Capitalism A Love Affair (2009)

I should have known better, but given that the subject of Michael Moore's latest "documentary film" is one relatively close to my heart, I thought it would at least be worth a look.

Wrong: I didn't last even to the halfway point (to be completely fair, the two glasses of prosecco consumed during dinner didn't help with this, but still...).

This film has only confirmed for me Michael Moore is a hack of the highest order (or lowest -- whichever level signifies "worst"). It is an appalling piece of self-satisfied, smug, hypocritical grand-standing that makes no attempt at any kind of balanced, honest or informed reporting.

It's not even worth going into details, but suffice it to say that he's up to his usual tricks of playing fast and loose with the facts as he cut-and-pastes events into a montage that best supports his pre-conceived thesis (nothing more than "capitalism is bad"). He flits from excruciatingly prolonged close-ups of families in tears at being evicted from their homes to heavily edited "interviews" with "fat cat" stereotypes whom he goads into saying something heartless-sounding (e.g. "would you be prepared to sack 10,000 people if that's what it took to save your company?" / "uh.. yes"/ "what about 20,000?" / "yes -- whatever it took". I mean, come on, what else could the guy say??). There's no attempt to examine how the "victims" have gotten to the point of eviction, but no doubt this wouldn't serve the simplistic case he's trying to make.

To labour the point, this is fundamentally bad, amateurish journalism. He's not going after the answers, he's fishing for juicy tidbits that portray things in a certain light, then splicing it all together -- feeling free to take some things completely out of context. The result is little more than fiction.

I wish I could say more, but as I say, I fell asleep after half an hour. But I saw enough to remind me once and for all to stay away from anything made by this idiot.

Stay away from this one.

"The turd in the punchbowl"

Finance types generally speaking have a fair knack for "colourful metaphors" -- but this is one of my favourites. It's attributed to Hank Paulson, who used it in reference to Bank of America, which ended up $20 billion in extra bailout money after its merger with Merrill Lynch.

BTW, I've just finished "Too Big To Fail" by Andrew Ross Sorkin. Overall it was an enjoyable read and it did a very good job of piecing together the behind-the-scenes machinations during the financial crisis. I think a truly authoritative work will have to wait until the after effects have played out more fully, but in the meantime I'd say this was a pretty decent effort.

Despite myself, I come away from the book with a bit more respect for some of the major players. Dick Fuld, for one, was roundly vilified by the media for his reckless mismanagement of Lehmann Brothers. But he comes across as a fiercely loyal character, who was trying until the bitter end to find a way out for the company. It's also interesting that he lost close to $1 billion in Lehmann when they went under -- leaving him with a net worth of "only" about $250 million. That suggests to me that (1) he had as much of a vested interest in the company's long-term survival as anyone could have and that therefore (2) the idea that management and shareholder interests can be "aligned" by paying out bonuses in stock doesn't have much basis in reality.

Another character who has climbed in my estimation is good ol' Hank Paulson: love or hate the guy, you can't deny he gave his all for the cause. He was apparently operating on a couple of hours sleep a night during the key few weeks of the crisis (around the very time I was begrudging having to get up a little earlier than usual to catch the train after relocating from Camden to Tunbridge Wells), and on a few occasions was so overcome by the stress/fatigue that he would be seen dry-retching into dustbins during meetings.

For my 2 cents, the real villains of the piece are the shadowy cast of characters operating well below the level of senior management, who are nevertheless able to command bonuses in the 10s of millions on the basis of their nebulous "talent". In other words, you've made the firm 100s of millions this year, and have a rolodex full of important clients, so we have to pay you that much or you'll just jump ship to the highest bidder, presumably taking that list of clients with you. A good example of this was articulated recently by Morgan Stanley CEO John Mack, who cited the case a 28 year-old trader at the firm whose desk made a profit of $300-400 million last year: after receiving an $11 million bonus from MS he promptly left for a hedge fund who offered him $25 million.

