Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Humanities/2020 March 17

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March 17

Placement of stress in two Greek-derived names

These are "Theotes" and "Ilioneus".

"Theotes" was supposedly a herald in the Trojan War, but there is no entry in Autenrieth's Homeric Dictionary, nor in L&S or the LSJ. I suppose it might be ?Θεότης, which uncapitalized would mean 'divinity', in which case we'd stress it on the 1st syllable, but Greek Wiktionary lists 'Θεώτας' as a (modern) man's name, with the usual η > α shift, and gives this as a ref, though it's not checking out.

"Ilioneus", also from the Trojan War, is given alt pronunciations in an old Noah Webster dict, with stress on either the 2nd or the 3rd syllable, depending on whether the -eus is pronounced as two syllables or as one. Anyone know if the stress normally shifts like that when a word ends in -eus and the preceding syllable is light? I can't think of any examples offhand.

Per L&S, that's Ἰλιονεύς Īlioneus, but our article Ilioneus gives Ἰλιονῆος, which can't be the same "Ilioneus" as in Webster. Are we wrong, or are there two Greek names transcribed the same way in English? Greek WP, BTW, has "Ιλιονέας (Ιλιονεύς)". — kwami (talk) 06:53, 17 March 2020 (UTC)

The name occurs in the Iliad in the accusative Ἰλιονῆα and the genitive Ἰλιονῆος. These forms fit with the epic conjugation of a name with the nominative Ἰλιονεύς.  --Lambiam 12:47, 17 March 2020 (UTC)

Ah, I didn't know about the epic conjugation. I assume that Latin and thus English normally uses the prose one? — kwami (talk) 23:08, 17 March 2020 (UTC)

Are you asking about the accented syllable in Greek, or the stressed syllable in the English version of the name? The two are not the same By a curious convention, Ancient Greek names used in English are generally pronounced with the stress on the syllable where the accent would fall if the name were transliterated to Latin. Modern Greek names are however normally pronounced with the stress as in Greek.--rossb (talk) 19:21, 17 March 2020 (UTC)

@Ross Burgess: Sorry, I meant the stressed syllable in English/Latin. I'm wondering how to pronounce these in English: Théotes or Theótes, Ilíoneus, Ilióneus or Ilionéus. — kwami (talk) 23:08, 17 March 2020 (UTC)

A herald named Θοώτης (Thoōtēs) is mentioned in the Iliad, book XII. Some GBS hits have Theotes as a scanno.  --Lambiam 06:34, 18 March 2020 (UTC)

Also in Greek as a scanno: Θεώτης.  --Lambiam 06:54, 18 March 2020 (UTC)

The error may have been introduced in 1839 by Gustav Schwab: in German, in a Swedish translation. It has been perpetuated in later editions. The book has also been translated to Dutch as Griekse en Romeinse Sagen, presumably with the same error.  --Lambiam 07:10, 18 March 2020 (UTC)

Ah, thank you! I never would've figured that all out. And that does check out with Autenrieth: "Θοώτης : the herald of Menestheus". I should create a stub on Thootes.

What did you mean by "epic conjugation" above? Is that where e.g. in Latin you change Patroclus to Patrōclus so it fits iambic verse? I don't know how the equivalent works in Greek. — kwami (talk) 10:26, 18 March 2020 (UTC)

No. Different Ancient Greek dialects have different but usually closely related declensions and conjugations with often predictable correlations, while Homeric Greek often has more unrelated declensions and conjugations, called "Epic". Since we have a (proper) noun here, perhaps I should have said "Epic declension". For an example, see the tables over at Wiktionary for Ἰδομενεύς.  --Lambiam 13:56, 18 March 2020 (UTC)

Thank you, Lambian. I see our article third declension explains that nicely.

Since I've got you here, do you know whether the first 'a' is long in Ελάρα (also Ελάρη)? I'm assuming it should be Élara in English, and that agrees with an English dictionary from 1851, but I'm not finding more than passing mention at Perseus. — kwami (talk) 00:28, 19 March 2020 (UTC)

An alias for the lady is Ἀλέρα, in which the first two syllables both are short. (This confirms this is another name for the same mythological figure.) It seems reasonable to guess that the same prosodic pattern then holds for the Ἐλάρα variant.  --Lambiam 19:19, 23 March 2020 (UTC)

Thank you! That's certainly suggestive. I won't worry about that one any more, then. — kwami (talk) 01:12, 24 March 2020 (UTC)

How many contractors does Amazon have?

Amazon (company) lists the number of employees, but I couldn't put my finger on the number of contractors they use. I was looking for this number after hearing they are hiring 100,000 new people, and trying to get a sense of the scale of that expansion. The company seems to rely on contract labor a lot for delivery services, so counting both seems like a better measure of how much they are expanding to cope with increased demand. I'm thinking about contractors in lieu of employees that do work that's only for Amazon, like staffing firms or individual gig workers, rather than work they contract out to say, plumbers or the USPS. (Though there's not much info about the business-to-business contracts in the article either, and I suppose it would be of public interest to know how Amazon interfaces with the shipping industry in those ways, too.) -- Beland (talk) 18:28, 17 March 2020 (UTC)

As background observation, from my past career in Facilities Management I can say that in general, large factories, plants, depots, office complexes and similar sites often outsource to contracting firms to carry out all or most of the day-to-day work that supports the site's actual primary function. This can include (but is not limited to) Security, Mechanical and Electrical Installation, Maintenance and Inspection, Civil (Buildings and Grounds) IMI, Cleaning, Catering, and most of the Office Administration necessary to control all these. Altogether this can add up to a significant proportion of all those working on/in the site.

