Thursday, September 04, 2008
Your money - no hiding place in the Crash
I've spent some time trying to find out where's a safe place for any little wealth you and I might have. Looking at the Great Depression for a precedent, Jesse suggests it's more a game of cat-and-mouse, or fox-and-geese. No "fire-and-forget," then: we will have to keep looking, thinking and acting. (htp: Michael Panzner)
Palin for Prez?
If her words are her own (and her delivery certainly is), I think I've heard a potential future first woman President of the USA, and it's not Hillary. Is it too late for McCain and Palin to swap?
P.S. I notice Donal Blaney is thinking the same.
P.S. I notice Donal Blaney is thinking the same.
Wednesday, September 03, 2008
The financial brakes are on
Mish argues that CPI inflation is now overstated because it ignores house prices, with the result that real interest rates should be viewed as high already.
Shale oil - are we ready for it?
After the recent oil price rises, is shale oil now economically viable, or not?
Monday, September 01, 2008
No paper tiger
Shortly after the Ossetian excursion, Putin tranquillizes a tiger. Could he be sending a message over to the south-east?
What I don't know about humanism
When did humanism come to mean atheism? Erasmus wasn't an atheist.
I've been to a humanist funeral (eulogy and a reading from Tolkien), and the celebrant gave an embarrassed laugh when (out of habit) I shook his hand on leaving the crematorium.
Modern atheism doesn't seem quite rational to me. I can't find it easily, but there was an ancient Greek philosopher who, denying the soul, told his followers to throw his body into the road when he died, and when they raised the possibility that wild animals might come to eat him while still alive, told them to put a stick in his hand. That's being consistent with your beliefs.
"The Humanist view of life is progressive and optimistic, in awe of human potential, living without fear of judgement and death, finding enough purpose and meaning in life, love and leaving a good legacy," says the President of the British Humanist Association. Why all this preachiness?
Doubtless I'll be enlightened by some of these paradoxical zealots in the comments.
I've been to a humanist funeral (eulogy and a reading from Tolkien), and the celebrant gave an embarrassed laugh when (out of habit) I shook his hand on leaving the crematorium.
Modern atheism doesn't seem quite rational to me. I can't find it easily, but there was an ancient Greek philosopher who, denying the soul, told his followers to throw his body into the road when he died, and when they raised the possibility that wild animals might come to eat him while still alive, told them to put a stick in his hand. That's being consistent with your beliefs.
"The Humanist view of life is progressive and optimistic, in awe of human potential, living without fear of judgement and death, finding enough purpose and meaning in life, love and leaving a good legacy," says the President of the British Humanist Association. Why all this preachiness?
Doubtless I'll be enlightened by some of these paradoxical zealots in the comments.
Sunday, August 31, 2008
Saturday, August 30, 2008
Financial Apocalypse Now
Cash, Gold, and Swiss gov't bonds.
In 7 years, it could very well be that a Krugerrand buys a decent house!
... says an anonymous commentator on Nourishing Obscurity, after listing multiple dire threats to our wealth and security. Any other expert care to give a view - and put his/her name to it?
In 7 years, it could very well be that a Krugerrand buys a decent house!
... says an anonymous commentator on Nourishing Obscurity, after listing multiple dire threats to our wealth and security. Any other expert care to give a view - and put his/her name to it?
US mortgage GSEs: Bank of China is taking cover
The Chinese have been reducing their investment in Freddie and Fannie (htp: Alice).
What bankers don't know about banking - or do they?
Those red and blue lines remind me of the song, Me And My Shadow.This is from Mark Lundeen's 12 August essay on banking and inflation (htp: The Mogambo Guru). And here's another graph from the same:
(Is it my imagination, or does the curve begin in the 60s?)
Should we call the credit crunch the Shawshank Recession?
