<p>^ and the world’s economy.</p>
<p>how the heck do you come to that conclusion, texas and tiger?</p>
<p>I kind of think of it as also the quants’ fault, the guys who develop the software that the traders and risk-managers rely on, and who become risk-managers and maybe even traders… kind of like card counters in the casinos!
They also enabled the slicing, dicing and repackaging of loans and securities supposedly to diversify and mange the risk into new securities.
They also create the off exchange trading systems that supposedly address liquidity problems with many of the newer securities.
till the next Black Swan…</p>
<p>Yes, the management of Wall St firms, the risk insurers, the big banks, the Fed and the US Treasury and other government agencies, and the central banks all over the world all drank the kool-aid concocted by these tech geniuses, who in the past were more likely to be employed outside of finance by software and hardware companies and scientific research labs, and doing engineering work.</p>
<p>It all started with Fisher-Scholes, then came the mainframe, then the minicomputer and the network, allowing us to make huge calculations searching for patterns and regressions, and away we went!!!</p>
<p>quant guys just do what they are told to do. Directors and fund managers are the guys who drive it.</p>
<p>“those that meet the minimum bar of intelligence but have out of this world drive”</p>
<p>Are always the guys who are cutting all the corners without paying attention to basics.</p>
<p>Umm, my sense is that quant guys also come up with NEW ideas, too, to compete and show off to their superiors so they can be connected with better results, and so forth.
“Hey, Mr PM, look what I came up with! It really does x and Y, which is a problem we ran into last year…”, and such. Or, “I can now handle 10 more years of data, so I think we can now look for Q.”
The general message to quants from PM’s: “find me a way to outperform the market.” Yes, also, “find ways for my portfolio as it is structured to outperform, or be hedged against X scenario.”</p>
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<p>Actually, that sounds much more like what the “those that meet the minimum bar of intelligence but have out of this world drive, social skills, and EQ - all coupled with a deep network of well connected individuals.” In short…the work of your stereotypical glad-handling salesperson (Or as it is undiplomatically known in my old NYC neighborhood…a BS artist.)</p>
<p>The really clever people aren’t the ones who figure out how to finance these things. The clever people are the ones who come up with / develop / market those ideas in the first place that add value to a company. I don’t know why CC so overvalues “oh, look, I moved money around” and so undervalues the actual creativity of the people who come up with the ideas and bring them to market.</p>
<p>[MF</a> Global Bankruptcy Leaves Star Bankers Adrift - Bloomberg](<a href=“Bloomberg - Are you a robot?”>Bloomberg - Are you a robot?)</p>
<p>MF Global sought bankruptcy protection yesterday within a week of Moody’s Investors Service cutting the New York-based firm’s credit rankings, reporting a record quarterly loss and disclosing $6.3 billion of wagers on the sovereign debt of some of Europe’s most indebted nations. The firm was one of the few on Wall Street adding staff amid about 120,000 layoffs announced by banks globally this year, according to Bloomberg Industries. </p>
<p>I am certain the quants forced these quick buck money makers on betting on the debt of these nations expecting bailouts from EU, IMF etc.</p>