Sam Gunn

Sam Gunn

By Ben Bova

The skipper used the time-honored cliché – he said – « Houston, we have a problem here. »

There were eight of us, the whole crew of Artemis IV, huddled together in the command module. After sixweeks of living onn the Moon the module smelled like a pair of unwashed gym socks.

With a woman President the space agency figured it would be smart to name the second round of lunar explorations after a female: Artemis was Apollo’s sister. Get it?

But it had just happened that the computer who picked the crew selections for Artemis IV picked all men. Six weeks without even the sight of a woman, and now our blessed-be-to-God return module refused to light up. We were stranded. No way to get back home.

As usual, capcom in Houston was the soul of tranquility. « Ah, A-IV, we read you and cpy that the return module is no-go. The analysis team is checking the telemetry. We will get back to you soonest. »

It didn’t help that capcom, that shift, was Sandi Hemmings, the woman we all lusted after. Among the eight of us, we must have spent enough energy dreaming about cornering Sandi in zero gravity to propel each of us right back to Houston. Unfortunately, dreams have a very low specific impulse and we were still stuck on the Moon, a quarter-million miles from the nearest woman.

Sandi played her capcom duties strictly by the book, especially since all our transmissions were taped for later review.

She kept the traditional Houston poker face, but managed to say, « Don’t worry, boys. We’ll figure it out and get you home. »

Praise God for small favors.

Nespresso, Ice Fest in Toronto. Photo by Elena

We had spent hours checking and rechecking the cursed return module. It was an engineer’s hell : everything checked but nothing worked. The thing just sat there like a lumb of dead metal. No elecrical power. None. Zero. The control board just stared at us as cold and glassy-eyed as a banker listeing to your request fro an unsecrued loan. We had even gone through the instruction manual, page by page, line by line. Zip. Zilch. The bird was dead.

When Houston got back to us, si hours after the skipper’s call, it was the stony, unsmiling image of the mission coordinator who glowered at us as if we had deliberately screwed up the return module. He told us :

« We have identified the problem., Artemis IV. The return module’s ain electrical power supply has malfunctioned. »

That was like telling Othello that he was a Moor.

« We’re checking out bypasses and other possible fixes, » Old Stone Face wen on. « Sit tight, we’ll get back to you. »

The skipper gave him a patient sigh. « Yes, sir. »

« We’re not going anywhere, » said a whispered voice. Sam Gunn’s, I was certain

One Antique’s Fantastic Journey

One Antique’s Fantastic Journey

When the “Garvan carver” created an exquisite card table 200 years ago in Philadelphia, he had no idea it would be worth nearly $1 million today. “This table was an extraordinary thing. Lush vines dripped down its legs the claws of its feet clung tightly to wooden balls,” begins author Thatcher Freund’s description of the Willing Card table. “If you stared at it for a while, the table almost sprang to life.” Freund’s Objects of Desire (Pantheon, 1994) is the Willing table’s biography, and it ends as triumphantly as any Horatio Alger novel. Here are the highlights of the Willing card table’s picaresque journey:

1759: Still in his 30s, flush with profits from his insurance firm, and looking to plug a tiny corner of his Georgian mansion, Thomas Willing commissions a card table from one of Philadelphia’s dozen or so professional carvers. The Garvan carver, so called because his work today features prominently in the Mabel Brady Garvan collection of Yale University charges fees for his labors.

1821: On Thomas Willing’s death, the executors of his will take inventory of his estate and value the table at 50 cents. A bottle of Madeira is valued at $1. No longer fashionable, the table is packed away by Willing’s son George – perhaps to the servants’ quarters.

An antic collection. Photo by Elena

1898: Phebe Barron Willing, granddaughter of George, carefully wraps the table and places it in storage in the basement of an old and prominent Philadelphia bank along with several other treasures. The cache is soon forgotten.

1964: Seeking maritime antiques, Thomas Willing’s great-great-great grandson, Tom Hughes, stumbles across the crate with his grandmother’s name stenciled on it. Hughes shares the treasures with othe Willing heirs and, taken with its beauty, keeps the table for himself.

1990: Eight years after his death, Hughes’s widow decides to sell the table rather than try to keep up with mounting insurance rates. She contacts Christie’s and Sotheby’s auction houses, who bid for her business by means of reserve, or how much the auction house will guarantee, Sotheby’s gets the business with a guaranteed reserve of $850,00.

1991: After spending $30,000 to promote the sale with advertisements in antique magazines and the wining and the dining of the ten or so buyers that could afford to spend upwards of $1 million for a single item of furniture, Sotheby’s sends the table to the block. The final bid of $850,000 is well over the reserve bid and is made by an anonymous buyer for the Chipstone Foundation, a museum in Milwaukee. The Willing card table is taken to its new home to rest finally among other treasures and admiring visitors. 

