senator Cantwell and some of her colleagues who did not mention their role in undercutting FAA oversight over the years or their oversight failures. Mr Muilenburg obviously isn't the only guy in that hearing room who needs to seriously rethink the way he does business but he is probably the only one who will during the short time he has left at Boeing.

This should be under its own thread titled: Why deregulation works.

[y66]

From Tyler Kepner at NYT:

Quote

HOUSTON — This setting, this moment, this pitcher. The patient, painstaking construction of an ace — it was all leading to Game 6 of the World Series on Tuesday at Minute Maid Park, when the Washington Nationals needed a savior and turned to Stephen Strasburg. They trusted him because that is what they do.

They trusted in his promise in 2009, with the first overall pick in the draft. They trusted in his long-term future in 2012, when they benched him for the playoffs to protect his arm after surgery. They trusted in his commitment in 2016, when they gave him a $175 million contract.

At every step, Strasburg has rewarded the Nationals’ faith. He passed his biggest test of all on Tuesday night with a World Series performance for the ages against the Houston Astros: eight and a third innings, with two runs allowed in the first and none thereafter in a 7-2 victory.

“Stras went out there and had the game of his life,” said Max Scherzer, who will start Game 7 against Zack Greinke on Wednesday night. Later, he added, “The job he did for us, the effort, that’s just world class.”

World class in the World Series. This was the Nationals’ vision all along for Strasburg, though even the best prospects rarely get there. Eighteen pitchers have been chosen first over all in the draft, and Strasburg is the only one to start a World Series game for the team that chose him.

He earned that distinction in Game 2, when he pitched six innings, gave up two runs and beat Justin Verlander. He topped Verlander again in Game 6, and should be strongly considered for the World Series Most Valuable Player Award if the Nationals take Game 7.

It would be the first award for Strasburg — besides a Silver Slugger, of all things, in 2012 — and would seem overdue for a pitcher who reached 1,500 career strikeouts faster than anyone else ever had. He is 112-58 in his career, with a 3.17 earned run average.

“He’s been held to such a high standard,” said Ryan Zimmerman, the Nationals’ veteran first baseman. “Even early in his career he was really good, and people for some reason wanted to say he wasn’t good at this or wasn’t good at that. If you look at his numbers since he’s been in the league, it’s unbelievable.

“But the last four or five years, in postseason and bigger games, he’s really stepped up. That’s caught the attention of people who maybe weren’t a believer in the first few years.”

This kind of October will do that: a 1.98 earned run average, 47 strikeouts and just four walks in 36⅓ innings. Strasburg has matched a record shared by Randy Johnson (2001) and Francisco Rodriguez (2002) for victories in one postseason, with five, but even those pitchers had a loss mixed in. Strasburg is undefeated.

Strasburg’s career postseason E.R.A. is 1.46, the fourth lowest for pitchers with as many innings as he has thrown. The others are some of the most hallowed names in history: Mariano Rivera (0.70), Sandy Koufax (0.95) and Christy Mathewson (1.06).

Rivera had the cutter, Koufax the fastball and curveball, and Mathewson was famous for his “fadeaway” — essentially a screwball — at big moments. Strasburg has three devastating pitches — fastball, curve and changeup — but in the first inning Tuesday, he was telegraphing them with the way he moved his glove.

The team’s pitching coach, Paul Menhart, noticed, and Strasburg corrected the problem. He did not allow another hit until the fifth, when he allowed a single and a double. Then he faced Jose Altuve, an exceptional contact hitter, with one out, a one-run lead and runners at second and third. He struck him out on three pitches: a changeup, a curveball in the zone and a curveball in the dirt. That combination, Altuve said, has no equal.

“The best you can see in the game, probably,” he said. “Curveball with a lot of spin and depth, and a changeup that looks like a fastball and disappears.”

Strasburg got the next hitter, Michael Brantley, on a hard-hit grounder up the middle. The Nationals — again defying the perception that they ignore analytics — had shortstop Trea Turner stationed on the right side of second base. He snagged it on a backhand and flipped to first for the out. It was the last serious threat against Strasburg.

“He can get you in so many ways, sometimes changeup, sometimes curveball, sometimes he’s just attacking, sometimes he’s pitching backwards,” Turner said. “He can do it all. Just the competitiveness in the postseason has been crazy.”

Zimmerman said Strasburg had learned a few years ago to be stoic on the mound, to stop “letting the little things bother him,” and Strasburg, 31, agreed. Injuries have sometimes restricted him — he made 22 to 24 starts in 2015, 2016 and 2018 — but this year he led the National League in innings, with 209. His edge has grown ever sharper.

