Monday, July 30, 2012

UK M4 shows continuing decline


Figures released today by the Bank of England show that M4 lending (quarterly, annualised) shrank again in the second quarter of 2012 - slightly up from Q1, but still lower than before. Where will it end?

Playing the chartist game, I connected the last two pairs of highs and lows, expecting to see the lines cross somewhere and give us an indication of the bottom. Instead, the channel not only trends downward but is widening.

Join your own dots, but despite all the QE I don't see a terminus. Will the next inflection - the next "top" - be in negative territory?

INVESTMENT DISCLOSURE: Mostly in cash (and index-linked National Savings Certificates), but now planning to build up some reserves of physical gold via regular saving.

DISCLAIMER: Nothing here should be taken as personal advice, financial or otherwise. No liability is accepted for third-party content.

UK M4 shows continuing decline


Figures released today by the Bank of England show that M4 lending (quarterly, annualised) shrank again in the second quarter of 2012 - slightly up from Q1, but still lower than before. Where will it end?

Playing the chartist game, I connected the last two pairs of highs and lows, expecting to see the lines cross somewhere and give us an indication of the bottom. Instead, the channel not only trends downward but is widening.

Join your own dots, but despite all the QE I don't see a terminus. Will the next inflection - the next "top" - be in negative territory?

Monday, July 23, 2012

IRS and pension fund managers robbing distressed Americans

A miserable twist of the knife: Americans are increasingly defaulting on pension loans, and the taxman and plan manager make money out of it all.

The 401(k) plan is a contribution-based pension for employees. Many such plans allow loans, often with restrictions as to their purpose (e.g. for college fees, medical expenses or housing); but Leo Kolivakis relays reports of an estimated $37 billion in annual defaults, as the great financial crisis continues to claim victims.

The worst of it is, when the borrower defaults, income tax is charged on the loan - plus (often) an extra penalty (presumably to the benefit of the plan manager):

"This can take you from a $6,000 loan to a wipe-out of $10,000 from your 401(k savings) ... and this is happening to people at the very worse times of their personal and financial lives."

What to do with bankers, G4S etc

In Papua New Guinea, they know how to deal with those who expect excessive bonuses:

Police in remote Papua New Guinea have arrested members of an alleged cannibal cult accused of killing at least seven people, eating their brains raw and making soup from their penises...

The 29 people were part of a 1,000-strong group formed to combat errant sorcerers who... had begun charging exorbitant fees...

"We ate their brains raw and took body parts such as livers, hearts, penis and others back to the hausman (traditional men's houses) for our chief trainers to create other powers for the members to use," one of those arrested said.

Make mine a large one.

Sunday, July 22, 2012

Is the generosity of Spain's social security system preventing revolution?

The Talking Clock blog is following the anti-austerity protests in Spain live, claiming that the BBC is showing little interest (though the BBC gave this online a couple of days ago).

However, Fin24's report includes an interesting detail: the newly unemployed there are to still get 50% of basic salary (down from 70%).

This raises the question of differences between social security systems across the EU, and in fact the European Commission has been looking at exactly that in a paper issued in May 2012 (pdf).

The authors find that "Belgium, Denmark, Portugal, Spain, Finland and the Netherlands appear to be relatively generous in terms of unemployment insurance replacement rates and duration compared with the EU average, while in the UK, Malta, Slovakia, Estonia, Poland and Romania benefit conditions are relatively tight", although Spain is not named among the countries (Belgium, Malta, Austria, Denmark, Ireland, Finland and Portugal) that have the most generous social security systems overall.

So while obviously financially constrained, the protestors may have enough to keep going and make a fuss, and not so little that they are driven in desperation to serious and sustained acts of rebellion.

Is this the real point of social security: to maintain safe those in power?

Recuerdos del Forest of Dean

A special needs teaching colleague's retirement do last week. Just try to stop teachers talking. One of the older staff tells us she'd once taught in Coleford, where the children in her class shared just three surnames. Aunts, nieces and nephews all behind the desk. Some of the children were still at mother's breast - at 12 and 13.

Another teacher said she'd done supply work (commuting from refined Cheltenham) in another place in the Forest. Two huge mothers stood at the school door like (or as) bouncers. Inside, there were four adults in charge of a class of 18 children, the air nevertheless thick with missiles etc.

My old financial services boss had previously been a headteacher in Dean. His 60th birthday celebration was held in the Speech House in Coleford. He recalled that when he'd first arrived as a class teacher, his head had asked him how he was getting on with the children "I can't hear what they are saying," he replied; the first sign of the partial hearing loss (owing to noisy early-generation computer printers in the ICT suite where he taught) that eventually got him his early retirement with enhancement. Later, supplied with a hearing aid, he told the head, "I can hear them now, but I can't understand what they're saying" (he was from Lancashire). Later still, he told the head, "I can hear them now, and I can understand them now; but I don't like what they're saying."

More vernacular

At a garden centre cafe yesterday: a Yorkshire terrier was keen to make friends with people on other tables. Says her owner, "'Er's as saft as a boiled turnip".

Saturday, July 21, 2012

This could kill the big banks

...and a good thing, too.

Matt Taibbi reports on a proposed scheme for local authorities to compulsorily purchase negative-equity homes at current market value - realising big losses for the lenders - and then let the homeowners take out smaller, 100% LTV replacement loans.

Could the good guys win?

Wednesday, July 18, 2012

Breaking News: New EU Olympic Flag

The Council of Europe has today issued an emergency executive order to all member States concerning the use of national flags in association with the 2012 London Olympics.

Teams, contestants and sponsors must choose one of the three designs below, in lieu of the nationalistic devices displayed at previous Games. (The third option may be adapted according to the two- or three- letter designation of the member State concerned.) The new range of banners serve to remind onlookers of the unity and competitive strength of the European Union.

Spectators may on no account display flags, emblems or symbols of any EU member State, inside the grounds or buildings of official Olympic venues, or within 100 metres of such locations.

The UK is instructed to enforce the order with effect no later than 23:59 on Thursday 26th July 2012.

Financial losses on the recall of outdated items, if strictly necessary to comply with this executive order, may be reimbursed by EU central funds (details to be advised in due course).

Seven types of fart

A bit of social history. My late father-in-law and his brothers used to have a list of flatulence categories and it seems to date from the 1930s/40s if not earlier - I wonder if anyone has heard of these elsewhere, or anything similar?

