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Matt Levine makes sense of Wall Street like none other

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141–150 of 199 posts

Re: Matt Levine makes sense of Wall Street like none other

#141
post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Actually, among developed countries the US has a relatively high corruption level, I believe. (Insert many caveats about how difficult corruption is to measure.)

One group that measures corruption (I'm sure there are many) is freedomhouse.org They rate USA 3/4 for corruption (Section C2 [0]) Comparing other similar nations for corruption Australia 4/4 Canada 4/4 New Zealand 4/4 United Kingdom 4/4 [0] https://freedomhouse.org/country/united-states/freedom-world...

They rate USA 75% for corruption, and the (ex) British colonies as 100% for corruption. What does that mean? Is literally every single transaction in those places corrupt? "Out of 4" seems like a very poor way of doing this kind or rating.

Re: Matt Levine makes sense of Wall Street like none other

#142
post #3

from this profile, Matt is very probably underpaid vs his earning potential (probably at least an order of magnitude) and should leave to substack or his own operation. but I respect that money really isn't everything.

He's IMO a perfect example of the intractability of the "fake news" problem. It's not that there aren't high quality news sources out there, like Matt Levine, it's that the market (in the form of folks willing to pay for it) isn't there. (Maybe it's technology? Micropayments still aren't effectively a thing?)

The market for Levine is certainly there. He could easily clear 7 figures on Substack.

Re: Matt Levine makes sense of Wall Street like none other

#143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

New to me and I've been programming web for quite a while. I've only ever seen that final "." in DNS records, it never occured to me that it would affect logic within the site.

You know what’s also missing if you go to bloomberg.com./? All of the ads, and the animated stock ticker. I’m on mobile so didn’t dig into it further, but I bet that all JS loaded on request from another domain (probably including the paywall) is absent or broken. The site itself loads fine though, because DNS still works and whatever routing layer in their app probably doesn’t care about the domain, just the path th…

I once got a verbal C&D from a Novell web dev because they answered to any domain and I pointed (as a joke) a domain to their IP. Google ended up indexing, and customers were asking what 'reallystrangedomain.com' was when they searched for Novell error messages.

They asked me to stop 'mirroring' their content, and didn't understand I was just pointing my domain to their servers. I stopped, but part of me didn't want to.

Edit: Looks like archive.org picked it up: http://web.archive.org/web/20110623134639/http://thebergenef...

Re: Matt Levine makes sense of Wall Street like none other

#144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is this really that compelling? I find it with lots of rhetorical flourish, but lacking the analysis of how the rich really do enrich themselves. > They did this by setting up what was, in reality, a two-tiered investment system — one for the insiders who knew the real numbers, and another for the lay investor who was invited to chase soaring prices the banks themselves knew were irrational What does this mean? Why w…

yeah wow the idea that matt taibi is well informed on these topics... he's not even a good writer either... other than that, he's a great Matt Levine comp haha.

so matt taibbi is isn't well informed because he didnt work in investment banking previously ?

Re: Matt Levine makes sense of Wall Street like none other

#146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One group that measures corruption (I'm sure there are many) is freedomhouse.org They rate USA 3/4 for corruption (Section C2 [0]) Comparing other similar nations for corruption Australia 4/4 Canada 4/4 New Zealand 4/4 United Kingdom 4/4 [0] https://freedomhouse.org/country/united-states/freedom-world...

They rate USA 75% for corruption, and the (ex) British colonies as 100% for corruption. What does that mean? Is literally every single transaction in those places corrupt? "Out of 4" seems like a very poor way of doing this kind or rating.

Higher score is better. 4/4 is best.

Compare vs. China https://freedomhouse.org/country/china/freedom-world/2020

Re: Matt Levine makes sense of Wall Street like none other

#147
post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Actually, among developed countries the US has a relatively high corruption level, I believe. (Insert many caveats about how difficult corruption is to measure.)

America ranks 23rd on the Perception of Corruption Index. Australia, Canada and the UK are 12th, and New Zealand 1st. [1] [1] https://www.transparency.org/en/cpi

How much did it pay for that privilege?

Re: Matt Levine makes sense of Wall Street like none other

#148
post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

only 150k? that's seems like huge for something which is almost a niche. How many people subscribe to newsletters? on these people how many are interested about the opinion of one guy on the details of market finance?

I thought something similar. Just to contextualize that number the LA Times only has 170 thousand digital subscribers.

And almost all of them in LA, even with a bias from it being digital so that's how you get it if you want it outside of LA.

Compared to Levine, who has me, in the UK, as a subscriber.

He has a way bigger potential audience than the LA Times.

Re: Matt Levine makes sense of Wall Street like none other

#149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One group that measures corruption (I'm sure there are many) is freedomhouse.org They rate USA 3/4 for corruption (Section C2 [0]) Comparing other similar nations for corruption Australia 4/4 Canada 4/4 New Zealand 4/4 United Kingdom 4/4 [0] https://freedomhouse.org/country/united-states/freedom-world...

They rate USA 75% for corruption, and the (ex) British colonies as 100% for corruption. What does that mean? Is literally every single transaction in those places corrupt? "Out of 4" seems like a very poor way of doing this kind or rating.

[deleted]

Re: Matt Levine makes sense of Wall Street like none other

#150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On the other hand, is there a lack of writing about finance with lots of contempt and anger? Matt Taibbi may not be an insider in the way that Levine is but he (and others) often manage to be fairly well informed and they are certainly contemptuous and angry. I also wonder if to understand is not, in some inevitable sense, to forgive? Is it really possible to fully understand on an emotional level how a quant trader…

Matt Taibbi is not at the same level as Matt Levine. He is writer first, analyst second.

Taibbi also has zero sense of humour - like when he reported that a trader was exchanging insider LIBOR tips for day-old sushi not realising it was obviously meant in jest:

https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/everythi...

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