For better or worse, we live in fascinating times.  Thanks to this motif of fright, many once-in-a-lifetime financial decisions are being made every day.  A few recent moves by the US Federal Reserve Bank, striving to maintain order:

• Sunday: an unprecedented 4-hour Sunday afternoon org-to-org trading session, part of “last-ditch efforts to prevent toxic assets from ailing Lehman Brothers spilling into global markets and rupturing investor faith in the international financial system”.   The result: only $1B in trades, slightly less panic the following day, and a loosening of the shared global trust in unwavering financial regulation.
• Sunday night?: Banks are told they may use deposits to fund their investment bank subsidiaries, flaunting Federal Reserve Act Section 23A. potentially stabilizing failing banks at the cost of risk to individual investors.
• Monday: a ‘dramatic loosening’ of the standard for federal loans to banks, potentially stabilizing them at the cost of dramatically increased risk of government losses.  Meanwhile, the US Treasury’s S&P AAA rating is vulnerable. Shared global trust in regulation dips.
• Tuesday: The Fed lends $85B to AIG, after refusing them $20B over the weekend.  True, AIG isn’t a bank, but see FRA Section 13(3).  AIG uses ‘all of its assets’ as collateral, giving the Fed an 80% stake.
• Tuesday: the FDIC feels the crunch, says it’s ok for a while, but makes a medium-term request for a $500B line of credit.  Why?  Well, while there are over $6,000B in bank deposits in the US, more than half of them FDIC insured, banks report less than $300B cash on hand. And the FDIC reserve is down to $45B, only enough to cover ~15% of the difference in case of a widespread bank run.
• Wednesday: Banks may count goodwill as capital when meeting regulatory requirements for capital onhand.  This allows a deepening of the leveraging of assets of troubled banks, which only caused trouble during the S&L crisis; what’s different now?
• Thursday: After three Reserve Fund money market accounts drop below $1 a share, Putnam’s Prime Money Market Fund shuts down to avoid losses.  It’s been a while.
• Friday: The Treasury pulls out a few more stops and assigns the $50B in the Exchange Stabilization Fund to current money market funds.

Updates as the week progresses.  The large market swings are reminiscent of the month before Black Monday… so stay tuned, relax, stick to insured banks, and (remind your loved ones to) stay out of the stock market.

Liquidity pyramid diagrams, fractional reserves, and other comments below the fold.

Before we continue, you may want to revisit the origins of the modern fractional-reserve banking system.  The international banking scene includes an additional layer of derivatives (”Not Your Father’s Financial Calculus” ), leading to a world with over 15x as many financial tokens as could ever be redeemed for underlying assets.  Here is the liquidity ‘pyramid’ from a few years go; it is twice as top-heavy now :

Bear in mind in the weeks to come : what scares the central parts of global banking systems is the knowledge that their empires are built on air… not just a cushion of air, for a single country, but clouds all the way down, for everyone.  People may talk about 10:1 or even 60:1 leveraging of assets, but even  the 1 in those equations relies on shared standards of value and basic trust.

Other comments:

Wednesday: Kenneth Rogoff suggests a $2T bailout may be needed to ‘contain the contagion’.

Wednesday night: The UK Telegraph reports on the day’s global credit freeze and the ongoing hit to the Moscow bourse, where trading was suspended after the Micex dropped 24% in 2 days.

…

On this motif : compounding the fear of having no fundamental support : our urban centers have in theory no hard backstop preventing total financial collapse, with a loss of faith in any institution to protect and safeguard value over time, and a loss of any shared sense of abstract value or usable currency.  In contrast, the closer one gets to self-sufficient communities with their own natural resources and balanced sets of local skills, the more superfluous these abstractions, and the less deadly their dissipation.

There is something to be said here about the stabilizing value of multiple competing (or even not entirely substitutable) currencies in a community, in comparison with a strong central bank, but I don’t know how to formulate it.

