No one likes Windows 8, people are saying it's even worse than Vista, and the head of the Windows division at MS has been sacked. What went wrong?
For my money, Win8 was a last, desperate throw of the dice. Microsoft decided it had to win the mobile space, and wagered the desktop as its stake. MS famously understands the value of developers, and knew that there just weren't enough people developing for Windows phone, so voilà! it was going to forcibly convert all its desktop developers into becoming mobile developers by foisting a unified GUI onto them. The initial release of the new Visual Studio was the big clue for this: free app development was going to be tied to the Metro interface - a decision they quickly had to revise, but it revealed the thinking behind their actions.
And now it looks like they've lost the bet. Enterprises are already allowing people to choose to bring their own devices to work. Now that a substantial workforce re-education appears to be necessary for Metro-or-whatever-it's-called-now, they may decide to go with Macs instead. Or maybe, just maybe, 2013 will be the year of Linux on the desktop?
Tuesday 20 November 2012
Thursday 8 November 2012
Recipes: Sweet and Sour Pork, and Egg Fried Rice
Two nicely complementary recipes, courtesy of the Christian Science Monitor. Homemade sweet-and-sour pork and Five secrets to fabulous fried rice.
For those unwilling to follow the links, the key to getting rice to fry properly without turning into a mushy mess is to allow it to cool after boiling it and, if you can afford the extra time, to also allow the outside of the grains to dry. An hour or so should be about right.
I find that it can also be good to toast the rice in a dry frying pan for a minute or so before boiling it; that makes it a little more flavoursome and helps it maintain its integrity after boiling.
For those unwilling to follow the links, the key to getting rice to fry properly without turning into a mushy mess is to allow it to cool after boiling it and, if you can afford the extra time, to also allow the outside of the grains to dry. An hour or so should be about right.
I find that it can also be good to toast the rice in a dry frying pan for a minute or so before boiling it; that makes it a little more flavoursome and helps it maintain its integrity after boiling.
Monday 10 September 2012
Timeo Danaos, et insulas vendentes
Greece Ready To Start Selling Its Islands. Makes the very good point that no international investors will touch these with a bargepole, because you simply can't trust the Greek government to honour the sale. The author mentions the possibility of forcible renationalisation without compensation, but to my mind more likely is a sudden, large, escalation in land and dwelling taxes — and perhaps specific to the islands in question.
Sunday 9 September 2012
Content lock-in
What does Bruce Willis have in common with the new generation of Kindle book readers from Amazon? They both illustrate the dangers of content-based lock-in.
Willis is publicly complaining, and considering suing Apple, because he can't leave his (apparently huge) collection of iTunes music to his daughters in his will. His "ownership" of the tunes (really just a license to play them) will die with him, and when that happens his account will simply be deleted, and his investment of presumably substantial amounts of money will disappear.
The new Kindles show an even more insidious approach (Jeff Bezos is a sharp businessman). The earliest Kindle didn't have adverts at all. The next generation contained a couple of price points, and at the lowest price point the Kindle was subsidised by displaying adverts alongside text, or while books were opening. But you could avoid the advert experience, even after buying your Kindle, by simply paying the difference between the subsidised price and the next price up.
And all the while, you were buying content. More and more content.
With the latest generation of Kindles, apparently, all models at all price points now display adverts. And there's no way to turn them off. But you aren't going to just dump your Kindle are you, because of all those books you've bought that are only readable on the proprietary Kindle readers... Oops!
Willis is publicly complaining, and considering suing Apple, because he can't leave his (apparently huge) collection of iTunes music to his daughters in his will. His "ownership" of the tunes (really just a license to play them) will die with him, and when that happens his account will simply be deleted, and his investment of presumably substantial amounts of money will disappear.
The new Kindles show an even more insidious approach (Jeff Bezos is a sharp businessman). The earliest Kindle didn't have adverts at all. The next generation contained a couple of price points, and at the lowest price point the Kindle was subsidised by displaying adverts alongside text, or while books were opening. But you could avoid the advert experience, even after buying your Kindle, by simply paying the difference between the subsidised price and the next price up.
And all the while, you were buying content. More and more content.
With the latest generation of Kindles, apparently, all models at all price points now display adverts. And there's no way to turn them off. But you aren't going to just dump your Kindle are you, because of all those books you've bought that are only readable on the proprietary Kindle readers... Oops!
Wednesday 15 August 2012
The debt ratchet explained
The predicament that the so-called "advanced" economies now find themselves in — i.e., terminal debt strangulation — can be easily understood by two considerations.
The first is generally referred to as "Parkinson's Second Law": expenditure rises to meet income.
The second comes from asking, what happens if part of that consumption is financed by debt? Say our income doubles one year because we get a new job, and each subsequent year we finance a little extra consumption by taking out loans, rather than by simply spending the cash on goods.
Initially, this seems to work quite well, we can afford a lot more goods each year, much more than if we simply paid extra cash for them. But over time the debt rises, and it rises until we can just afford to pay the interest on it, in addition to our other involuntary expenses. At that point, further non-obligatory consumption stops.
Now let's suppose, the applicable interest rate declines by one percent. Suddenly we have a little more money available at the end of the year. Plugging that into our earlier loop, we buy some more goods using more debt finance, until we again can only just pay the interest.
This is exactly what happened in the last few years, as interest rates declined over a couple of decades right across the world, and governments responded by taking out fresh debt. I don't know how many times, in this period, that I read articles in the financial press talking about the national debt and concluding that it wasn't the absolute size of the debt that mattered, but the size of the interest payments, and making the observation that as interest rates seemed to be continuously declining, things looked OK, at least for a while
The problem is, if each new interest rate decline encourages you to take out even more debt, what happens when interest rates finally start to creep up again, as they inevitably must? In my lifetime, the UK bank rate has varied from 2% up to 17%, and is now back down at 0.5%. With interest rates so low, even a tiny increase will double or triple your payments. And if you've already allowed your repayments to rise until you can only just afford them, then you are bankrupted by the first rise.
That's where Europe is now, with rates being artificially held down by a quantitative easing that is temporarily sterilised by the deflationary environment. It won't last.
The first is generally referred to as "Parkinson's Second Law": expenditure rises to meet income.
The second comes from asking, what happens if part of that consumption is financed by debt? Say our income doubles one year because we get a new job, and each subsequent year we finance a little extra consumption by taking out loans, rather than by simply spending the cash on goods.
Initially, this seems to work quite well, we can afford a lot more goods each year, much more than if we simply paid extra cash for them. But over time the debt rises, and it rises until we can just afford to pay the interest on it, in addition to our other involuntary expenses. At that point, further non-obligatory consumption stops.
