These are the top articles I’d like to share to each one of you. Maybe they aren’t much interrelated to each other, but I assure you (if you believe in my taste in articles) that these are all good and great to share. My interests are generally trading, social entrepreneurship and writing, and that’s what you’ll mostly find in my links.
Ranked in Terms of Preference:
1.) Together, there really is nothing that we can do! We have solved a crucial puzzle in AIDS through the power of collaboration!
After watching the movie “Contagion” with my siblings (which I actually liked), I was pleasantly happy to find out that video-game players have solved a molecular puzzle that stumped scientists for years, and those scientists say the accomplishment could point the way to more crowd-sourced cures for AIDS and other diseases. Also, the impressive feat was accomplished in 10 days! Hurray for James Surowiecki’s “Wisdom of Crowds”, Hurray for the world. Let’s all work together.
Read More Here. Watch the video too! Collaborative Gamers Solve Molecular Puzzle that Baffled Scientists!
2.) Watch Cha-Ching with your kids! This is the first extensive financial literacy program for kids that Cartoon Network is airing. Cartoon Network is, in fact, the No. 1 television station for kids as far as audience reach is concerned in the Philippines and neighboring countries.
The cartoon television show, titled “Cha-Ching: Money Smart Kids,” is geared toward teaching very young viewers the concept of money and how to manage and prudently use it.
Cha-Ching, an English slang for “cash,” is a 10-episode program, with each episode running for three minutes, that has started to air this month and will continue to be aired repeatedly until January 2012. The program focuses on the four concepts related with money management, namely, earning, saving, spending, and donating.
Learn more about Cha Ching.
3.) Highly Recommended Reading: Mock Capitalism by Joshua Brown
Excerpts:
The US Census Bureau is out with a brand new report this week telling us that 46.2 million Americans are currently living in poverty. 15.1% of our fellow US citizens are poor people and the rate for children is even worse – 22% of the nation’s kids are living below the poverty line, almost a quarter of them. 50 million Americans under the age of 65 cannot afford health insurance, 16.3% of the nation. 13.5% of working age adults cannot find work. Median incomes are down 6.4% versus 2007 – even those with jobs are paid less each year for the pleasure of showing up,
This horrible existence goes on day after day while we, the fortunate few, sit here quibbling over earnings estimates and PE ratios and stochastics and support levels for a completely untethered “asset class” that bears little resemblance to the condition of the country in which it exists.
The market, which once existed primarily for capital formation, has become little more than a mock-capitalist game aimed toward enriching only the participants, contributing little to the rest of the nation.
50 million people live in poverty as we trade amongst ourselves and clip fees and commissions off of every loose dollar thrown our way. We have become little-girl queens in aLandofMake-Believe, walled off from the realities of the peasants who each day grow more wretched and disenfranchised.
4.) The Best Charts for The Coming Week – Peter Brandt – Click here, I don’t want to spoil the best charts.
5.) What A Trillion Dollars Look Like – Also click this, because I don’t want to spoil this either.
– The Faceless Trader
P.S.
(I really trimmed down the list). However, I want to include Mr. Barry Ritholz and Matt Taibbi’s reaction with the UBS $2 Bil losses too. So…if you’ve got time, please read this too:
No Rogue Traders, Only Rogue Banks
Consider the choices made by management: The collapse of firms such as AIG, Bear Stearns and Lehman Brothers were caused by the same sort of poor judgement as UBS’s $2 billion in losses. Only the rogues gallery there were the senior-most managers of the firms. Ace Greenberg exhorting his staff to focus on reusing paperclips, while the Mortgage Syndication division lost $100s of billions means that Ace had gone rogue; Dick Fuld surrounding himself with Yes Men while the firm’s leverage and risk exposure went through the roof also marked him as a rogue. Tom Savage, President, AIG’s Financial Products, calling derivative underwriting “Free Money? Yet another C-level rogue in a corner office.– Barry Ritholz
In the financial press you’re called a “rogue trader” if you’re some overperspired 28 year-old newbie who bypasses internal audits and quality control to make a disastrous trade that could sink the company. But if you’re a well-groomed 60 year-old CEO who uses his authority to ignore quality control and internal audits in order to make disastrous trades that could sink the company, you get a bailout, a bonus, and heroic treatment in an Andrew Ross Sorkin book. In other words, “rogue traders” are treated like bad accidents and condemned everywhere from the front pages to Ewan McGregor films. But rogue companies are protected at every level of the regulatory structure and continually empowered by dergulatory legislation giving them access to our bank accounts. – Matt Taibbi
Also, if you haven’t watched this HBO documentary yet, you’re really missing out “Too Big To Fail”
Highlight Quote: Lloyd Blankfein
“We’re getting out of a chauffeured car at the NY Federal reserve, not a swift boat on Normandy Beach – keep your perspective” – after his assistant whines “I can’t handle this anymore”
Faceless Trader 
very nice read 🙂
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love it!!! especially 4 and 5 🙂 thanks FT!
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