Philip M Halperin
What's New
15th May 2004 Speaking of comic relief, I added another piece to the Scribblings - section "Music to the Risk Manager's Ear, or, Stupid Comments We've All Heard Before". I hope the Risk Manager practitioners might find it mildly amusing.
15th March 2004 6th January 2003 11th November 2001 18th November 1999 28th August 1999 31st May 1999
6th March 1999
24th January 1999 17th January 1999 Financial Disasters Watch - Look and feel of the board now matches the rest of the website. The first spamming message was "tacked" onto our board. I guess it is a sign that we have arrived. Actually, there have been some nice postings as well, with one contributor scooping the news sources by nearly a week. 29th December 1998 23rd December 1998 Financial Disasters Watch - This is the place for our little community to tell each other about layoffs, downsizing, rumours of losses, problems ahead, or any other news and gossip. 19th November 1998 Scribblings - Added a new fable, "The Flagpole". 18th October 1998
Bookshelf
- New review: MacKays venerable Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds. 11th October 1998 16th September 1998
CV - Added downloadable text version of CV. Revised web-based CV. Added index page, improved navigation in skills set. 23rd August 1998 8th August 1998 1st August 1998 18th July 1998 14th July 1998--After reading a bit about philosophy of how these
things work, I came upon a visual conceit --- the application of
visual metaphor to design of look-'n-feel. I have started to
revise the scribblings section accordingly, searching out the net
for writing paper metaphor. I believe this works a bit better
from a user standpoint.
The big news is that the good folks at Operational Risk Magazine decided to award us the 'Best Framework for Operational Risk at a Bank Based in an Emerging Market' Award 2004. So my team finally won something, and more interestingly, this is the first time any Russian bank won anything on a domain larger than 'Best in Russia.' Some genius at my Moscow bank decided to swap all mobiles, so I have had to update every page that had my old mobile. I am missing calls, and having the normal problems with Russian inter-connectivity, and now I get the chance to hand-code what should be unneccessary changes. I have also cleaned some of the silly advertising from the guestbook file, but I decided to leave in the Nigerian scam artist for comic relief.
Just a minor update on this page. My private life has changed drastically with my June marriage to the former Polina Davidovna Kramer, now Polina Halperina. For the first time in many years, I feel complete and happy. Also I have put on some weight!
I again updated my CV to reflect changes in London including my speaker status at Risk/Waters conference. I have updated the Russia links, cleaning up a little bit.
After a long hiatus I have finally found enough time to do something of an update on this page. After three+ years of living in Russia and establishing Risk Management at Alfa Bank, it seemed already time to update my CV to reflect my evolution from trading house Risk Manager to staid banking Risk Manager-Director status. Concommitant to that it seemed fitting that I eliminate the programs page --- they are all pretty old by now, and much better programs than mine are available as freeware. I have updated the main links page and done updated the Russia links, pruning, trimming, and adding new stuff as well.
Finally, I have obtained my British Passport (Rule, Britannia!) to supplement my US passport. I have been spending increasing amounts of time in Moscow again, and of course it is welcome to finally be able to go through the fast queue at Heathrow. I have updated my Contact Data and of course the CV to reflect my proud dual citizen status. As is necessary from time to time, I have updated the main links page. Regrettably, the prevalence of spam and difficulty of maintenance has forced me to take down the discussion board. I added some new photos showing me very banker-ly indeed, from Moscow.
I find myself back in London more, and in a new flat. Finally, I have obtained Permanent Leave to Remain in the UK (no more work permits required, thank you Home Office!). I have started an occasional derivatives and risk management advice column, co-authored with Con Keating, entitled Worldly Wisdom in the magazine Futures and OTC world. The columns that have been published are available in the Scribblings page (actually I added a new page for publications). I have updated my Contact Data and of course the CV to reflect my status and publications and such. 
Scribblings Publications - Adobe pdf files of my magazine column.
It has been a very busy summer for me, culminating with a new job, based in London and Moscow.
On the back of that, plus additional demands from my editors, there has not been time to put up much of value on the website. So this is basically a maintenance release, wherein I cleaned up the software on the programs page, and updated my CV to reflect my new position, Director of Risk Management for Alfa-Bank in Russia and in London. With the commuting lifestyle I now have, I also added a new page of Contact Data to help people stay in touch.
Mostly work on links. In the wake of learning some Russian, I have added a page of Russia links including guides to Cyrillicisation, web media, lifestyles, and mechanical translation. I have added some interesting links on the main links page including an interesting set of calculators and Russian/English translator and checked all for viability. The programs have also been updated, and I added some new photos Russia links - Links to guides to Cyrillicisation, fonts, web media, lifestyles, mechanical translation.
Various concerns in personal life (moving flats) have taken precedence over keeping this page updated (sorry, it happens). Have updated CV Contact Data as a result. The programs have also been updated, and I cleared all of the spam out of the message board. Let's see if it can get going again, now that those lowlifes have been removed.
Primarily a continuation of formatting. I have installed frames to allow easy navigation, a no-frames path for the frames-impaired, and the option of reverting to no-frames so that folks can continue to bookmark. Have improved the formatting on the Scribblings section, added splash page gateway there.