Now let's suppose, the applicable interest rate declines by one percent. Suddenly we have a little more money available at the end of the year. Plugging that into our earlier loop, we buy some more goods using more debt finance, until we again can only just pay the interest.
This is exactly what happened in the last few years, as interest rates declined over a couple of decades right across the world, and governments responded by taking out fresh debt. I don't know how many times, in this period, that I read articles in the financial press talking about the national debt and concluding that it wasn't the absolute size of the debt that mattered, but the size of the interest payments, and making the observation that as interest rates seemed to be continuously declining, things looked OK, at least for a while
The problem is, if each new interest rate decline encourages you to take out even more debt, what happens when interest rates finally start to creep up again, as they inevitably must? In my lifetime, the UK bank rate has varied from 2% up to 17%, and is now back down at 0.5%. With interest rates so low, even a tiny increase will double or triple your payments. And if you've already allowed your repayments to rise until you can only just afford them, then you are bankrupted by the first rise.
That's where Europe is now, with rates being artificially held down by a quantitative easing that is temporarily sterilised by the deflationary environment. It won't last.
Thursday 9 August 2012
Ged's guide to ... human cloning
I've never understood the general antipathy to human cloning. Your clone is just your twin, albeit one whose birth is separated from yours by an unusually long time. I guess there's an air of sci-fi about it, redolent with the promise of monsters and mutants, or maybe people are reacting to an unspoken feeling that the clone may be used as an organ supply for the original, that his or her person-hood may not be respected.
However that may be, I've finally worked out how we can do human cloning easily and cheaply, if not altogether ethically. Perhaps I might go a little further on that last point: the process involves ... steps ... that might be acceptable to the Chinese gerontocracy, or possibly if one were the dictator of North Korea, or one of the late, unlamented dictators in the Middle East, but are unlikely to go down well in even moderately democratic societies. Still, it's the idea that counts, and I'm fairly bursting with how clever this one is.
Note that this is not a technical how-to on getting a clone going. It still requires you to be able to produce a single human clone. What it does do is sidestep the problems currently resulting from that.
The current problem with cloning is that it is likely to produce clones with developmental abnormalities, as with the example of Dolly the sheep. However, if you can tolerate that then my method requires only two more things. First, that the abnormalities are limited to developmental ones, i.e. that they don't affect the germ line. Second, that the individual can at least reach the age of sexual maturity. [With those clues, you may now wish to guess for yourself how it works.]
Step 1. From a human male, acquire a cell suitable for whatever method of cloning you select. Remove that cell's Y chromosome.
Step 2. From the same male, acquire another such cell. Remove that cell's X chromosome and put it in the first cell.
Step 3. You now have a female version of the original male cell. [Well done! People will make very bad monster movies about you. Incidentally, now would be a good time to start choosing an island where you will spend the rest of your unnaturally long life hiding from the law.] Grow your first clone from this cell.
Step 4. Having raised your female clone to sexual maturity, breed her with the original donor. [Note, better start the whole process before the male is too old.]
Step 5. Profit! Time to buy that island and start raising a clone army / organ reservoir.
The elegance of this approach is that no matter what genetic recombination takes place as a result of sexual reproduction, the offspring will still be clones of the original, since both male and female sourced chromosomes have the same gene variants in the same places! Also, since all reproduction from now on is completely normal, developmental anomalies arising purely from the use of cloning technology should not occur. The only thing you have to worry about now is genetic drift arising from copy errors, and I would guess you have tens of generations before that becomes important.
Update
Tsk, not as clever as I thought. Because human gametes only contain one set of chromosomes, and because each chromosome is randomly selected from the maternal and paternal versions, it's not possible to guarantee that the offspring get the full complement of chromosomes from the original donor — for any given chromosome, an individual offspring might get two copies of the donor's paternal version for example, or two copies of the maternal version... The usual inbreeding rules will still apply, darnit!
However that may be, I've finally worked out how we can do human cloning easily and cheaply, if not altogether ethically. Perhaps I might go a little further on that last point: the process involves ... steps ... that might be acceptable to the Chinese gerontocracy, or possibly if one were the dictator of North Korea, or one of the late, unlamented dictators in the Middle East, but are unlikely to go down well in even moderately democratic societies. Still, it's the idea that counts, and I'm fairly bursting with how clever this one is.
Note that this is not a technical how-to on getting a clone going. It still requires you to be able to produce a single human clone. What it does do is sidestep the problems currently resulting from that.
The current problem with cloning is that it is likely to produce clones with developmental abnormalities, as with the example of Dolly the sheep. However, if you can tolerate that then my method requires only two more things. First, that the abnormalities are limited to developmental ones, i.e. that they don't affect the germ line. Second, that the individual can at least reach the age of sexual maturity. [With those clues, you may now wish to guess for yourself how it works.]
Step 1. From a human male, acquire a cell suitable for whatever method of cloning you select. Remove that cell's Y chromosome.
Step 2. From the same male, acquire another such cell. Remove that cell's X chromosome and put it in the first cell.
Step 3. You now have a female version of the original male cell. [Well done! People will make very bad monster movies about you. Incidentally, now would be a good time to start choosing an island where you will spend the rest of your unnaturally long life hiding from the law.] Grow your first clone from this cell.
Step 4. Having raised your female clone to sexual maturity, breed her with the original donor. [Note, better start the whole process before the male is too old.]
Step 5. Profit! Time to buy that island and start raising a clone army / organ reservoir.
The elegance of this approach is that no matter what genetic recombination takes place as a result of sexual reproduction, the offspring will still be clones of the original, since both male and female sourced chromosomes have the same gene variants in the same places! Also, since all reproduction from now on is completely normal, developmental anomalies arising purely from the use of cloning technology should not occur. The only thing you have to worry about now is genetic drift arising from copy errors, and I would guess you have tens of generations before that becomes important.
Update
Tsk, not as clever as I thought. Because human gametes only contain one set of chromosomes, and because each chromosome is randomly selected from the maternal and paternal versions, it's not possible to guarantee that the offspring get the full complement of chromosomes from the original donor — for any given chromosome, an individual offspring might get two copies of the donor's paternal version for example, or two copies of the maternal version... The usual inbreeding rules will still apply, darnit!
Saturday 4 August 2012
Best sentence read today
Moreover, we know of examples where natural selection has caused drastic decreases in organismal complexity – for example, canine venereal sarcoma, which today is an infectious cancer, but was once a dog.Gregory Cochran letting loose at West Hunter. One could quibble, but it's such an amusing sentence that I'm content not to.
Thursday 26 July 2012
Lazy writing at nature.com
Did anyone review the second sentence below (in the write-up of an article published in Nature) before clicking the button, just to see if it made any sense? —
I am sure that the writer knows perfectly well what she means, but she clearly hasn't written what she knows.
