1. "total credit losses from subprime mortgages and other bad debts could reach a staggering $1.6 trillion"2. "The FDIC has $52.8 billion in its insurance fund to cover bank failures."
Wednesday, July 09, 2008
Checking your deposit protection may not be enough
1. "total credit losses from subprime mortgages and other bad debts could reach a staggering $1.6 trillion"2. "The FDIC has $52.8 billion in its insurance fund to cover bank failures."
Education, literacy and discipline
A thread began at Alice's, originally about the decline in manufacturing industry, but moving on to the expense and alleged uselessness of public services, particularly education - bring back the cane, we're turning out kids who can't read, etc. Here's some news from the front:
When it was available, corporal punishment didn't have to be used often. An unexpected consequence of the ban-the-cane soft-handedness is that children are now assaulted by each other much more frequently, and quite often in the classroom in front of the teacher - whom G*d help if she (and it will usually be a she, these days) tries to get involved.
But as to functional illiteracy, in the absence of old-style discipline (and I agree that schools are not nearly brutal enough), maybe we've got almost as far as we can go, because we're swimming against strong tides. In the past, we had a literate culture and media, and parents who reinforced social rules and had aspirations for their children. The children of today are more likely to have complex and dysfunctional homes, their TVs (I often turn off at 9 to avoid the crapshed) and computers are full of violent fantasy and their neighbourhoods are ruled by postcode-based gangs rather than the police.
With the best will in the world, teachers cannot impose marital fidelity, sobriety, male employment, moral self-restraint in public entertainment, and the free run of the Queen's writ throughout her realm. Quite seriously, we in the education system can hear the creaking and groaning from the pit props in the mine.
Teachers will continue to be moderately well-remunerated as long as our rulers maintain the pretence that schools can do the principal work of child-rearing; when the scales fall from our eyes and we start to take responsibility for our offspring and the example we set them, schools will go back to standardised textbooks and employ humble, low-paid functionaries to steer the children through them. The public purse will benefit, and more importantly so will the next generation, for whom the present one has so little regard.
When it was available, corporal punishment didn't have to be used often. An unexpected consequence of the ban-the-cane soft-handedness is that children are now assaulted by each other much more frequently, and quite often in the classroom in front of the teacher - whom G*d help if she (and it will usually be a she, these days) tries to get involved.
But as to functional illiteracy, in the absence of old-style discipline (and I agree that schools are not nearly brutal enough), maybe we've got almost as far as we can go, because we're swimming against strong tides. In the past, we had a literate culture and media, and parents who reinforced social rules and had aspirations for their children. The children of today are more likely to have complex and dysfunctional homes, their TVs (I often turn off at 9 to avoid the crapshed) and computers are full of violent fantasy and their neighbourhoods are ruled by postcode-based gangs rather than the police.
With the best will in the world, teachers cannot impose marital fidelity, sobriety, male employment, moral self-restraint in public entertainment, and the free run of the Queen's writ throughout her realm. Quite seriously, we in the education system can hear the creaking and groaning from the pit props in the mine.
Teachers will continue to be moderately well-remunerated as long as our rulers maintain the pretence that schools can do the principal work of child-rearing; when the scales fall from our eyes and we start to take responsibility for our offspring and the example we set them, schools will go back to standardised textbooks and employ humble, low-paid functionaries to steer the children through them. The public purse will benefit, and more importantly so will the next generation, for whom the present one has so little regard.
Tuesday, July 08, 2008
Dinner at G8
WORLD leaders sat down to an 18-course gastronomic extravaganza at a G8 summit in Japan, which is focusing on the food crisis.
Don't scoff.
I've tried to work up an alternative menu, esp. for Gordon Brown's place (roast turkey?), but so far all I can manage is the wine:
Sweet Cherie (n/a)
Sancerre smiles
Beau jolly
Sham pain
Con yak
Emerging markets inflation could break the current system
... says Nouriel Roubini, and there's already a fund to speculate on consequential revaluation of developing world currencies, according to this.
Inside the news media
A comment from "Ryan" on the previous post is too good not to feature up-front (hope you don't mind, Ryan):
My sister is a journalist, but stays away from the nationals. She points out that the big papers get all their real news from Reuters and the local papers, then work it up into a much bigger story. They don't employ many real reporters or journalists - its too expensive. They prefer talking heads that can offer news-views which add a narrative to a story dug up by someone else and which matches the editorial line of the paper.
My sister also tells me that the papers have dirt on almost every public figure, but they CHOOSE who to turn over. This gives them enormous power over those that they chose to support - they can make you king one day and pauper the next. You can see they do this all the time with celebs, building them up one year and tearing them down the next, but we never imagine that they employ the same tactics with politicians - but they do.
She used to tell me all the tactics that papers would use to tell a story their way with their own spin on it. For instance, how often have you seen a phrase along the lines of "A spokesman said"? No name given. Why? It means the line was made up by the writer and attributed to someone real to give it substance. "A spokesmon", "unnamed sources", "A source within the Labour party" etc etc etc. Yes, they may all refer to a real person - but they could just have been made up by the journo to get his opinion across whilst making it sound like he has his finger on the pulse.
