Barry Ritholtz used to come around here a lot talking smack about how he had so much data proving I was wrong about diversity being a major factor in the mortgage meltdown. So, we laid our cards on the table ... and now he doesn't seem to want to talk about it anymore.
How come?
UPDATED: In the comments, Barry writes:
How come?
UPDATED: In the comments, Barry writes:
Ritholtz said...Im busy with real stuff . . .
Hmmmhmmmh ... He seemed to have plenty of time before we had our little showdown.
My published articles are archived at iSteve.com -- Steve Sailer
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21 comments:
If his data are reality based, they support your Diversity Recession thesis. Perhaps he's sitting on them until he can figure out the right PC spin.
In other words, he is reducing his data with Occum's butter knife, as you might say.
Um, because you had a straight flush and he had eight high?
I noticed they had him over at the Freakonomics blog the other day. One of the commentors clearly mocked him using sarcasm based on the Sailer debacle -- calling him highly empirical, data driven, a logic machine, a master of exposing "hacks", and so on. It went completely over his head, as he took the person's comment literally. Poor Barry.
Now that you have dispatched the sagacious Barry Ritholtz perhaps you should focus your attention on Dahlia Lithwick of Slate. She just authored a shameless hit piece on Frank Ricci.
He's a lightweight shyster, hailing from the notorious bucket shop Maxim Group. Move on please, and let him write his trading brain farts and worse than a random dart throw stock picks in peace.
"Barry Ritholtz used to come around here a lot talking smack"
LOL, it's even funnier because you look like Jim Rome, only with reddish brown hair. I was hoping for a good throwdown a la Jim Manzi; that was epic, dude.
He had to go back to bragging about his Regent's Scholarship. Have fun looking into that one Steve.
because his bitchass couldn't handle the Sailer
Ritholtz makes more money pulling in ad revenue on his slick website than running money.
He's a third rate stockjobber.
Maybe because each of you've made the points that can be made. Actually I think there's a good case to be made that the diversity was not the proximate cause. That the financial speculation was. I mean do we blame dotcoms on diversity? And even if the Feds did encourage the disaster, we should still not bail people out. Then it would not be such a big deal. Besides, the issue of people underwater or even banks on the hook is not as bad as the places like Goldman that were making wild leveraged derivative bets, including with counterparties that could not pay up. Of course if we just let the Goldmanies jump out of windows instead of bailing ghem out, they would stop behaving that way.
In the martial arts world, the UFC -- an event that pitted different stylists against one another with minimal rules to see what actually works -- put a burden on phony arts to show and prove what they could do.
If you ask any practitioner of these arts that have either chosen not to compete or did but failed, "Why don't people from your style compete in MMA?"
The answer you will get goes something along the lines of, "Oh, our style is far too deadly. We'd poke their eyes out, and that's not allowed. We'd actually kill people with our secret techniques, so we choose not to." Etc.
This is what Barry did.
Barry: I'm the king of fighting. Never mind the pot belly. Call me master. Look at my uniform. KIIIYAAA!!!
Steve: Let's get in the ring. Here's what I do and know. Right here, right now.
Barry: LOL! Nooo thank you, my style is far too deadly for you. I deal with REAL stuff. I would poke your eyes out with causation and ruin your liver with a Dim Mak palm strike. It's what I do, how I roll. We do different arts. And mine is real. Bye bye.
Perhaps he just disappeared in a blinding flash of most excellent and righteous non-qualitative, completely fact-based statistical analysis.
Shazam! Like that!
He's in a better place now.
To discover interesting and useful answers, one should try to ask insightful, open-ended questions.
Recall that Mr. Ritholtz's entry into this fray was to proclaim, "The CRA didn't cause the financial crisis! Why, I'd pay $10,000 if anyone could prove me wrong, which they can't."
His opening move was to paint himself into a corner. Of course 1977 legislation didn't suddenly "cause" the 2007/08 implosion. But this is phrasing that only an ideologue could love.
Re-framing the discussion to focus on insight would be awkward. In general, Mr. Big types don't do well with "awkward."
Oh, as far as pesky facts and analyses, it's worth re-linking Stan Liebowitz's Anatomy of a Train Wreck from October '08. From the Abstract --
This report concludes that, in an attempt to increase home ownership, particularly by minorities and the less affluent, virtually every branch of the government undertook an attack on underwriting standards starting in the early 1990s. Regulators, academic specialists, GSEs, and housing activists universally praised the decline in mortgage-underwriting standards as an “innovation” in mortgage lending. This weakening of underwriting standards succeeded in increasing home ownership and also the price of housing, helping to lead to a housing price bubble. The price bubble, along with relaxed lending standards, allowed speculators to purchase homes without putting their own money at risk.
Im busy with real stuff . . .
Ritholtz - Im busy with real stuff.
So, when you started off on your blog dismissing Steve's position, that was you engaging in 'real stuff' then - but isnt now? Or was it never 'real stuff'? In which case how are we to acertain which of your interests are actually 'real stuff' which we should take seriously and which are you just messing about, which we can safely ignore?
Could we have some sort of graphic or code by each blog post perhaps.
Ritholtz makes more money pulling in ad revenue on his slick website than running money.
He's a third rate stockjobber.
That's it.
Steve, if you want to hit Barry where he hurts, ask him to publish some specific, hard facts and data showing that his investment advisory service makes money for his clients.
Check out his amazon wishlist. Pure SWPL, man, from the woman-like examples of desperately craved consumer products to the puerility of the urban hipster drowning in pop culture, old Bar is clearly just another shallow tool.
Hope somebody gets Diamond's GG&Steel for you, bro. You'll eat it up.
"Check out his amazon wishlist. Pure SWPL, man"
How SWPL is it just to post your 667-item amazon wishlist publicly?
I'm reminded of the annoying SWPL tendency to say things like "oh, I'd love to go backpacking through South America, if only I could get the time off..."
It's an unbelievably pretentious attempt to demonstrate that you have good taste in things you can't afford.
"Im busy with real stuff . . ."
I'm sure you are.
Kiyaaaaaaa!!!!
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