Self-destructive behaviour is common among the sterile worker castes of eusocial insects such as termites and honeybees. The workers forego reproduction, so they are free to evolve altruistic behaviours that benefit the colony as a whole rather than themselves as individuals.
I am sure that the writer knows perfectly well what she means, but she clearly hasn't written what she knows.
Monday 2 July 2012
Upgrading Android
Just about every article on Android that I've read in the past year and a bit has lamented its fragmentation: partly it's the simple the proliferation of models, with different screen sizes, aspect ratios, availability of functionality such as Bluetooth etc., but mostly it's the sheer number of devices running old versions of the OS that's causing the distress.
The good folk at Google clearly want as many people to be using recent versions of Android as possible — they are releasing minor revisions on a three monthly basis and major ones every year or so. Coming to this from the PC industry (in the most general sense), they seem to think of the devices the way any tech guy thinks of his own PC: buy the best processor available, the best power supply and the best case; make sure the board can take twice as much RAM as you can currently afford because you'll be adding the other half in a year or two as a mid-life kicker; install the latest version of your chosen operating system and continuously update it with patches as they are issued, and with major revisions and new versions fairly soon after they become available.
Manufacturers, just as clearly, aren't playing ball. There are two reasons, and neither of them is going to go away.
The first reason is that manufacturers aren't designing their phones with OS upgradeability in mind, nor are they much interested in supplying OS upgrades to older devices, for the obvious if short sighted reason that each OS update installed represents the delayed and therefore possibly lost sale of a new device. It's a mentality common to manufacturers of consumer goods worldwide (you'll know it as built-in obsolescence or some variation of the term) and it's diametrically opposed to the one I'm crediting to Google.
-----------------
Google remember sell adverts, not mobile phones.
Google are used to the "plasticity" of the PC -- new software makes your PC new again, as long as it's got good enough hardware to run the new software.
The good folk at Google clearly want as many people to be using recent versions of Android as possible — they are releasing minor revisions on a three monthly basis and major ones every year or so. Coming to this from the PC industry (in the most general sense), they seem to think of the devices the way any tech guy thinks of his own PC: buy the best processor available, the best power supply and the best case; make sure the board can take twice as much RAM as you can currently afford because you'll be adding the other half in a year or two as a mid-life kicker; install the latest version of your chosen operating system and continuously update it with patches as they are issued, and with major revisions and new versions fairly soon after they become available.
Manufacturers, just as clearly, aren't playing ball. There are two reasons, and neither of them is going to go away.
The first reason is that manufacturers aren't designing their phones with OS upgradeability in mind, nor are they much interested in supplying OS upgrades to older devices, for the obvious if short sighted reason that each OS update installed represents the delayed and therefore possibly lost sale of a new device. It's a mentality common to manufacturers of consumer goods worldwide (you'll know it as built-in obsolescence or some variation of the term) and it's diametrically opposed to the one I'm crediting to Google.
-----------------
Google remember sell adverts, not mobile phones.
Google are used to the "plasticity" of the PC -- new software makes your PC new again, as long as it's got good enough hardware to run the new software.
The point of a rocking chair
One of those eureka moments when you suddenly realise that you've been looking at something in precisely the wrong way for the whole of your life.
I can dimly remember that when I was small one of my elderly relatives had a rocking chair, a basic thing with wooden rockers and wooden arms, and an upholstered seat and back. Naturally, as soon as I arrived I used to run to the chair, sit down and start rocking for dear life.
Two things puzzled me then. One was that a rocking chair was clearly meant for strenuous activity, and I didn't associate Auntie Nellie or Grandma with that. The other was that when they sat in the chair they didn't use it the way I thought they should — that is, they didn't rock! They just sat there, patiently knitting and talking to my mother, clearly wasting the marvellous opportunity offered by the chair. They were, I concluded, "spoiled rotten" (a phrase that I heard often in the conversations they were having with my mother) by the sheer availability of the chair.
Nowadays as I get older and am rather on the — to put it delicately, and you better had — heavy side I can find getting up from the (ludicrously) low furniture that people have today rather difficult. At my heaviest I had to slide forward in the seat, rest a hand on the arm of the settee (and God forbid that the settee didn't even have arms), and pushing myself forward with the hand, roll on to my feet and immediately try to stand up from the resulting semi-crouching position before I rolled too far and tumbled forwards, with the option of pivoting sideways and letting my weight rest temporarily on the arm in contact with the settee if something did in fact go wrong.
There. Have you guessed yet? I tried to hide it with the use of the word "roll", but you could as easily have used the word "rock" there, and of course I'd simply rediscovered the natural principle of rotating forwards to more easily power upwards, only with everything taken to absurd lengths to cope with my weight.
The rocking chair is the old-tech (and completely ingenious) solution to the common problem of decreased mobility with age. They tended to be rather high affairs, which is a good thing for older people (perhaps I should parse today's taste for low-slung living-room furniture according to signalling theory, and conclude that it's driven by our society's obsession with youth), and when you need to get up you can gently push yourself slightly forward in the seat, which will have the effect of making it rotate forward a little without you having to actually force a rocking motion out of it, and then as you lean forward to stand up it will rotate forward slightly more, delivering you hopefully reasonably safely to your feet.
The technique is similar for sitting down. Here you need to be careful when positioning your hands so that you can press them downward to take your weight without initiating a violent movement of the chair either forwards or backwards. Care is also necessary with the initial aim of your behind: don't land either so far forward in the seat that the chair rocks forwards as you sit, potentially depositing you in a heap on the floor, or so far back that you fall backwards into the chair and then continue to roll, causing a nasty jar to the lower back (and conceivably, if you were very heavy, even rolling the centre of gravity beyond the rear end of the rockers and breaking your neck, though I'm not sure how possible that really is). Then, when you're down and still, you can gently shuffle backwards in the chair until you're peachy.
After a little bit of practice you do get used to sitting down in and getting up from a rocking chair, you just need to pay attention when you do it.
And so granny was right. The point of a rocking chair is to sit, quietly and safely, enjoying whatever it is you are doing, and to rock precisely twice per sitting: once when you sit down, and once again when you get up.
I can dimly remember that when I was small one of my elderly relatives had a rocking chair, a basic thing with wooden rockers and wooden arms, and an upholstered seat and back. Naturally, as soon as I arrived I used to run to the chair, sit down and start rocking for dear life.
