White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki Asked About New Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen Being Paid $810,000 From Citadel In Speaking Fees

"Are there any plans to have her recuse herself from advising the President on GameStop and the whole Robinhood situation?"

Did you know that you can send a follow-up email sequence from @gumroad?

It's called a workflow, and here's how to use it to make $$$...

1) Set up a free product (pay what you want, $0+)
Keep it high value and very short.
A single page summary or plan of some sort is good.

Tell them in the product that they'll get more by email.

2) Set up your workflow under Customers => Workflows.

Here's what to send...

#1 Sent Immediately:
Remind them of what they'll be able to do if they ACT on the freebie
Tell them they'll get more useful stuff over the next few days
tell them how to recognise your emails

#2 Optional same day
Keep this super light and breezy, like an email to your friends

If you have a higher level service, ask if they're interested

Ask what they're working on, people love talking about this

#3 The paradigm shift

Tell them there's a reason why what they're doing isn't working
Hint at a missing piece, a conspiracy against them (Big Pharma), or just dumb advice accepted as common wisdom

This is the setup for your product which solves the problem

A children's book explanation of what's happening:

1. If you are "smart money" you are allowed to take your $1 and leverage it up to $15+

2. You can now buy $15 of stock AND if you promise to short companies, you can short $15 of stock as well

3. In finance language, this means that you are $30 "gross" ($15 of longs + $15 of shorts) but $0 net (+$15 of longs -$15 of shorts). This makes everyone feel good because it feels like you are taking zero risk...but in reality, your $1 is exposed to $30 of risk.

4. Now you go around and tell your friends about both your longs and your shorts and when you do it at a restaurant vs on Reddit, its called an "ideas dinner".

5. You also publish your longs on a quarterly lag via an SEC rule. You don't have to tell anyone about your shorts.

6. Now the less cool people who weren't invited to the ideas dinners, start copying your longs based on your report.

7. You realize that publicizing your shorts is also a good idea so instead of only selling stocks, you also BUY options (puts) which has to be reported.

8. Now everyone can see both your longs and your shorts and if you have a hot hand, you can likely predict that the cool people from the dinner as well as the less cool people monitoring your filings will copy you.

9. But then an outsider notices that the math is way off!

Seeing lots of explainers about the reddit/hedge fund drama right now, and as someone who worked as a quant for a big fund for 7 years, figured I'd chime in. This whole situation is pretty much why I quit. Big thread.

First, what's happening? At the simplest level, hedge funds "short" stocks. That is, they borrow stock, sell it, and have to buy it again later to return it to the borrower. If the price falls during that time, they make a profit.

It's an effective way to make money from falling prices. But it also has enormous risk. Normally, if you put $100 in a stock, all you can lose is that $100. But if you short a stock and it goes to the moon, your losses are unlimited.

Consider $GME, Gamestop. Let's say a fund shorted it when it was $40. When the price spiked to $470 today, they'd be facing a LOSS of $430 on that $40 investment. If they shorted it for, say, $10M, they'd be facing a loss of >$100M.

But it gets worse. Let's say an institution BORROWED money and then used that loan to short the stock. That's called leverage. Before the GFC, banks were running at ~33x leverage ratios. For every $1 they owned, they'd invested $33.

A hearing is underway now in the case of Richard Barnett, one of the Capitol insurrection defs (photographed at Pelosi's desk) — the govt is challenging an Arkansas magistrate judge's release order. Chief Judge Beryl Howell in DC halted his release until she rules on the matter

Prosecutor Mary Dohrmann begins by arguing Barnett flouted laws "in the most brazen and flagrant manner possible" when he breached the Capitol: "He knew exactly what he was doing."

