While You Were Working - March 8 - SmartBrief

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While You Were Working – March 8

Trump dubbed first Silicon Valley President, Nason just says no to the Fed, Quants relive the quake and FC Barcelona shocks the world

3 min read

Modern Money

FC Barcelona striker Neymar

FC Barcelona striker Neymar - Photo credit: Michael Regan/Getty Images Sports

Trump was dubbed “The First Silicon Valley President”

The moniker actually works because Trump adopted so many Silicon Valley principal to run his campaign and govern. The name actually works better for Trump than for President Barack Obama. Obama leveraged technology and social media to ascend to the White House, but then forgot most of those tactics once he was in office. Trump has stayed loyal to the “move fast and break things” mantra.

Nason said no to the Federal Reserve’s bank supervision role

David Nason, the chief executive of GE Energy Financial Services, informed the White House that he is no longer interested in the Federal Reserve post as vice chairman for supervision. With Nason out of the picture, there is no clear front-runner to fill the role that has been covered by the departing Daniel Tarullo.

The White House continued to micromanage its Cabinet

It seems like it would be a wee bit frustrating to accept a Cabinet secretary position only to be told you didn’t have much power over who you could hire as your deputies. First it was Rex Tillerson at the State Dept. and now it appears Steven Mnuchin is suffering the same fate. “So you want me to run a behemoth government agency and you aren’t going to let me choose the people I want to help me do it? I’m IN!”

The “Quant Quake” was revisited with a warning attached

The FT did a deep dive recounting the “quant quake” that shook the financial world in 2007. One of the key takeaways is how the quant world was relatively smaller 10 years ago, so the quake didn’t rattle such a wide swath of the market. But now the quant world of algo trading is wider and much more susceptible to a bigger meltdown.

“We’re caught in a tug of war between Moore’s Law and Murphy’s Law,” says Andrew Lo, finance professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, referring to Gordon Moore’s prediction that computing power would double nearly every year, and the adage that anything that can go wrong, will go wrong. “Our technology has outgrown our ability to manage it, and the financial world is increasing in complexity and fragility.”

That’s reassuring.

SEC Chair-nominee Clayton said he would divest holdings, recuse himself from case involving clients

Jay Clayton, President Trump’s nominee to lead the SEC said that if he is confirmed he would recuse himself for a period of one year from cases involving former clients or his former law firm, Sullivan & Cromwell. Clayton also said he would divest his 176 assets believed to be worth millions of dollars. The divestiture will also affect Clayton’s wife, who works for Goldman Sachs.

FC Barcelona shocked the sports world

Needing a mighty comeback to overcome a 4-0 deficit from the first leg against Paris Saint-Germain, the Catalans managed just that. Scoring a goal on virtually the last kick of the game, Barca won 6-1, notching a 6-5 win on aggregate. Mes que un club.