Thursday, June 30, 2011

Mainframe programming for mere mortals

Or, why won't IBM let programmers help them?

IBM is in a comfortable niche w/r/t their high end hardware. For "real developers", there is zPDT. It ain't free. In fact, it is well beyond what most FOSS volunteers can afford. So we have free (as in beer) ways of emulating a mainframe, like Hercules. The guys who shouldered the monmuental task of emnuating the mainframe with open-source did an amazing thing. And there are some things Hercules cannot do. So there is a place for zPDT. Maybe IBM is just trying to keep certain business partners comfortable. I hear that many developers are not. (are not "comfortable", that is)

Tuesday, June 28, 2011

Legal entity IDs

Coming soon to a market data vendor near you. And not a moment too soon.

In an effort to combat counterparty risk, there is a major push to give financial institutions global ID numbers. Regulators, brokerage firms and banks are calling for a standardized way to recognize who is really involved in a transaction, regardless of where in the world a trade takes place.

Sunday, June 12, 2011

Long commodity funds and food prices

Bankers recognized a good system when they saw it, and dozens of speculative non-physical hedgers followed Goldman's lead and joined the commodities index game, including Barclays, Deutsche Bank, Pimco, JP Morgan Chase, AIG, Bear Stearns, and Lehman Brothers, to name but a few purveyors of commodity index funds. The scene had been set for food inflation that would eventually catch unawares some of the largest milling, processing, and retailing corporations in the United States, and send shockwaves throughout the world.


The problem seems to be, more or less, that we need a worldwide solution to the problem of the futures markets being dominated by speculators, and it's hard to get London, Hong Kong, DC, etc to agree to outlaw these fools.

Hat tip

Saturday, June 11, 2011

Commodore 128 Programmer's Guide

Excellent, now I can start the task of porting all of our apps to this affordable machine.

Sunday, June 5, 2011

Exemptive Relief

Most ETFs are registered under the Investment Act of 1940 – often referred to as the ’40 Act – as open-end investment companies. As such, they are subject to the specific provisions of the ’40 Act as they pertain to open-end funds. However, several of the customary features of an ETF are not consistent with the requirements of the ’40 Act. Thus, a key part of the process in launching any ETF is to receive the required exemptions from these provisions of the ’40 Act.


I'm not an expert, but it seems like it would be easier for Congress to pass a law to make ETFs legal in their customary form, no?