Here they are, in ascending order of noise and destructive power:

  1. The Fizz
  2. The Fuzz
  3. The Fizzy Fuzz
  4. The Poop
  5. The Anti-Poop
  6. The Tear-arse
  7. The Rattler

Tuesday, July 17, 2012

How The System enslaves you - libertarians take note



How fast we agree to become laboratory rats. And note how the exultation and applause increases as you have to work harder to get the same reward.

In our Age of Abundance, is the liberty issue about self-denial? Are we enslaved as much by appetite as by force?

Sunday, July 15, 2012

Extreme blogging, extreme TV

I'm reading an Andy McNab yarn ("Exit Wound") and halfway through his protagonist (Nick Stone) says that Iranian President Ahmedinajad has his own blog (dormant since 2007). I don't know why it should surprise me, but it turns out to be true - and on blogspot, to boot. Here it is.

Any others? Did Bin Laden have one?

Mind you, I'm getting to the point where I watch Russian TV (RT) to get something like the truth about stuff that is scarcely covered on BBC et al. (Max Keiser is gonzo in style but revelatory in content) - and even Al-Jazeera, for goodness' sake. It's a reversal of the days when Germans listened to the BBC during WWII etc.

Speaking of Max Keiser, he interviewed Brit econ commentator Ian Fraser (from minute 12 onwards) a day or two ago, who revealed that following the Blue Arrow debacle in 1992 the message had come down from on high (see 15:15) that no senior banker or institution would ever again be prosecuted; and (see 16:00) that the Financial Services and Markets Act 2000 included a crippling clause that said the FSA had to consider the international mobility and competitiveness of our financial sector when deciding how to proceed against our red-braced Bolly-swigging crooks.

Where was either of those messages in the papers?

Wednesday, July 04, 2012

US financial system has now been reset

For the first time in 40-plus years, the ratio of monetary base to credit in America has returned to 5%.
(If you want to check the data, see here and here.)


INVESTMENT DISCLOSURE: Mostly in cash (and index-linked National Savings Certificates), but now planning to build up some reserves of physical gold via regular saving.

DISCLAIMER: Nothing here should be taken as personal advice, financial or otherwise. No liability is accepted for third-party content.

US Financial System has now been reset

For the first time in 40-plus years, the ratio of monetary base to credit in America has returned to 5%.
(If you want to check the data, see here and here.)

Tuesday, July 03, 2012

Is gold still fairly priced?

The nominal price of gold has soared over the last decade, prompting some to worry that it may be something of a bubble. And ceratinly its price path is erratic, reflecting sentiment more than monetary fundamentals.

But whether you look at the US monetary base, or alternatively at the growth of total credit market debt, gold is slightly below its 42-year average in relation to these benchmarks:



I didn't have the money in 2005 to pile in as I wanted to; but I'm starting to buy small amounts of physical gold now - no longer to make a killing in real terms, but as a hedge against inflation.

Why? A number of reasons:
  • the British Government is still not offering index-linked National Savings Certificates (I've written about this to my MP, who has written to the Chancellor, who has not replied so far);
  • the high streets around my area are still boasting a number of shops buying gold, not selling it;
  • China has (some time ago) announced its determination to build up a stock of 10,000 tonnes;
  • other central banks are buying;
  • you can still purchase gold in the UK without VAT.
There are so many prophets around, but which one of them will turn out to be correct? My feeling is that we face a deflationary/stagnatory phase, which will become so painful and (in a sort-of democracy) unsustainable that somehow or other, the monetary floodgates will open.

In the medium term, I kind of expect UK housing (ex-London and some other chi-chi areas) to cheapen as unemployment, uncertainty and bank crises continue; by the time we get to sub-Weimar I hope to have moved house (using much of our spare cash) and then with what's left I'll hope to be in fairly defensive stocks (utility companies etc), gold and maybe Marc Faber's beloved emerging markets.

For now it's cash, plus gold plus anything officially guaranteed to hold its value.

INVESTMENT DISCLOSURE: Mostly in cash (and index-linked National Savings Certificates), but now planning to build up some reserves of physical gold via regular saving.

DISCLAIMER: Nothing here should be taken as personal advice, financial or otherwise. No liability is accepted for third-party content.

Is gold still fairly priced?

The nominal price of gold has soared over the last decade, prompting some to worry that it may be something of a bubble. And ceratinly its price path is erratic, reflecting sentiment more than monetary fundamentals.

But whether you look at the US monetary base, or alternatively at the growth of total credit market debt, gold is slightly below its 42-year average in relation to these benchmarks:



I didn't have the money in 2005 to pile in as I wanted to; but I'm starting to buy small amounts of physical gold now - no longer to make a killing in real terms, but as a hedge against inflation.

Why? A number of reasons:
  • the British Government is still not offering index-linked National Savings Certificates (I've written about this to my MP, who has written to the Chancellor, who has not replied so far);
  • the high streets around my area are still boasting a number of shops buying gold, not selling it;
  • China has (some time ago) announced its determination to build up a stock of 10,000 tonnes;
  • other central banks are buying;
  • you can still purchase gold in the UK without VAT.
There are so many prophets around, but which one of them will turn out to be correct? My feeling is that we face a deflationary/stagnatory phase, which will become so painful and (in a sort-of democracy) unsustainable that somehow or other, the monetary floodgates will open.

In the medium term, I kind of expect UK housing (ex-London and some other chi-chi areas) to cheapen as unemployment, uncertainty and bank crises continue; by the time we get to sub-Weimar I hope to have moved house (using much of our spare cash) and then with what's left I'll hope to be in fairly defensive stocks (utility companies etc), gold and maybe Marc Faber's beloved emerging markets.

For now it's cash, plus gold plus anything officially guaranteed to hold its value.

Sunday, July 01, 2012

UK baby boom since 2000

I'm picking up on an anonymous comment on conspiracy blog The Tap, in which the writer says they've noticed an increase in pram-pushers and it reminds them of an observation by Alan Watts that promiscuity increases before a major war.

I'm less sure about the cause - it may have more to do with a reaction to recession, possibly leading to more women deciding that in the absence of paid work it may be time to start or increase their family. But the ONS statistics do bear out the commenter's perception, and it seems not to be simply a quirk of demographics in his/her geographical area.