To tie this in with one of my favourite rants: it's reminiscent of the way the English Premier League has gone in recent years (viz. Ronaldo leaving MUFC for Real Madrid). There's obviously no simple answer to the problem, but I would argue that a good first step is eliminating the merry-go-round of mercenary "rogue traders" shameless pursuing ever-bigger bonuses, and encouraging long-term loyalty to the company that has allowed the profits to be generated in the first place.

floating point arithmetic 101

There is a pretty fundamental pitfall when comparing floating point precision numbers in a language like C, Python (or even with MachinePrecision numbers in Mathematica): because decimal-to-binary conversion inevitably leads to truncation errors, it is possible to get seemingly incorrect results to numerical comparisons such as:

10.05 - 10.00 > 0.05 (in Python, but interestingly not in Mathematica)

2.000006 - 2.000005 > 0.000001 (in Python AND Mathematica)

I recently fell prey to this basic gotcha. The solution is to add an "epsilon" which determines a threshold level, e.g.

def myGreater(a, b, eps=1e-6):

    return a > b + eps

In Mathematica, such problems can be completely avoided by using arbitrary-precision arithmetic, e.g.

2.000006`20 - 2.000005`20 > 0.000001`20

but at the cost of slower performance.

This article has what appears to be a good discussion of the ins and outs of fpa (one for a *very* rainy day...):

http://dlc.sun.com/pdf/800-7895/800-7895.pdf

More Than This

Just watched this documentary on Roxy Music (made in 2008). Was very good -- some very interesting footage from the early days and candid discussions with band members in the present day. Of all the (ex) members, Eno and Phil Manzanera came across as the most at peace with things; I found Eno's perspective in particular to be quite insightful (interesting that he rates the third album -- the first after he left the band -- as their best). Andy Mackay and Phil Thompson, in contrast, seemed to harbour some residual bitterness towards Bryan Ferry. Some of this seemed to be re the way the group's style evolved (from Manifesto onwards) in a more commercial direction -- with the other band members' role reduced to essentially that of a backing band for Ferry. Tellingly, I still regularly forget that "Dance Away" was a song from the Manifesto and not one of Ferry's solo albums. It is quite ironic that most of their most well-known songs came from the last 3 albums, which were actually quite uncharacteristic of most of their earlier work.

Conspicuously absent was any discussion of the band members' personal lives or solo careers. It would have been interesting to hear BF's take on Jerry Hall and Mick Jagger around the time of the Siren album, as well as Eno's first solo project "Here Come The Warm Jets".

As a side note: Kari-Ann Muller, the model from the cover of the first album, was featured briefly. She seems to have aged very well --- given that the cover dates back to 1972. Maybe she's been giving Mick Jagger some tips -- apparently she's been happily married to his brother Chris for the past 20 years (thanks to Wikipedia, I also know that she lives in Highgate and teaches yoga). Seems the Jagger brothers had a thing for Roxy Music cover models...

P.S. The show is on ABC2 iView for another 12 days or so:

http://www.abc.net.au/iview/#/abc2

Whatever Works (2009)

Watched this last night. It's Woody Allen's latest piece of New York-centric quasi-intellectual self-indulgence. It was reasonably amusing in parts, but was pretty forgettable overall. A couple of comments:

- With Larry David addressing the audience on a regular basis through the film and the lengthy passages of dialogue (mostly David's morose tirades), the film felt more like a theatre show. I reckon this film would work better in that format: addressing a live audience could have a lot more impact.

- I still can't really buy Larry David as an actor. It felt too much like he was just playing himself a la Curb Your Enthusiasm. And he always seems to be struggling to hold back a smile, like he's about to crack up at himself.

homemaker photo shoot

Some photos to showcase the progress in our domestic furnishings...

1. The library, um, i mean, the dining room:

I think my whole life has been leading up to this moment: entire book collection proudly shelved and within easy reach. Thanks to Ikea (9 x Billy 40 x 202 cm) for helping this dream become a reality.

2. The living room. Resplendent in N.I. jersey and nursing jamaican mule on brand new sofa:

Lloyd keeps things in perspective

Another memorable quote from "Too Big To Fail" (start of Ch. 15)...

It's 8:00am on Sunday, Sept 14, the day before Lehman files for bankruptcy. Goldman CEO Lloyd Blankfein is arriving at the NY Fed with his chief of staff Russell Horowitz for a second marathon day of talks aimed at finding a way out of the crisis:

"I don't think I can take another day of this," Horowitz said wearily.

Blankfein laughed. "You're getting out of a Mercedes to go to the New York Federal Reserve--you're not getting out of a Higgins boat on Omaha Beach! Keep things in perspective."