Telemarketing

Telemarketing

Telemarketing, as a phenomenon, is hard to miss. Rare are those who never received a call at home or on their cell phone, from someone trying to survey or sell something. Many people’s reaction is annoyance, even exasperation in the face of persistence. Other persons are more puzzled with how the caller, or their employers, obtained the telephone number. Notwithstanding, “telemarketing is an effective business tool” (Bateman, 2007; p.84).

Perhaps largely because of unpleasant emotions likely associated with the trade, telemarketers are always sought for, even without any experience or training, to judge by local (Montreal) free (Voir, Hour, Mirror, Metro, 24H) and non-free (The Gazette, Globe & Mail, Journal de Montreal, Le Devoir) newspaper publications. The salaries promised are competitive, training is paid and almost no credentials are required. Students and retirees are welcome. So what is holding people back? The inquiry path taken to answer this question leads to some pearls from the literature. Before we proceed, telemarketers do not perform the exact same functions as customer service agents. Conducted by telephone, telesales are the traditional method, but today’s telemarketers employ, albeit indirectly, e-mail and social media platforms.

In the turn of the millennium, state and federal level legislation was passed, prompted by privacy concerns among things, regulating telemarketing. As Bateman (2007) narrates, the U.S. National Do Not Call List counted 122 millions consumers in April 2006. Paradoxically, despite that volume of calls directed at those registered has decreased according to them, the industry is healthier than ever. Also, what about a company’s right to business? The author points out that soliciting the people on the list, unless the telemarketing firm is a charity, results in a fine.

A lot of marketing majors work in banks. Not in any way to say that marketing and telemarketing is the same thing, telemarketers also work in financial institutions. Reputation is crucially important in banking, so a bank may not want to be associated too closely with the trade if it makes consumers uncomfortable.

Telemarketers must find amazing ways to attract attention to their merchandise. Photo by Elena

A common urban legend warns of the never quitting telemarketer. In the horror story, a woman leading a busy life, unwittingly gets trapped by a solicitor into a contract, that once agreed to, cannot ever be cancelled after the first year.

Klein & Newman (2006) confirm that the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Financial Services Modernization Act (FSMA) rules on private information versus convenience and business operation regulations. As mentioned in the introductory paragraph, information sharing between businesses for the purposes of the telemarketing has been very problematic and has been largely outlawed except in cases of clear consent and for the company’s own products. As often is the case, it appears that perhaps a few troublemakers ruined it for everybody. Certain firms may have behaved unethically, and thus provoked the complaints that set the whole avalanche in motion.

Other areas of dissatisfaction sometimes mentioned are when people answer a call and there is no response, as well as telemarketers hanging up on them. In late 2010, in Montreal, there was an epidemic, with what is quite frankly most likely a fraudulent spambot. The only relation to telemarketing is that it probably involves some of the initial outbound data collection. In any case, a person would receive a call on their personal line that told them that they won an X amount of reward points on Air Miles. To accept, one was asked to press 1. At that point, most Montrealers got disconnected. Perhaps feeling a bit roughed up, they still got the better end of the deal. Apparently, those who got through were asked to disclose their credit card number. Air Miles has explicitly posted on their website that they had nothing to do with, do not endorse, and wish to be dissociated from, the action.

References:

    Bateman, C. R. & Schmidt, J. (2007). Do not call lists: A cause for telemarketing extinction or evolution? Academy of Marketing Studies Journal, 11 (1): 83-111.

    Klein, G. D. & Newman, C. M. (2006). Call from peerless bank: A case consideration of telemarketing and ethics. Journal of the International Academy for Case Studies, 12 (3): 103: 120.

Financial Econometrics

Financial Econometrics

The present tentative excerpt aims to display a brief introduction to the field of financial econometrics. While financial economics has greater notoriety, empirical econometrics is significant in modeling financial series.

With globalization, the Internet community gained greater exposure. Almost unlimited knowledge has been made accessible with online resources. Prospective sources include prominent search engines’ financial sections, online encyclopedia Investopedia, government and corporate Websites to name a few. For students preparing a term essay, ESTAT and CANSIM are great databases for Canadian statistics, but the Internet STAT USA is no longer available.

Providing the findings that support financial econometric theories, employed in investment management, highlighted in this text is empirical finance. Introducing the subdiscipline, empirical finance may refer to an organizational blog, a peer reviewed journal, a college course or even a consulting and investment management corporation.