Two things puzzled me then. One was that a rocking chair was clearly meant for strenuous activity, and I didn't associate Auntie Nellie or Grandma with that. The other was that when they sat in the chair they didn't use it the way I thought they should — that is, they didn't rock! They just sat there, patiently knitting and talking to my mother, clearly wasting the marvellous opportunity offered by the chair. They were, I concluded, "spoiled rotten" (a phrase that I heard often in the conversations they were having with my mother) by the sheer availability of the chair.
Nowadays as I get older and am rather on the — to put it delicately, and you better had — heavy side I can find getting up from the (ludicrously) low furniture that people have today rather difficult. At my heaviest I had to slide forward in the seat, rest a hand on the arm of the settee (and God forbid that the settee didn't even have arms), and pushing myself forward with the hand, roll on to my feet and immediately try to stand up from the resulting semi-crouching position before I rolled too far and tumbled forwards, with the option of pivoting sideways and letting my weight rest temporarily on the arm in contact with the settee if something did in fact go wrong.
There. Have you guessed yet? I tried to hide it with the use of the word "roll", but you could as easily have used the word "rock" there, and of course I'd simply rediscovered the natural principle of rotating forwards to more easily power upwards, only with everything taken to absurd lengths to cope with my weight.
The rocking chair is the old-tech (and completely ingenious) solution to the common problem of decreased mobility with age. They tended to be rather high affairs, which is a good thing for older people (perhaps I should parse today's taste for low-slung living-room furniture according to signalling theory, and conclude that it's driven by our society's obsession with youth), and when you need to get up you can gently push yourself slightly forward in the seat, which will have the effect of making it rotate forward a little without you having to actually force a rocking motion out of it, and then as you lean forward to stand up it will rotate forward slightly more, delivering you hopefully reasonably safely to your feet.
The technique is similar for sitting down. Here you need to be careful when positioning your hands so that you can press them downward to take your weight without initiating a violent movement of the chair either forwards or backwards. Care is also necessary with the initial aim of your behind: don't land either so far forward in the seat that the chair rocks forwards as you sit, potentially depositing you in a heap on the floor, or so far back that you fall backwards into the chair and then continue to roll, causing a nasty jar to the lower back (and conceivably, if you were very heavy, even rolling the centre of gravity beyond the rear end of the rockers and breaking your neck, though I'm not sure how possible that really is). Then, when you're down and still, you can gently shuffle backwards in the chair until you're peachy.
After a little bit of practice you do get used to sitting down in and getting up from a rocking chair, you just need to pay attention when you do it.
And so granny was right. The point of a rocking chair is to sit, quietly and safely, enjoying whatever it is you are doing, and to rock precisely twice per sitting: once when you sit down, and once again when you get up.
Friday 29 June 2012
A bottomless pit for the european north
Cheers have been raised for the new Eurozone banking regulation authority which was apparently agreed at the latest eurozone meeting in the early hours of this morning. I'm not so sure.
Certain questions have to be answered: who will grant banking licenses, the authority or national bodies? Common sense says that if you have a supranational regulator then that must be the body that issues banking licenses, but this is Europe we are talking about, and common sense plays no part here. Also, will regulations (and licences!) be Europe wide, or merely country wide as at present (albeit set by an international body)? There would always be cases where policies set Europe wide that suited the majority of countries wouldn't suit a minority, and if the new regulator's regulations meant that Italian banks couldn't stuff themselves with junk Italian sovereign debt when the Italian prime minister wanted them to, then I suspect underhand means might end up being employed.
My biggest worry is that the solvent northern countries may simply have painted themselves into a very sticky corner. Germany may think that it will be able to control the new authority, as the biggest creditor nation, but I don't think that any such control can last. Prepare for a new-found commitment to democratic accountability on the part of Italy, Greece, Portugal and France. The northern countries will find that while their financial reserves have become beholden to the new regulator, the new regulator will end up being dominated by the spendthrifts in the south.
Certain questions have to be answered: who will grant banking licenses, the authority or national bodies? Common sense says that if you have a supranational regulator then that must be the body that issues banking licenses, but this is Europe we are talking about, and common sense plays no part here. Also, will regulations (and licences!) be Europe wide, or merely country wide as at present (albeit set by an international body)? There would always be cases where policies set Europe wide that suited the majority of countries wouldn't suit a minority, and if the new regulator's regulations meant that Italian banks couldn't stuff themselves with junk Italian sovereign debt when the Italian prime minister wanted them to, then I suspect underhand means might end up being employed.
My biggest worry is that the solvent northern countries may simply have painted themselves into a very sticky corner. Germany may think that it will be able to control the new authority, as the biggest creditor nation, but I don't think that any such control can last. Prepare for a new-found commitment to democratic accountability on the part of Italy, Greece, Portugal and France. The northern countries will find that while their financial reserves have become beholden to the new regulator, the new regulator will end up being dominated by the spendthrifts in the south.
Sunday 17 June 2012
More on Hitler's vegetarianism
Drawing together the threads of the notion of "food fascism" I recently commented on Hitler's vegetarianism. Well it turns out that there may be more to that than a cheap joke: Wholesome Foods and Wholesome Morals? Organic Foods Reduce Prosocial Behavior and Harshen Moral Judgments. This may also apply to those who take against an occasional post-prandial brandy and fine cigar.
Sunday 3 June 2012
The Marseillaise
Reading an article somewhere about how expat French people living in northern Europe (which, for this purpose, is taken as including Ireland and the UK) will soon have their own MP, I realise that I don't actually know the words of the Marseillaise !
Off to YouTube then, to watch a few recordings, and off to Wikipedia for the lyrics. And — oh my ! — what a bloodthirsty piece ! I'll just include the first verse and the chorus here so you can see:
So the soldiers of the tyrant's armies are "in our faces, slitting our sons' and our wives' throats". You can certainly hear the full-on hatred for the ancien regime there. [There's an accessible sample of the sort of things that went on under the ancien regime in the early parts of Dickens' A Tale of Two Cities: the hatred seems to have been very well deserved.]
I couldn't help comparing that amazing and wonderful, if also rather terrifying chorus to our own dear national anthem: "To arms, citizens! Form battalions! March! March and soak our fields with [their] guilty blood" ("guilty" is my own rather free translation of "impur"). No wonder the Parisian crowd seems able to come out whenever it wants to, if they're learning that in school, and no wonder French governments fall when it does. I can't imagine that the remnants of French aristocracy sing along to the Marseillaise quite as easily as Lady Whatnot might to God Save the Queen.
Speaking of which, I was of course singing along to YouTube, especially this rather ferocious rendition, when I realised that it was two o'clock in the morning of the weekend of the Queen's Jubilee — perhaps not quite the thing. I do hope my repeated clicks on this revolutionary piece haven't inscribed my name on the wrong hard disk somewhere, en secret...
