Merv's Politically Incorrect Audio Blog

Discussion in 'SBAF Blogs' started by purr1n, Dec 26, 2018.

  1. Tachikoma

    Tachikoma Almost "Made"

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    By normalized I mean almost everyone being infected by the coronavirus at least once over their lifespan.
     
  2. JustAnotherRando

    JustAnotherRando My other bike is a Ferrari

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    I think that people worry about 'exponential increases' too much. I've seen similar sentiments reflected all over the Internet for two months now.

    The initial stages will see rapid growth, and then it will taper as people adjust behaviour. It might take a lot of people to get infected first, unless society is primed by memories of something like SARS in Asia, but it won't follow the same growth until it wipes out civilisation.
     
  3. Thad E Ginathom

    Thad E Ginathom Friend

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    So how does this work or not work? One person gets infected, meets ten people, of whom three get infects. Each of those infects three people... And so on...

    Or should there be some limit built into the model because communities are limited? Probably. But then some idiot decides to go and visit his relatives a thousand miles away.

    Just wondering: I have no idea.
     
  4. JustAnotherRando

    JustAnotherRando My other bike is a Ferrari

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    I'm just working on the assumption that it starts by spreading like crazy because nobody knows about it, then people know about it but don't change behaviour, then at some stage everybody freaks out and society change behaviour (some of the changes being helpful, and some of them not helpful). It's not like the rate of infection can continue forever, I'm always skeptical when someone talks about exponential growth.

    Obviously I'm not a professional! This is just based on what I've seen out here. HK changed behaviour pretty rapidly because of prior experience.
     
  5. Hrodulf

    Hrodulf Prohibited from acting as an MOT until year 2050

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    Exponential growth stops once:
    1. Potential infectee pool shrinks (dead, immune, already infected)
    2. Or the infected can't meet them to infect (isolation, the infected get better or die)
     
  6. JustAnotherRando

    JustAnotherRando My other bike is a Ferrari

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    I think that when the media talks about exponential growth, the bizarre assumption that many people draw is that it will simply run unchecked. I think that society will act in such a way that it will be curbed in fairly short order, but getting there will be chaotic and painful. And it will still grow (HK has seen another wave of infections mainly from overseas returnees), but talking about exponential growth seems not very productive to me.
     
  7. Tachikoma

    Tachikoma Almost "Made"

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    Why not? Part of the reason we talk about exponential growth is to scare society in acting in a way that would curb said exponential growth. Also, there is no reason we should expect people to act in a rational manner.
     
  8. Thad E Ginathom

    Thad E Ginathom Friend

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    There is not enough evidence here in India that society is making the necessary changes. Thus, in many places, lockdown begins tomorrow. Almost everything will be shut down, only food and medicine shops will be open. I'm worried about having enough cat food. On top of worrying about the damned virus, now have to worry about what we might or might not be allowed to do. I hope it gets clearer. Politicians love "clarifying" things except when they literally need to do just that.

    Third hand, I hear Paris is locked down as in curfew: people not allowed on the street.
     
  9. Brause

    Brause Friend

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    Here a great account how the works for different scenarios: https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2020/world/corona-simulator/

    Whatever people do, it can be expressed mathematically.
     
  10. Hrodulf

    Hrodulf Prohibited from acting as an MOT until year 2050

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    Italy, Spain, France are showing exponential growth in infected cases so far. Seems like USA is heading that way as well. You guys in HK got your shit together pretty early, so you're following the slow pandemic scenario. When left to their own devices, people seem to act in a way to promote exponential growth in infection.
     
  11. Thad E Ginathom

    Thad E Ginathom Friend

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    That might be why people is such a difficult thing!
    Yes, nice. The less numerate amongst us much prefer animations to equations!
     
    Last edited: Mar 23, 2020
  12. Brause

    Brause Friend

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    Even simpler: if no measures are taken, cases double every few days (2-5 right now, depending on country).
     
  13. purr1n

    purr1n Desire for betterer is endless.

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    Already there in USA - depends upon what state. EU countries may show some tapering. Hard to say, it could pop up suddenly.
     
  14. Taverius

    Taverius Smells like sausages

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    Well, that's what's got folks worried - transient response on the virus-human-healthcare system is ~2 weeks, you screw it up and a fortnight later the breaker trips and you're dumping to ground o_O
     
  15. purr1n

    purr1n Desire for betterer is endless.

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    THE MORTGAGE CRISIS ACCORDING TO MERV PART I

    It was 2005. I was doing some sort of audit at Savings and Loan or what is known as a Thrift. My specialty was information security, but I think I was doing some other kind of compliance audit that day because I ended up looking at home mortgage loan applications. I worked for a boutique audit firm that specialized in the community banks. In the audit firm that I worked in, we each had our specialties, but we also needed to learn other aspects of the business, just in case someone else wasn't available. That's how consultancies work: we maximize our billable hours.

