Rants Go Here!

NoCoPilot wrote:

Not "deposits" per se I know, but losses in the billions.

$41 billion, to put a number to it.

A bank is like any other stock investment: when the company goes in the toilet, so do the shares. For some reason, investors in banks think they should receive special treatment.

"Too big to fail" only applies to the government's interest, not shareholders of those TBTF institutions. It's a typical fool's bet -- if it succeeds they win, if it fails you lose.

"To big to fail" means that a failure would be disastrous to the economy.

I'm not sure what you mean by "the government's interest."

"...if it succeeds they win, if it fails you lose". In this sentence, who is "they" and who is "you"?

I don't know.  I'm not being too coherent; lack of sleep.

I was thinking about AIG and BOA and Citigroup and all those banks that got bailed out when their subprime mortgages tanked.  The people saved by the bailouts weren't the shareholders, they were the FDIC and the bank managers.  Lehman and WaMu were allowed to fail because they didn't have the political clout of the banks that got rescued.

Quote :

Lehman’s bankruptcy filing on September 15, 2008, was a signal event of the financial crisis.  The disorderly and costly nature of the bankruptcy -- the largest financial bankruptcy in U.S. history -- contributed to the massive financial disruption of late 2008.  The lengthy bankruptcy proceeding has allocated resources elsewhere that could have otherwise been used to pay creditors.  Through February 2011, more than $1.2 billion in fees have been charged by attorneys and other professionals representing the debtors alone.

https://www.fdic.gov/regulations/reform/lehman.html

How was the FDIC "saved" by the bailout? AIG had no FDIC-insured accounts, they were a financial services insurance company. They should not have been bailed out. Period.

Lehman and WaMu were two very different situations. Lehman Brothers was an investment bank with no FDIC-insured deposits. WaMu was a commercial bank. I don't think that they did any investment banking. They were just poorly run.

The shareholders were never the intended recipients of the benefits of the bailout, nor should they have been. Of course, the top management should have received a huge bite on the ass, but we know that doesn't happen. Glass-Steagall should have been restored and many of the banks should have been nationalized. But that makes too much sense for Washington to handle it.

Yeah you're probably right. Time for a another nap.

Here's one of my all-time rants: Word Usage.

I don't have a problem with people using the wrong word in casual conversation. I would never interrupt someone to point out an error; that's just being a dick. I don't consider myself to be any kind of linguist, not even a cunning one. But all those who get paid for using words - writers, narrators, editors (do they still have those?), should always use the proper words and phrases. For god's sake, if I notice and am irritated by poor word usage, can you imagine how bothersome it must be for an English major? So here are just a few of my favorites.

Cement:
There is no such thing as a cement wall, a cement block, a cement sidewalk, etc.. Cement is a powder. Those items are all made of concrete, of which cement is one component. Calling a skyscraper a "cement building" is no more correct than referring to a cake as "flour".

Backseat and Backyard:
These words do not exist in the English language, although there are some so-called experts who insist that because they have become commonly used, they are okay. Well, screw that. They are not okay. They are fine as hyphenated adjectives, when appropriate, but they are not nouns. Never!

I have seen "backseat" and "front seat" in the same sentence. I remember a book in which one sentence contained "backyard," "front yard," and "side yard." Did the editor not notice these things? Or was the editor just unfit for the job?

There are many other cases where people now decide to run words together incorrectly. I blame it on the internet. There is no such word as "online." There is an adjective spelled "on-line" and there is the state I am now in, which is "on line." But never "online."


Weights and Measures:
This one really drives me nuts, and it is becoming more prevalent. I read an article this morning where the weight of a latice metal was described as "nearly 100 times as light as styrofoam." Does this mean the latice is just more than 100th the weight of styrofoam, or just less than 100th? The sentence can be interpreted either way, because it is incorrectly phrased.

I have recently seen "four times as small" rather than "one fourth the size" and "prices cut 700%." How do you cut prices more than 100%? I guess you could give the purchaser six times the normal price of the item rather than having him pay you anything.

