whether he is successful or not. This will be interesting. He sounds like an intelligent person who is curious and also both realistic and idealistic (at the same time). I'm just guessing but the outcome could be quite surprising I think based on reading the article.

Phillip Hoffman's character was a mathamatical game theorist who also
designed the revolution against the capital

Or did I?

BOTH of these posts would get one from me.

The hews here (Spain) this morning is that the governments of both France and Italy support Syriza's position that the Troika should be closed down, with multi-lateral negotions taking its place.

Chelsea Clinton's Husband Suffers Massive Hedge Fund Loss On Greek Investment



Despite having Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein as an investor and being Bill and Hillary Clinton's son-in-law, Marc Mezvinsky (and two former colleagues from Goldman Sachs who manage Eaglevale Partners hedge fund) told investors in a letter sent last week they had been "incorrect" on Greece, helping produce losses for the firm’s main fund during two of the past three years. By 'incorrect' Chelsea Clinton's husband means the Eaglevale fund focused on Greece lost a stunning 48% last year and, as The Wall Street Journal reports, is impacting the overall returns of the roughly $400 million fund which has spent 27 of its 34 months in operation below its "high-water mark."


In 2013, Institutional Investor proclaimed Mezvinsky "a hedge fund rising star"...

In late 2011, Marc Mezvinsky co-founded New York-based, macro-focused hedge fund firm Eaglevale Partners with Bennett Grau and Mark Mallon, two Goldman Sachs Group proprietary traders whom he'd gotten to know when they all worked at the bank. Best known as the husband of Chelsea Clinton, Mezvinsky, 35, who has a BA in religious studies and philosophy from Stanford University and an MA in politics, philosophy and economics from the University of Oxford, has been quietly building his finance career. Before launching his own firm, the longtime Clinton family friend was a partner and global macro portfolio manager at New York- and Rio de Janeiro-based investment house 3G Capital. Eaglevale manages more than $400 million.
But, as The Wall Street Journal reports, things are not working out so well...

The hedge fund co-founded by Bill and Hillary Clinton ’s son-in-law suffered losses tied to an ill-timed bet on Greece’s economic recovery, according to documents reviewed by The Wall Street Journal.

Eaglevale Partners LP, founded by Marc Mezvinsky and two former colleagues from Goldman Sachs Group Inc., told investors in a letter sent last week they had been “incorrect” on Greece, helping produce losses for the firm’s main fund during two of the past three years, according to the letter.

The main fund dropped 3.6% last year, far trailing the 5.7% rise for similar hedge funds tracked by HFR Inc. That followed an Eaglevale gain of 2.06% in 2013 and a loss of 1.96% in 2012, the documents show


http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2015-02-03/chelsea-clintons-husband-suffers-massive-hedge-fund-loss-greek-investment

absolutely no sympathy.. but I am curious as to why they were investing in "Greece" .. given their economic situation vis a vis the global financial crises etc. yes, the report indicates they were betting on recovery, however it's been a tad been dicey or so i thought.

Last edited Wed Feb 4, 2015, 01:25 PM - Edit history (1)

It didn't

I wasn't watching the situation in Greece too closely, but I never had the impression that the Austerity measures the World Bank was imposing on them was going to be sustained. I was aware of huge protests/demos - a very angry population out in the streets with pitchforks in a manner of speaking.

Bout time we got in techies in government finance somewhere who simply aren't revolving door banksters. Let's hope the trend comes to America if Greece does well under his guidance.

Understanding Oligopoly Behavior – a Game Theory overview
Jason Welker



What makes oligopolistic markets, which are characterized by a few large firms, so different from the other market structures we study in Microeconomics? Unlike in more competitive markets in which firms are of much smaller size and one firm’s behavior has little or no effect on its competitors, an oligopolist that decides to lower its prices, change its output, expand into a new market, offer new services, or adverstise, will have powerful and consequential effects on the profitability of its competitors. For this reason, firms in oligopolistic markets are always considering the behavior of their competitors when making their own economic decisions.

To understand the behavior of non-collusive oligopolists (non-collusive meaning a few firms that do NOT cooperate on output and price), economists have employed a mathematical tool called Game Theory. The assumption is that large firms in competition will behave similarly to individual players in a game such as poker. Firms, which are the “players” will make “moves” (referring to economic decisions such as whether or not to advertise, whether to offer discounts or certain services, make particular changes to their products, charge a high or low price, or any other of a number of economic actions) based on the predicted behavior of their competitors.

If a large firm competing with other large firms understands the various “payoffs” (referring to the profits or losses that will result from a particular economic decision made by itself and its competitors) then it will be better able to make a rational, profit-maximizing (or loss minimizing) decision based on the likely actions of its competitors. The outcome of such a situation, or game, can be predicted using payoff matrixes. Below is an illustration of a game between two coffee shops competing in a small town.







In the game above, both SF Coffee and Starbuck have what is called a dominant strategy. Regardless of what its competitor does, both companies would maximize their outcome by advertising. If SF coffee were to not advertise, Starbucks will earn more profits ($20 vs $10) by advertising. If SF coffee were to advertise, Starbucks will earn more profits ($12 vs $10) by advertising. The payoffs are the same given both options for SF Coffee. Since both firms will do best by advertising given the behavior of its competitor, both firms will advertise. Clearly, the total profits earned are less when both firms advertise than if they both did NOT advertise, but such an outcome is unstable because the incentive for both firms would be to advertise. We say that advertise/advertise is a “Nash Equilibrium” since neither firm has an incentive to vary its strategy at this point, since less profits will be earned by the firm that stops advertising.

As illustrated above, the tools of Game Theory, including the “payoff matrix”, can prove helpful to firms deciding how to respond to particular actions by their competitors in oligopolistic markets. Of course, in the real world there are often more than two firms in competition in a particular market, and the decisions that they must make include more than simply to advertise or not. Much more complicated, multi-player games with several possible “moves” have also been developed and used to help make tough economic decisions a little easier in the world of competition.

Game theory as a mathematical tool can be applied in realms beyond oligopoly behavior in Economics. In each of the videos below, game theory can be applied to predict the behavior of different “players”. None of the videos portray a Microeconomic scenario like the one above, but in each case a payoff matrix can be created and behavior can be predicted based on an analysis of the incentives given the player’s possible behaviors.


more


http://welkerswikinomics.com/blog/2012/03/23/understanding-oligopoly-behavior-a-game-theory-overview/

From 2011 Richard Wolff's introduction to him is 1:20 minutes in to the video;

will watch it later after my walk with my dog

There was so much packed in it I had to listen to it twice. One of several items that really grabbed my attention was the economic situation with union workers in Germany. I had no idea they were being squeezed by a system ripped right from the playbook of Big Business here in the U.S.

I had always been confused about the structure/system of the Euro and how it actually worked. I had no idea that the value of the Euro was not equal among Euro nations. One might ask, what the hell was the point in setting that system up and agreeing to join in the first place, but we know the answer to that.

I enjoyed his humor also, I could listen to him speak again and again. I'm not sure of his conclusions with regard to another collapse at least not quite as soon as maybe he's likely thinking. When the collapse happened here in the U.S. in 2008 - with bailouts waiting to fall in place, I'm pretty much of the mind that the PTB simply will not "allow"a another collapse , in so far as they're in control of economic outcomes on a macro level, I just don't think they'd be ready to let it go there again anytime soon.

But then again, there's a hell of a lot i don't know and yet to understand.

"I am not an economics/science expert, but........", makes you just as good as one apparently in America.