However, it's also not simply down to teenage mums - the average age of the mother is increasing (which could be because the births recorded are trending to more second or subsequent births).

The increase is also not merely in raw numbers (which one might expect as the total poulation grows) but also in births per 1,000 head of population.

Here's the data in graph form (ONS November 2011 update), starting with 1940 or 1997:




The end, and a new beginning

The Classic FM radio news said that "David Cameron" (the Prime Minister, apparently - Google him up) "may consider" a referendum on the UK's membership of the EU. (My position is that we're not in it.)

The Sunday paper (Mail, of course - I need to know what the gullible are thinking, they're - we're - the ones who vote) gave this a big front-page splash, though their (print-version) headline "BRITAIN TO GET VOTE ON EUROPE" might just as easily have been "PRIME MINISTER COUGHS." For a few seconds' further reading tells you his new sort-of-potential-policy is a bit of skirt-twitching, hinting that you might get lucky in 2015. It might be part of a General Election manifesto, or a stand-alone referendum (which might be in-out or might also include some alternative about staying in but clawing back some powers). Or it might be just a hand job, or maybe you should give up and buy a packet of chips.

We've had duplicitous bastards before. Think of John Major (who prided himself on being able to talk to "the man in the four-ale bar") and, of course, the lucky, hard-wriggling spermatozoon Blair who pierced the Labour Party and altered its DNA. But they only employed special advisers; Cameron simply was one, is one.

Perhaps everything that's happened since the 1960s has been a kind of reconditioning of our expectations, so that we become habituated to hoping and believing less and less every year. The end point will be when we don't buy newspapers (the proprietors are already starting to give up selling them), disbelieve what we see on telly news, stop voting altogether. Those with get-up-and-go will either run the country (how many modern politicians go straight into the machine from university!), own it (increasingly, from abroad, at least from a taxation standpoint) or leave it. The rest will lapse into a dumb brutishness quite, quite unlike that of the mediaeval peasantry.

I heard years ago (and it's plausible) that Allied soldiers taken prisoner in the Korean War were initially placed in a holding area, and their behaviour observed. Those who displayed signs of initiative were taken to smaller, heavily-controlled camps; the rest were herded into much larger pens with few guards. And when I taught in an inner-city school in Birmingham in the late 70s, I was interested to note that the very dumbest kids were white: anybody of the old population who had anything about them, had left, and the new incomers were entrepreneurial, legally or otherwise.

The British Left, with its self-loathing and penchant for anarchic mischief, and the British Right, with its love of money above all else, have conspired in a cultural subversion that I cannot see anywhere else on Earth. For decades, brains and talent have fled this country like Equitable Life investors scrambling to get out of their with-profits fund, while immigration has been keenly encouraged, by the Left on Gramsci-ite principles and the Right because cheap imported labour has helped in the transfer of wealth from the (increasingly indebted) working and lower middle classes to the rich.

But the last laugh will be on all of them. For as with America, the key is initiative: those who had the gumption to leave their country and try to make a living here will eventually acquire whatever schooling, skills and knowledge they need, but the jizz is hard-wired into their DNA. The Left will wither as a new class of entrepreneurs springs up that sees no need to support anyone who isn't family; the Right will find that the domination game is no longer so easy, and while they spent their time foxhunting and otherwise aping a class from which they did not spring, their businesses were outcompeted. Eventually they will be kept going in genteel captivity, like pandas, while a new class arises that works hard, protects their family and fears God in whatever form they worship Him.

As Alexander Pope, observing the self-indulgent decadence of the filthy rich in the eighteenth century, dared to hope:

Another age shall see the golden ear
Imbrown the slope, and nod on the parterre,
Deep harvests bury all his pride has planned,
And laughing Ceres reassume the land.

Saturday, June 30, 2012

The UK is NOT in the European Union

The Prime Minister has, despite his previous clear manifesto commitment, decided for us that there should not be a referendum on our membership of the European Union. He further claims to "completely understand" those who want us to leave it.

He does not understand.

We are not in the EU now.

It is unfortunate, but as the Bible shows, hardly without precedent, that opposition to the current unlawful state of affairs should begin with voices crying out in the desert. One such voice is Albert Burgess, whose website "A Case For Treason" calls for the arraignment of those in our political class who have agreed to make us subject to European law, regulation and institutions. He is calling for citizens (British subjects) to make official complaints to the police, requiring them to bring charges of sedition, treason etc.

Doubtless this will not succeed in the near future and he will be written off as a crank; but his case is founded on fact and logic and as Thoreau reportedly said, "Any man more right than his neighbors constitutes a majority of one." But look how long it took William Wilberforce to carry the anti-slavery vote in Parliament, and hope.

At the core of Burgess' case is his reading of the British Constitution, which is that rule requires the consent not only of the monarch and political representatives but also of the people themselves using their own voices. Like the US Constitution, this is something that cannot be countermanded by any court or statute; it lies outside and above Parliamentary law.

Nor, I (and doubtless Burgess) would argue, can it be simply be buried in a political party's manifesto; an issue of such tremendous importance cannot validly be muddled up in pork-barrel politics. Voting for a political representative in Parliament is completely different from deciding the manner in which we are to be governed, and in any case our current electoral process effectively disenfranchises millions of us.

To join with other nations in a supranational political entity, in defiance of the settlement of 1688/9, would be a monumental constitutional change requiring the express consent of the people. This has never been given, nor, according to Burgess, can it be imposed except after the successful invasion of our land by a foreign power.

Since we have never had the EU membership question put to us, even the slightest transfer of sovereignty to that entity is ultra vires and has no force in law.

We are not now in the European Union, and I ask everyone who reads this, if they agree, to say so to others at every appropriate opportunity.

ADDENDUM

The Talking Clock blog urges us to support Mr Douglas Carswell's Bill to repeal the 1972 Act that claimed to makes us members of the European Union. I comment:

I plan to write to Mr Carswell to ask him to withdraw his proposed Bill, on two (related) grounds: 


1. Parliament had no power to pass the 1972 Act. Without the express consent of the people, this constitutional change could not have taken place and therefore never did. The Act is ultra vires.


2. Therefore, there is no point in repealing an Act that has no force in law. There is no such Act. It falls, and so does everything (all subsequent Acts, regulations, directives etc) that depends on it or in any way arises from it.


