Horray, I Passed!!!

I just got an emails that I passed GARP FRM (financial risk management) Level 1 and 2 exams. I was so worried that I failed and would have to take it again. Whew, what a relief. Now I can concentrate on applying to jobs in risk management.

This is my reading stack for the next 6 months!

It's a big stack, but I hope to be able to finish most of it by this Summer. Some of the programming ones may not be finished until the end of 2011. There are additional readings for the May 2011 FRM exams that are not shown here because I bought the e-book version.

I replaced the internal hard disk drive on my laptop SONY SZ160P

Here is a shout out to Wener Heuser of http://repair4laptop.org/. Thank you very much for maintaining a site packed with useful DIY laptop repair info! The article by Thai Tan on how to replace Sony laptop HDD was detailed and thorough. I had no problem with the hardware at all. Took only 30 minutes to replace the hard drive. (Link to Thai Tan article)

However, I did run into some problems with the software. It took me 3-4 days to finally get everything working efficiently again. My new HDD is Hitachi Travelstar 7K200 which has 200GB and 7200 rpm access speed. I am very happy with this HDD. My main reason for replacing the drive was the faster 7200 vs. 5400 rpm. However, after this experience, I don't think the increased spin speed was worth the effort. It IS faster, but I learned that there are so many other issues that can make the computer run slowly, and fixing those other problems yielded more dramatic speed gains. (I list those speed fixes in Part IV of my Blog.)  I AM enjoying the extra 110 GB storage space and noticeably quieter spins. Read details on my Blog>

Bank of America's revised $150 million settlement with SEC approved by New York Judge.

On February 22, 2010, federal judge in New York reluctantly approved the revised settlement between Bank of America and the SEC for failure to disclose material information prior to the shareholder vote regarding the acquisition of Merrill Lynch by Bank of America. The settlement amount was increased from $30 million to $150 million. Read More>

Ken Lewis is Like Moses. Read More>

Could the SEC have caught Madoff's Ponzi Scheme, if only they executed well?

My short answer is that the SEC definitely had the legal power to examined Madoff Investments, but that it is unlikely for the SEC to have discovered the Ponzi scheme. The primary reason is that the fraud occurred at an unregistered investment fund, which is not protected by SIPC. Only the Modoff Securities, the broker-dealer unit, is covered by SIPC. SEC's clout is severely limited when it comes to an unregistered investment fund, although they technically have full legal authority to examine any company suspected of securities fraud. Nothing less than a full audit of customer positions would have revealed a ponzi scheme. It is highly unlikely that Madoff would have stood by while SEC conducted such an audit. SEC's primary source of information on fraud is customer complaints. In Madoff Investments' case, no customers complained. Only potential competitors filed a complaint with the SEC. Without numerous customer complaints, SEC would not have felt it had the clout to go in and conduct a thorough audit.

"Spending is Spending!" were famous words expressed on the floor of Congress. Where does this term come from? Does it justify a stimulus package that is packed with pork?

A quick answer is that the Congressman was quoting Keynes, who thought that even wasteful spending, such as a war, would positively stimulate the economy during the Great Depression. However, the appearance of an active economy from wasteful public works and later on WWII, was later proven to have been false. Wasteful or destructive spending did not in fact help the economy during the Great Depression. U.S. standard of living did not improve until a few years after WWII when factories could again be used for productive ends.