Legitimacy in financial markets: credit default swaps in the current crisis

The current financial crisis appears to be a moment of epochal change, an archetypal ‘legitimation crisis’. This paper examines the impact of this collapse on one particular section of the financial markets that concerned with credit default swaps. This paper shows how and why the markets for these products expanded and why they were integral to the financial crash. The consequence of the crash was a huge loss of legitimacy for these markets. This paper examines the processes whereby this legitimacy is being reconstructed. In particular, it distinguishes between the re-establishment of pragmatic legitimacy, which is the primary concern of the market participants, and the re-establishment of broader political legitimacy, which concerns governments and regulators. It argues that these two forms of re-establishing legitimacy work in different ways and proceed at different rates. It explores the tensions to which this leads in terms of reconstructing the financial system

Deflation of Eigenvalues for Iterative Methods in Lattice QCD

Work on generalizing the deflated, restarted GMRES algorithm, useful in lattice studies using stochastic noise methods, is reported. We first show how the multi-mass extension of deflated GMRES can be implemented. We then give a deflated GMRES method that can be used on multiple right-hand sides of $Ax=b$ in an efficient manner. We also discuss and give numerical results on the possibilty of combining deflated GMRES for the first right hand side with a deflated BiCGStab algorithm for the subsequent right hand sides.Comment: Lattice2003(machine

Deflated GMRES for Systems with Multiple Shifts and Multiple Right-Hand Sides

We consider solution of multiply shifted systems of nonsymmetric linear equations, possibly also with multiple right-hand sides. First, for a single right-hand side, the matrix is shifted by several multiples of the identity. Such problems arise in a number of applications, including lattice quantum chromodynamics where the matrices are complex and non-Hermitian. Some Krylov iterative methods such as GMRES and BiCGStab have been used to solve multiply shifted systems for about the cost of solving just one system. Restarted GMRES can be improved by deflating eigenvalues for matrices that have a few small eigenvalues. We show that a particular deflated method, GMRES-DR, can be applied to multiply shifted systems. In quantum chromodynamics, it is common to have multiple right-hand sides with multiple shifts for each right-hand side. We develop a method that efficiently solves the multiple right-hand sides by using a deflated version of GMRES and yet keeps costs for all of the multiply shifted systems close to those for one shift. An example is given showing this can be extremely effective with a quantum chromodynamics matrix.Comment: 19 pages, 9 figure

Hidden-Markov Program Algebra with iteration

We use Hidden Markov Models to motivate a quantitative compositional semantics for noninterference-based security with iteration, including a refinement- or "implements" relation that compares two programs with respect to their information leakage; and we propose a program algebra for source-level reasoning about such programs, in particular as a means of establishing that an "implementation" program leaks no more than its "specification" program. This joins two themes: we extend our earlier work, having iteration but only qualitative, by making it quantitative; and we extend our earlier quantitative work by including iteration. We advocate stepwise refinement and source-level program algebra, both as conceptual reasoning tools and as targets for automated assistance. A selection of algebraic laws is given to support this view in the case of quantitative noninterference; and it is demonstrated on a simple iterated password-guessing attack

Some calibrated surfaces in manifolds with density

Hyperplanes, hyperspheres and hypercylinders in $\Bbb R^n$ with suitable densities are proved to be weighted minimizing by a calibration argument. Also calibration method is used to prove a weighted minimal hypersurface is weighted area-minimizing locally.Comment: 7 page

The Silent Space of the Vacuum

In this paper I argue that a reimagining of the notion of silence as more than a sonic phenomenon is needed to address the dominant structural apparati of Western discourse. Silence as an existential medium is where the Foucauldian apparatuses that power the status-quo of the world operate. They forge connections between things like ideology and social organization where one falls into the wake of the other and is shaped in a way that is nearly invisible to the passing glance. It is the indeterminacy within silence as explored by John Cage that that allows this to happen, but it also offers the potential to have an active role in the shaping of these apparatuses toward a more beneficial and culturally aware form of society. This new approach is crucial in helping one learn to embrace the indeterminacy of life and the hazy relational structures that drive our existence

Weather Data: a guide to finding information

Using the library to find sources relating to weather data

"Laws of Forgiveness: Obama, Mandela, Derrida"

Excerpt from Routledge Companion to Transnational American Studies, edited by Nina Morgan, Alfred Hornung, and Takayuki Tatsum