When someone says, “Figures don’t lie,” know this: Figures lie, and liars figure.Never trust a weasel with a calculator.Do you remember the mortgage meltdown of 2008 and The Big Short, the movie that was made about it? There is a scene in that movie where investors Mark Baum and Vinnie Daniel go to visit Georgia Hale, an employee of the ratings agency Standard and Poor’s: Georgia Hale: So, alrighty, FrontPoint Partners, how can Standard and Poor’s help you? Vinnie Daniel: Well, we don’t understand why the ratings agencies haven’t downgraded subprime bonds since the underlying loans are clearly deteriorating. Georgia Hale: Well, the delinquency rates do have people worried but they’re actually within our models. Vinnie Daniel: Says you. Mark Baum: So you’re convinced the underlying mortgages in these bonds are solid loans? Georgia Hale: That is our opinion, yes. Vinnie Daniel: Did you check the tape? Have you looked at the loan level data? Georgia Hale: What do you think we do here all day? Vinnie Daniel: They’re giving these loans to anybody with a credit score and a pulse. Georgia Hale: Excuse me, sir. What do you think we do here all day? Vinnie Daniel: We’re not sure. That’s why we’re here. Mark Baum: Here’s what I don’t understand, Georgia Hale: We check, we recheck, we check again… Mark Baum: If these mortgage bonds are so stable, if they are so solid, Georgia Hale: Perhaps you should check your friend. Mark Baum: have you ever refused to rate Georgia Hale: We stand behind them. Vinnie Daniel: That’s delusional. Georgia Hale: We stand behind them. Mark Baum: Georgia, have you ever refused to rate any of these bonds – upper tranche – as Triple-A? Can we see the paperwork on those deals? Georgia Hale: Oh, I’m under no obligation to share that information with you, whoever you might be. Mark Baum: Just answer the question, Georgia. Can you name one time in the past year where you checked the tape and you didn’t give the banks the Triple-A percentage they wanted? Georgia Hale: If we don’t give them the ratings, they’ll go to Moody’s, right down the block. If we don’t work with them, they’ll go to our competitors. It’s not our fault. It’s simply the way the world works. Vinnie Daniel: (after a dumbfounded pause) Holy shit. Georgia Hale: Yes, now you see. And I never said that. It seems to me the principal difference between the unregulated world of subprime loans and the unregulated world of online marketing is that there is no way to “short” the world of online ad fraud. There is no way to make a profit by exposing and ending it. http://nymag.com/intelligencer/2018/12/how-much-of-the-internet-is-fake.html?utm_campaign=the_download.unpaid.engagement&utm_source=hs_email&utm_medium=email&utm_content=68743473&_hsenc=p2ANqtz--AldEBTt-85kzPZtXTq708Xd5fw7-juafcbTJzzKHZt_Zbu-sprt-n9b-jxR8S-sRMyLrx1gs9iwmp3vo28edezCMJOg&_hsmi=68743473 (In a widely-circulated news column) published the day after Christmas, 2018, reporter Max Reid asked and answered an important question:“How much of the internet is fake? Studies generally suggest that, year after year, less than 60 percent of web traffic is human; some years, according to some researchers, a healthy majority of it is bot. For a period of time in 2013, the Times reported this year, a full half of YouTube traffic was “bots masquerading as people,” a portion so high that employees feared an inflection point after which YouTube’s systems for detecting fraudulent traffic would begin to regard bot traffic as real and human traffic as fake…” “In late November, the Justice Department unsealed indictments against eight people accused of fleecing advertisers of $36 million in two of the largest digital ad-fraud operations ever uncovered…” “Take something as seemingly simple as how we...