Off to YouTube then, to watch a few recordings, and off to Wikipedia for the lyrics. And — oh my ! — what a bloodthirsty piece ! I'll just include the first verse and the chorus here so you can see:
Allons enfants de la Patrie, Le jour de gloire est arrivé ! Contre nous de la tyrannie, L'étendard sanglant est levé, (bis) Entendez-vous dans les campagnes Mugir ces féroces soldats ? Ils viennent jusque dans vos bras Egorger vos fils, vos compagnes ! Aux armes, citoyens, Formez vos bataillons, Marchons, marchons ! Qu'un sang impur Abreuve nos sillons !
So the soldiers of the tyrant's armies are "in our faces, slitting our sons' and our wives' throats". You can certainly hear the full-on hatred for the ancien regime there. [There's an accessible sample of the sort of things that went on under the ancien regime in the early parts of Dickens' A Tale of Two Cities: the hatred seems to have been very well deserved.]
I couldn't help comparing that amazing and wonderful, if also rather terrifying chorus to our own dear national anthem: "To arms, citizens! Form battalions! March! March and soak our fields with [their] guilty blood" ("guilty" is my own rather free translation of "impur"). No wonder the Parisian crowd seems able to come out whenever it wants to, if they're learning that in school, and no wonder French governments fall when it does. I can't imagine that the remnants of French aristocracy sing along to the Marseillaise quite as easily as Lady Whatnot might to God Save the Queen.
Speaking of which, I was of course singing along to YouTube, especially this rather ferocious rendition, when I realised that it was two o'clock in the morning of the weekend of the Queen's Jubilee — perhaps not quite the thing. I do hope my repeated clicks on this revolutionary piece haven't inscribed my name on the wrong hard disk somewhere, en secret...
Wednesday 30 May 2012
No wonder Japan has had a lost decade
Plowing thorugh posts on Zero Hedge, my eye alights on a telling phrase in this one:
I've been mentally dismissing rumours that the U.S. is attempting to do the same thing to the renminbi, but perhaps they are.
Bruce Kovner expressed the idea more eloquently when he said, “I have the ability to imagine configurations of the world different from today and really believe it can happen. I can imagine...that the dollar can fall to 100 yen”. I am sure you are nodding in agreement, except Bruce was saying this when the USDJPY was well over 200, not today's rate of 80!I'm used to thinking of quantitative easing — not the "official" kind that we've had twice so far in the U.S., but the unofficial, continuous overproduction of money throughout the financial system, resulting in huge oceans of dollars washing up on foreign shores — as largely an attempt to inflate away debts (and future debts too, of course), but that phrase puts it in context. Wikipedia tells us more: from 239 yen/dollar in 1985 to just under 80 today, that represents an enormous currency strengthening for Japanese exporters vis-à-vis their principal export market.
I've been mentally dismissing rumours that the U.S. is attempting to do the same thing to the renminbi, but perhaps they are.
Wednesday 9 May 2012
Health fascism
It's quite common, at least on the blogs that I read, to hear campaigners against smoking, drinking and overeating decried as "fascists". One might have thought that this was just a little bit of name calling. Apparently not.
According to Proctor:
According to Proctor:
Nazi Germany was ... decades ahead of other countries in promoting health reforms that we today regard as progressive and socially responsible... the Nazis conducted the most aggressive antismoking campaign in modern history... Hitler's government passed a wide range of public health measures, including restrictions on asbestos, radiation, pesticides, and food dyes. Nazi health officials introduced strict occupational health and safety standards, and promoted such foods as whole-grain bread and soybeans. These policies went hand in hand with health propaganda that, for example, idealized the Führer's body and his nonsmoking, vegetarian lifestyle.Ah yes, a non-smoking vegetarian. Now it all makes sense.
Tuesday 8 May 2012
Today's "wow!" moment...
Comparing absolute numbers, Israel — a country of just 7.1 million people — attracted close to $2 billion [in 2008] in venture capital, as much as flowed to the UK, Germany and France combined. (…) In addition to boasting the highest density of start-ups in the world (a total of 3,850, one for every 1,844 Israelis), more Israeli companies are listed on the Nasdaq than all companies from the entire European continent.
From Start-up Nation, the story of Israel economic Miracle, hat tip Frédéric Filloux.
Wednesday 25 April 2012
Depressing economic illiteracy on the left
Just been reading an article on the BBC website about how saying "no" to austerity is gaining ground in Europe. The comments really have to be seen to be believed, with most people blaming corruption, capitalism, "the market" and so on for the debt overhang. Once commenter rejoices that people are starting to tell their politicians to chose growth rather than choose austerity. Really? Do they think that politicians come into work and say "What shall it be then, growth or austerity? Shall we all earn more and consume more or shall we pay off debts and earn less? -- I know, let's choose austerity! -- OK then, austerity it is." The whole mindset on the left is completely infantile.
Politicians haven't "chosen" austerity at all, they've borrowed for absolutely as long as they've been able to, in order to finance consumption which they euphemistically rename "investment in people", and now that they can't borrow -- either at liveable rates of interest or, in some cases, at all -- the path of austerity is forced upon them. At this point, of course, leftists always decry the evil influence of "moneylenders" (i.e., investors, pension funds, etc.), saying that, of course the country could achieve growth "if only" the moneylenders would do what they are supposed to do and, well, just keep on lending us money. That way it becomes somebody else's fault if we can't do what we want to because we haven't got the money: in the case of the international markets, it's "moneylenders", in the case of the Eurozone, it's Germany. What a convenient excuse!
Let me try to paraphrase the arguments that are being made:
"Life on Earth is a bit grimy and hard work, so we've decided to decamp en masse and go to live in Heaven instead.
"The window's open, let's all jump out together and zoom off up to Heaven then.
"Oh noes! Something is wrong! We seem to be going down, not up!
"This is unfortunate and completely unforeseen. If we continue to go down, as we are now, at an ever increasing pace, innocent people could get hurt, and it will all be the fault of the force of gravity. It really would be so much more convenient if only we could float upwards instead, but this cursed force of gravity won't let us."
Combine this with the natural tendency on the left to see agency where there is only the working out of cause and effect, and you have the essence of the "international financiers won't let us be free" theory so ably displayed by Occupy Wall St. and its clones.
Politicians haven't "chosen" austerity at all, they've borrowed for absolutely as long as they've been able to, in order to finance consumption which they euphemistically rename "investment in people", and now that they can't borrow -- either at liveable rates of interest or, in some cases, at all -- the path of austerity is forced upon them. At this point, of course, leftists always decry the evil influence of "moneylenders" (i.e., investors, pension funds, etc.), saying that, of course the country could achieve growth "if only" the moneylenders would do what they are supposed to do and, well, just keep on lending us money. That way it becomes somebody else's fault if we can't do what we want to because we haven't got the money: in the case of the international markets, it's "moneylenders", in the case of the Eurozone, it's Germany. What a convenient excuse!