What I don't know about banking
London Banker reports that US deposit insurance looks compromised. I comment:
In my amateur way, I have suggested that we give up on fractional reserve banking for home lending and simply lend (create) money without any base at all (but with, perhaps, some State budget for how fast they can inflate the money supply). We're nearly there, but the current system is complicated by the expensive mechanics of taking in and returning deposits, and the threat of runs on the banks.
Perhaps deposit takers could be like the old Swiss banks and charge you for holding your cash, while the lending banks rot its value. Any votes for a separation of functions?
In my amateur way, I have suggested that we give up on fractional reserve banking for home lending and simply lend (create) money without any base at all (but with, perhaps, some State budget for how fast they can inflate the money supply). We're nearly there, but the current system is complicated by the expensive mechanics of taking in and returning deposits, and the threat of runs on the banks.
Perhaps deposit takers could be like the old Swiss banks and charge you for holding your cash, while the lending banks rot its value. Any votes for a separation of functions?
The British underclass: cocooned victims
Theodore Dalrymple, a retired doctor who worked in Birmingham with many of the underclass, writes an excellent, all-in-one piece about the misery and degradation at the bottom of society, and how it is sustained by people in the middle who depend on it for their living, and a political class that pretends to treat these carpeted, centrally-heated slaves as their clients.
And the whole thing is supported by ninnies who think they're clever: "For intellectuals, multiculturalism is a lot of different restaurants."
It's in yesterday's Daily Express, but I'm finding it hard to create a link as you are led straight on to some viewing program; so since everyone who was going to buy that edition has now done so, here's the text:
MODERN Britain is a land of contrasts, not to say of paradoxes. Its children are simultaneously overindulged and neglected, mollycoddled and subjected to violence. Adults either work long hours or while away the time in complete idleness.
It imports labour from overseas but supports large numbers of people to do nothing. As the health of the population improves so the number of invalids grows inexorably. No war has ever produced as many people unable to work as the British welfare state.
Despite official statistics – misleading, of course – about the low rate of unemployment, one in seven British households does not have a working adult. Millions of children are growing up with no personal example of earning a living before them. No wonder later in life they call the day on which they receive their social security “pay day”.
They even use the word “wages” in this connection. (Habitual burglars, by the way, talk about “going to work”). It is not their fault. We have made – or perhaps I should say our government has made – them as they are.
We should not imagine, just because we ourselves would like a little more leisure time, that the condition of state-supported idleness is a happy one. Living happily in idleness is an art which most people do not possess. On the contrary, state-created and subsidised idleness is purgatory on earth, or a limbo in which you are denied the two great motives of effort: hope and fear.
IF THOSE paid to be idle go out to work the chances are that, because they are mostly unskilled, they will receive little more money than if they do not. Who, other than a saint, wants to get up at 6am every morning to earn £15 a week more than if he stays in bed? The idle do not believe they can improve their lives by honest labour and they are not entirely wrong.
On the other hand they cannot deprive themselves of an income either. Whatever they do, however they behave, the money – such as it is – will come in. No hope, then, and no fear. This also means no meaning. What rushes in to fill the void? The answer is self-destruction and social pathology of every conceivable kind. Better to live a life of perpetual crisis – a kind of personal soap opera – than one of quiet limbo. A bit of crime and violence helps to break the monotony.
The whole system is very expensive. It means the rest of the population has to spend between an eighth and a quarter of its working life paying for it. Moreover, there is no end in sight: for the system is reproducing the very kind of people who will necessitate its continuance. No one strapped to a treadmill ever had a more futile occupation than the employed British population working to reduce child poverty under the present arrangements.
A large number of the households with no working adult are those of single parents. Contrary to received opinion, the answer is not to force them all out to work, tiring them out so that they can devote even less time and attention to their child or children.
The answer is to provide firm and very strong incentives for people to form stable couples. As anyone who has ever witnessed an unhappy marriage will know, not every stable couple is a happy one but from the point of view of public policy it is better on the whole. From the point of view of children and public finances, too, couples (even unhappy ones) should be stable. Successive governments have followed exactly the opposite course, encouraging the break-up of parents as much as possible. The consequences are disproportionately severe for those at the lower end of the economic spectrum.
