08 August, 2004

Yes, I do, and it is knavery and thievery of the most wicked type!

From WIRED Magazine's site:

Do You See a Pattern Here?

An open letter to the wizards of Wall Street from Benoît Mandelbrot, father of the fractal.

By any measure, the late 1990s was a time of extraordinary growth and prosperity in much of the world - and yet, the global financial system still managed to lurch through six crises: Mexico in 1995; Thailand, Indonesia, and South Korea in 1997 and 1998; Russia in 1998; and Brazil from 1998 to 1999. The Indonesian crisis was especially severe: The country's quarterly real GDP plummeted 18.9 percent, and its currency fell into a hole 526 percent deep. Each of these upheavals spread to most parts of the globe, destabilizing currencies, knocking gaping holes in bank balance sheets and, in many cases, causing a wave of bankruptcies. The fact that each country recovered and the global economy roared on again is testament not to good financial management but to good luck.

In this "open letter" (actually an excerpt from a book he and Richard L. Hudson are selling), he starts out with some hard facts, but of course calls for one that encompasses just more risk models for governments, banks and regulators, "...one that takes into account long-term dependency, or the tendency of bad news to come in waves."

One salient fact that is mentioned in this "open letter" is the New Basel Capital Accord, and a very telling slide show about it can be found here.

The book is entitled, "The (Mis)Behavior of Markets" and can be found here or at other booksellers found in the previous link.

--WP

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