The biology of trading and risk-taking

When Jon Stewart, 50, takes a 12-week-long hiatus from "The Daily Show" this summer to shoot his new movie "Rosewater" overseas, it's "Senior British Correspondent" John Oliver, 35, who will take over his hosting duties.

Meric Gertler, an authority in urban economics and the University of Toronto’s dean of arts and sciences, will become the school’s next president. The appointment, confirmed by the university’s governing council Monday, runs for a five-year term and is the culmination of an international search that began last June. The 16th president in the school’s nearly 200-year history, Mr. Gertler, who succeeds David Naylor, said he was deeply honoured to be selected for the role.

Review of Robert Skidelsky (2000), "John Maynard Keynes: Fighting for Britain" (London: Macmillan: 0333604563), pp. xxiii, 580. J. Bradford DeLong July 2001

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry will use a trip to Moscow this week to discuss cooperation in the investigation of the Boston bombings as well as future intelligence-sharing, according to two State Department officials who briefed reporters today in Washington.

Yves here. One of the sources of risk in big and even moderately big banks that does not get the attention it deserves is information systems. Having mission critical systems function smoothly, or at least adequately, is crucial to a major trading operation. Huge volumes of transactions flow through these firms, and the various levels of reporting (customer exposures, funds flows, risk levels, transaction and reconciliation failures) need to be highly reliable or things get ugly fast.