Let me try to paraphrase the arguments that are being made:
"Life on Earth is a bit grimy and hard work, so we've decided to decamp en masse and go to live in Heaven instead.
"The window's open, let's all jump out together and zoom off up to Heaven then.
"Oh noes! Something is wrong! We seem to be going down, not up!
"This is unfortunate and completely unforeseen. If we continue to go down, as we are now, at an ever increasing pace, innocent people could get hurt, and it will all be the fault of the force of gravity. It really would be so much more convenient if only we could float upwards instead, but this cursed force of gravity won't let us."
Combine this with the natural tendency on the left to see agency where there is only the working out of cause and effect, and you have the essence of the "international financiers won't let us be free" theory so ably displayed by Occupy Wall St. and its clones.
Tuesday 17 April 2012
Spain, Argentina, Repsol and YPF
I wonder if now would be a good time to talk to the Spanish about recognising Britain's claim to the Falklands?
Sunday 15 April 2012
Another poor article on Spiked
Spiked is a bit of a curate's egg, supposedly sourcing articles from all over the spectrum, and publishing them without fear or favour and so on. In reality, the articles vary from hard-left and unaware that any other viewpoint exists, to a soggy just-right-of-centre semi-dryness, and the quality varies from fairly interesting to quite dull.
Too much is poor. To wit, Who benefits from housing handouts? by one Neil Davenport. Where to begin? Well a summary, I suppose: private landlords have always wanted to charge "whatever they liked for a shoddy room or flat", rent control stopped them [cheers], Thatcher's right-to-buy scheme destroyed the unity of the proletariat by taking them out of their poverty and allowing them to start accumulating capital [boos], and, most fantastically of all "with a monopoly on living space ... landlords have been able to massively increase rent prices over the past 20 years".
Say what? The average house price in the UK in Q3 1992 (a little late to represent the introduction of right-to-buy, but never mind) was some fifty-four thousand pounds (source: Nationwide). The average house price in the UK in Q3 2011 was some one hundred and sixty-six thousand pounds, over three times as much. I've left the numbers unadjusted for inflation in both cases, since presumably that was part of Mr Davenport's point; at least, he doesn't mention if he's adjusted "massively increase" for inflation. Even so, even if you use inflation adjusted house prices, prices now are still twice what they were in 1992. A fairer comparison also might be with 2011 and 1980, say, when house prices were a mere twenty three thousand pounds, so that house prices in nominal terms have actually gone up a "massive" seven and a bit times.
The point of that is that, in this country at least, private landlords must take their costs, the costs of their housing stock, from the market. Which, also in this country at least, they do not dominate. House prices here are dominated by the owner-occupier market, and the price of investment residential property tags along in lock-step since it is, in all respects, exactly the same stock, at least as far as private landlords are concerned. It would be much more informative if Mr Davenport were to look at the return on capital in the residential rental market over the period 1990 (say) to 2011; but that, alas, he does not do — probably because those numbers are hard to get and, in any case, irrelevant to having a good old, if terminally unenlightening, bash at the capitalists.
Too much is poor. To wit, Who benefits from housing handouts? by one Neil Davenport. Where to begin? Well a summary, I suppose: private landlords have always wanted to charge "whatever they liked for a shoddy room or flat", rent control stopped them [cheers], Thatcher's right-to-buy scheme destroyed the unity of the proletariat by taking them out of their poverty and allowing them to start accumulating capital [boos], and, most fantastically of all "with a monopoly on living space ... landlords have been able to massively increase rent prices over the past 20 years".
Say what? The average house price in the UK in Q3 1992 (a little late to represent the introduction of right-to-buy, but never mind) was some fifty-four thousand pounds (source: Nationwide). The average house price in the UK in Q3 2011 was some one hundred and sixty-six thousand pounds, over three times as much. I've left the numbers unadjusted for inflation in both cases, since presumably that was part of Mr Davenport's point; at least, he doesn't mention if he's adjusted "massively increase" for inflation. Even so, even if you use inflation adjusted house prices, prices now are still twice what they were in 1992. A fairer comparison also might be with 2011 and 1980, say, when house prices were a mere twenty three thousand pounds, so that house prices in nominal terms have actually gone up a "massive" seven and a bit times.
The point of that is that, in this country at least, private landlords must take their costs, the costs of their housing stock, from the market. Which, also in this country at least, they do not dominate. House prices here are dominated by the owner-occupier market, and the price of investment residential property tags along in lock-step since it is, in all respects, exactly the same stock, at least as far as private landlords are concerned. It would be much more informative if Mr Davenport were to look at the return on capital in the residential rental market over the period 1990 (say) to 2011; but that, alas, he does not do — probably because those numbers are hard to get and, in any case, irrelevant to having a good old, if terminally unenlightening, bash at the capitalists.
Saturday 7 April 2012
Antal Fekete on the Gold Standard
A most interesting article, giving me lots to chew over.
I hadn't heard of the Real Bills theory of money before, and Prof. Fekete seems to make a most convincing argument for it. Sadly, I had found the Quantity Theory of money entirely sufficient for my own musings, and even though I'm now assured of the rightness of the Real Bills theory, I'm not exactly sure where the Quantity Theory goes wrong [ :-) ]. It looks like there's going to be a need to read and re-read on my part.
Being a cautious chap, I immediately looked up both Antal Fekete and the Real Bills theory of money on Wikipedia, only to find an enormous number of other articles that I will now have to read as well: how annoying (but, actually, pleasing).
I hadn't heard of the Real Bills theory of money before, and Prof. Fekete seems to make a most convincing argument for it. Sadly, I had found the Quantity Theory of money entirely sufficient for my own musings, and even though I'm now assured of the rightness of the Real Bills theory, I'm not exactly sure where the Quantity Theory goes wrong [ :-) ]. It looks like there's going to be a need to read and re-read on my part.
Being a cautious chap, I immediately looked up both Antal Fekete and the Real Bills theory of money on Wikipedia, only to find an enormous number of other articles that I will now have to read as well: how annoying (but, actually, pleasing).
Monday 2 April 2012
Make your own vegetable stock
A nice little post on making vegetable stock from scraps over at The Garden of Eating. Basically: avoid brassicas, as they tend to make the stock bitter, avoid anything that's going rotten or mouldy (obviously), anything wilted is OK, highly-coloured vegetables may colour the stock (beetroot will make it red, onion skins will make it brown).
Since I associate brown coloured stock with something more flavoursome than clear, rightly or wrongly, I'll probably try adding onion skins; however if anything is going to be mouldy it's an onion skin, so minute inspection will be in order there!
