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Why is this on the front page of HN? Because so many apologists for liquidity at any cost congregate here. Because so many of us rely on the FIRE sector to impl
by ChristianMarks 14y ago
Why is this on the front page of HN? Because so many apologists for liquidity at any cost congregate here. Because so many of us rely on the FIRE sector to implement self-binding mechanisms of cooperative benefit to save for our retirement. And now we have more evidence the FIRE sector cannot be trusted. So perhaps instead of our colleagues patronizing us to go educate ourselves about the falsehood that all liquidity is good liquidity and that they are doing God's work (when research shows that HFT leads to diminishing returns [hint: gain from trade in competitive markets is a convex downward function with respect to efficiency]), they might consider engineering systems that sustain the cooperative benefits of self binding, instead of implementing systems that cynically and systematically win asymmetric zero-sum games against the rest of us.
- photon137 14y agoThis is on the front-page of HN because, as Richard Feynman said, "It's the things that nobody knows about that we can discuss. We can talk about the weather; we can talk about social problems; we can talk about psychology; we can talk about international finance... so it's the subject that nobody knows anything about that we can all talk about!".
- Variance 14y agoHN is also far more of a resource for tech-sector knowledge and wisdom than economic wisdom, as I've found all too often. On the other side of the LIBOR issue, reading through many of the comment pages here and seeing all the cries for disincorporating banks or "eliminating the profit motive" betrays an unfortunately reactionary populism.