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U.S. Proposes Ban on Flash Trading on Wall Street

By on September 18, 2009 in economy

The NY Times article is saying that

The S.E.C. on Thursday proposed banning what are known as flash orders, which use powerful computers to glimpse at investors’ orders. The practice is often associated with a controversial corner of finance called high-frequency trading, which has grown, largely hidden from view, into a potent force in the markets.

We can only hope so. I posted on this in early August here.

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Canada’s Oil Sands Conundrum

By on September 15, 2009 in economy, Environment

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There is a new not totally unbiased review of the impact of the Athabasca Oil Sands on climate and Alberta’s economy.

You can download it here.

We all know that the technology is polluting and wastes too much natural gas but what bothers me is as stated in the report.

As a consequence, the governments of Alberta and Canada are now gambling on another technology, carbon capture and storage (CCS), to reduce GHG emissions in the tar sands. Both governments have invested nearly $3 billion worth of taxpayers money to develop several demonstration projects.105 This largely untested and complex technology, intended primarily for coal-fired power plants, strips CO2 emissions from smoke stacks, compresses the gas and then transports it to be stored in deep underground formations. This waste must then be monitored for an undetermined time, possibly thousands of years, at an uncalculated cost, to ensure no leaks occur.

If the federal and provincial governments had any intelligence they would spend this money on proper sustainable ways to conserve energy and utilize sustainable resources.

News flash, to coincide with the now Greenpeace has blockaded Shell’s Albian Sands open-pit-mine north of Fort McMurray.

Here is another blog’s take on it.

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Economic forecasting nonsense

By on August 8, 2009 in economy

I first posted this on August 2 and now I’ve added more on the High Frequency Trading Programs at the end of this post.

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We are heading for recovery

Canada’s recovery in sight, report says

No wait, we are not

Canada’s economy contracts sharply in May

and there is a Record number on unemployment

And it looks like Alberta’s recovery may be slower, expert warns

But the US is heading for recovery

U.S. economy stabilizing, Fed says

Recession winding down in U.S.

No wait it isn’t quite yet

Flaherty sees signs of hope but says crisis yet not over

But it isn’t so bad

Why a Recovery May Still Feel Like a Recession

So the bozos that couldn’t forecast the financial crisis are going to forecast now when it will end?!

And here is something that is really worrying. Now the traders are profiting by executing the trading in milliseconds with high speed computers.

In other words

And this kind of nonsense now comprises 70% OF ALL MARKET TRANSACTIONS. Put another way, the market is now no longer moving based on REAL orders, it’s moving based on a bunch of High Frequency Trading Programs gaming each other and REAL orders to earn fractions of a penny.

This from an article on Five Reasons the Market Could Crash This Fall via Dvorak.

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What Caused the Financial Crisis

By on March 6, 2009 in economy

The following from Thomas Friedman pretty well sums up how we got the financial crisis.

This problem is more complicated than anything you can imagine. We are coming off a 20-year credit binge. As a country, too many of us stopped making money by making “stuff” and started making money from money – consumers making money out of rising home prices and using the profits to buy flat-screen TVs from China on their credit cards, and bankers making money by creating complex securities and leverage so more and more consumers could get in on the credit game.

via Friedman: Obama’s ball and chain – International Herald Tribune.

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