    Back in the day, there were four hundred or so local community banks in the Western United States. Now there are half that many because of legislation enacted in 2010. Dodd-Frank was intended to prevent banks from being too big to fail. The unintended consequence of Dodd-Frank was even more bigger banks too big to fail. The onerous compliance requirements made it difficult for less efficient smaller banks survive. Many threw in the towel, merged with bigger banks, and thus created bigger banks. I wouldn't say that the consequences were totally unintended. The big banks had their money and their lobbyists to ensure that the legislation would in some perverted way, come out in their favor. As with any piece of ground sweeping legislation, there will always be winners and losers. The people with the most money and penetration into our political class usually wins. Legislators try do good, but like most of us, are totally clueless. Strangely, Congressional committees which are supposed to leverage specialized and nuanced knowledge to get down to the details, didn't do their job.

    As for the disappearance of the local community bank, it's really not as of a huge as a deal as it may seem. Sure there are those organic food info-commercials tailored to progressive types extolling the virtues of local this and local that, including local banks. But the fact is, local community banks don't want to have anything do with with regular people like us. Local community banks are really business banks that love to give out business loans. They don't want you to start a checking or savings account as those are liabilities (for banking, loans are assets)! It works like this: say an audio manufacturer needs a quick loan to pay for a bunch of amp chassis which they know the can pay off in a few months after all the amps have been sold. The audio company would then call their personal rep or loan officer at the community bank for a loan. In less than a day or maybe two, the community bank will have the moved the requested funds to the audio company's banking accounts. Sure this audio manufacturer can deal with Wells Fargo or Bank of America. But we've seen how these big banks work: the tellers at the branches are different people every few months and no one banker can make an approval on a deposit over $10k (this would require three people to approve). No sane business owner wants to deal with the big banks - although it should be mentioned that the big banks have been getting more nimble for their business customers to better compete against the smaller banks.

    Anyway, I actually met Senator Chris Dodd in person, after I lost my job in the community banking niche. LOL, he already knew of my background. No doubt his handlers had already prepped him. One of the first things he did was apologize to me for his legislation, somewhat comforting me with "by golly, don't worry, we're working on fixing it, we're working on it, good ol' chum". You just gotta love a guy like that! No wonder he was such a successful politician. I just couldn't get myself to hate the dude who upended up my life and my family's well-being with his Andy Griffith old time charm.

    At the risk of jumping timelines in Picard-esque type way, let's head back to 2005 where I'm in the offices of the Thrift. Flipping through loan applications, I see stuff like this again and again, application after application:

    Name: Juan Valdez
    Job: Janitor
    Salary: $88,000
    Loan Amount: $550k
    Down payment: $10k
    Loan type: 5/1 ARM
    Status: Approved


    WTF !@#$%!

    continued: https://www.superbestaudiofriends.o...incorrect-audio-blog.7261/page-28#post-298460
     
    Last edited: Jan 7, 2021
  16. penguins

    penguins Friend, formerly known as fp627

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    ^ something something libertarians are right something something something

    In all seriousness IMO should have let all those banks fail in 2008. Anything else that went down with it should have gone down too to clean out the bad money / unsustainable business practices, etc.

    Of course we could say it goes back to the Fed *yada yada more libertarian something something* or is simply due to a society that has been deferring responsibility since the 1930's via FDR let big gov take care of you social programs and can no longer defer effectively with an inverted population pyramid + loony financial system + the fact that other countries have actually developed enough to where everyone wants more stuff and natural resources / capacity are actually somewhat scarce now... and to further compound the problem I'd bet that most (even very educated) people don't intrinsically "feel/understand" the exponential part of growth/decline and the myriad of problems it causes / underlies, including finances, environmental issues, etc.

    I seriously wonder if there is a real solution to the problem...
     
    Last edited: Apr 27, 2020
  17. purr1n

    purr1n Desire for betterer is endless.

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    There was and there is. Or at least very simple basic methods to substantially mitigate the risks. However, if you don't follow the methods or want to circumvent them because of populist appeals from politicians (from both the left and right sides of the aisle)... oh well if the shit hits the fan.

    Many factors and many failures at so many different levels. More tonight. Too easy to point to any particular President, entity. institution, "banks", etc. (The story that most of you guys got from the news is greatly simplified, and thus more or less wrong). I'll go through each of the failures that I saw from bottom to top. All the nitty gritty stuff that your government didn't want you to know. The stuff that never made it to the news, so that anger only be directed to the banks.
     
    Last edited: Apr 27, 2020
  18. YMO

    YMO Chief Fun Officer

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    A little too far out ATM, but Post-2008 it was a great time to be a big growing bank buying out smaller banks or failed banks with an agreement with the FDIC. Back in the day you can get crazy deals on wonderful branch/office locations which as time went on their value went up like mad.
     
  19. penguins

    penguins Friend, formerly known as fp627

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    Yep, it was way more than banks, etc. But that wouldn't have fit the theme of my silly rant.

    In all seriousness though - I'm curious about what you're going to say. I've heard a few stories from other people in I guess what joe at home would call an "inside" position such as yours. Hence why I wonder if there is a solution.
     
  20. neogeosnk

    neogeosnk Friend

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    The wife works for the government for this to never happen again. There's a software layer/platform that won't allow lenders to do this at least through Fanny Mae/Freddy Mac. This should theoretically never happen again but someone always finds a loophole and f*cks everything up.
     

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