Paying large numbers of people to do nothing, we find ourselves short of labour so we import it. This has unfortunate consequences, whatever political correctness might say. (For intellectuals, multiculturalism is a lot of different restaurants).
ONE of the reasons people give for wanting to leave Britain – and more want to leave than the natives of any other comparable country – is that it has entirely lost its distinctive character. Oddly enough, even older immigrants say the same, lamenting the country they came to is no longer the one they live in.
As if this were not enough, much of the demand for labour produced by the prosperity of the past years, now coming to an end, has been bogus in the sense of not being economically viable in the long run. Half of the employment created in the past decade has been in the public service without there having been a corresponding improvement in public services.
These extra public servants – many of them in effect drones of the State, whose main activity is obstructing others from doing anything useful – have to be paid for by taxes. They are an extra burden to those in the real economy and are the natural political allies of the permanently idle. After all, those with social pathology require an army of saviours from the consequences of their behaviour.
The whole pyramid scheme – for that is what it is – works wonders for a time, based as it is on a mountain of personal and public indebtedness. But once confidence in it is lost the edifice comes tumbling down.
As Louis XV’s mistress Madame de Pompadour said, aware of where all the excesses of the aristocracy were ultimately leading: “Apres nous, le deluge” (After us, the deluge). The Government has turned a cynical witticism into its economic and social policy.
And the whole thing is supported by ninnies who think they're clever: "For intellectuals, multiculturalism is a lot of different restaurants."
It's in yesterday's Daily Express, but I'm finding it hard to create a link as you are led straight on to some viewing program; so since everyone who was going to buy that edition has now done so, here's the text:
MODERN Britain is a land of contrasts, not to say of paradoxes. Its children are simultaneously overindulged and neglected, mollycoddled and subjected to violence. Adults either work long hours or while away the time in complete idleness.
It imports labour from overseas but supports large numbers of people to do nothing. As the health of the population improves so the number of invalids grows inexorably. No war has ever produced as many people unable to work as the British welfare state.
Despite official statistics – misleading, of course – about the low rate of unemployment, one in seven British households does not have a working adult. Millions of children are growing up with no personal example of earning a living before them. No wonder later in life they call the day on which they receive their social security “pay day”.
They even use the word “wages” in this connection. (Habitual burglars, by the way, talk about “going to work”). It is not their fault. We have made – or perhaps I should say our government has made – them as they are.
We should not imagine, just because we ourselves would like a little more leisure time, that the condition of state-supported idleness is a happy one. Living happily in idleness is an art which most people do not possess. On the contrary, state-created and subsidised idleness is purgatory on earth, or a limbo in which you are denied the two great motives of effort: hope and fear.
IF THOSE paid to be idle go out to work the chances are that, because they are mostly unskilled, they will receive little more money than if they do not. Who, other than a saint, wants to get up at 6am every morning to earn £15 a week more than if he stays in bed? The idle do not believe they can improve their lives by honest labour and they are not entirely wrong.
On the other hand they cannot deprive themselves of an income either. Whatever they do, however they behave, the money – such as it is – will come in. No hope, then, and no fear. This also means no meaning. What rushes in to fill the void? The answer is self-destruction and social pathology of every conceivable kind. Better to live a life of perpetual crisis – a kind of personal soap opera – than one of quiet limbo. A bit of crime and violence helps to break the monotony.
The whole system is very expensive. It means the rest of the population has to spend between an eighth and a quarter of its working life paying for it. Moreover, there is no end in sight: for the system is reproducing the very kind of people who will necessitate its continuance. No one strapped to a treadmill ever had a more futile occupation than the employed British population working to reduce child poverty under the present arrangements.
A large number of the households with no working adult are those of single parents. Contrary to received opinion, the answer is not to force them all out to work, tiring them out so that they can devote even less time and attention to their child or children.