Prosecutor says the note that Barnett left for Pelosi in her office — "Nancy, Bigo was here you bitch" — was "disturbing" and says the photographs of him sitting at Pelosi's desk show that he appears to "relish" the notoriety

Govt says Barnett doesn't have a criminal record, but notes police reports where a caller lodged a complaint that he'd pointed a rifle at a car with a "Black Lives Matter" sticker and, in a separate incident, was carrying around guns in public

The media spent years pretending Trump could magically pardon his co-conspirators, consequence-free, at any time, even though nothing works that way. Now the media is pretending the GOP can magically filibuster, consequence-free, at any time. Nothing works that way. It gets old.

Every media pundit understands that there are always consequences to every move in politics. Yet they always frame the Republicans as being able to magically do anything they want, with no consequences, to try to scare/enrage you into staying tuned in.

"But the Republicans are indeed getting away with it all..." No they're not. They lost the Senate, the House, and the presidency. Their top leaders in the House are at each others' throats. They're out of power, adrift, losing donors. These are the consequences for their antics.

The catch is, it's just not the consequences you want. Because even as TV pundits convinced you that republicans were magically winning, liberal Twitter pundits convinced you that republicans could be defeated by imaginary simplistic magic wand solutions.

So now the pundits have spun you around to where you don't even realize your side won the election, you don't realize the Democrats are going be able to pass everything they want to pass, and you're pissed at Democratic leaders for imaginary reasons.

THREAD: Do the people on Reddit's #WallStreetBets who are buying Gamestop, AMC, and other stocks have any legal liability to do so?

1/ Although the facts are still evolving, it appears that many users on #WallStreetBets (a "sub-reddit" on Reddit, a social media site) and others starting buying Gamestop, AMC, and other stocks that they believed were being "shorted" by certain Wall Street firms.

2/ You "short" a stock when you sell a stock that you don't own, betting that the price will go down. The goal is to sell high and buy low. If you "short" a stock and the price goes up, you can lose a lot of money by buying shares at a higher price than you sold them at.

3/ Based on media reports, it looks like a lot of Redditors didn't like that certain Wall Street firms had bet big that the price of Gamestop and AMC would go down via COVID.

By buying up Gamestop and AMC stock, they caused the price to shoot way up in a short period of time.

4/ That caused fast gains for them and potentially huge losses for firms that shorted those stocks.

So did they engage in "market manipulation," as some people on social media have claimed? Could they get in trouble with the SEC, which is "watching" the matter, or go to prison?

1/ THREAD. MFA in Creative Writing at Chapman University. Application deadline: February 1. That's MONDAY! Let me say a few things about our program first, and then I'll provide a CODE for an application FEE WAIVER at the end of this thread. #MFA #gradschool #creativewriting

2/ While some of our MFA students focus on one genre, many write across genres. @tryphena_yeboah published her first poetry chapbook last year with @AkashicBooks, has published stories @NarrativeMag, and is writing a thesis in fiction with thesis director Richard Bausch.

3/ Likewise, @lizharmer published her first novel with @penguinrandom while she was an MFA student here, her second novel is forthcoming in 2022, and she drafted a memoir as her thesis, with me as the thesis director. Lots of our students take a workshop in a second genre.

4/ MFA faculty work across genres too. Jim Blaylock is a steampunk fiction writers (see Homunculus), and now he writes essays (see a couple in @poetswritersinc). @TheMil10 writes plays & poems & I write poems & essays. Together, our expertise covers a broad range of aesthetics.

5/ All incoming MFA students begin with Aspects of a Writer in their first fall semester. This course focuses on sustaining a writing life, publishing, and fostering literary culture. When I teach the course, each student forms a Writing Life Plan based on their own goals.

I hope you all understand where this GME ends. It ends with the government taking over your 401k for your own good, of course.

THREAD.

Biden already has a plan that would affect the tax benefits of your 401k. And it’s not exactly a secret that Democrats have been eyeing the 401k accounts for years. First they want to collect the taxes that you’re saving by using a 401k. It’s a lot of money.

That green new deal? Oh yeah that’s gonna be crazy expensive. It’s gonna mean deficit spending that makes precious deficit spending look like a balanced budget in comparison. Worse yet is that it’s going to cost jobs. Lots and lots of jobs.

