Viewing profile — rlucas

This piece is very much not sourced from payment rails transaction data. It's big demographic and macro data and the sources are all nicely cited

"Licit" in English usage also carries the weight of its connotation in church ("canon") law, wherein it can refer to acts that are considered not only to have occurred spiritually …

Sorry, I meant Jesse Livermore's "Confessions of a Stock Market Operator," worth a read to anyone interested in the history of this stuff.

I don't think that's a true etymology of "bucket shop," which per my recollection of Livermore was just an off-track-betting parlor for ticker symbols, but where nobody actually bo…

I think bdcravens is suggesting not that the law itself was intentionally a half-measure, but that the state apparatus is slow-walking the reform measures in a sort of malicious co…

A caution on the source; "The College Fix" is a rage-bait blog for one side of the tiresome U.S. culture war. As a result, expect sensational framing.

54% of SVB’s loan book was loans “to” VCs and PEs, but they weren’t loans based upon the funds’ portfolio holdings. They were Capital Call lines, based on the power of the VC to de…

... though it may well be relevant that they might have felt great pressure to /retain/ customer deposits in a world of competitive yields.

It's not nearly that simple, though. You are ignoring capital requirements. For things like Treasuries, you don't need any capital % against it. ($100 in deposit -> $100 in Treasur…

See also, thermohaline circulation. A major factor in the global climate is the flow of water pulled north along the Atlantic's surface due to the sinking of denser, saltier water.…

BC has a lot of cred with some of us "been around since web 1.0" folks, to be clear

There is a large set of infrequently encountered (for most) but often highly important and/or time-sensitive things that having a traditional bank you can walk into makes much easi…

++ A giant amount of social quandaries melt away when you realize: "Good guys" and "Bad guys" is not a matter of identity, it's a matter of activity. You aren't a "Good guy" becaus…

Effectively, yes. It's a subsidy to individuals of moderate means, particularly those who have spent decades maxing out their holdings. If you think that's regressive and absurd, w…

This is misleading to those who read "plain English" meanings and not familiar with jargon. Banks call "Capital" or "Equity" the unencumbered safe assets like cash they hold. Banks…

++ COLLATE "C" is your friend, particularly if you find yourself using a GUID or other text-y PK field.

I got a similar response when I tried to return an electronics item a couple years back. The guy (totally over his head) walked through an algorithm and 10 minutes into it, basical…

I recently had a big burst of returns in my Amazon account. It would be disruptive to me if I were to be “fired” as a customer in ways I have heard about. Is there an official or u…

Weirdly reminiscent of the sci fi plot element in Sawyer, “The Terminal Experiment.”

I also had intermittency on 2021-11-27 between 1-2 PM PT. Would work one minute, not the next, retry and it works. Feels round-robin-y kind of Heisenbug.

Just ask yourself, what productive use of USD reliably yields 8.88% plus a spread for the intermediary? (For regulated boring banks, net interest margin historically is around 3%.)…

There are an awful lot of businesses that charge huge margins and use that extra cash flow, plus their scale, to essentially fence out new entrants by a mix of sales/marketing, cha…

A meta-comment here: Beware the advice you might glean here. Often, surveying HN for the consensus provides a signal; more often, skimming the cream of the commentary provides a be…

Staff please update title — importantly the reported upon study indicates no effect of legislation mandating hi-viz, not the wearing of it. For example, perhaps everyone who would …

That is orthogonal to the point of the article. The state can demand, using their guns, that you pay them in the coin of their realm. At that point, you need to come up with those …