ya gotta love it

Just don't let the Boeing reliability engineers know you've read it. Everything's a bell curve to them. And if the bell curve suggests that we don't get enough faults to justify bus differential protection, they'll delete the equipment.

The 'Black Swan' event of a bus tie breaker fault having happened for a second time now doesn't seem to have modified their philosophy.

John Larkin wrote

pros.

It still aint zero sum.

Put more succinctly, you're playing against pure unmitigated GREED (and greed disquised as incompetence). Either of which, from having been on the board of a publicly-traded company -- I can ASSURE you has no limit.

It's actually one of the reasons I left.

-mpm

Many people thought Bernie Madoff was a professional investor. And on some levels, they were right. Just look at those pre-bust gains.

ETFs are the way to go. In May, the Nasdaq 100 will be safe again due to a change in the mix. The Apple weighting is way too high at the moment. The cult of Steve is only useful if Steve is above room temperature.

mpm wrote

can reliably win.

pros.

More fool them. Its completely trivial to only use those who are independantly rigorously audited.

That just means he was a professional con man.

i do

Something can have a house cut and still not be zero sum. And I basically *hire* pros to invest for me. I get a statement once a year and forget about it.

-- Les Cargill

Indeed. Though what you say here smacks of anti-capitalism.

They do a good line in insider trading too for good measure. That is one way that they *can* consistently beat the market - one very high profile guy was caught red handed by phone logs fairly recently.

Not only that but the house can construct bets that are extremely complex and designed to fail, then sell them to their competitors and take up annihilation positions against them. This is pretty much how the banking crisis got amplified to the point where taxpayer bailout was needed to avoid global meltdown. And they are at it again...

Regards, Martin Brown

More just mindless silly stuff.

reliably win.

Mindlessly silly. Those who just avoid the obvious duds do fine.

Wrong.

We aint gunna get another global meltdown any decade soon, you watch.

But we also have our red-flag colorblind SEC to thank for doing such a great job of scaring off over 90% of potential investors.

house can reliably win.

ots and pros.

antly rigorously audited.

Arthur Andersen was an independent auditor. What's your point?

What I'm saying is there isn't any difference in them. ...except maybe, for how much lipstick is on the pig.

With Arthur Andersen, it was Enron.

e quoted text -

Well thank God, because it's clear the SEC can't handle the 10% they have now. The stock markets no longer represent the real economy anyway. We might do better to privatize the oversight - maybe the folks at Nevada Gaming could do a better job?

ide quoted text -

Exactly, might as well let the mafia run the SEC.

Let us put Ponzi Madoff in charge, because he obviously knows how to get loot out of thin air. Our SEC as it stands is a joke, and it might as well not even exist. The same goes for a dozen other government agencies that are dysfunctional on a good day.

mpm wrote

and pros.

But wasnt used with Madoff.

That those who were stupid enough to put any of their money with Madoff didnt bother to see what independant auditors had to say about his operation.

You're wrong.

There wasnt any independant audit of Madoff.

he house can reliably win.

obots and pros.

ndantly rigorously audited.

But these are Monsanto frankenpigs, so perhaps that makes a difference.

obots and pros.

ion.

I honestly think your fundamental disconnect here is that you still believe auditors are independent in the first place. They are not. And, certainly were much less so back in the days of Arthur Andersen. (1998-2002 time frame) Bank then, they were allowed to audit the very companies they either owned or were selling on Wall Street. And even though it's been watered-down a little since then, how is that "independent"?

And whoop-dee-do about independent auditing in the first place.

In my experience, the auditors typically know very little about the companies they audit, and therefore can not fully appreciate the risks involved. They simply parrot what they are told by the company's senior managment, or maybe, the last auditor (who was probably fired for not saying it like the company wanted.) Those so-called "independent audits" are little more than negotiated agreements. "Spin", in other words.

If the books look even half-way clean, you get a good bill of health.

rn,

the house can reliably win.

robots and pros.

pendantly rigorously audited.

e quoted text -

So who's Monsanto's auditor? Oscar Meyer? :)

________________________ /| /| | | ||__|| | Please don't | / O O\__ feed | / \ the troll | / \ \ from OZ | / _ \ \ -------------------- / |\____\ \ || / | | | |\____/ || / \|_|_|/ | __|| / / \ |____| || / | | /| | --| | | |// |____ --| * _ | |_|_|_| | \-/

• / \_ /- | - | | * ___ c_c_c_C/ \C_c_c_c____________