Logically, Mr Carswell would do better to submit for consideration a Bill to arrange a referendum for the UK to JOIN the EU, since we are not now members. This would confirm to us all that he shares our view that we are not now in the EU, and also that to join would require the consent of the people in propria persona.

Friday, June 29, 2012

Problem-Solving

The President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology has recently released a report on the impending shortage of people trained in the STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) disciplines. They note that mathematics courses are a bottleneck in this process. In a brilliant example of problem-solving, they have squarely fixed the blame on mathematics teachers, and decided that the cure is to have mathematics courses developed and taught by faculty in ‘mathematics-intensive’ disciplines instead. As I have said on numerous forums, the study of mathematics has been honed, pruned and refined for 2,500 years. I would suggest that we might be doing something right. Perhaps, as some good educational and cognitive psychology studies suggest, ability in mathematics is a fairly rare talent, but nonetheless essential for the training of good scientists?

Wednesday, June 27, 2012

Speculators will starve the poor

This report highlights an issue for me: how to preserve the value of my savings without hurting other people?

Agricultural funds are, I think, a step too far, though the returns will of course attract other investors.

INVESTMENT DISCLOSURE: Mostly in cash (and index-linked National Savings Certificates), but now planning to build up some reserves of physical gold via regular saving.

DISCLAIMER: Nothing here should be taken as personal advice, financial or otherwise. No liability is accepted for third-party content.

Tuesday, June 26, 2012

Speculators will starve the poor

This report highlights an issue for me: how to preserve the value of my savings without hurting other people?

Agricultural funds are, I think, a step too far, though the returns will of course attract other investors.

UK credit card lending down 28% in last 12 months


INVESTMENT DISCLOSURE: None. Still in cash (and index-linked National Savings Certificates), and missing all those day-trading opportunities.

DISCLAIMER: Nothing here should be taken as personal advice, financial or otherwise. No liability is accepted for third-party content.

UK credit card lending down 28% in last 12 months


INVESTMENT DISCLOSURE: None. Still in cash (and index-linked National Savings Certificates), and missing all those day-trading opportunities.

DISCLAIMER: Nothing here should be taken as personal advice, financial or otherwise. No liability is accepted for third-party content.

Sunday, June 24, 2012

Much ado about nothing: Hayward Gallery's "Invisible" exhibition

And so yesterday we walked through a warm and busy London to the South Bank, where, after sharing a doughy cheese pierogi off the real food street market, we ascended bloodstained concrete stairs to the Hayward Gallery.


The exhibition is entitled "Invisible: Art about the Unseen, 1957 -2012". We paid, were given tickets after reminding the counter clerk (was this a foretaste of the installation?) and gave them to the attendant at the door, who said something we didn't catch, so we asked him to repeat it. It was "Can you see me?" with what I suppose he hoped was an appropriately ironic smirk; I guess we should have replied, "Yes, but we can't hear you."

In we went, noting an avertissement that warned visitors that some might have difficulty reading the labels. Which were printed in white, on transparent plastic sheets, against white walls. Not that there were that many exhibits; now call me middle-browed, but if I'm offered nothing I want a lot of it for my money. In keeping, the gallery was sparsely attended, though one woman was making up for it by gazing very intensely at an empty section of wall. My wife speculates that she might have lost her glasses and thought she was looking at something. Or perhaps she was merely entering into the spirit of the thing (or the nothing).

The first item I inspected with any care was a press cutting from 1959, about Yves Klein's stunt "Zone de Sensibilité Picturale Immatérielle." Klein sold tickets in exchange for shreds of gold leaf (20 grams for the first exhibition - rising later to 80 grams, such are the effects of inflation). If the buyer opted to convert these into an immaterial experience, he burned his ticket (at least he got one first time of asking, I assume) and the artist threw half the gold into the river Seine; otherwise Klein kept the lot. So the artist got something tangible and conventionally valuable, whatever happened. Gallic cunning? But it's possible, of course, that I may be doing Klein an injustice, for in 1980 one of his pieces was discovered quite by accident in an Italian convent, having been anonymously deposited there in 1961 as a votive offering by the artist, who prayed for success and the increasing beauty of his works.

I do suspect that French philosophy is basically for impressing French chicks. It worked with Simone de Beauvoir, for one; and years ago in Paris, my beloved and I were watching TV and caught an interview with Serge Gainsbourg (conducted by Jane Birkin, as I recall) where he was acting the literary lion à la française - unshaven, Gauloised, possibly well-oiled as we used to say, and spouting un grand tas de testicules about la vie, l'amour etc. Fortunately we were well-oiled too, and understood him as drunks do each other. French women know that their role is to serve the gorgeous peacock; one remembers H E Bates' "A Breath of French Air", where muscular Adonises play ball on the beach, admired by mousy-looking girls with what the Irish call streely hair.

Maybe, as with Sartre in 1943, the concept of nothingness (or for others, the numinous) is a reaction to a time when you were supposed to join one team or the other, with no standing on the sidelines (it's getting like that again now, I sense). À bas les salauds, and all that; spit in the eye of those "assured of certain certainties"; let the spirit off the leash of Reason. 

Having said that, Sartre seems to have been able to redirect his gaze to concrete matters when it suited him, as witness the controversy over his stepping into a Jewish professor's job when it became forcibly vacant under the Nazis; and in the 1968 Paris student riots, he suddenly abandoned his fundamental stance on existentialism and became able to believe in collective freedom, at least for a while. Perhaps his volte-face and surrender to the authority of Marxism is the core of surreal rebellion. As a paper already cited says, "Hysterical questioning is critical of power (“Why have you done this? This is not just!”), but beneath it all is a provocation to the father figure to appear and to interpellate more successfully."

Back to the matter in hand. There was other stuff here, including Robert Barry's Energy Field (AM 130 KHz) from 1968 (a wooden box with a battery and coil), and a room with a couple of air coolers (my wife said she found these things very welcome after a sauna). One room was a blackout (pictured below; fortunately I captured another visitor, so I got both ground and figure, the essentials of all Western art).

 

Then there was a wide upper gallery. This space spoke to me: it said, 'You paid fourteen quid for this." And finally, something for the kids: Jeppe Hein's Invisible Labyrinth. You know, like those inlaid floor mazes found in some theme parks and gardens, only here you had to memorise the routes.