Econometricians work in the industries of finance, higher education and research, among others. Although econometricians are prevalent in a healthy economy, there are few universities who offer degrees in financial metrics; often it is merely a class. However, Master’s degrees in financial economics (MFE) or econometrics (MSc) are offered by such institutions as the prestigious Oxford University or popular University of Amsterdam, respectively.

Eighty percent of the people in the world have no food safety net. When disaster strikes – the economy gets blown, people lose a job, floods, war, conflict, bad governance, all of those things – there is nothing to fall back on. Josette Sheeran. Illustration by Megan Jorgensen (Elena)

The new actuarial science is a blend of multiple disciplines such as statistics, economics, mathematics and finance. Areas of study examples are: expected returns, volatility and price dynamics (Fan, 2008). Some models derived from the field carry theoretical as well as practical implications.

Theories and statistical and mathematical tools interact to produce the end result. For example, econometric models for trade, quotes, prices, and volumes justify the market microstructure paradigm (Engle, 2001).

In modern academia, areas of study are plentiful. The likelihood approach is common in econometric analysis; other topics of interest to econometricians are the following incidences from the literature. One account (Kitamura, 2006) focuses on parametric, semiparametric, nonparametric distributions testing and time series.  Another paper (Pagan, 1996), examines several types of financial series such as stock prices, interest rates, exchange rates omitting futures and option prices. A great source for peer-reviewed academic articles is the Journal of Financial Econometrics, an Oxford Journal reflecting current advancements in the field.

Credit risk, business and senior quantitative analysts would deal with financial econometric data, although one may prefer to look at careers in a larger pool instead. Careers in financial economics span the areas of asset management, investment and commercial banking, private equity or venture capital, management of financial institutions, corporate financial management, financial engineering, and consulting.

References:

• Engle, R. (2001). Financial econometrics – A new discipline with new methods. Journal of Econometrics, 100 (1): 53-56.
• Fan, J. (2005). A selective overview of non-parametric methods in financial econometrics. Statistical Science, 20 (4): 317-337.
• Kitamura, Y. (2006). Empirical likelihood methods in econometrics: Theory and practice. Cowles Foundation Discussion paper No. 1569. Cowles Foundation for Research in Economics, Yale University.Pagan, A. (1996). The econometrics of financial markets. Journal of Empirical Finance, 3: 15-102.

What Lenders Want to Know

What Lenders Want to Know

If You Want to Get Your Loan Approved, Be Ready With Answers

You can speed up the loan application process by having the right information with you when you meet with your mortgage lender. Here – from the Federal National Mortgage Association, the government-chartered company otherwise known as Fannie Mae that buys mortgages from 3,000 lenders nationwide – are some of the things lenders look for.

Purchase agreement/Sales Contract:

Outlines terms and conditions of the sale.

Your addresses: All from last seven years.

Employment information: Name, address, and phone number of all employers for the past seven years.

Lenders want to know everything! Photograph: Megan Jorgensen (Elena)

Sources of income: Two recent pay stubs and your W-2 form for the previous two years. Verification of income from social security pension, interest or dividends, rental income, child support, and alimony may also be needed.

Current Assets: Balance, account number, name and address of financial institutions for your savings, checking and investment accounts. Recent statements should suffice. Real estate and personal property can also be listed on your application as assets. Bring an estimate of market value.

Current debts: Names and addresses of all creditors plus account numbers, current balances, monthly payments. Recent bank statements may be required.

Source of down payment: May be savings, stocks, investments, sales of other property or life insurance policies. May be from relatives if it doesn’t have to be repaid.

Follow the Bouncing Rate

What to look for in adjustable rate mortgage

As interest rates dropped in the early 1990s, the race to ARMs (Adjustable Rate Mortgages) slowed dramatically. But, in 1994, interest rates started rising again, and so did ARM applications, accounting for some 40 percent of all mortgages.

Lenders use indexes – such as the rate on six-month Treasury bills or three-year Treasury notes – to decide when to raise or lower the interest rate on an adjustable rate mortgage. For example, when the financial index your lender uses rises, the interest rate on your mortgage may also increase – it depends on how the index is applied. Fluctuations in the interest rate can change your monthly payments, mortgage length, or principal balance. Some indexes reflect what the market will bear across the country; others reflect local trends. Other money indexes are controlled solely by individual lenders. The index you select should be one that is verified easily.

Its past performance may give you an indication of how stable it is. Have someone with expertise translate past and potential changes into dollars and cents. Also, find out how the index is used. For example, if the index changes monthly, is the lender also changing the rate on your loan monthly, or are there limits on the number of times and/or amount your rate can fluctuate? Finally, check how much advance warning the lender will give you before new rates or payments go into effect.