It seems to be more common today to misstate the condition than it is to use the correct wording.

>EOR>
That's all for now, but remember what Ahnold said.

I'm with you 110% on this one.

But your right, nobody pays attention any more.

I saw what you did there.

My pet peeve for the day is government agencies that misuse (or misunderstand?) statistics.

The WHO has just labelled processed meats as 'carcinogens.'

Same category as cigarette smoke and some chemicals.

WHO reviewed some 800 studies of meat consumption and came up with the conclusion that red meats and processed meats led to a higher incidence of colo-rectal cancer.

How high?  They didn't say.  Chances are it's not 100%.  Chances are its way down in the single digits (or less), where LOTS of foods and chemicals live because cancer isn't "caused" by any one exposure -- except maybe radiation.  Is there a correlation between red meat consumption and C-R cancer?  Possibly -- but without knowing if these 800 studies controlled for cigarette smoking and all the other 21 billion things "known to cause cancer" the conclusion is worthless.  And correlation is not causation -- and 'carcinogen' implies causation.  Hell, it SCREAMS causation.

It's just crap science with a crap conclusion and massive publicity for something that probably isn't true.

[Edit: the WHO says eating 50 grams of processed meat per day increases cancer rate by 18%.  What is the baseline?  Did it go from 0.00001% to 0.000018%?  Without knowing the baseline, an increase figure is worthless.]

Yeah, I caught that on the crawl last night.

The problem, I believe is in the reporting. I am sure that the WHO report is packed with numbers for the raw data. But no mainstream news report is going to give us any numbers or describe the testing methodology. So, I don't think your problem is with the report, but rather the reporting. We don't have any way to come to our own conclusions unless we can find the WHO reports.

The New York Times wrote:

Smoking causes a roughly 20-fold increase in a person’s risk of developing lung and other types of cancer, and every year it results in about a million deaths worldwide. In comparison, a person’s risk of colorectal cancer rises by a factor of about 1.1 or 1.2 for every serving of processed meat consumed per day.

Specifically, 1.18.

Versus 20.

Same category.

Insanity.

Well, a factor of 1.2 indicates a twenty percent increase. That's not trivial. And that's for each serving. Bacon or sausage for breakfast, burger for lunch, steak for dinner - now you've got a sixty percent increase in your chances. That's a bunch, isn't it? Unless I am interpreting the numbers incorrectly, and that wouldn't surprise me - they are a little ambiguous.

PER service, PER day.

So, if you ate sausage, spam & eggs three times a day every day of your life you'd have 1.64 times the risk of colo-rectal cancer than if you ate none. (1.18 x 1.18 x 1.18) Less than TWICE, slightly more than one + a half.

Still no mention of what the baseline is. 1.64 times what?

_Howard wrote:

That's not trivial. Bacon or sausage for breakfast, burger for lunch, steak for dinner - now you've got a sixty percent increase in your chances. That's a bunch, isn't it?

Don't forget that's PER CENT, or over a hundred.  64/100ths.

Not the same as 64 times.

Smoking is "20-fold" or twenty times the risk.  Meat is 18% (PER CENT), or 1.18 times the risk.  More than a hundred eleven times smaller.

I assume the baseline (1) is for people who don't eat red meat. At least that's what I take from that paragraph.

Not knowing what the percentage is of people who get that cancer, it is impossible for me to understand the significance of the numbers. If only one tenth of one percent of people get it, then increasing your risk by sixty percent doesn't seem like a big deal.

I do understand the difference between percentages and multiples.

Prezactly.

Cancer.org wrote:

Excluding skin cancers, colorectal cancer is the third most common cancer diagnosed in both men and women in the United States. The American Cancer Society's estimates for the number of colorectal cancer cases in the United States for 2015 are:

   93,090 new cases of colon cancer
   39,610 new cases of rectal cancer

Overall, the lifetime risk of developing colorectal cancer is about 1 in 20 (5%). This risk is slightly lower in women than in men. A number of other factors (described in the section “What are the risk factors for colorectal cancer?”) can also affect a person's risk for developing colorectal cancer.