Good art (like radio plays) makes you do some of the work, and there's no shortage of clever people stropping their intellects on this one:


Of course, reviewers don't pay to get in, and on the whole, nor would we have, if we'd known what was in store. But surely every show must have a closing number, and to play you out here's the orchestral version of John Cage's 4' 33'' so you can have something to hum as you leave:



Coincidentally, the show we saw after, "Yes, Prime Minister" at the Trafalgar Studios (Whitehall Theatre as was), also featured a nothing, this time the Prime Minister, described in the play as "a vacuum". It was funny and beautifully acted, but edgier and darker than the old TV programmes - as with Stravinsky's The Rite Of Spring, we scent in the artist's work a storm coming to us in real life.

A shame then that five minutes down the road from there we have a PM who is the human equivalent of a German beach towel, merely keeping the place for a real person to come later. Like Jim Hacker, we now see Cam thrashing about with a handful of Blairite eye-catching initiatives to divert attention from his failure to achieve anything*. As we passed the now-gated entrance to Downing Street I said, make the most of it, you've got twelve months.

*... and, sadly for him, draw attention to his own "housing benefit".

Hayward Gallery: "Invisible" exhibition (2012)

And so yesterday we walked through a warm and busy London to the South Bank, where, after sharing a doughy cheese pierogi off the real food street market, we ascended bloodstained concrete stairs to the Hayward Gallery.



The exhibition is entitled "Invisible: Art about the Unseen, 1957 -2012". We paid, were given tickets after reminding the counter clerk (was this a foretaste of the installation?) and gave them to the attendant at the door, who said something we didn't catch, so we asked him to repeat it. It was "Can you see me?" with what I suppose he hoped was an appropriately ironic smirk; I guess we should have replied, "Yes, but we can't hear you."

In we went, noting an avertissement that warned visitors that some might have difficulty reading the labels. Which were printed in white, on transparent plastic sheets, against white walls. Not that there were that many exhibits; now call me middle-browed, but if I'm offered nothing I want a lot of it for my money. In keeping, the gallery was sparsely attended, though one woman was making up for it by gazing very intensely at an empty section of wall. My wife speculates that she might have lost her glasses and thought she was looking at something. Or perhaps she was merely entering into the spirit of the thing (or the nothing).

The first item I inspected with any care was a press cutting from 1959, about Yves Klein's stunt "Zone de Sensibilité Picturale Immatérielle." Klein sold tickets in exchange for shreds of gold leaf (20 grams for the first exhibition - rising later to 80 grams, such are the effects of inflation). If the buyer opted to convert these into an immaterial experience, he burned his ticket (at least he got one first time of asking, I assume) and the artist threw half the gold into the river Seine; otherwise Klein kept the lot. So the artist got something tangible and conventionally valuable, whatever happened. Gallic cunning? But it's possible, of course, that I may be doing Klein an injustice, for in 1980 one of his pieces was discovered quite by accident in an Italian convent, having been anonymously deposited there in 1961 as a votive offering by the artist, who prayed for success and the increasing beauty of his works.

I do suspect that French philosophy is basically for impressing French chicks. It worked with Simone de Beauvoir, for one; and years ago in Paris, my beloved and I were watching TV and caught an interview with Serge Gainsbourg (conducted by Jane Birkin, as I recall) where he was acting the literary lion à la française - unshaven, Gauloised, possibly well-oiled as we used to say, and spouting un grand tas de testicules about la vie, l'amour etc. Fortunately we were well-oiled too, and understood him as drunks do each other. French women know that their role is to serve the gorgeous peacock; one remembers H E Bates' "A Breath of French Air", where muscular Adonises play ball on the beach, admired by mousy-looking girls with what the Irish call streely hair.

Maybe, as with Sartre in 1943, the concept of nothingness (or for others, the numinous) is a reaction to a time when you were supposed to join one team or the other, with no standing on the sidelines (it's getting like that again now, I sense). À bas les salauds, and all that; spit in the eye of those "assured of certain certainties"; let the spirit off the leash of Reason. 

Having said that, Sartre seems to have been able to redirect his gaze to concrete matters when it suited him, as witness the controversy over his stepping into a Jewish professor's job when it became forcibly vacant under the Nazis; and in the 1968 Paris student riots, he suddenly abandoned his fundamental stance on existentialism and became able to believe in collective freedom, at least for a while. Perhaps his volte-face and surrender to the authority of Marxism is the core of surreal rebellion. As a paper already cited says, "Hysterical questioning is critical of power (“Why have you done this? This is not just!”), but beneath it all is a provocation to the father figure to appear and to interpellate more successfully."
 
Back to the matter in hand. There was other stuff here, including Robert Barry's Energy Field (AM 130 KHz) from 1968 (a wooden box with a battery and coil), and a room with a couple of air coolers (my wife said she found these things very welcome after a sauna). One room was a blackout (pictured below; fortunately I captured another visitor, so I got both ground and figure, the essentials of all Western art).

 

Then there was a wide upper gallery. This space spoke to me: it said, 'You paid fourteen quid for this." And finally, something for the kids: Jeppe Hein's Invisible Labyrinth. You know, like those inlaid floor mazes found in some theme parks and gardens, only here you had to memorise the routes.

Good art (like radio plays) makes you do some of the work, and there's no shortage of clever people stropping their intellects on this one:


Of course, reviewers don't pay to get in, and on the whole, nor would we have, if we'd known what was in store. But surely every show must have a closing number, and to play you out here's the orchestral version of John Cage's 4' 33'' so you can have something to hum as you leave:



Coincidentally, the show we saw after, "Yes, Prime Minister" at the Trafalgar Studios (Whitehall Theatre as was), also featured a nothing, this time the Prime Minister, described in the play as "a vacuum". It was funny and beautifully acted, but edgier and darker than the old TV programmes - as with Stravinsky's The Rite Of Spring, we scent in the artist's work a storm coming to us in real life.

A shame then that five minutes down the road from there we have a PM who is the human equivalent of a German beach towel, merely keeping the place for a real person to come later. Like Jim Hacker, we now see Cam thrashing about with a handful of Blairite eye-catching initiatives to divert attention from his failure to achieve anything*. As we passed the now-gated entrance to Downing Street I said, make the most of it, you've got twelve months.
 
*... and, sadly for him, draw attention to his own "housing benefit".