What and how much of such work is carried out by the contractors' employees rather than those directly employed by the host company depends on the host's current management practices. Fashions for preferring in-house to outsourced work or vice-versa seem (to me) to oscillate over approximately 10-year cycles, with the transitions sometimes seeming to be used to justify the employment of some of the hosts' in-house executives. {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} 90.197.27.39 (talk) 04:11, 18 March 2020 (UTC)

Fed cuts reserve requirement to zero, what can go wrong?

[1] is the idea of the reserve requirement to prevent cascading debt collapse like in 1929? To prevent hyperinflation? Both? What happens with it gone? Thanks. 2601:648:8202:96B0:386A:A40C:EBB1:ACC0 (talk) 19:03, 17 March 2020 (UTC)

See Leverage (finance) and Margin (finance) to start... AnonMoos (talk) 01:16, 18 March 2020 (UTC)

Right, I'm aware of those concepts, so eliminating the reserve requirement is like "whee! Free money!" unless I'm missing something. It is fractional reserve banking so if the fraction is zero, the bank can literally create money out of nowhere with no backing assets. I think the 2008 financial crisis might have worked a bit like that (because of the subprime mortgage bundles) but this is even more direct. 2601:648:8202:96B0:386A:A40C:EBB1:ACC0 (talk) 08:24, 18 March 2020 (UTC)

The 2008 financial crisis was a speculative bubble. Banks made lots of mortgage loans that realistically were unlikely to be repaid. Securitization of the loans provided an additional perverse incentive to do so because banks didn't keep these loans on their books; they were bundled into mortgage-backed securities and resold. --47.146.63.87 (talk) 19:34, 19 March 2020 (UTC)

@DOR (HK): you're our in-house economist; what's your take on this? Eliyohub (talk) 12:28, 18 March 2020 (UTC)

In a very simple model, a bank takes in deposits and lends out loans. It can lend because most depositors will leave their money in the bank for a long time, which means the bank doesn’t need the money to be on hand, to repay depositors.

However, there is a legal requirement that a portion of deposits – the share is set by the Fed – be retained, ostensibly to cover a sudden demand for withdrawals. In the real world, the Fed can tighten the money supply without raising interest rates directly by increasing the reserve requirements. In other words, by requiring banks to hold a larger share of their deposits in cash, it can reduce the amount available for lending. This has an added benefit of giving the banks additional ammunition with which to beat back a sudden run, or rapid demand for cash.

The reserve requirement isn’t related to cascading debt collapse (for banks, that would be the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation) or hyper-inflation. And, the reserve requirement is never “gone;” it just might be reduced to previous levels (or to a new low, even zero).

There is no “whee! Free money!” moment in fractional reserve banking. All money is either an asset or a liability, either my asset or yours, either my liability or yours. Whatever the banks lend out is just a temporary use of the deposits (remember folks, very simple model here … no commercial paper, financing bonds, or any of that) while they are not needed to repay customers. DOR (HK) (talk) 17:07, 18 March 2020 (UTC)

DOR (HK), thanks, but the link I posted starts with

"As announced on March 15, 2020, the Board reduced reserve requirement ratios to zero percent effective March 26, 2020. This action eliminated reserve requirements for all depository institutions."

That's the part I found surprising. Is there still some kind of requirement after the reduction to zero? If not, what happens now? I don't know any economics so it's possible I don't understand how loans work. But I thought that if I borrow $1000 from a bank, they literally create $1000 out of nowhere by updating a column in a database representing my bank balance, adding $1000 to it without making an offsetting subtraction to some other account; this is where new money comes from, and the reserve requirement is what limits the amount they can create that way. So "whee, free money" refers to that limit being gone. 2601:648:8202:96B0:386A:A40C:EBB1:ACC0 (talk) 17:24, 18 March 2020 (UTC)

The Fed has a regulation that says the banks (and other deposit-taking financial institutions) must hold a certain percentage of their deposits as cash, or in cash-like instantly-available instruments. That percentage is defined by the Fed, and changes periodically. Effective March 15, the required amount is 0%. That’s a policy move designed to increase liquidity, and will very likely be reversed at some point down the road.

When you borrow money from the bank, it debits its general funds, and credits your account. If you’re buying a car, then the next day you transfer the money (write a check) to the seller, and when the transaction is completed (the check clears, for example), your account is debited (reduced) and the seller’s is credited (increased). The original money comes from the bank’s general funds, which include all deposits and other sources of capital, such as borrowing from the Fed or issuing notes on the bond market. In each case, one account is credited and another is debited. No one is creating money out of nothing. Rather, they are exercising their legal right to subtract from one account and credit another. Since all of this is happening inside a computer, it may appear to be magic, but it isn’t even economics: it’s actually just accounting.