Colorectal cancer is the third leading cause of cancer-related deaths in the United States when men and women are considered separately, and the second leading cause when both sexes are combined. It is expected to cause about 49,700 deaths during 2015.

The death rate (the number of deaths per 100,000 people per year) from colorectal cancer has been dropping in both men and women for more than 20 years. There are a number of likely reasons for this. One is that polyps are being found by screening and removed before they can develop into cancers. Screening is also allowing more colorectal cancers to be found earlier when the disease is easier to cure. In addition, treatment for colorectal cancer has improved over the last several years. As a result, there are now more than 1 million survivors of colorectal cancer in the United States.

So, baseline is 5%.  Eating Spam & eggs three times a day every day of your life increases the risk to 8.2% (5% x 1.64).  You'd still have a 91.8% chance of NOT getting it.

At least, that's my understanding of statistics. I could be wrong.

8.2% is one in twelve, up from the baseline of one in twenty.
A pretty big number considering the subject matter. But then so is five percent. I had no idea that type of cancer was so common.

What percent of drivers are involved in an accident each year?

CarInsurance.com wrote:

By car insurance industry estimates, you will file a claim for a collision about once every 17.9 years. That’s if you’re an average driver, which, whether you’re willing to admit it or not, you likely are.

There's your one-in-twenty again (just about).  EXCEPT, now that I think about it, the cancer figures are for over your lifetime.  You wouldn't get cancer every twenty years!

So, say a driver averages 60 years on the road (16-76).  That means an average of three accidents (=3.35, lifetime risk = 60 divided by 17.9).

Versus cancer risk = 0.082

Are you trying to get me to start a rant about meaningless comparisons?

_Howard wrote:

8.2% is one in twelve, up from the baseline of one in twenty. A pretty big number considering the subject matter.

Yes but eleven out of twelve (or 19 out of twenty) will not get this cancer, Looked at this way, those are better odds than any casino gives you.

_Howard wrote:

Are you trying to get me to start a rant about meaningless comparisons?

No but you had it right -- "doubling your risk" means nothing until you know what the original risk was.  If it was zero, it's still zero!

Comparing car crashes to rectal cancer is an exercise in reading statistics.

• Statistically, 100 drivers will have 335 crashes over their lifetimes.
  
  
• Statistically, 100 meat eaters will have 8.2 cancers.

NoCoPilot wrote:

• Statistically, 100 drivers will have 335 crashes over their lifetimes.
  
  
• Statistically, 100 meat eaters will have 8.2 cancers.
  

The data didn't say that only meat eaters get C-R cancer, which is what your sentence describes. But we'll let that pass.

I count eight car accidents in my lifetime. That's much higher than the 3.35 per driver average that you show. Does this mean I have a higher risk of colon cancer? Or possibly it means I have a lower risk.

If you can show a causal relationship between car crashes and colon cancer, then your comment is valid. Otherwise, still meaningless.

_Howard wrote:

The data didn't say that only meat eaters get C-R cancer, which is what your sentence describes.

No, according to the data 5 vegetarians would get cancer (ignoring all of the myriad of variables not controlled for), versus 8.2 carnivores, out of a hundred of each. This is the true scope of the WHO press release.

_Howard wrote:

I count eight car accidents in my lifetime. That's much higher than the 3.35 per driver average that you show. Does this mean I have a higher risk of colon cancer? Or possibly it means I have a lower risk.

Says NOTHING about miles driven so the figures mean little. I have had two accidents (one my fault, one not). Therefore between the two of us we're just a shade above average and all the women are good looking.

_Howard wrote:

If you can show a causal relationship between car crashes and colon cancer, then your comment is valid. Otherwise, still meaningless.

Distracted drivers is the link. Eating a Slim Jim while driving, I suspect.