Wednesday, June 20, 2012

NHS - spiralling out of control




Utterly horrible. And not only confined to the elderly - a youngish friend who had an infection / fever would have died from lack of hydration had her husband not come in gangbusters, taking names and generally making it clear what would happen to them (legally) if they didn't get a line in her NOW.

Tuesday, June 19, 2012

The System, Part 2: There really is a class war, and the Right knows it

Yesterday, I attempted a jokey and simplified graphic to illustrate the result of "free trade" - the initial response from James Higham has been very sniffy, something to do with hats I gather (though he seems to have no similar objection to barrels or Chinese junks). Apparently it shows I'm a Leftist, even though I've never voted for Labour - or anything further left, before you ask. Or perhaps he's merely provoking me to greater effort, despite the sense that so many bloggers are getting now, of how they are wasting their time when they could instead "sport with Amaryllis in the shade ." Nevertheless...

The "System" graphic (see sidebar) is, of course, much too simple - where is the Federal Reserve, where are the bankers (NOT the banks) who make (extract*) money at every turn, including and especially when they receive government bailouts and organise the purchase of government securities?

But a striking aspect of this cartoon update of what is, in effect, a class war is that the conflict was identified and described in class terms by speakers for what one might loosely call the Right, 18 years ago. They anticipated our present economic crisis and the resulting social instability and they did not at all welcome the prospect, as I shall show. I'm not generally fond of embedding long videos, because I like to skim and scan for essential points, but I'd like to share a couple here and having watched them in full myself I recommend them to you. Neither of the speakers makes reference to the other, but in relation to GATT and untrammelled free trade generally they are saying the same prophetic things.

The first is a talk by Dr John Coleman (whose website is here); the occasion is not explicit but from the content and tenor of his remarks I think he is addressing a broadly Republican-supporting audience in New Mexico in 1994, at the time of the GATT talks. Think of this 100 minutes as an investment, saving you the trouble and expense of reading his several books, as much of his material appears to be summarised in this tour through Conspiracy Central: Guelphs, the Black Nobility of Venice, the coming New World Order etc. In the final 5 minutes, he predicts that the US economic system will collapse and destroy the American middle class, and the varied and extensive banking system will concentrate into five majors. I'm reluctant to accept the alleged motives of the alleged secret players, and think that short-sighted greed and venality are more plausible drivers of the process, but the end result is the same, with or without the comic-book villains.



Next is an interview (also in 1994) with billionaire Sir James Goldsmith, where he correctly sees that GATT will (as he says) tip the balance between labour and capital sharply in favour of the latter, and that it will cause social disruption in Western societies.



Goldsmith, like Dr Coleman, was emphatically anti-Communist and spent his cancer-riddled last energies campaigning for a referendum on the UK's membership of the EU; he describes himself in this interview as pro-free trade; but he is very clear on the destructive effects of putting our workforce in direct competition with foreign workers whose labour is dramatically cheaper in currency-adjusted terms. (Since then, we have seen the Chinese manipulate their currency so that this price advantage is maintained, whereas according to the idealised system described by classical economists the renminbi would rise against the dollar, certain US exports would be encouraged, certain Chinese exports discouraged and there would eventually be a new equilibrium).

The canal analogy I used in my graphic has two functions: first, it suggests that the removal of all barriers to international trade triggers financial flows and economic developments at a rate that neither side can properly cope with. Second, it illustrates a system that is indeed intended to foster trade, but with a series of control points (lock gates) that manage the rate of change.

Time is the key. Given more time to adjust, capital and labour in the West would be reallocated to relatively more competitive enterprises; education and training could mutate to support the required new skill sets. But certain individuals saw an opportunity to make massive personal fortunes by helping to dislocate the society that nurtured them, with the result that the West is experiencing growing disparities of income and wealth, as well as national accounts that can't achieve a balance, and the development of a kleptocratic and tyrannical overclass in government.

Well, it it so now, despite the best efforts of the Jeremiahs and Cassandras. Perfectly ordinary, stable, hard-working people that I meet as a financial adviser are saying, unprompted, that their government doesn't care for them, even that we are headed for a revolution. Some of it is jokey (a taxi driver I know wants to start a new political party called Dilligif, after the Oz saying "Do I look like I give a f***", to show we care as little for them as they do for us); some, less so.

And it wasn't just the Left then, or now, that was saying it.

* Jesse's discussion of Acemoglu and Robinson's "Why Nations Fail" is enlightening, with its polarised pair of terms "extractive" and "inclusive". 

Sunday, June 17, 2012

Time must have a stop: was there actually NO "Big Bang"?


"A fool may ask a question which forty wise men cannot answer."

I have a question about the supposed origin of the universe, and perhaps you may be the forty-first wise man (or woman):

Time slows down in the neighbourhood of massive objects. There is no object more massive than the entire Universe, when (some 14 billion years ago) it is supposed to have been compressed into a space smaller than the nail on my little finger. In that case, seen from our present frame of reference, was time then effectively at a stop? In which case, is the Big Bang effectively separated from us by an infinite duration, and therefore did not happen?

Another correspondent tells me, "Good question. Before Planck time, there isn't even matter, and energy doesn't experience time."

Saturday, June 16, 2012

Punt that pint! The beer vending machine you HAVE to assault



hat-tip: Dick Puddlecote

London Metals Exchange: another one bites the dust

Founded in 1877 but with 16th century roots in Gresham's original Royal Exchange, the London Metals Exchange has just been sold to the Chinese.

Ironically, the LME is the last "open outcry" market in Europe. Apart from a few brave individuals like Brian Haw (whom Parliament, to its everlasting disgrace, attempted to outlaw), and the Occupy London protestors against which the City, major newspapers and that refuge of the poor and oppressed the Church orchestrated a campaign of condemnation and legal action, we hear very little open outcry against our negligent, incompetent, venal, corrupt, secretive, dictatorial and treacherous overclass. A class that has sold its soul to the money men, who have sold the freehold and seed corn of our economy in the name of "free trade" that is progressively costing our freedom and is only beneficial to the trader. It does not take a conspiracy theorist to see a pattern in the invitees to Bilderberg 2012.

The complacency of the traders and their agents in politics is astounding. Martin Hutchinson was warning of the future decline of the City back in 2007, and around the same time a smirking financier at an Oxford college reunion was assuring us that we'd be cheating foreigners for a long time to come.