There’s the direct job loss for example, keystone pipeline layoffs. But there’s indirect job losses. Because people like me can sorta absorb increased energy and gasoline prices. But that usually means I’m going to cut back on spending. That less eating out. Less purchases.

Maybe ending services like housekeeping or pest control in favor of DIY. Now my little contribution won’t cost a job but take 10 people like me and you’ve got a couple job losses. Take 1000 people or 10000 like me and you’re looking at big job losses.

Buckle up, everyone, this story is *wild*.

The 62-year-old Dyatlov Pass mystery, in which nine students died at the hands of an unknown force, has likely been solved thanks to the movie Frozen and gruesome car crash experiments.

Me, for @NatGeo + thread!

In what has become known as the Dyatlov Pass incident, ten members of the Urals Polytechnic Institute in Yekaterinburg—nine students and one sports instructor who fought in World War II—headed into the frigid wilderness on a skiing expedition on January 23, 1959. 1/x

One student turned back after experiencing joint pain.

He never saw his friends again.

2/x

The team made camp on February 1, pitching a large tent on the snowy slopes of Kholat Saykhl, whose name can be interpreted as “Dead Mountain” in the language of the region’s Indigenous Mansi people. Ominous, sure - but these were experienced mountain hikers. 3/x

The nine were never heard from again.

When a search team arrived at Kholat Saykhl a few weeks later, the tent was found just barely sticking out of the snow, and it appeared cut open from the inside. The next day, the first of the bodies was found near a cedar tree. 4/x

I'll just put this out there:

1. This is classic liquidity crunch and has happened many times.

2. RH/etc. will turn out to have made mistakes, didn't plan for any of this, ultimately lose big.

3. Reform will center on how services are offered/advertised to retail investors.

4. Lots of coverage will center on class warfare narrative and the 'game being rigged'.

5. That same coverage will make 3 seem like the answer and a fair resolution to the problem.

6. The real culprit, as always, was leverage and incentives.

7. In the US financial institutions that accept deposits insured by the federal government (FDIC etc) are allowed to hold positions in risky assets, though this is regulated.

8. Other even less regulated institutions (funds etc) hold shares in the guys referred to in 7.

9. The REAL problem is those institutions are allowed to make leveraged bets that, if they go badly enough, could affect the value of 'safe' assets like savings accounts and pension funds.

10. Thus the ultimate incentive problem: Big funds ultimately insured by taxpayer dollars

11. Ultimately the ONLY real reforms that matter are:

i) Reserve requirements, i.e. how much banks/funds/etc are allowed to borrow to invest in risky assets

ii) Trade restrictions, i.e. some institutions (commercial banks) not allowed to hold some assets/positions (short)

@BeschlossDC It was my sophomore year of high school. I was taking a Drama class, it was taught in the auditorium and had 60 or so students in it, so we generally had 2 teachers present. The intercom system didn't function correctly in there, so when we heard an announcement one of the (1/)

teachers went out to see why something was coming over the intercom in the middle of the day. I was in the Orlando area, less than an hour from KSC, so launches were normal for us. We'd grown up watching them & many of us had been to KSC to see them in person. So we weren't (2/)

really thinking about the launch, it was business as usual. This is where it's important to note I was in a drama class. In the first week of class the teachers had staged an incident where one of them was telling the class a story about a student, and a football player (3/)

who was in the class jumped up, screaming "you promised not to tell!" and attacked one of the teachers. It was all staged, and given that this was 1986 so before people thought about school shootings or mass violence it was scary but not something that would be considered (4/)

"out of bounds" like it would be today. It did, however, make us HUGELY skeptical of anything the teachers in that class told us because we didn't know if it was another "exercise." So when the teacher who'd gone out to check the announcement came in looking upset and saying (5/)

An Interrupted Dawn

A fresh sadness has cast its cold shadow over me. It caught me by surprise but not because I’m unaccustomed to flickering light. I’m too old to be unaccustomed to such common things. I’m not afraid. Just surprised. Surprised because I thought it was morning.

