Academic Identity
I am assistant professor of Sociology at Barnard College. My book (and my dissertation research) is a comparative study of technology and futures trading, an ethnography of open outcry and electronic traders. My current research is on how art specialists price cultural commodities, particularly how categories and commensuration work in the secondary/resale fine arts market. I teach courses in economic sociology, organizations, and gender.
Professional Identity
I occasionally consult, focusing on organizational change, the future of technology and financial markets, and environmental markets. I do strategic assessments of markets, technology and organizational design, with qualitative and quantitative components. If you are interested, please email me.
Personal Identity
I grew up outside Chicago, and went to school(s) at Wesleyan University, USC, and Northwestern University. I currently live in New York, with a partner who is a marketing manager for an educational nonprofit. I love movies, like to cook, and I can do a mean lindy swing out. I am INTP.
Welcome! This blog is mostly about markets, culture, organizations, as well as other more rambling kinds of things. You can certainly browse, and I welcome comments. If you prefer a feed reader, you can subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!
July 2, 2009
site weirdness
Filed under: Nuts and bolts, Ramble — Peter @ 9:58 pm
I’m updating the template over the next few days, so if your feed does weird things, I apologize in advance. See ya on the other side of it.
Comments (0)June 30, 2009
Valuation of Warrants
Filed under: Financial Crisis, Markets — Peter @ 7:47 am
From the CBO’s June update on TARP funds (that’s a .pdf):
The market value of outstanding warrants held by the Treasury is around $6 billion, CBO estimates.14 Of the total, about $1 billion is from warrants issued by the 10 banks that recently repaid their TARP funds. However, those calculations are sensitive to the assumptions used in CBO’s models—particularly for treating the volatility of future stock prices (that is, how widely stock prices fluctuate over a given period).
14. CBO uses a Black-Scholes options-pricing model to price TARP warrants that relies on observed stock prices, estimated dividend yields, and historical data on volatility compiled from weekly securities returns for a period of 10 years.
Because what other methods are you gonna use?
Interestingly, the current estimate of the amount of ’subsidy’ from $700+ billion TARP (that is, the part we’re not going to get back) is $159 Billion. Cost is weird here, since there are three main sources of governmental assistance: 1) asset guarantees; 2) very cheap loans; and 3) payments not going to get paid back.
And in particular (ahem, Goldman Sachs), $35 Billion to AIG in loans and stock purchases, lots of which went directly to pay off GS and others’ credit default swaps. Another $40B lost to the auto industry, and $50B to the as-yet-established mortgage relief plan.
Comments (0)June 28, 2009
on cultural and political change reporting in NYT
Filed under: Ramble — Peter @ 9:13 am
I’m not an expert on political change. But this article in the NYT claiming that “even as cultural acceptance of homosexuality increases across the country, the politics of gay rights remains full of crosscurrents” strikes me as insane, for two reason. First, that someone could be short-sighted enough to think that a decade of change, backlash, sometimes-acceptance, and sometimes-hidden deep animosity to LGBT communities means ‘cultural acceptance’ is stupid. And second, to believe that the politics haven’t changed is stupid.
In fact, I would suggest that the whole article is written as a process piece meant to goad the Obama administration into a public fight with the LGBT community, because it would be fun to watch for political reporters and would allow political opponents to point to (probably real) rifts in the Democratic party. It would also allow those who would prefer to rid the world of pesky gay people to continue to oppose political change without being openly accused of being homophobic.
Comments (1)June 26, 2009
wtf, Burger King?
Filed under: Ramble — Peter @ 1:57 pm
Sometimes a burger is just a penis.
Cap and Trade irony
Filed under: Markets, Pollution — Peter @ 10:56 am
I love that when Cap & Trade was introduced in the 1990s, Democrats and environmentalists derided it as putting a price on the environment and capitulating to business. Republicans pushed it as a market-based solution to a social problem.
Now, Democrats and environmentalists embrace C&T as the greenest thing around (well, other than structurally-similar carbon taxes), and Republicans deride it as a massive tax increase.
It (still) is what it is: an incremental improvement on environmental pollution, mobilized by a (probably flawed) market mechanism, that will increase costs (but not as much as if the EPA began regulating carbon by itself).
It (still) is not economic Armageddon or a serious solution to environmental degradation.
Comments (0)June 22, 2009
Goldman Sachs is corrupt
No Comments . Filed under: Financial Crisis
Looks like Goldman Sachs is going to be making record bonus payments on the year. Let’s take a stroll, shall we?:
Under then-head Jon Corzine (the soon-to-be-ex-governor of NJ), Goldman fucked over LTCM when they were going bankrupt in the late-1990s. From Roger Lowenstein’s When Genius Failed: “In Greenwich, Goldman’s sleuths, who had the run [...]
June 16, 2009
just words – Iranian election
3 Comments . Filed under: Institutional
Interesting to note that once you claim to be holding an ‘election’, or that your country is a ‘democracy’, it makes it possible to put you on the hook for things you wouldn’t normally want to be on the hook for.
So, Iran is now making ‘reluctant concessions’ with regard to the farce of election they [...]
June 11, 2009
Shameful administration stance on finance pay
No Comments . Filed under: Financial Crisis
This article doesn’t make clear enough the fact that ALL major Wall Street banks continue to have billions of dollars of federal assistance. Set the pay for giving money to AIG but not for Goldman Sachs, despite the fact that the money went directly from AIG to Goldman Sachs. Goldman Sachs books profits because their [...]