How many bricks can you take out of the bottom course of your house before the structure caves in? We don't have leaders; we have Destructors.

Tuesday, June 12, 2012

Controversy continues over Chinese foreign farm purchases

Further to my recent post on this subject, here's a WSJ article about resistance from New Zealand farmers to the purchase of 16 farms there.

According to Wiki, Crafar Farms was NZ's largest family-owned dairy concern until a crash in milk prices forced it into receivership. The receivers had two goes at getting official clearance to sell to Chinese businesses and got the okay in April this year.

Other farmers are worrying that it's the thin end of the wedge and cash-rich foreign buyers may now start to flood in, snapping up land at prices the locals can't match and ultimately turning Kiwis into tenant farmers. Australians share their concerns - though at least one business commentator there is blowing the free trade trumpet and warning of international tension if it's unheeded.

It's an issue here, too: last month saw a £50m deal between the UK and China, to sell pork products, which is OK in itself, but indicative of the potentially vast demand from the Chinese, so our food may not stay cheap for much longer.

The Daily Telegraph, reporting on this year's Hay Festival, included an interview (see 18:00) with Conor Woodman, author of Unfair Trade - How Big Business Exploits the World’s Poor and Why It Doesn’t Have To.  The title is self-explanatory, and the issue is becoming live for us here; as Woodman says, "What concerns me more than monopolies is Chinese investments in parts of the developing world where they are buying up land, fishing, mineral and mining rights. The Chinese have been going round buying up the world and we ought to be concerned by that."

On the one hand, there's land-grabbing going on inside China, where speculators are illegally seizing and converting precious agricultural land to building projects; and on the other, Chinese business is purchasing blocks of food-producing land around the world, including the South-East of England.

Don't expect our negligent, venal and treacherous ruling class to do much about it. Daily Mail business expert Alex Brummer's new book, "Britain for Sale: British Companies in Foreign Hands - The Hidden Threat to Our Economy" shows how, unlike our foreign counterparts, the UK has long been happy to sell off key British enterprises; flogging the very ground we stand on is only an extension of that process.

Savers between a rock and a hard place

The stock market is thoroughly corrupt;  physical assets, especially those purchased with the assistance of debt, are overpriced; and the bond market looks like a mantrap.  Yet even now there are economic commentators who are not in favour of protecting cash against inflation.

If sound money is not to be, then it seems to me that unless one is part of the elite battening on the financial system, sucking out wealth faster than it is diminished by inflation, impoverishment is certain.

Monday, June 11, 2012

Drugs: just say no to antidepressants



"The cost to the NHS of treating depression [includes] £230m for antidepressant drugs" - Nigel Morris, The Independent, 30 December 2011

"The prime purpose of prescribing antidepressants is to enable doctors to avoid being blamed for patients' suicides." - Dr Robert Lefever, Daily Mail, 8 June 2012

Protecting savers from inflation - an email to my MP

Request for Parliamentary question re NS&I index-linked savings certificates

Dear Mr Xxxx

As one of your constituents, I should be grateful if you would ask questions in Parliament re the Government's intentions in respect of preserving our life savings against the ravages of inflation. This is especially a matter of concern because of continuing enormous financial support for the banking system, here and in other countries (latterly Spain) that seems destined to burst out as high inflation at some future point.

I note that Mr Cameron's private secretary has written recently to all members of the Cabinet saying, among other things:

"The Prime Minister wants to ensure that the Government as a whole is giving the highest priority to addressing the cost of living."

(http://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-2157018/Cameron-summits-quads-secrets-save-EU.html)

If this is so, why did National Savings & Investments withdraw Index-Linked Savings Certificates from sale on 19 July 2010, when they had previously been continuously available since 1975, a year in which RPI was 24.2%? Is this an indication that the Government expects RPI to be even worse than that figure in the intermediate future?

And why were these Certificates, somewhat grudgingly reintroduced (5-year term only) on 12 May 2011, withdrawn again on 7 September? Why are they not available now?

It is also worrying that the Government's 2011 Budget Plan (as given in Red Book Annexe B, page 90 - http://www.direct.gov.uk/prod_consum_dg/groups/dg_digitalassets/@dg/documents/digitalasset/dg_196165.pdf) says "National Savings and Investments (NS&I) is expected to make a contribution to net finance of £2 billion."

Is this a sign that the Government is purely concerned about targets for government borrowing and not at all exercised about the protection of HMG's subjects' money savings, which in many cases have been built up slowly and with difficulty over many years. Why should simple savers have to accept risks to the real value of their deferred spending, as though they were speculators?

Is the Prime Minister's leaked pronouncement a misleading dog-whistle to the electorate, or is he really willing to put our money where his mouth is?

Protecting savers from inflation - an email to my MP

Request for Parliamentary question re NS&I index-linked savings certificates

Dear Mr Xxxx

As one of your constituents, I should be grateful if you would ask questions in Parliament re the Government's intentions in respect of preserving our life savings against the ravages of inflation. This is especially a matter of concern because of continuing enormous financial support for the banking system, here and in other countries (latterly Spain) that seems destined to burst out as high inflation at some future point.

I note that Mr Cameron's private secretary has written recently to all members of the Cabinet saying, among other things:

"The Prime Minister wants to ensure that the Government as a whole is giving the highest priority to addressing the cost of living."

(http://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-2157018/Cameron-summits-quads-secrets-save-EU.html)

If this is so, why did National Savings & Investments withdraw Index-Linked Savings Certificates from sale on 19 July 2010, when they had previously been continuously available since 1975, a year in which RPI was 24.2%? Is this an indication that the Government expects RPI to be even worse than that figure in the intermediate future?

And why were these Certificates, somewhat grudgingly reintroduced (5-year term only) on 12 May 2011, withdrawn again on 7 September? Why are they not available now?

It is also worrying that the Government's 2011 Budget Plan (as given in Red Book Annexe B, page 90 - http://www.direct.gov.uk/prod_consum_dg/groups/dg_digitalassets/@dg/documents/digitalasset/dg_196165.pdf) says "National Savings and Investments (NS&I) is expected to make a contribution to net finance of £2 billion."

