It sure is great to know
that President Obama solved our economic woes and saved the American public
from the greed mongers on Wall Street. He
brought solid growth to our economy and stability to our markets. Drove the unemployment rate down and kept the interest
rate low.
Well, at least that is the
political spin.
The truth is quite the
opposite if truth were exposed to the people but that will never happen with
the corporate, political, news media merger of special interests assuring no
one is in a position to tell the truth.
Take our financial crisis
now underway in which the American stock markets have lost over Four trillion
dollars in eight days, most likely the greatest loss of value in history. Not a single word from our President,
Treasury Secretary, nor Chairwoman of the Federal Reserve Bank.
The world is in a
financial meltdown and NOTHING from our president! Makes one wonder who he is trying to protect?
High Frequency Trading (HFT)
has taken over our stock markets and taken down the world financial system and
our leaders have not even blinked.
Do you know what HFT means
to us? It means no more brains, with a
heart and soul, can control the market trends. It means our banks have insulated themselves
so well they have no responsibility for what happens to the market.
It means market volatility
is imbedded in a market that was supposed to maintain stability.
In short, our government
and our banks have sold their souls to the Devil and the Devil is in the shape
of an algorithm.
An algorithm (pronounced
AL-go-rith-um) is a procedure or formula for solving a problem. The word derives
from the name of the mathematician, Mohammed ibn-Musa al-Khwarizmi, who was
part of the royal court in Baghdad
and who lived from about 780 to 850.
Contribution
of Al-Khwarizmi to Mathematics and Geography
By: N. Akmal Ayyubi
Muhammad
ibn Musa Al-Khwarizmi is one of the greatest scientific minds of the medieval
period and a most important Muslim mathematician who was justly called the 'father
of algebra'. Besides his founding the science of jabr, he made major
contributions in astronomy and mathematical geography. In this article, focus
is laid on his mathematical work in the field of algebra and his contribution
in setting the foundation of the Islamic tradition of mathematical geography
and cartography.
Introduction
Islam
gave birth to a new civilization that spread from China in the east, India in
the south east, Russia in the north, and Anatolia in the west of Asia, to East
and North Africa up to the Mediterranean regions of Southern Europe. This
civilisation was marked by a deep interest in science. In the heart of the
Islamic scientific tradition lays the queen of sciences, mathematics, where the
scholars of bilad al-Islam (lands of Islam) excelled in all its branches
practiced in pre-modern times.
One of
the greatest minds of the early mathematical production in Arabic was Abu
Abdullah Muhammad ibn Musa al-Khwarizmi (b. before 800, d. after 847 in Baghdad ) who was a
mathematician and astronomer as well as a geographer and a historian. It is
said that he is the author in Arabic of one of the oldest astronomical tables,
of one the oldest works on arithmetic and the oldest work on algebra; some of
his scientific contributions were translated into Latin and were used until the
16th century as the principal mathematical textbooks in European universities.
Originally he belonged to Khwârazm (modern Khiwa) situated in Turkistan but he
carried on his scientific career in Baghdad
and all his works are in Arabic.
He was
summoned to Baghdad
by Abbasid Caliph Al-Ma'mun (213-833), who was a patron of knowledge and
learning. Al-Ma'mun established the famous Bayt al-Hikma (House of Wisdom)
which worked on the model of a library and a research academy. It had a large
and rich library (Khizânat Kutub al-Hikma) and distinguished scholars of
various faiths were assembled to produce scientific masterpieces as well as to
translate faithfully nearly all the great and important ancient works of Greek,
Sanskrit, Pahlavi and of other languages into Arabic. Muhammad al-Khwarizmi,
according to Ibn al-Nadîm and Ibn al-Qiftî (and as it is quoted by the late Aydin Sayili),
was attached to (or devoted himself entirely to) Khizânat al-Hikma.
It is
also said that he was appointed court astronomer of Caliph Al-Ma'mun who also commissioned
him to prepare abstracts from one of the Indian books entitled Surya Siddhanta
which was called al-Sindhind in Arabic.
Al-Khwarizmi's name is linked to the translation into Arabic of certain Greek
works and he also produced his own scholarly works not only on
astronomy and mathematics but also in geography and history. It was for Caliph
al-Ma'mun that Al-Khwarizmi composed his astronomical treatise and dedicated
his book on Algebra.
Muhammad
ibn Musa Al-Khwarizmi is one of the greatest scientific minds of the medieval
period and the most important Muslim mathematician, justly called the 'father
of algebra'. He wrote the Kitâb al-Jem wa'l Tafrîq bi Hisâb al-Hind also called
Kitâb Hisâb al-adad al-Hindî on arithmetic in which he used Indian numerals including zero in place of depicting numbers by the letters of the alphabet and
the decimal notations or numeration by position for the first time. It deals
with the four basic operations of addition, subtraction, multiplication and
division as well as with both common and sexagesimal fractions and the
extraction of the square root. The original Arabic text of the book is lost and
only its Latin translation is available.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Now you know, our financial trading system consists of High Frequency
Trading formulas based on the work of a Persian Islamist developed over 1,500
years ago.
These algorithms enable a select number of super computers to buy and sell
stock at a speed far beyond the human capacity to direct, let alone manage. On a normal trading day High Frequency Trading
is responsible for about 50% of the trades and seven billion shares are about
the number traded daily.
Black Monday of this week
saw 13.9 billion shares traded, almost double the normal volume, as the market
began a wild three-day spiral that ended a week of high tension investing and
left traders staggering at what happened. The vast majority of those trades were by HFTs.
Most of the increased
volume was HFT, which is formula not human driven. Events took place showing humans have clearly
lost control of our markets. Stocks
dropped over 1,000 points in less than an hour, far more than the greatest
single day loss in history of 777 points.
In just two days, the
S&P 500 lost $900 billion in value, and total losses across the world for
just the last week were over FOUR TRILLION DOLLARS. That is more than the entire United States
budget ($3.8 trillion) for 2015. In the US alone over
$2.1 trillion was lost in six days.
Imagine that, the market
lost 1,000 points before anyone could react.
All the new gimmicks the Obama administration ordered to protect stock
manipulation failed because the algorithms knew exactly when to stop driving
the market up or down to avoid detection by the SEC. On Tuesday the market lost almost 700 points
the last 30 minutes.
So what about the
circuit-breakers that are supposed to suspend trading and calm the market, well
on Monday there were 1,200 market stops and they had no control over events
that took place. It was still the
largest market loss in history.
Installed after the May
2010 flash crash, the so-called circuit breakers are designed to slow down
dramatic selling or buying. They are typically triggered when stocks dive or
spike by a certain amount in a matter of minutes. Think of it as a time out.
Trading is halted for five minutes, giving investors a chance to calm down and
allowing cooler heads to step into the market.
Where is the outcry? Where are the protectors of the people? Have we finally lost control to the machines?
.