Since I associate brown coloured stock with something more flavoursome than clear, rightly or wrongly, I'll probably try adding onion skins; however if anything is going to be mouldy it's an onion skin, so minute inspection will be in order there!
Monday 19 March 2012
Gay Marriage
I am still trying to follow the Archbishop of Westminster's argument that allowing gays to marry is a terrible violation of human rights, oops, Human Rights. Hmmm... nope, can't quite see it. Is there a missing negative there? Have all the newspapers reported it wrongly? Let's try that then: not allowing gays to marry is a terrible violation of human rights... Yes! Now it makes sense! That must be what he means.
All attempts at humour aside, the Archbishop's argument essentially seems to be that the venerable institution of marriage will be cheapened by letting in the riff-raff. Luckily, I have a proposal for him that I rather think may brighten his mood considerably!
First off, I'm afraid that the State is as intrusive now as it ever was. Marriages aren't legal unless they are processed by the state — a fact that the Catholic Church, as opposed to the Church of England, has had to accept for a long time now, since when Catholics have a church wedding, they also have to have a separate civil wedding, usually just before or just after the religious one and done on the quiet somewhere private on the church's premises. Othewise, though the couple may be married in the eyes of the Church, they aren't married in the eyes of the State, and that would be just too confusing for everybody. Now the State just isn't going to abandon its privileges in this area, I'm afraid that's not on. But the Catholic Church has a way of reconciling itself to such behaviour based on a maxim coined by its founder: "Render unto Caesar that which is Caesar's" (quite snappy really).
So we're going to have to say goodbye to the word "marriage", sorry about that old chap, no way round it. But what we can do is invent another term — like the way we did with "Civil Partnership" — that can mean everything we used to mean by "Marriage", except with added specialness from not having to share it with anybody that doesn't deserve like want to use it (i.e., riff-raff).
Obviously the archbish is going to have his own favourite candidates for this role, but here are a few that I think might fit the biscuit. What about "Mystical Union"? That sounds super and soaraway, and quite religious doesn't it? Or, since I hear that one of the arguments was that marriage should be reserved for people who can be progenitors (except, of course that there would still have to be room for heterosexuals who can't, obviously), what about "Progenital Partnership"? No? Let's see... "Mariantur"? "Maritari Possunt"?
Actually, I would have though that the Archbishop would be cock-a-hoop about the proposal. Because it's the civil version of marriage that will be, in his view, spoiled: that is to say, the marriage that you get in a Registry Office or a Church of England church. Aha! The Church of England doesn't have a marriage that's separate from the civil one, they are the same thing, but the Catholic Church (as discussed above), already does. If that isn't enough evidence of Divine Dispensation for him, I don't know what is.
Tuesday 13 March 2012
Terrifying paragraph
From Cause, Effect & the Fallacy of a Return to Normalcy, my emphasis:
Besides not actually reducing their debts, the disposable personal income figure provided by the government drones at the BEA includes government transfer payments for Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, unemployment compensation, food stamps, veterans benefits, and the all- encompassing “other”. Disposable personal income in the 2nd quarter of 2008 reached $11.2 trillion. It has risen by $500 billion, to $11.7 trillion by the end of 2011. Coincidentally, government social transfers have risen by $400 billion over this same time frame, a 20% increase. Excluding government transfers, disposable personal income has risen by a dreadful 1.1%. For the benefit of the slow witted in the mainstream media, every penny of the social welfare transfers has been borrowed. Only a government bureaucrat could believe that borrowing money from the Chinese, handing it out to unemployed Americans and calling it personal income is proof of deleveraging and austerity.
Friday 9 March 2012
The big winners from the Greek CAC event
By allowing EU institutions to convert their existing holdings of Greek bonds for senior debt instruments, not subject to haircut, the Europeans have mightily pissed off American and other bondholders. The amount of venom directed at the ECB in the blogs and on the boards for this kind of trickery — which, let's face it, would have startled us with its barefaced cheek if it had happened in China — is quite frightening. The more perceptive commentators are talking of a "political premium" that will have to be paid by any and all Euro Zone governments for access to the international bond markets. I wonder if the big winners here might not end up being London-based law firms, as I guess there is going to be a big increase in the work of drawing up "English Law" bonds (and a corresponding decline in Portuguese-, Irish- and Italian-law bonds), and there will no doubt be an increase in London-based litigation on the basis of those bonds further down the road.
Friday 24 February 2012
The Y chromosome — reports of its death are greatly exaggerated
What is this nonsense I keep hearing about the death of the Y chromosome and the "extinction of men"? I cannot believe that responsible scientists can have suggested this, except in the most tongue-in-cheek fashion, as being a valid interpretation of the facts. The latest "news" is that it's not going to happen after all — well, a child could have told them that! Last I heard, men are necessary for new babies, and the extinction of men would be followed in pretty short order by the extinction of women, and that's that!
The really crazy thing is that some reports have allegedly suggested that after the extinction of men, women would "evolve" to not need them for procreation. Though how they are going to evolve if they can't get pregnant in the first place is beyond me; these people do understand that it takes millions of years for a species to achieve parthenogenesis, right? This particular strand of idiocy also confuses cause and effect: it's one thing for species that has adopted parthenogenesis as its main strategy to subsequently lose its males, it would be quite another thing for a species which has somehow lost its males to achieve parthenogenic abilities!
The really crazy thing is that some reports have allegedly suggested that after the extinction of men, women would "evolve" to not need them for procreation. Though how they are going to evolve if they can't get pregnant in the first place is beyond me; these people do understand that it takes millions of years for a species to achieve parthenogenesis, right? This particular strand of idiocy also confuses cause and effect: it's one thing for species that has adopted parthenogenesis as its main strategy to subsequently lose its males, it would be quite another thing for a species which has somehow lost its males to achieve parthenogenic abilities!
Sunday 19 February 2012
Paper money, gold coins, BitCoins
As always, doing catch-up reading of Zero Hedge. My eye alights on a little article proposing a (post-diluvial) gold-based currency. Note: gold-based not just gold-backed. His idea is that part of the difficulty with a 100% gold-backed currency — that you can't expand it to cope with new goods being produced — will be solved by simply using gold coins instead, and relying on velocity of circulation. I'm not so sure about that: if your currency really is 100% backed by gold, then each unit is ipso facto "the same as" some amount of gold, so you gain nothing by moving the gold around. Indeed, you continually lose a little bit to wear and tear, and perhaps to thieves who can be guaranteed to find ever-smarter ways to remove a little bit of gold from a coin without the next guy noticing. They didn't invent milled edges for nothing, after all. The velocity of circulation argument seems to be a red-herring too, no, in my view, you'd just have to rely on deflationary effects to sort out the money supply: if I open up a widget factory, the supply of widgets increases and their price falls, all expansion of the money supply does is cover up that basic fact, so let's just accept it instead.