Is this a sign that the Government is purely concerned about targets for government borrowing and not at all exercised about the protection of HMG's subjects' money savings, which in many cases have been built up slowly and with difficulty over many years. Why should simple savers have to accept risks to the real value of their deferred spending, as though they were speculators?

Is the Prime Minister's leaked pronouncement a misleading dog-whistle to the electorate, or is he really willing to put our money where his mouth is?

INVESTMENT DISCLOSURE: None. Still in cash (and index-linked National Savings Certificates), and missing all those day-trading opportunities.

DISCLAIMER: Nothing here should be taken as personal advice, financial or otherwise. No liability is accepted for third-party content.

Insatiable beaver

"South Park" creator Trey Parker's first film:

Friday, June 08, 2012

Watch out! Phony mobile roaming charges can cost you THOUSANDS!

A bad experience recounted by Henry Curteis of The Tap blog: a bill of £4,000 for emails to a switched-off mobile phone.

I've had pay-as-you-go for years, not just because I'm a low user but as a protection against those telephone scams that instantly charge you hundreds when you hit "reply".

"Basket of currencies" a solution for Zimbabwe

According to this blog, stocks in the shops have improved since they have started to accept currency from the USA, South Africa and Botswana. Though there is a problem with small change...

New Olympic sport: pole dancing

Drop the louche allure and put on the whites, and this'd challenge the men on the pommel horse:


To all college students everywhere

How true!

http://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/laundry.png

Tuesday, June 05, 2012

China's foreign farmland acquisitions

Back in March (Broad Oak Blog), I argued that the USA's future is not so bleak, when you consider her natural resources, especially farmland:


You can see that China's ratio is very low, and what with an expanding population, an improving diet, the grabbing of rural land by corrupt regional officials for speculative building projects, growing air and water pollution etc the demand for farmland is intensifying.

And China is doing something about it. In January, its Hong-Kong based Phoenix Weekly publication announced that 8,000 square kilometers of foreign arable land have been acquired so far, some recently in Australia (where cattlemen are arguing that the latest 400 sq mile project won't work) and New Zealand. As with all tussles over limited resources, this is bound to be controversial, so the next step is attempts to avoid scrutiny of the process.

Food prices and shortages are moving up from a Third World to a First World issue - see farmlandgrab.org for ongoing coverage from around the world. And if China should begin eyeing Russia's fertile soil? 

Then there's the world of professional investment - one of the longer running funds being the CF Eclectica Agriculture Fund. This is yet another area fraught with moral dilemma - making money for you and yours (or your clients), but at the price of soaring food costs and ultimately, starvation for many. If we make a fuss about "blood diamonds", how much more so should we raise objections to "blood farmland"?

Greed, and suffering. The sooner we move away from the over-financialised economy and back to sound money, making things and exchanging our surpluses, the better.

Post-it animation



Via Cartoon Brew.

Sunday, June 03, 2012

The Bilderberg Jubilee

Today marks the end of the 60th Bilderberg Conference.
The Alternative Action blog lists the attendees. Usefully, you can copy and paste into a spreadsheet and re-order, so that you can see how each country is represented.

Here's the GB contingent (I've added an indication of current or former interests in the right-hand column) - the two in red were the appointed "rapporteurs"for this conference:


Bearing in mind that Bilderberg is about European-North American dialogue and cooperation, do you think these people are the best to represent British interests here? Is there any voice you think should (or should not) have been included?

Or do you get the uneasy feeling that it's a convocation of cats to decide what to do about mice?

Fruity language from Balloon Head Cameron

"... a court sentenced Hosni Mubarak [...] to life in prison for his role in the killing of more than 800 protestors..." - ABC News

On radio news yesterday, it was alternatively "protestors" and "demonstrators". But if it had been "rioters"? The choice of terms can make such a difference.

Yet ex-spin doctor David Cameron, supposedly an expert on presentation, said yesterday that hostage-takers like those raided by the SAS in Afghanistan could "expect a swift and brutal end".

"Brutal"? That leaves a bad taste in the mouth.

Well, English wasn't one of his A-level subjects, though presumably it was at 'O' level. Perhaps his judgment has been permanently clouded by his alleged school age cannabis consumption, for which he got 500 lines. Not white lines, obviously; though when I visited a friend in Magdalene College, Cambridge in 1970 he told me that the large Old Etonian contingent there was cliquey and very into cocaine, so one can only wonder where and when their predilection was allowed to develop.

Would you like to think like a Prime Minister? Play Fruit Ninja here!

Means and ends

1941: 

"A Hauptmann (captain) with the 73rd Infantry Division reflected that peace would come even to the Balkans with a New European Order ‘so that our children would experience no more war’."

- Quoted in Anthony Beevor's "The Second World War" (Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 2012)

There is always this regrettable thing to do, then the lasting good will come. But it can't:

"... our personal experience and the study of history make it abundantly clear that the means whereby we try to achieve something are at least as important as the end we wish to attain. Indeed, they are even more important. For the means employed inevitably determine  the nature of the result achieved, whereas, however good the end aimed at may be, its goodness is powerless to counteract the effects  of the bad means we use to reach it. Similarly, a reform may be in the highest degree desirable; but if the contexts in which that reform is effected are undesirable, the results will inevitably be disappointing. These are simple and obvious truths. Nevertheless they are almost universally neglected."

- Aldous Huxley, "Ends and Means" (Chatto & Windus, 1941)

The European Project, the wholesale reordering of the British constitution (Supreme Court, House of Lords, the coming sinister National Crime Agency and so on), the international assault on Iraq - all undertaken without truthfully informed democratic consent.

The alliance with Franco against Communism, the support of the Taliban against the Russians; all these clever, disastrous calculations balancing evils. Stalin teaming up with Hitler's National Socialists against the wicked West, then ten silent, shocked days in a forest cabin when Hitler turned on him.

Procedure matters, after all. We can't guarantee a successful end, but at least we can choose what means we employ.

Saturday, June 02, 2012

Derby wager

The race is to start in five minutes. I'm rooting for Minimise Risk for a place; I think it's an appropriate name, like Party Politics in the 1992 Grand National.

Update: placed last, of course. Camelot wins - is this a favourable augur for the Conservative PM?

Dow 1,000 or less? Quote of the week (or century)

"If I am correct, I expect the Dow to be trading well under 1,000 by 2016. I am nailing that to my mast – and computer screen."

John Burford, Financial Trading Strategies website