• a 100M activity containing most of the Spanish Wikipedia, with illustrations, math fontification, and templates

• scripts that support generating a new version from the latest articles, from heuristics defining the most popular titles, with only a few hours of work

There is also a short blacklist of pages and images that need improvement which will change over time.  A whitelist of unpopular but crucial pages will surely build up, and the process will find a way to learn from the subject-specific wikireader efforts to produce smaller uncompressed collections.  The same idea and scripts can provide a roughly Britannica-sized collection for every major language; or a multilingual cover of the 200 smallest languages; expect an English one soon for comparison.
While this reader (which has to unzip each page as it is requested) is slower than browsing html, it is still a pleasure to use. The real lack, shared with other readers to date, is that comments and editing don’t yet work…

Sometimes I do that reflexively while thinking, practiving a little Langerfulness. So it was that I found myself tonight seven pages into the discussion threads for the YouTube video “Why Chuck [Norris] endorsed Mike [Huckabee] – Episode One [of Five]“, where I ran across the following exchange between BuckDresser and jtm04d; those of you who know my favorite tests of familiarity with good scientific method may appreciate it…

BD : Being a professional engineer, a nuclear scientist, and an agnostic until age 40 when I “for fun” did the research to realize that the God of the Bible is real…I realize this: “A little science estranges a man from God. A lot of science brings him back.” You don’t need to leave your brain behind to appreciate the Bible – in fact, unless you challenge the conventional wisdom of sound-byte “scientists” you probably never will.

jtm: I doubt any rational scientist would believe the earth is 6000 years old(bible) and evolution is false[Huckabee ]. The Scientific community is whole heartedly supportive of evolution. I’m a Biology major and we study evidence for evolution on the chromosomal level. On the bible if you want to defend it you have an extremely difficult job ahead of you.

BD: jtm04d, mutation & natural selection are real – evolution is contrary to the 2nd law of thermodynamics. On the chromosomal level you witness rearrangements, not new more highly ordered structure. Evolution implies an increase in order. The 6000 years is the date when Adam was created, not the earth. You might read “the Science of God” by Gerald Schroeder (not a Christian) which is a plausible reconciliation of a 15 billion year universe, the 6000 years + 7 days of creation. Seek & guess what..

jtm: Buck I think your a smart guy, much smarter than the creationists I usually debate on my campus. But the fossil record does not agree with your 6000 year old Adam theory. In fact the record points to Homo Sapiens being around 250,000 years. And I know you think homophobia, misogyny, racism, genocide and totalitarianism are wrong too, but the bible contradicts you on all those points. I’m just saying its time we educated people reevaluate Bronze Age texts.

jtm: oh and my chromosomal evidence has nothing to do with rearrangements during Meiosis or even the similarities between primate DNA and human DNA(though they are relevant), I could give you a link to a lecture on that if ur interested, oh and add slavery to the list of immoralities the bible approves of

BD: jtm, I must sign off for several days, but… a debate is just a competition, & no debate will lead you to truth. An open mind, enough open books, and a humble heart might. My experience is, that until the Lord created a spirit of life in me, I had no idea I had been dead. And I still don’t know why He did it – an arrogant SOB like me didn’t/doesn’t deserve such grace. But He’s the King, & He does what He will. Thank God! Good night, jtm. Buck.

jtm: You’re right about debates, and I respect your belief and your experience. But its time our society had an honest debate about the bible and religion and its effects. I personally turned from religion when a friend of mine was murdered by someone on a divine mission in Iraq. I’m not saying that all theists are terrorists, but it made look at my beliefs outside the box.

