sharpe

Quick and likely stupid question - why is the oil at the bottom of the sea - i thought it floated?

A voice of reason - thank you and well put!

This discussion has been had before on this forum. All it revealed is that there are many tight fisted, childless, immoral, c*nts on the forum

Read the first few paragraphs. I'll give the Lib Con alliance a year. Mr Cable was asked what it would be like working with Osbourne he just laughed. Thatcher was in power when billions of pounds worth of oil wealth was found. That wealth was largely squandered (say compared to Norway). She was the end of politics in this country and the start of PR - scum

Can you explain that? You mean the UK treasury will get to tax the oil companies? Not quite sure how it works with the Falklands

Gold went up during the deflationary great depression. My guess is we will have a deflationary period with gold going up. (The opposite to 1981-1999 which was inflationary with falling gold price)

Externalities mean free markets work only in a few select circumstances

There will be a strong demand from pension funds and life insurers for long dated bonds. Banks and general insurers want short dated bonds. The scenario you suggest seems unlikely given that demand

These were normal people though - bloke runs a comic store. I expect this here, but not with normal people.

Spoke to some german friends. Their understanding was that money would not be worth very much for much longer and they are now buying as much as they can - apparently many people think like this in germany following the money printing.

is it any different from anywhere else?

i think this and the previous comment are about the intellectual depth of little englanders...

would kentucky be better off with independence?

I understood they are using the crisis to drive fiscal unity. This would produce a US of E in the long run, which would be a good thing for everyone in Europe and the UK if we were part of it

yes that is right - that is why you need good modelling - like any science experiment

in a free market if you under price you will get all the business and go bust. if you over price you will get no business and go bust. accurate pricing is everything. large reinsurers like swiss re and munich re have been around a long long time with no bail outs. acts of god are a defined concept and are not included in the pricing either - so it is fair they are not in the claims. you can buy insurance for anything - I mean anything, acts of god included.

accurate pricing and risk management you are not looking

insurers survived before any insurance was mandatory. (there are crop price insurance notes from the Babylonian times - some of the first writing ever found. insurers do not pay out when the claim being requested is on a different basis from the pricing. so if you want a payout for suicide - and your policy has an exclusion for suicide - it is fair

the first point is basically the definition of equality. second point is true - welcome to the fun world of modelling

insurance companies make a lot of money by taking a different view from this.

it is strange people using the normal distribution for these events are still in the press. it is probably as stupid as rolling a dice and expressing exasperation that a 1 comes up every so often. Mandlebrot had some good comments on price movements, he thought it is basically turbulence; and also suggested the cauchy distribution

According to Simon Schama, the french revolution was initiated by the aristocracy against the monarchy - then it morphed out of their control

Was looking at a put and a call, same term, same strike. Goes up in value if market rises or falls and / or volatility rises. Google Soc gen warrants - available on LSE

Pardon my ignorance - what is the moment of the Yen? I saw it snapped upwards on friday

Even if banks could force all mortgagees to instantly return their borrowing - this would never be quick enough to meet a bank run. There is a huge mismatch of assets and liabilities