2020 was such a dark year. Like you, no doubt, the global darkness of the pandemic fell like a lead blanket over a personal season that would also throw a wool shawl over my man & me. Our 2 kids did just what they we’re supposed to do. They grew up. To our great fortune, we still

got to live a lot of family life. The halls of our house rang a constant ruckus. Grandchildren running, skating, cartwheeling, dancing, leaping, hiphopping, dog-ball-throwing, nerf gun launching. Adults eating, discussing, debating, arguing, discoursing and opining as Moores do.

Then the Lord moved one. Then the others. Moved them far away. I blame it entirely on the Lord because that’s how I can accept and embrace it as good. I know it was him because even I can look at it—at what he’s orchestrated for my people—& nod & say, Amen. So be it. It is well.

What he’d given Keith & me in having both our girls & their loves all these years was a gift, not a right. Amen. So be it. It is well. I hesitate to write this part because my girls will see it & I know they will hate it because they love their mother. So I’ll say it quickly like

So you’d think that under Trump there would’ve been more successful filibusters than ever given Democratic opposition.

Nope.

The vast majority of cloture votes passed — the Senate already nuked the filibuster for things Republicans care about



During the Trump era, there were an historic number of cloture motions filed in the Senate: 529 of them. 466 of them got votes — 93% of them passed

Compare to Obama’s first term: only 70% passed the first half, 57% in the

Why? In 2013, Senate Dems nuked the 60 vote threshold to get past a filibuster on nominees, except for SCOTUS, but left it for legislation

But when controlling Congress and the WH, the GOP didn’t move much legislation. They got what they wanted

So when Mitch McConnell says “no no, you have to keep the filibuster for legislation” it’s because he knows that it doesn’t matter when the GOP is a majority

The filibuster isn’t a useful tool for Democratic minorities — just Republicans

This essay is brought to you by several hours of combing through cloture motions for this spreadsheet, which shows a major drop in the filibuster blocking cloture after 2013 — with one exception highlighted, which I’ll explain in a second

1/ #LBBB generates often a classical pattern on #EchoFirst. The pattern is very distinctive in Tissue Doppler of the septum.

The classical pattern arises from the time lapse of the activation and relaxation of the two walls, creating a pattern of interaction due to a sequence temporal imbalances of the tension between the two walls.

2/ As the septum is activated first, it contracts (shortening - septal flash) without activation of the lateral wall, which stretches. This generates slower pressure build up than a normal IVC, which then is prolonged.

3/ During ejection, the LV volume decreases, so both walls shorten. Tension, however, declines first in the septum, as this was activated first. This leads to a tension imbalance, so the lateral wall continues to shorten, the more relaxed septum stretches.

4/ The stretching of the septum builds up an elastic tension in the septum, which is released as recoil, when tension declines in the lateral wall, showing a post systolic shortening in the septum which is due to elasticity.

It's 2021. If you still think coal is a good business plan for America's future, I've got a bridge I'd like to sell ya.

"In April 2020, Bloomberg New Energy Finance found Solar PV and onshore wind are now the cheapest sources of new-build generation for at least two-thirds of the global population."

The @nytimes reports that Joe Manchin (D-West Virginia) and Mitch McConnell (R-Kentucky) are likely to be the most vociferous objectors to Biden's climate plan. I'd like to point out that supporting coal is going to lead their states to ruin.

Coal is already one of the most expensive forms of energy generation. It's actually cheaper to produce *new* solar power plants than to keep existing coal plants running.

Supporting coal in this rapid-growth renewable market is like the people at Kodak who thought digital photography was a fad, or the folks at Sears who thought their "tried and true" brick and mortar stores could weather in the Amazon instant-buy age. IOW, terribly short-sighted.