In my book, “whee, free money!” means no one ever has to pay it back. That is clearly not the case, so TANSTAAFL. DOR (HK) (talk) 14:41, 19 March 2020 (UTC)

And, for a really neat graph showing financial institutions' borrowing from the Fed, and the real problem of 2007-09, see [2]. DOR (HK) (talk) 14:41, 19 March 2020 (UTC)

I'm sure your understanding is better than mine, and therefore it's likely that I'm confused on a point that I thought was fundamental. The amount of money in the economy keeps growing, which means new money has to be added to the system all the time. Where does it come from? If every loan (issued as a credit to the borrower's account) is offset by a debit against the bank's general funds, the total amount of money stays constant. I thought it didn't work that way, but rather, in fractional reserve banking, the credit is created without a corresponding debit, i.e. the total amount of money increases, that is where money supply growth comes from; and the reserve requirement is what kept the system from being completely unstable. That's why eliminating the reserve requirement surprised me so much. I guess I should read the fractional reserve banking article again since I probably misunderstood it. That graph (showing a huge spike at 2008 crisis) is interesting and if I understand it correctly, the Fed is doing something similar now. Thanks. 2601:648:8202:96B0:386A:A40C:EBB1:ACC0 (talk) 18:47, 19 March 2020 (UTC)

Uhh, so I see you're a professional economist, but it's my understanding that in a fractional-reserve system, commercial banks do create money, and money creation seems to agree. --47.146.63.87 (talk) 19:22, 19 March 2020 (UTC)

I get the feeling that the issue of how banks, deposits and money creation works is one of those areas where there is dispute between economists including the more main stream views and more fringe ones on how things should be views. The definition of money and credit etc also come into play. See e.g. [3], [4], [5], [6], [7], [8], [9], [10], [11], [12] or a careful read of our articles.

But I wonder if it may help to back up a bit in how fractional reserve banking can work. I'm not sure if this is a problem here, but I think this may be a common area of misunderstanding. (Well maybe also some disagreement among economists.) My incorrect understanding was that if I deposited $10,000 (in a simple demand deposit) the bank can then go around and loan $100,000 to someone else and this is how they "create money".

But as our article and a bunch of the sources explains, you don't need this for money creation. If I deposit $10,000, the bank may only loan out up to $10,000 depending on the reserve requirements and other things. However maybe person A who receives the $10,000 loan then pays me or someone else for some service. I now put the money into the bank. And the bank now has $20,000 starting from my one $10,000 deposit. They can now loan out another $10,000 and so on. The restrictions on them doing this come in various forms, reserve requirements are not generally considered that important nowadays.

Of course me (or whoever) who deposited the money may want it back at any time, and that's where it can fall apart. Whoever borrowed the money has agreed to pay it back either on demand or over a certain period of time. The second doesn't help when you need the money now. And in either case the person may not be able to pay it back nor have assets the bank can take over to make up for it. But if we go back to the earlier issue, the bank actually has $20000 or whatever of deposits.

Nil Einne (talk) 14:37, 20 March 2020 (UTC)

From reserve requirement: Canada, the UK, New Zealand, Australia, Sweden and Hong Kong have no reserve requirements. As that article kind of says, reserve requirements are largely viewed today as antiquated. --47.146.63.87 (talk) 19:22, 19 March 2020 (UTC)

I think in the 1920s the US had no reserve requirement, and that resulted in massive bank runs after the 1929 crash causing insolvency everywhere. So the requirement was imposed around then. If it's antiquated now, something else must have taken its place, and I see the reserve requirement says

On the contrary, banks are constrained by capital requirements, which are arguably more important than reserve requirements even in countries that have reserve requirements.

So maybe that is the answer. I'll look at the capital requirement article and try to understand it. 2601:648:8202:96B0:386A:A40C:EBB1:ACC0 (talk) 20:09, 19 March 2020 (UTC)

As we say in fractional reserve banking, banks lend out more than their deposit base. That is, they reserve only a fraction of the base. If you want to use the derisive term “free money,” go right ahead. But, as the entire political system – at least, the parts between the fascists and communists – now understands, holding the money supply constant is an excellent way to wreck an economy. That’s why the gold standard had to go, and the Bretton Woods monetary system as well, Even Joseph Schumpeter, one of the gurus of the credit theory of money, recognized that there is absolutely no substitute for growing in the money supply, if one is seeking growth in the overall economy.

Our various articles on the subject point out that with a (theoretical) 10% reserve requirement, the maximum one bank can lend on a $100,000 deposit is $90,000. Where “it can fall apart” is that wildly unlikely but oh-so-juicy scenario where everyone wants their deposits back at the same time. Bottom line: it isn’t worth worrying about ever since the FDIC was established back in 1933.

What happens after that is really outside the casual understanding of the subject, and should probably be discussed with a panel of Nobel Prize laureates and a large chalkboard. They won’t agree, but it will be much more useful than 150-word posts. DOR (HK) (talk) 13:39, 21 March 2020 (UTC)