Beauty

Lorna Page is using the proceeds of her first book to spring friends from OAP jail. What a beautiful thing to do. And what a beautiful face.

Britney and Madonna at MTV Awards Ceremony

But her 50th isn't until Saturday...

As my wife points out, it's not their sexuality they're exploiting, it's men's. It's just not fair on me.

By the way, Tarantino is sizing up Britney for a big part. Maybe this stunt (from 2003) gave him the idea.

But is Paris Hilton a NATURAL gold? We deserve to know.

23 years of FTSE growth, RPI-adjusted

At last, education for life (instead of lifelong education)

In the Sunday Express today, Alain de Botton explains why he's opened a School of Life shop-cum-philosopher's-studio-cum-therapy-room in Marchmont Street, London:

"Before I went to university, I imagined it as an extraordinary place where you'd get a chance to escape from commercial pressures and examine the great questions of life in beautiful surroundings with fascinating people, and so become a better, wiser, more interesting person."

So did I, and mostly what I learned was how naïf I'd been.

Good luck with the new venture.

IN- or DE: Denninger reasserts his position

Karl Denninger repeats - in his rather forthright and sexualised way - the simple argument that deflation suits the bankers who run the Fed:

... In a deflationary environment the banker gets as much of your money as he can, and then he also gets the house! [...] The banker makes money in terms of real value in a deflationary environment. You, on the other hand, being debt, get rammed."

In short, cui bono?

And in the Marc Faber interview cited in the previous post, Dr Doom maintains that the drop in the price of oil shows that we're already in recession; the drying-up - the sucking back out - of excess liquidity is what will make the dollar more valuable.

I once read a short story by Brian Aldiss, in which invisible vampire aliens ravage a farmer's livestock - all one can see is the double puncture. The skin is pierced, the innards liquefy and are drained. Sturdily, the farmer accepts that he has a new class of customer.

Is this not like banking and government? Without mortgages and inheritance tax, how otherwise would almost everybody in each generation be forced to buy their living quarters anew?

The view from Agamotto's Eye

Doctor Strange and the all-seeing Eye of Agamotto

Mish relays an interview with Marc Faber, who is a bull on the US dollar (not US stocks) and Japan.

"Europe will have to cut interest rates as well, and their economies are most likely much weaker than perceived...

... We are in a seven year bull market for commodities, so commodities can easily drop 50%. Some have already done that like nickel, lead, and zinc. Others will follow. But after that, I think that the bull market in commodities will reassert itself. But my view was that for the second half of 2008 commodities would go down."