The Londoner

Book Review by Sikander Hayat  As far as I have been able to decipher, this book is about the emergence of an event which  is  totally unforeseen, unpredictable and which cannot be modelled for by our usual  forecasting models . Black Swan by Nassim Nicholas Taleb is a great book to read despite  its length and tone which shows its anger against the current establishment in academia,  industry and just about anyone in high places. Nassim has been a quant in his previous life,  has practised financial forecasting methods in trying to choose the eventual winners and has  tried to use his practitioner's knowledge to inject life into the idea of his Black Swan thesis.  Although he has used forecasting models in his life as a trader, he is fully aware of the short  comings of these models and in fact, he makes a strong case against modelling risk with the  current tool...

By Sikander Hayat  People of Britain made a calculation that getting out of EU would be a painful task in economic terms but in the long run it will be a good for the social cohesion of the country. Brexit is an attempt by the people of United Kingdom to save themselves from the impacts of globalisation . World is overpopulated and Africa is fast becoming the epicentre of overpopulation with populations doubling in twenty years in some countries. India is not far behind in overpopulation and it has been  estimated that it will overtake China in next few years. India is presented as a shining example by some economists and is shown as a counterweight to China in the greater South East Asian region but in terms of controlling population, educating it and pulling masses out of poverty, China has done remarkably better than India . In fact, China does not export its people to other parts of the world like India does . Population increases are linked to lack...

Plan B Fails, Boehner Marches Toward Cliff People are using words like “meltdown” to describe the failure of the House of Representatives last night to pass “Plan B.” They’re doing that because House votes are traditionally a matter of pure formality, normally having all the suspense of a Politburo vote. John Boehner expected to squeeze 217 votes from his 241 Republican members because, once Boehner had decided on his course, they had no rational choice. It was vote with him or court pure chaos. Some number of his charges – at least a couple dozen – chose chaos. At the same time, the actual stakes of the vote were far from Earth-shaking. Let us consider the progression here. Boehner had been negotiating quite fruitfully with President Obama , and had brought the terms of the emerging agreement closer to where he started than Obama had started, with a deal-hungry Obama apparently ready to move even a bit farther. Then, almo...

The Second Great Betrayal: Obama and Cameron Decide that Banks are above the Law One of the “tells” that reveals how embarrassed Lanny Breuer (head of the Criminal Division) and Eric Holder (AG) are by the disgraceful refusal to prosecute HSBC and its officers for their tens of thousands of felonies are the false and misleading statements made by the Department of Justice (DOJ) about the settlement.  The same pattern has been demonstrated by other writers in the case of the false and disingenuous statistics DOJ has trumpeted to attempt to disguise the abject failure of their efforts to prosecute the elite officers who directed the “epidemic” (FBI 2004) of mortgage fraud. HSBC was one of the largest originators of fraudulent mortgage loans through its acquisition of Household Finance . Three recent books by “insiders” have confirmed earlier articles revealing the decisive role that Treasury Secretary Geithner has played in opposing criminal prosecutions of the elite...