The answer is to provide firm and very strong incentives for people to form stable couples. As anyone who has ever witnessed an unhappy marriage will know, not every stable couple is a happy one but from the point of view of public policy it is better on the whole. From the point of view of children and public finances, too, couples (even unhappy ones) should be stable. Successive governments have followed exactly the opposite course, encouraging the break-up of parents as much as possible. The consequences are disproportionately severe for those at the lower end of the economic spectrum.
Paying large numbers of people to do nothing, we find ourselves short of labour so we import it. This has unfortunate consequences, whatever political correctness might say. (For intellectuals, multiculturalism is a lot of different restaurants).
ONE of the reasons people give for wanting to leave Britain – and more want to leave than the natives of any other comparable country – is that it has entirely lost its distinctive character. Oddly enough, even older immigrants say the same, lamenting the country they came to is no longer the one they live in.
As if this were not enough, much of the demand for labour produced by the prosperity of the past years, now coming to an end, has been bogus in the sense of not being economically viable in the long run. Half of the employment created in the past decade has been in the public service without there having been a corresponding improvement in public services.
These extra public servants – many of them in effect drones of the State, whose main activity is obstructing others from doing anything useful – have to be paid for by taxes. They are an extra burden to those in the real economy and are the natural political allies of the permanently idle. After all, those with social pathology require an army of saviours from the consequences of their behaviour.
The whole pyramid scheme – for that is what it is – works wonders for a time, based as it is on a mountain of personal and public indebtedness. But once confidence in it is lost the edifice comes tumbling down.
As Louis XV’s mistress Madame de Pompadour said, aware of where all the excesses of the aristocracy were ultimately leading: “Apres nous, le deluge” (After us, the deluge). The Government has turned a cynical witticism into its economic and social policy.
Friday, August 29, 2008
Impending dollar implosion?
Mish reports a notion that there's heavy foreign buying of US Treasuries supporting the dollar; how much longer can it be kept up?
Impending gold explosion?
According to "Jesse", India is buying physical gold like there's no tomorrow, and they've run out of supplies of Krugerrands in SA.
Thursday, August 28, 2008
The New World Order
I said earlier this week that rich and powerful foreign investors will call the tune now, and London Banker relays a threat from the Chinese re Fannie and Freddie. Unlike the domestic citizen and taxpayer, these people absolutely will not be stiffed. Which is why we will get high interest rates, to prevent robbery-by-inflation. Which is why cash may remain on its throne for quite a while yet.
The question remains, which currency? One says the yen, another coughs and says "Euro." Wish I knew.
A snippet from Alice
Just a reminder from Alice's powerful Picasa presentation on house price trends (see also her Youtube version - top of sidebar).Advisers and analysts who haven't been in the game long enough to yellow their teeth, may be emotionally unprepared for severe and enduring reversals of fortune.
Woman in orange suit breaches security cordon to assail Presidential nominee
UPDATE (24 Feb 2012): curiously, the link for Hillary's picture below is now broken. Further, the reverse image search engine Tin Eye returns ZERO results for this specific image, despite its being an AFP/Getty Images pic. Quite possibly this is the last place on the Internet that you will find it.
Is this happenstance like those photos in Stalin's era, re-edited as certain persons became unpersons? Or in this case, as an unperson became a Person?
You can, though, find other images of the same thing elsewhere. So maybe it's to do with the vanishing of the LA Times Dishrag blog? And when and why did it vanish?
___________________________________________________________
"Pantsuit", or jumpsuit? You decide; I fear it may be prophetic.
But I think Paris Hilton carries it off better.
Is this happenstance like those photos in Stalin's era, re-edited as certain persons became unpersons? Or in this case, as an unperson became a Person?
You can, though, find other images of the same thing elsewhere. So maybe it's to do with the vanishing of the LA Times Dishrag blog? And when and why did it vanish?
___________________________________________________________
"Pantsuit", or jumpsuit? You decide; I fear it may be prophetic.
But I think Paris Hilton carries it off better.
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