June 10, 2009
Banks, TARP, Treasuries
No Comments . Filed under: Financial Crisis, Markets
This week, we find out that 10 banks are returning TARP money. Or more specifically, 10 banks are repaying $68.3 billion in federal bailout money. This does not mean that these banks are freeing themselves from the yoke of government (only, says the snark in me, it allows them to pay themselves obscene amounts of [...]
Money men in the third sector, part one
One Comment . Filed under: Culture, Management Schools
My partner and I have been talking a lot about non-profits of late, and some of the thinking about expertise that came out of these discussions is possibly worth sharing (at least to the extent that anything really is on the intertubes). I want to give credit to partner without assigning blame for my viewpoint. [...]
June 3, 2009
25 things – thing 2
One Comment . Filed under: Personal
On the subject of memory again, I am afraid of needles. Needles of all kinds, but shots and blood-drawing in particular. Apparently, I was fine with shots until about the age of six. But while it’s tempting to attribute to my mother’s passing (doctors! trauma! death!), here I think it is not the case [...]
June 2, 2009
25 things – thing 1
5 Comments . Filed under: Personal
A few month ago, a meme went around on Facebook to say 25 things about yourself. I thought it might be interesting to do them a bit more fleshed out than the FB venue allows for. I might not get to 25, I might do more.
Thing One: my mom died when I was 6 [...]
May 29, 2009
The rise of futures trading, part who knows what
4 Comments . Filed under: Financial Crisis, Markets
The financial crisis has made it appear as though futures markets have been humming along famously and unproblematically until the past few years, when credit default swaps and esoteric derivatives made the otherwise functional system toxic. And this may be. But let’s not pretend that futures markets were always just hedging mechanisms with an added [...]
May 28, 2009
Socially acceptable markets
2 Comments . Filed under: Markets
Cedric Cowing, in his wonder book Populists, Plungers, and Progressives, writes about the distinctions between futures and options in the 19th century and the tenuous myth of deliverability:
Probably the greatest difficulty the exchange forces faced was the task of differentiating between a simple option and a futures contract. Options permitting fulfillment by settlement of differences [...]
May 27, 2009
thinking, thinking, thinking
3 Comments . Filed under: Art
A work of art seems to be a hardier breed; it can be sold in the market and still emerge a work of art. but if it is true that in the essential commerce of art a gift is carried by the work from the artist to his audience, if I am right to say [...]
May 19, 2009
Now that the semester is over, I can admit it
3 Comments . Filed under: Ramble
update: had to take this down for sanity reasons…
Sadly, I’m squarely in the uncanny valley.
May 18, 2009
Asshole corporate doublespeak
No Comments . Filed under: Markets, Organizations
from their website: AMERICAN EXPRESS ANNOUNCES REENGINEERING PLAN TO GENERATE $800 MILLION COST BENEFIT
from the New York Times: American Express to Cut 4,000 Jobs, Saving $175 Million
April 29, 2009
Song #3 for last day of class
2 Comments . Filed under: Ramble
I play music for my students while they fill out evals. In honor of the fact that, in the end, I don’t know squat about the lives of 20-something women, I like to include something that I find inexplicable that the kids are listening to. So, natch, Avril Lavigne’s Girlfriend:
Avril Lavigne – Girlfriend (Radio Edit)
Song #2 from last day of class
No Comments . Filed under: Ramble
I give students music for evals. Here’s number 2, from Sigur Ros (It translates to ‘Within me a Lunatic Sings):
Last day of class, part one
No Comments . Filed under: Ramble
I always give my students music to listen to while filling out evaluations. Here’s on tap for today:
This song is from this album, incidentally. If you don’t feel like dancing, you can always relax and let Buddha take you away.
Highlights: at the 2:54 mark, you can see the highest guy in the place in the [...]
April 28, 2009
Frankie Manning
No Comments . Filed under: Culture, Ramble
Frankie Manning died yesterday, April 27th. He was a month shy of his 95th birthday. There were (and are) celebrations planned, which will now become memorials.
My partner and I started taking swing lessons a good 7-8 years ago, and we’ve probably taken a few workshops a year since then. We go dancing occasionally (a [...]
April 25, 2009
Depressing NYT, Refreshing Theses
One Comment . Filed under: Ramble
Here’s a screenshot of the NYT right this moment:
Somehow the combination of Maude’s death, the impending flu epidemic (if not now, soon), continued immigration sadness, the professor suspected in shooting, Iraq still slow-disintegrating, and the incredibly depressing potential re-rise of the monied financial classes. It makes me want to just throw up my hands or [...]
April 24, 2009
I know the future
No Comments . Filed under: Culture
It’s true. Partner and I saw This American Life, simulcast at a movie theater from NYU. The show will air in a couple weeks, I think. The theme was “Return to the Scene of the Crime”, and the highlights (IMHO) were Dan Savage’s tear-inducing story about his lapsed Catholicism, and Joss Whedon’s performance of a [...]
April 22, 2009
Speaking of reviews and recommendations
No Comments . Filed under: Culture, Technology
In another frame of mind, I would say that some crowd-sourced reviews do make me happy. ‘Skip S’ reviews Animal Collective’s Merriweather Post Pavilion on iTunes:
Okay. Imagine sitting back in the day with none other than the Buddha himself. The two of you are discussing life, love, and various other zen things. Then, all of [...]
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