“The ups, the downs, it only makes you stronger mentally,” Strasburg said after Game 6. “I think, without those things, it would have been a lot harder to focus on what I can control out there.”

Strasburg acknowledged that he had matured from all the scrutiny, and had learned over time to be the best version of himself. How does he block out the noise?

“Remind myself what’s most important — it’s these guys in the clubhouse, it’s my two little girls, my wife and family, all those things,” he said. “You focus on your support system and everything else is just there.”

Game 6 of the World Series was just there on Tuesday, so Strasburg handled it. He was the first pitcher in his lifetime to work eight innings on the road when facing elimination in the World Series, and that was probably all he had to give.

“I emptied the tank tonight,” he said. “It’s trusting everybody next to you. It’s going to take all 25 of us.”

Sean Doolittle collected the last two outs in Game 6, and he would seem to be the most likely Nationals pitcher to close Game 7. Doolittle said he would not rule out Strasburg pitching again, which makes sense; historically great players are that way for a reason.

But if Strasburg has thrown his last pitch of 2019, he has done the Nationals proud. They never had a doubt.

“He definitely did his job tonight, and he doesn’t have anything to prove to anybody,” Doolittle said. “He doesn’t have anything to prove to us.”

[y66]

Winstonm, on 2019-October-29, 17:43, said:

This should be under its own thread titled: Why deregulation works.

Muilenburg will likely not face criminal charges which the Justice Department considers counter-productive to getting corporations to be more transparent in the long run but it's hard to imagine Boeing won't push him over the side.

The Seattle Times has a good story about Muilenburg's performance and the ineffectiveness of yesterday's hearing: https://www.seattlet...stly-unscathed/

The story ends with a pre-hearing quote from Ralph Nader, the longtime consumer advocate whose grandniece, 24-year-old Samya Rose Stumo, died in the Ethiopian crash:

Quote

They’ll beat up on him, but it’s all Kabuki theater. The questions are very tough. Then they unground the planes.

[johnu]

Garth Brooks Got Called Out by Jimmy Carter for Taking Break During Habitat for Humanity Build

Quote

During an appearance on The Ellen DeGeneres Show on Friday, the country star, 57, shared a story working on a Habitat for Humanity housing build alongside 95-year-old Carter.

“We were in Haiti, right, working on the roof — been working on the roof all day long — and they’re metal roofs, it’s 115 degrees. And when you get a roof on, the great thing is now the house has a roof, you can go down and stand underneath it, get two seconds of shade,” Brooks told host Ellen DeGeneres on the show. “In my two seconds, the president walked in. I sit there, and he goes, ‘You need something to do, Garth?’ “

Laughing about the encounter, Brooks added: “I said ‘No, sir,’ [and] jumped right back out there again.”

Imagine being 95 years old and still volunteering to work on building houses for Habitat for Humanity. Pretty amazing.

[Winstonm]

y66, on 2019-October-30, 11:44, said:

Muilenburg will likely not face criminal charges which the Justice Department considers counter-productive to getting corporations to be more transparent in the long run but it's hard to imagine Boeing won't push him over the side.

The Seattle Times has a good story about Muilenburg's performance and the ineffectiveness of yesterday's hearing: https://www.seattlet...stly-unscathed/

The story ends with a pre-hearing quote from Ralph Nader, the longtime consumer advocate whose grandniece, 24-year-old Samya Rose Stumo, died in the Ethiopian crash:

In my view, a national problem is conflating "regulation" with government overreach. There has been a hard sell from the right that business should be free from oversight because we are capitalists, yet there has been no corresponding messaging about the need to provide for the public's safety.

The failure of laissez-faire to provide for public safety was the initial reason for many regulations that are being rolled back or eliminated. Commercial banks were barred from risky investments because they were entrusted with public's funds; government was charged with the safety of the food we buy.

Somewhere along the way we forgot this message. We also forgot that without enforcement regulations are meaningless.

[Winstonm]

The map of where we have been shows where we are headed.

Quote

Today, white nationalism is closer to the mainstream of American politics than ever before. The far right’s fears about “replacement” of the white race and outsider “invasions” have become standard tropes at conservative media outlets, and its anger is routinely stoked by the president of the United States. At the same time, right-wing violence is on the rise: Far-right terrorists accounted for the overwhelming majority of extremist murders in the U.S. last year, according to a January report by the Anti-Defamation League.

The seeds for this iteration of white supremacy were planted 40 years ago in Greensboro, when the white wedding of Klansmen and Nazis launched a new, pan-right extremism—a toxic brew of virulent racism, anti-government rhetoric, apocalyptic fearmongering and paramilitary tactics. And this extremism has proven more durable than anyone then could imagine.