hallam@Etna.ai.mit.edu writes:

As you know very well it's Dr.

My apologies. From now on I will refer to you solely as Dr. Phill Hallam-Baker, PhD.

and as you also know, signing a futures, options or any other type of contract is an open ended risk.

One doesn't "sign a futures" contract. The risk is also not always open ended by any means. If I purchase 50 unleaded gasoline contracts, my risk is strictly limited -- I cannot lose more than the value of the gasoline, and that would only be if it became totally worthless (an unlikely event). If I sell an uncovered contract, things are different, of course. With options, if I buy puts or calls, again, my risk is totally limited -- I cannot lose more than the cost of the contracts.

That is how the person purchasing the contract has the theoretcial possibility of unlimited reward.

Er, no. You have potentially unlimited reward in ANY purchase, and limited risk. If I buy a box of cornflakes and next week cornflakes suddenly become worth $1,000,000 a box, well, I've experienced reward, but my risk was at most the cost of the cornflakes.

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Of course they know. There just isn't anything that can be done. There is no proof. Its more or less as though one finds a man with gunpowder stains on his hands, and a bullet embedded in the wall of his office and human blood soaking the carpet. You can't prove that he killed anyone. You can never get a conviction. But you can know.

Its called circumstantial evidence and it leads to a conviction provided the name of the defendant isn't O.J. Simpson.

No, it isn't. If there is no body and no one knows who you have shot, the rules of Corpus Delecti pretty much dictate that you aren't going to jail. You cannot be charged with the murder of unknown persons when there isn't even any evidence of what happened (it could very well have been someone being accidently injured while you were showing off your gun collection and they might have done just fine). You don't even have to say what happened -- you are under no obligation to testify, you know. Now, your neighbors will probably talk badly of you forever, but you won't be convicted of anything.

It would certainly be enough to arrange congressional hearings, subpoena half the Whitehouse staff and demand every document in sight.

What documents can they subpoena? All of Hillary Clintons documents are available. It is known what she traded and when. Without a witness who will say who did the bribing, or broker records showing the counterparty who was doing the bribing, nothing can be done. You seem to assume that every crime in existance can be prosecuted. They can't. Hillary Clinton can claim to be the victim of a very odd set of circumstances, which is effectively what she has done, and we have no way to put her in jail. That doesn't mean, however, that we have to believe her.

Speculating in derivatives is not something I am particularly interested in, having seen the losses of some people in this building who got caught in the Netscape short squeeze I'm not particularly inclined to rush into that market.

Netscape options were not available at the time that the shorts got hurt. Selling short is not a derivatives investment. You don't seem to have much of a deep knowledge of these markets -- at the very least you speak of them in a manner guaranteed to produce derision from professionals.

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Switching the tickets was the fraud. Taking bribes was also a crime.

Perry, Perry, you are off at it again. You are making allegations you cannot back up.

You are right. The human blood might have been from the blood bank, and the bullet might have been an accident. Its fucking unlikely, though.

You have hypothesised that there were multiple tickets but have no proof,

Correct. That is why Hillary Clinton and Bill Clinton aren't in jail. However, court proof and proof good enough for me aren't the same thing.

All you can point to is that a person with a net worth of several million

They had a considerably smaller net worth at the time. Most of the Clinton's net worth appears to have come from dirty political dealings over the years -- things like the Cattle Futures bribe laundry, Rose Law Firm overbillings or dealings with the Arkansas state government, etc. Not a shred of it can be proven in court, of course.

made a tidy profit speculating in cattle futures with the aid of some astute financial advice.

No one out there that I know of who does this for a living has ever seen anyone make that much money in short term speculation that way. George Soros, Paul Jones and all the rest would be envious of the performance she had in the markets. I don't know anyone who can articulate a theory of why the trades were made when they were that comes from "astute thinking". They are seemingly random. Thats probably because they WERE random.

If you are to make such serious allegations against anyone you should be prepared to back them up with something more than heresay and name calling.

As I've said, the evidence is compelling. It just isn't proof. Its just like the bullet, the blood, and the powder burns on your hands. No body and no missing person means no jail, but it doesn't mean that one has to go about thinking what one is looking at is perfectly innocent.

Just because it might have been possible to conceal a bribe does not mean that you have evidence that a bribe was given.

If this was Richard Nixon no one would be questioning what the money was. I see no other explanation for what the money would have been. The fact that her supposed advisor on these trades was the attorney for Arkansas's most important company, Tyson Chicken, is a bit on the suggestive side. Again, it is not proof, but proof isn't needed.

It is not unusual for lawyers to dabble in speculation. It is also not unusual for clever lawyers to have friends who can give good advice.

If you can find anyone on earth who can give that good a bunch of advice, please let me know. Several hedge fund managers I work with would probably pay me for their name. I don't know anyone who has EVER performed that well in the markets. Its nearly impossible.

Consider that anyone on cypherpunks might have made a tidy profit by realising that certain network ventures were likely to realize substantial profits for those dealing in the market. It dosen't take a genius to look at the rise Sun's stock price

Could you have made 100 to one on that in a couple of months, though? Sure, its easy to make 20% or 30% on your money a year. Its hard, but many people do it. Making 10,000% in a few weeks is impossible.

Oh come off it Perry, the Washington media do not need proof or even evidence to have a feeding fest.

They did for a while, but when it became obvious that the evidence was not going to lead to the court room, it ended. Besides, most of the media in Washington are registered Democrats. 89% of the Washington press corps voted for Clinton from what I've read. Your attitude seems to be "you can't prove anything so you must assume that they are innocent." My attitude is "I can't prove anything so they can't go to jail, but that doesn't mean I have to believe that they are innocent -- in fact, I'm an idiot if I believe that."

I think that given Perry's ad-hominem attacks and the fact that this has nothing to do with cryptography that its about time someone sent Perry a Perry-gram.

Cypherpunks no longer is a cryptography mailing list. Its a sewer. Perry