me6[at]privacy.net wrote:

Generallizing, I've never been real comfortable with efficent market theory
because it didn't consistently describe how markets behave.  Efficent markets
shouldn't have bubbles, for example.
Interesting

So you are saying that sometimes the market does not
make for efficiency because people do things that don't
make any economic sense?

I think the problem with the efficient market theory is not the claim that
the market is efficient, but that the theory assumes that there is any
objective rationality to the prices that are so efficiently attached to
assets on a second-to-second basis. A Ferrari is supassingly efficient at
getting from A to B, but in the hands of a teenager, it is not a pure blessing.
    Our stock markets are amazingly efficient in that the price I get is
mostly the same as the price anyone else gets at a given instant, and
that value can change continuously over the day, according to the
constant flow of news, *gambles, and whims* of the huge audience of buyers
and sellers. I would argue that the efficiency of a market can only increase
the stage where emotional swings and whims can play on the perceived (and
therefore represented) value of assets.
Joe

BMS wrote:

- quote -

The two possibly-interested parties are the financial institution itself,
and whatever government anti-fraud entity that might pertain. Try calling
these entities in person. The trouble is that the cost and effectiveness
of proactively pursuing this sort of thing is higher than the cost (to the
company) of paying off the reported and pursued losses.
I may sound cynical, but I believe that with some effort on your part,
you will have a slightly better affect on this issue than you would by
petitioning the governments of Nigeria and Ghana to shut down the rampant
fraudulent spam where people pose as officials of those governments, wanting
help transferring millions of dollars into your U.S. bank account.
With enough technical expertise, it is still too easy to gain undetected
access to innocently-owned computers and have them act as the initial
destination
of such phishing responses, and have it forwarded to a publicly accessible
forum (such as newsgroups) in an encoded fashion that only the real phisher
can decrypt. Unless you're very up-to-date and familiar with your firewall
there's a chance your box itself might be sending/receiving some of these
emails...
Good luck,
Joe