The Grand Summary

This blog has pretty much lived out its purpose. It was to document the sheer unabated insanity of journalism in the era of the World's Largest Bubble™.

It's done. It's on the record and its (semi-?) permanent.

Let us summarize everything that has been learnt so far:

Journalists are complete fuckin' idiots when it comes to finance. Let's explore all the reasons:

1. They are bound at the hip to their paycheck as are most humans. They serve the powerful advertising lobbies — in this case it would've been the Real Estate lobby. (On a related note, the NAR has its massive office nearest to the Senate entrance in DC and there are a ton of wonderful fancy restaurants there. One wonders why!)
2. They are numerically illiterate and proud of it! They understand fuck-all about Statistics. They think that three anecdotes and two quotations consist an article.
3. The entirely idiotic idea that one must give credence to the "opposing view". One can almost feel the headline: Earth is Round? Opinions Differ!
4. They fail to understand the importance of self-interest when they seek quotations. Someone who benefits from a certain situation is guaranteed to be biased and will spin the situation in their favor and their "opinion" must be severely discounted if not ignored altogether. Which leads us to:
5. Complete lack of critical thinking. English majors — what can one do? They are not the type to ask forceful follow-up questions which tend to be pretty obvious.

Virtually all financial media is complete and utter tripe. Within three sentences, it is obvious whether to stop reading or not. Heck, sometimes it's so bad that you'd be better served by reading "50 Shades of Gray" or surfing for porn rather than read financial headlines.

The most important point is there is no fix. Why would that be?

The reason is pretty clear.

Analytic, statistically-minded types with penetrating insight are much better served by doing the analysis and profiting from it not documenting it for other people with passive intellects that want to consume data not generate it.

There is smart financial media to be found. It's suitably obscure and it serves the author not to reveal since it acts as a form of IP (Intellectual Property.)

So the world will continue to spin as it always does but this blog will die a slow (passive) death.

It's been FUN though!

Candy Crush

This blog is basically dead but it behooves to write about the economics of a pretty stupid (and addictive) game called Candy Crush.

The idea is simple:

1. You have a few lives.
2. The game is pretty difficult or gets so at specific levels.
3. You can either get more lives by getting "timed out" or "paying for more lives".

(It's a little more complex but this axiom system will work as a first-approximation.)

The idea seems to be that:

1. The game is addictive. (TRUE.)
2. People are stupid. (TRUE.)
3. Some people will "pay" rather than "sit out the timeout".

Remember the firm that makes this only gets paid if Rule [3] is true. Otherwise, they get paid jack diddly-squat for doing all this work and that's not much fun in the real world.

The logical conclusion is that if someone gets too frustrated they will stop playing which brings us to:

1. If they stop playing, you don't get a single fuckin' penny.

Which brings us to the equally logical conclusion:

1. If you sit out long-enough, they will dumb down the game so you can get to the next level.

Once you figure this out, the game is not that interesting any more.

Incidentally, this is what Las Vegas slot-machines do. They are designed to be frustrating but not "too frustrating". They will give you a payout precisely when you are about to walk away forever. Turns out humans are pretty much designed the same way.

We really can't handle the laws of REAL probability which can be endlessly frustrating. Even after extensive training and endless rounds of losses, we are still human and handling tons of losses in a row is hard on the human psyche.

So is the game bogus? YEP.

Are most humans retards? YEP.

Oh well! The game was fun while it lasted.