BD: I’m sorry. That misguided fanatic may represent the face of religion, but not God. Don’t let him kill you along with your friend. Your mind and your heart testify that the Creator is not some atavistic being which we in our current highly-evolved state can now judge. At best, we may be better positioned to understand Him than our fathers could thousands of years ago. At least from a scientific & historical knowledge perspective – I’m not sure our hearts have evolved much at all. G’night for real

jtm: Buck, I can honestly say you give the strongest argument for theism than I’ve heard from any of my professors or scholars

jtm: PS: entropy does not refute evolution, don’t you think the scientific community recognizes that? or do you think that I and the scientists are part of an “evil conspiracy” to “Satanize” the world. As for your argument of irreducible complexity, thats been refuted too, nice try though. (I may seem condescending, i don’t think theists are stupid, they’re just wrong[)]

A few things here aside from the obvious. 1) it would be neat to have spanshots of life on earth 6000 years ago, for all sorts of reasons. 2) jtm forgets in the end he’s talking to a scientist. 3) I’m waiting for an excuse to nest that thing with the brackets one level deeper.

Quanta plans widescale rollout of cheap computers; the cheapest with small screens and no hard drive.  No word on whether they care about power and life…

… …

I keep on running into people who refer to Wikipedia with over-definite articulation. That is to say, with a definite article. I am reminded of a comment from years past, care of Joho:

The circle of articulate digerati who have recently preferred the
“the Wikipedia” to the “Wikipedia” option, however, highlight the
urgency of the struggle for nomenclatural justice.

I have updated the Wikipedia FAQ to clarify and rectify the reality of the matter, and trust that the “the” the Wikipedia-loving fans of the aforementioned circle have grown accustomed to, will in the near future fade into the recesses of the past.

Please fight for justice in nomenclature, and save us all from grammatical confusion and disorder.

Nomenclatural justice …

Welcome back to “How to criticize Wikipedia”, a series for bloggers and others hoping to change Wikipedia for the better.  After a brief delay, reporting live from Abuja, here is the first lesson, on constructive criticism.

Criticizing Wikipedia is a serious undertaking, and not one to be picked up lightly. You may have the world’s most incisive criticism of Wikipedia; but if you can’t express yourself in a way that will make any community member listen, being incisive won’t be enough.   Be sure that you

• read up on past discussions along the same lines,
• respect and take advantage of the way the Wikipedia community welcomes and responds directly to criticism,
• place with care any criticisms, first identifying the 2 or 3 best places for them
• assume good faith of others when wording criticisms.

Reading up: for one thing, most criticisms about Wikipedia and how it has treated your favorite writer, contributor, subject, biography, or ideology have already been stated somewhere, with cross-references and ensuing discussion and refinement, somewhere on Wikipedia itself.  For another, many controversial aspects of Wikipedia have also been the topic of policy debates, even proposed and adopted policy, and community WikiProjects.  Try searching WP for topics related to your criticism before typing out a new manifesto.

Respect:  Most organizations and most websites provide only for closed-circuit feedback and complaints.  Respect the open channels available to you (as well as the zealots and lunatics) for criticisms and discussions, avoid abusing them,  and recognize that those responding to you also spend their time responding to the aforementioned zealots and lunatics, and mistake the seriousness of your criticisms if they are in a hurry.  (They may also have had the same discussion a dozen times before.)  If someone snaps at you, don’t instantly snap back; it takes at least two for a critical debate to degenerate into a flamefest.

Place with care: The fact that you can post your criticism to the personal talk pages of every active community member, and to every discussion portal, does not mean you should do so.  Find one place to make your point clearly and solicit discussion, and no more than two other places where it or related topics are already being discussed, from which to link to your point.  When in doubt, ask on the Village Pump where to put such criticism; the community members likely to respond will know where all the policy and discussion pages are, even if you don’t.

Assume good faith: The contributors to the site are not part of a great conspiracy; do not share any uniform political, religious, or editorial goals; do not hate you; and are not ignoring what you have to say.  They do not all speak with one voice.  A couple of editors, even if they are 2 of the 1000 administrators on en:wp, do not represent the “view” of the entire project, nor any significant subset of it.  Individual editors may be immature, in a bad mood, uninterested in dealing with criticisms of the site.  The body of editors as a whole responds well to gracefully-put criticism, and even encourages and highlights it:

How to criticize Wikipedia: Lesson 1, Constructive criticism …

From a recent slashdot thread:

I see.

