Recent content by Adam

  1. Adam

    A 69% Capital Gains Tax Hike ...

    Luckily, nobody's talking about $1 Trillion healthcare reform right now. According to the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office, the Affordable Health Care for America Act (HR 3962) will cost $892 billion over 10 years, which is more than 10% less than $1 trillion. Not only that, but...
  2. Adam

    Obama steps up campaign against Wall Street banks

    Let's say the Democrats suggest we order pasta for dinner. The Republicans threaten to filibuster, suggesting that we eat broken glass, instead. The Democrats respond by offering a compromise: we'll eat broken glass for dinner, but we'll have tiramisu for dessert. These are our choices in...
  3. Adam

    Nytimes.com to charge for viewing next year

    What happens when the editorial board of a government-sponsored newspaper is the same party as the government in charge of doling out subsidies? Hell, what happens when they're a different party? AGs who pursued cases that Karl Rove didn't like got fired back in '05. Journalists on the public...
  4. Adam

    Nytimes.com to charge for viewing next year

    I would prefer that the Attorney General's Office be the police when it comes to politicians, and that the wetlands be preserved by the EPA.
  5. Adam

    So how much does a master's GPA matter?

    This is a flawed question, but in a very interesting way. The good news (for you, at least) is that correcting the flaw leads to good news (for you). You see, Wall Street is not a monoculture. I'm sure there are some IBs who value variables-and-data over code-and-data-structures, and I'm...
  6. Adam

    Bankers fury at UK 50% bonus supertax

    I know, right? This is why I only buy products that are made in sweatshops, preferably ones staffed by child or slave labor. Children and slaves are cheaper! Allowing ethics to inform the way you purchase products? Oh please. Waah waah waah.
  7. Adam

    So your stranded on an island....

    Forcing others to depend upon you for their very survival, setting up a situation where the feeding of an entire community depends upon a single person and therefore has only one point of failure between itself and disaster, belittling others' desire for an increased quality of life by putting...
  8. Adam

    So your stranded on an island....

    Sounds pretty good, until Steve the Fire Guy gets eaten by a wild boar. Just like you, Steve absolutely refused to teach anyone else how to make fire, because he had a "comparative advantage", and it was just more efficient to let him do it for everyone. But now Steve is gone, leaving everyone...
  9. Adam

    2009 Goldman Sachs bonus: $700,000/employee

    That's right. It could be anyone at all. This explains why people are rioting in the streets protesting the millions of dollars Tom Hanks gets per picture. America is jealous that Tom Hanks makes a lot of money and they don't. America hates Tom Hanks.
  10. Adam

    2009 Goldman Sachs bonus: $700,000/employee

    Marxism is another system that's supposed to be good for society. At least, that's what Marxists will tell you. In fact, I can't think of any system ever invented that wasn't "supposed" to be good for society. But then, I'm sure we're all familiar with the desination of the road paved with...
  11. Adam

    Proof for an Intelligent Creator and His purpose

    You take as fact the statement "No thing nor event in the known universe or laws of physics lacks a cause." This pretty much begs the question. Perhaps the universe itself exists without a cause. In the scope of human knowledge, quantum physics is relatively new. We have yet to prove the...
  12. Adam

    SQL

    Here's one example: data reconciliation. Let's say you work in middle office, and your IB recently purchased another IB. You now have to transfer all of their trades from their systems to yours. Of course, the trade details, cashflow information, curve data, etc. will differ between systems, so...
  13. Adam

    hard question(no clue how to answer)

    I think you're making an incorrect assumption here. X and Y are two events based on two separate, independent series of coin tosses, from coins A and B, respectively. Here's an example: Coin one: T-T-T-T-H-H Coin two: H-H-H-T-T-T Event X (two heads in a row from coin A) occurred after...
  14. Adam

    What's financial engineering?

    I'm a bit confused as to how you could have narrowed down your choice for undergrad study to financial engineering without knowing what financial engineering is. What is it you're looking for in a course of study, exactly? My suggestion is to take a step back and think about what you're...
  15. Adam

    The Master Happy Birthday thread

    I call "survivorship bias". Think of all the Civil War letters lost to the ages because of the physical impermanence of paper and ink. GMail has practically every e-mail I've ever sent or received (that wasn't spam) for the last five years saved on its servers. Meanwhile birthday cards...
Back
Top