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Books Politics

Liar’s Poker by Michael Lewis

An interesting tale of life inside a big brokerage house, where the strangest behaviors are normal… if you’re a big swinging dick. It’s a weird dip into a very different life, as the author acknowledges.

It’s half a memoir; the classes and story are told from his perspective, but he takes long asides to explain the politics and organization charts that drive the activity. It sounds like the whole organization underwent a tremendous transformation shortly before he arrived, changing from a partnership with strong controls into a corporation. The older people, who’d worked in the partnership environment, stay decent for a while–out of habit and intertia–but the new kids aren’t locked in as partners, making it much less costly to defect.

A great part of the story was about the beginnings of the residential market and its CMOs. They are kissing cousins to the CDOs that featured so prominently in the 2008 crash… but I never heard of CMOs before this book.

It also demonstrates 2 decades early exactly why the brokerage firms resisted listing prices on an index. Back in the early 80s, the Solomon Brothers middlemen were able to take a huge bite–like 5%–out of mortgage trades where only they knew the prices. That lack of transparency helped drive mortgages from an ignored remnant to 40% of the profit in less than 5 years. But, as soon as their rivals had access to the prices [mostly via defectors], the margins collapsed quickly.

The relations he describes makes the movies about Wall Street sound like documentaries, instead of the wild exaggeration for the screen that I’d hoped. It’s an amazing tale, with corruption at hand at every turn. It’s amazing that he was able to avoid enough of the snares to escape… with a hefty bonus, but without permanently taking on the trader’s worldview.

What’s scary is how many of the very same things played out in the 2008 crisis–also driven by “financialized” versions of mortgages sliced into tranches. It’s crazy how much is familiar…

Anyway, well written, with terrifying foresight baked in.

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Books

Dead Set by Richard Kadrey

A well told story set in the modern bay area. A teen age girl (the novel is soley her POV) is adjusting to a new school, coping with her Dad’s recent death, and enduring a rocky home life.

School passes mostly in a blur and she’s detached and drifting. Until she finds a record shop with a special back room. From there, the story gets supernaturally strange, but never crosses into Urban Fantasy despite its setting. She’s offered great temptations, learns the terrible price that people will pay for love, and more. It’s really well told and jukes just when you think you’ve got the formula.

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Uncategorized

Dungeon painter and other cool links

Dungeon Painter a cool online tool! (via Tenkar’s Tavern)

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Books

World Divided Book Two of the Secret World Chronicle

I began reading this, due to the last half of the first book picking up pace and becoming more interesting. I read only about half of the book, typically annoyed at the spaghetti plot and series of actions affecting disconnected characters at discrete times. I decided to set it aside before I started reading it for its flaws–to appreciate the part I’d enjoyed, without continuing out of obligation.

I bet it was a good call.

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Politics

Elie Mystal: I’m With Her… I Guess

I’m With Her… I Guess is basically where I am. It’s not super exciting, but it makes sense to me.

One good bit:

But I don’t understand liberals who hate Hillary Clinton. She is authentic; she is naturally bad at running for office and that painfully shows through at almost all points. But maybe you would be bad at campaigning too if you had been subjected to over two decades of vicious and often contradictory political attacks.

We’ve forced Hillary Clinton to change her hair, her clothes, and her accent. We’ve criticized her for taking too prominent a role during the Bill Clinton administration, then questioned whether being First “Lady” qualified her to run for office. She’s been the most investigated politician since Richard Nixon, yet has never been found to have committed a crime. People have said she has all of the “Clinton baggage” but none of the “Clinton charisma,” which is odd because the “baggage” is her husband cheating on her and the “charisma” is what allows her philandering husband who perjured himself to be loved, while she’s gets called “untrustworthy.”

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Books

Secret World Chronicles 01 – Invasion by Mercedes Lackey Steve Libbey, Cody Martin & Dennis Lee

Before I begin, if you’re wondering whether you should read this book, the answer is probably no. If you like the old MMO City of Heroes, you might enjoy a story set in its universe and appreciate it for that. Otherwise… it’s a very slow starting novel that doesn’t come to a clean conclusion, which is two big strikes.

The book is a collection of stories (but not really contained short stories, like an anthology) told from a rotating POV. The slow start comes from time spent setting up the world before we really meet the characters. The PCs are often solo in chapters well into the book–while they meet people, they’re focused on their own issues–widely separated at first (these read like a character’s backstory as handed to a GM), then with some interaction between their characters.

Many of the characters are well drawn–cool characters. The plot has some tie to the characters, but it’s more a sense of the characters being created to tie into a standing plot, than the plot emerging from the characters’ experiences. It feels a little like early Dragonlance novels.

It looks like the podcasts that the books are based on went to 8 seasons (novel equivalents), so that’s interesting. I bet they get better if you stick with them.

Categories
Books Politics

Rise of the Warrior Cop: The Militarization of America’s Police Forces by Radley Balko

Rise of the Warrior Cop: The Militarization of America’s Police Forces is a good overview of the changes to policing, particularly as it intersects the Castle Doctrine. I’ve learned a lot and found a few congress people who took surprising stands–I want to learn more about them. (Though not enough to actually read a biography about them.)

It does a good job of establishing what the norms used to be–I’ve only lived and paid attention to politics in the era where the parties compete to be “tough” on crime by sending money to police departments and undermining traditional constitutional protections against search, etc.

One of the great strengths of the book is consolidating what’s often a background issue and documenting the changes that have propagated over time. By looking in a focused way, we can see the original predictions (this will be rare, oversight will keep this contained) break down in practice, particularly along the lines of his focus, the castle doctrine. Similarly, some good ideas (encourage community policing via COPS grants) should have worked… but when the money was misappropriated, they caved to militarization instead of risking confrontation with police departments and unions.

The heart of the book, particularly from the 90s on, is about how the drug war justified increasing militarization (drug dealers can afford assault riffles, so police need to be able to engage at even longer ranges; when they wear kevlar, police needs rounds to penetrate kevlar) and increased urgency encouraged no-knock warrants to be served ever more aggressively.

It’s a disturbing world, particularly because swimming against the current works–real community policing, in the examples provided–shows how engagement gets the support needed to solve crime. Unfortunately, the book ends with a note about the shift in recruiting tactics for the last generation. Instead of targeting conciliators and people skilled at managing the tedium of paperwork and bureaucracy, we’ve been recruiting people who want to kick butt to be our police. Reestablishing the traditional “serve the public” instead of “public as enemy” ideas throughout departments is going to be a critical test in the next few years. Once SWAT runs everything, returning to a trust and engagement model may be almost impossible. Several interviews throughout make it clear that as the break doors for the adrenaline rush forces entrench themselves, returning to traditional norms may be difficult. Difficult, but critically important.