Wikipedia’s nationality is at risk.  Arguments have started up this week about whether Wikipedia has nationality, and whether it is associated in people’s minds with the US.  World Citizenship has not apparently been suggested. But the discussion turned up this gem, from (you guessed it!) dpbsmith:

Mike Newell has apparently written and spoken about a culture of bung — a “bung culture”, as it were — for the past year or two. Now that term , which may never have been popular before, has become indelibly linked to his name.

“Another conservatory”, “a boob job”, and “a fast car” are all identified with one another in the list of uses to which a bung may be put.

Bungs “have always been a part of football” — apparently they are kickbacks of one sort or another. Where this usage comes from escapes me atm, but I’m sure I will find out soon.

A painfully wonderful flash short:  Touchtone Genius  

You must also visit the composer’s website, where he tackles
interesting requests with a genius that extends far beyond
touchtones (Aaron Mandel, call your office) : songs to wear pants to.

But the greatest short I saw last year: “What can be changed“.  I want to see the original, without subtitles…

And finally, for doomsday preparations, you can’t do better than Martyr.net.

Monthly pick-you-up …

A friend I made just recently was trying to explain a fear of public exposure
– not precisely a passionate sense of privacy, as certain breaches
thereof were acceptable (being published in one’s own field, being
known for good work one had done, being a backup dancer on stage); but
a strong aversion to specific kinds of exposure (being published for a
lay audience, having comments published in a local paper, being a
singer on stage, having a web page, being written about publicly by
friends).  It made me think of what a luxury this is; of all the people in the world who have no access to exposure, nor any notion of what it might mean to be ‘overexposed‘. 

Reverends Mandell and Pierce gave sermons recently about survival in the modern world; specifically for children,
whose capacities to choose are frequently limited. Global Voices should
start including those of children — not yet old enough to have their
own sites, perhaps, but surely old enough
to think, react, journal, and speak.  I know some people who would
like this idea; for instance, I would love to hear thoughts on the
matter from Rebecca.  Mandell spoke of  reaching out to children; Pierce published a sermon from his church in Lawrence, on sinning by omission, which I find significantly less compelling [how many omissions would I unmake, if I could?  and how to prioritize among them?]. 

But reaching out, taking their voices seriously as we do those of adults, is a major step.  Let us take it.

Area woman eschews web presence …

Adam Curry edited his own encyclopedia entry.  Well, the
podcasting article, to be precise.  How do we know?  He
admits it.  But before he admitted it, and before he admitted his
edits were wrong, the community sussed it out.  Details below…

http://www.cnn.com/video/player/player.html?url=/video/tech/2005/12/05/phillips.wikipedia.interview.cnn

The interviewer wasn’t pleased with her own Wikipedia entry. She ran a fine
interview, though. The segment was longer than most of the CNN segments
that hour. Both Seigenthaler and Jimbo looked a little beat; from
stalking himself on the wiki and tussling with the floor, respectively.

CNN is great about maintaining their own transcripts. Happily, the
local news division had the program on the projection screen in their
main conference room.

Seigenthaler and Wales square off on CNN …

Thanks to Dave’s fabulous new game-industry blog
(now that he’s the associate dir @ MIT’s gaming lab, it’s about time he
got one up), I’ve been following some of the recent scandals and events
in the latest generation of games, something I haven’t done since
E3.   And today I was lucky enough to spend an hour with Cory Ondrejka at Berkman, someone I haven’t seen since Accelerating Change this time last year.

So I was reading up on the latest changes in Second Life, and ran
across this insightful take on Rockstar, from the cybersex-oriented Black Love Interactive:

Next time I see one of the developers of “Bully”, I’ll be thinking of Xmas prezzies from grandma.

…they’re planning for disaster by training the community to be more self-reliant (and going back to centuries-old roots in the process).  How did I miss this when it was first announced?

My karma’s rubbing off on Boston …