Bookshelf - Review of Kindleberger's "Manias, Panics, and Crashes"
Primarily a technical upgrade, the outcome of learning some HTML 4. Uniformity of links and link styles, implemented some Java Script on home page, tunnel entrance with splash pages, using meta refresh and spacer gifs. Installed frames for the frames-enabled, and a breakout mechanism for the frames-impaired. Finally, made all background and link colours web-friendly for limited palette displays.
Programs - I have updated the options calculators, Lmecalc and Lmecalc2 to expire on 1st March 99
Links - With the advent of the holiday jollity, I added a lovely e-greeting-card link.
Thanks to the kind research done by Ursula and Andrew Zemek, I now have discovered one of the four hometowns of my grandparents, Lubtch, in Belarus. It seemed appropriate to put it in the Photo Album . Thank you so much, Ursula and Andrew...
Major new addition this month is a discussion board - for now, I'll call it "Financial Disaster Watch". Also added some new articles and links.
Scribblings - New article, "Trading Signature Analysis - Trader Prototypes".
Links - With the Baghdad bombing and Clinton resignations, I was motivated to find some fast news sources, as well as expand cartography links greatly.
Programs - I have updated the options calculators, Lmecalc and Lmecalc2 to expire on 1st February 99
Minor revisions only. Cleaned up the links a bit: the guest book now works from all chapters, although the thank-you page still generates a spurious error I cannot track down. Also changed mailto: to add subject line, to make e-mailing simpler. Some new articles and links. Major website activity has been publication: Have manually submitted to the major search engines, and have thus far only been picked up by Alta-Vista and AOL. Yahoo seems to have picked up an old CV for some reason, which I redirect to homepage.
Links - Added some links: Numa Web (which was kindly reciprocated), a Translator link, others.
Minor revisions only. Extended the paper metaphor to the Programs page, added a photo, and my daughter gave me the Latin for the Hannibal quote on the homepage. Only real addition is a new review in the Bookshelf
Photos - Added a new photo of kids from their visit to London this summer, courtesy of my daughter.
Programs - Cleaned up the page, removed dancing icons, obnoxious midi, marquee scrolling, it's now a tolerable experience.
The major addition for this month is a whole new section --- the Bookshelf. Many of the Risk Management websites have the old standards reviewed. It seems to me that what is called for is a fresh approach, including books accessible to the layman. In particular, it seems appropriate for me to emphasise the wealth of literature on previous financial crises, and certainly topical. The visual metaphor in design is extended here, using some fairly cool webpaper that works well for books and book reviews. I have also re-worked the Programs section somewhat. The major initial appearance change is in orthography. While reading Bryson's "Mother Tongue", I found to my horror that here in England they use the spelling "Programs" rather than "Programmes" --- a usage issue I confirmed in Burchfield's excellent Oxford Dictionary of Modern English usage. So I had to correct my immigrant over-compensation.
Programs - With the resolution of copyright issues (I have full intellectual property rights), I can take a look at cleaning up the programs page. The first step is installing updated copyright titles in the programs
What little work I have done this past month has gone to cleanup, formatting, updating, and the like. I believe that the visual presentation of the reorganised CV pages works a bit better, and the photo-album metaphor is also visually cleaner. In addition, revised the t.o.c. for CV and Scribblings (separated humour from serious in the latter; this was unnecessary in the CV which most folks find quite humorous anyway). The Guestbook page is also cleaner, although I have not yet been able to solve the curious problem reported to me of ghost errors when the guestbook is entered from within a LAN firewall.
Programmes - Replaced old time-trapped programmes with updated versions that will expire 1st December 1998.
Links - Believe it or not, the one link I had neglected to clean up on the links page was to my own CV. Guess the cobbler's sons went barefoot again. Well, it works now.
Photos - Added a photo of self and kids generously sent by a friend. Thanks, David.
Scribblings - New Article Added - The VAR Question. New Fable Added - The Short Put.
Links - Cleaned up old links, added risk managment comix link. Waldemar Puszkarz added this site to his Professional's Page on Waldemar's List. Site traffic has picked up fivefold.
Scribblings - New Articles Added - Trading Signature War Story and Devil's Dictionary for Risk Managers
Scribblings - Revised the Generalised Butterfly, added notes
Scribblings - New Articles Added - The Balloonist (a Fable)
Links - Added veritable cornucopia of practicum links
Scribblings - New Articles Added - I have learned after much trial
and error how to produce graphs and get them into web-ready form.
The first application of this is an easy (some might say facile)
article on closing the butterfly and ratio spreading. Acting on
what I feel to be well-considered advice, I am trying to pitch
the articles a bit more toward the general practitioner.
Photos - Another trip to the scanner. Added Three Generations
- Getting to be a bit of a family album now.
Programmes - Almost Ready--Some Actually Work. The major result is
that I now can get the programmes to download and run. Just for
fun (and to try out various HTML techniques), I made this page
into everything I dislike about so many web pages. Dancing
rubbish, stupid tunes, different colors, cutesy icons, pointless
emphasis, you name it, it's there (except Java script). Once
everything is up and running well, this page will lose its
mindlessness.
Links - Useful New Links
Added - I have put in some idiosyncratic links to reference
shelves, literary and artistic, and added a web-search link or
two for those that I think are overlooked. The Risk Management
section has been expanded as well, with more practitioner links.