Anyway, none of that is the point of this post, though there's a clue in the wear and tear reference above. It's that coins — at least those that depend on their precious metal content for their value — are an essentially analog specie. Notes on the other hand, are essentially digital. If I shave a tiny scrap off a gold coin, I reduce its value; if I do the same with a dollar bill I am left with ... a dollar bill plus a tiny, worthless, scrap of paper.
Now I'm as impressed as anybody else by what seems to be happening, simultaneously, to the money supplies of independent nations (and blocs) all over the world, and I do think that we risk seeing coordinated runaway hyperinflation on a global basis some time in the next twenty years. But. But... we are not going to be giving up our mobile phones and their NFC payments, or our online shopping for that matter. So I don't see gold making a comeback as an actual circulating currency. As one amongst many stores of value, yes, certainly, but not as circulating coinage. It's just not digital enough, and it's not "e-digital" at all.
So what can provide a store of value and medium of exchange in an e-digital world, and one that's unadulterable by thief and government alike? The only thing I can think of is BitCoin, the subject of much derision by professional economists. It doesn't help, either, that one of the few functioning BitCoin exchanges (and vaults) closed its doors this week. However, historically, many currencies have stumbled after their introduction (one thinks of ... oh ... the Euro), so none of this negativity is necessarily a guide. As a result of this train of thought I've now decided that I'm more positive with respect to BitCoin's prospects: it, or something like it, probably has a part to play in the future.
One intriguing suggestion as to how BitCoin might start to be used more, that I came across recently, is that it would make a perfect in-game currency. This really is rather appealing: if nothing else, it would provide instant convertibility between in-game artefacts in different games, without the necessity (and possible legal complications) of involving state-backed currencies. Also it would provide economists with perhaps a better way of comparing the sizes of game economies. What's not to like?
Anyway, none of that is the point of this post, though there's a clue in the wear and tear reference above. It's that coins — at least those that depend on their precious metal content for their value — are an essentially analog specie. Notes on the other hand, are essentially digital. If I shave a tiny scrap off a gold coin, I reduce its value; if I do the same with a dollar bill I am left with ... a dollar bill plus a tiny, worthless, scrap of paper.
Now I'm as impressed as anybody else by what seems to be happening, simultaneously, to the money supplies of independent nations (and blocs) all over the world, and I do think that we risk seeing coordinated runaway hyperinflation on a global basis some time in the next twenty years. But. But... we are not going to be giving up our mobile phones and their NFC payments, or our online shopping for that matter. So I don't see gold making a comeback as an actual circulating currency. As one amongst many stores of value, yes, certainly, but not as circulating coinage. It's just not digital enough, and it's not "e-digital" at all.
So what can provide a store of value and medium of exchange in an e-digital world, and one that's unadulterable by thief and government alike? The only thing I can think of is BitCoin, the subject of much derision by professional economists. It doesn't help, either, that one of the few functioning BitCoin exchanges (and vaults) closed its doors this week. However, historically, many currencies have stumbled after their introduction (one thinks of ... oh ... the Euro), so none of this negativity is necessarily a guide. As a result of this train of thought I've now decided that I'm more positive with respect to BitCoin's prospects: it, or something like it, probably has a part to play in the future.
One intriguing suggestion as to how BitCoin might start to be used more, that I came across recently, is that it would make a perfect in-game currency. This really is rather appealing: if nothing else, it would provide instant convertibility between in-game artefacts in different games, without the necessity (and possible legal complications) of involving state-backed currencies. Also it would provide economists with perhaps a better way of comparing the sizes of game economies. What's not to like?
Wednesday 15 February 2012
François Hollande
A nice little article on France's probable next president. What I especially like about it is that it makes clear that the policies that lead to Europe's debt crisis will likely be repeated many times yet, because they stem from a mind set that is still firmly entrenched in European elites, albeit one in temporary retreat.
The danger is that once Europe starts showing some signs of healing, politicians on the left will sweep into power, cast off the yoke of "austerity" (i.e. financial discipline) and start enacting popular tax and spend policies (or worse, borrow and spend policies, for those who can). One thinks shudderingly of Ed Balls.
The danger is that once Europe starts showing some signs of healing, politicians on the left will sweep into power, cast off the yoke of "austerity" (i.e. financial discipline) and start enacting popular tax and spend policies (or worse, borrow and spend policies, for those who can). One thinks shudderingly of Ed Balls.
Thursday 2 February 2012
Bundesbank dragged into the red buying up peripheral debt
This is rather tragic news. Merkel's constant doubling-down (or doubling up, they appear to mean the same thing) with regard to the PIIGS reminds me of the problems with the South Korean chaebol in the late nineties, where losses in a few subsidiaries were subsidised by the rest of the group, and were thus not properly addressed until they became so large that they brought down whole conglomerates. Wikipedia summarises it thus (note the parallels with the euro zone):
The article makes it clear that this could theoretically end with the ruination of the Bundesbank, which does not benefit from Government guarantees. As a symbol of economic strength and financial probity, the Bundesbank has a special place in the German psyche, in the German identity. Though I don't doubt for a moment that the state would step in to rescue it, that might end up with a steep loss of independence — indeed, I wonder if that's actually the game plan somewhere in Brussels?
Many of the chaebol had become severely indebted to finance their expansion, not only to state industrial banks, but to independent banks and their own financial services subsidiaries. In the aftermath of the crisis when they could not service their debt, banks could neither foreclose nor write off bad loans without themselves collapsing. The most spectacular example came in mid-1999 with the collapse of the Daewoo Group, which had some US$80 billion in unpaid debt. At the time, it was the largest corporate bankruptcy in history.
Investigations also exposed widespread corruption in the chaebol, particularly fraudulent accounting and bribery.
The article makes it clear that this could theoretically end with the ruination of the Bundesbank, which does not benefit from Government guarantees. As a symbol of economic strength and financial probity, the Bundesbank has a special place in the German psyche, in the German identity. Though I don't doubt for a moment that the state would step in to rescue it, that might end up with a steep loss of independence — indeed, I wonder if that's actually the game plan somewhere in Brussels?
Monday 30 January 2012
The beatings will continue...
I've finally managed to crystalise why, every time I see someone recommend a stimulus package to stoke aggregate demand as a way of getting out of a recession, I feel like slapping their face. What they are saying essentially boils down to this:
"The deficit spending will continue until you are all rich."
"The deficit spending will continue until you are all rich."
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