How David Li Screwed the Economy

[RoccoRyg]

Source: Cracked.com

Most of you probably don't gamble, or at least don't gamble a lot, for fear of losing your rent money on a single bad hand or blown point spread.

But imagine somebody came up with a simple formula that took the guesswork out of it. You could punch the information into a calculator and it would tell you your risks with any given hand or sports team. It guarantees that over the long run, you'll come out ahead. Think about how it would streamline gambling -- hell, you could create a computer program to play blackjack for you. Think about how many more people would gamble if this existed -- it'd make gambling a reliable, safe way to make some extra cash. All the risk would be gone. Everybody would do it.

Read more: http://www.cracked.com/article_19357_6-people-who-single-handedly-screwed-entire-economies.html

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Another reason for the economic crash and how it didn't involve unions or liberals.

[Demeter]

1. Interesting read, thanks!

[girl gone mad]

2. This lets the real culprits off too easy.

To paraphrase what a quant friend told me a couple of years before the bubble burst:

"Everyone knows the math is smoke and mirrors. My job is just to provide some cover when it all comes crashing down (and it will)."

Several insiders have written and talked about meetings with various banking execs, wherein they warned that the housing market would crash and the models and assumptions used in securitizations would fail spectacularly. According to these accounts, the leadership knew and simply did not care. In fact, they encouraged a few of them to take short positions so that they could sell more of these defective bonds.

[underpants]

3. I am about 5 lists into this sight

thanks.