She showed me a story that she sold to the Guardian for £50. It was one column inch. The Guardian worked it up to half a page - all of it made up and based on opinion. She was pissed off: "I should have got £2500 if the story had really been that big!"
Take a story, remove the bits that are attributable to named sources - and what is left is usually made up. The attributable bit has probably come right from Reuters. That's why I don't read papers anymore and rarely watch TV news. Its 90% made up by wet-behind-the- ears kids that know nothing about the world we live in but make up a narrative for the news that suits their editor.
Can anyone else give us any more on the ways of journalists and the news media, please?
My sister is a journalist, but stays away from the nationals. She points out that the big papers get all their real news from Reuters and the local papers, then work it up into a much bigger story. They don't employ many real reporters or journalists - its too expensive. They prefer talking heads that can offer news-views which add a narrative to a story dug up by someone else and which matches the editorial line of the paper.
My sister also tells me that the papers have dirt on almost every public figure, but they CHOOSE who to turn over. This gives them enormous power over those that they chose to support - they can make you king one day and pauper the next. You can see they do this all the time with celebs, building them up one year and tearing them down the next, but we never imagine that they employ the same tactics with politicians - but they do.
She used to tell me all the tactics that papers would use to tell a story their way with their own spin on it. For instance, how often have you seen a phrase along the lines of "A spokesman said"? No name given. Why? It means the line was made up by the writer and attributed to someone real to give it substance. "A spokesmon", "unnamed sources", "A source within the Labour party" etc etc etc. Yes, they may all refer to a real person - but they could just have been made up by the journo to get his opinion across whilst making it sound like he has his finger on the pulse.
She showed me a story that she sold to the Guardian for £50. It was one column inch. The Guardian worked it up to half a page - all of it made up and based on opinion. She was pissed off: "I should have got £2500 if the story had really been that big!"
Take a story, remove the bits that are attributable to named sources - and what is left is usually made up. The attributable bit has probably come right from Reuters. That's why I don't read papers anymore and rarely watch TV news. Its 90% made up by wet-behind-the- ears kids that know nothing about the world we live in but make up a narrative for the news that suits their editor.
Can anyone else give us any more on the ways of journalists and the news media, please?
Here is the news
Lead story on Classic FM news this morning: "It looks like Britain's heading for a recession."
FLASH: Queen Anne's dead.
Where does the news come from? Is it any use? Other than weather forecasts, the last usable information I can remember is from the summer of 1987, when I learned that Sir James Goldsmith had sold all his shares on the Paris Bourse, which confirmed my feelings about the way the market was going - but that item came from Private Eye magazine.
December 1, 1978: publication of the Times and Sunday Times suspended for 11 months. During the journalists' industrial dispute, a spoof paper comes out, called "Not The Times". At that time, a strap line for the Financial Times was ""Don't you wish you were better informed?", so the send-up featured a picture of a steam locomotive that had crashed right through the wall of a railway terminus and down onto the pavement beneath, with the headline "What could you have done, had you been better informed?"
FLASH: Queen Anne's dead.
Where does the news come from? Is it any use? Other than weather forecasts, the last usable information I can remember is from the summer of 1987, when I learned that Sir James Goldsmith had sold all his shares on the Paris Bourse, which confirmed my feelings about the way the market was going - but that item came from Private Eye magazine.
December 1, 1978: publication of the Times and Sunday Times suspended for 11 months. During the journalists' industrial dispute, a spoof paper comes out, called "Not The Times". At that time, a strap line for the Financial Times was ""Don't you wish you were better informed?", so the send-up featured a picture of a steam locomotive that had crashed right through the wall of a railway terminus and down onto the pavement beneath, with the headline "What could you have done, had you been better informed?"
Useless, or trivial. As the Poet Laureate Alfred Austin wrote about the terminally-ill King Edward:
"Along the wire the electric message came,
He is no better, He is much the same."
So, who determines the news agenda? Are journalists much cop any more? Are they allowed to be?
... which brings us back to gold.
A quote from the Economist article cited yesterday:
real returns from American shares were just 0.1% a year from 1966-81; they fell a dismal 1.3% a year from 1973 to 1981.
Although that performance was much better than the painfully negative returns suffered by holders of government bonds, it was a long way short of the 6-7% returns that shares have historically achieved. Gold was a much better inflation hedge, earning an annual 10.9% in real terms between 1966 and 1981.
Which is, I suppose, what Marc Faber means by recommending gold at this point.
real returns from American shares were just 0.1% a year from 1966-81; they fell a dismal 1.3% a year from 1973 to 1981.
Although that performance was much better than the painfully negative returns suffered by holders of government bonds, it was a long way short of the 6-7% returns that shares have historically achieved. Gold was a much better inflation hedge, earning an annual 10.9% in real terms between 1966 and 1981.
Which is, I suppose, what Marc Faber means by recommending gold at this point.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)