We present an alternating augmented Lagrangian method for convex optimization
problems where the cost function is the sum of two terms, one that is separable
in the variable blocks, and a second that is separable in the difference
between consecutive variable blocks. Examples of such problems include Fused
Lasso estimation, total variation denoising, and multi-period portfolio
optimization with transaction costs. In each iteration of our method, the first
step involves separately optimizing over each variable block, which can be
carried out in parallel.