Life is a duck race

A few weeks ago, we watched a duck race in the Wye Valley. The ducks were emptied out of a big bag off the bridge at the same time, but at the finish a mile lower down, the winner was 20 minutes ahead of the second. Others had formed little groups and convoys, with stragglers and outliers.

Seems like a metaphor to me. The winner certainly didn't paddle any harder or smarter than the others. How much of a part does luck play in our lives?

Investment cataclysm?

The Mogambo Guru points out that the Standard & Poor's 500 Index stands at $940, but the earnings last week were $7.21, a price-earnings ratio of 130.

Historically, the p/e ratio of the S&P 500 has averaged less than 20 - whether you measure from 1881, 1900, 1945 or 1970.

If the earnings don't improve dramatically and soon, the implication is a super-crash. But even if earnings triple from last week's level, that would merely put us back to where we were in December 1999, when the S&P's p/e ratio stood at its highest-ever (up to then) level: 44.2. And as you know, the market went on to halve in value by 2003.

So the S&P earnings have to become three times better than they are now, just to match the pre-Millennium crash conditions.

The dominant feeling I have now is a diffuse sense of denial.

A winning move for New Labour?

What if New Labour's next General Election manifesto were to contain a pledge to hold a straightforward, binding referendum on British membership of the EU?

Call out the instigator

We are in one of those “generational revolutions” that Jefferson said were as important as anything else to the proper functioning of our democracy. We can no longer pretend that our collective behavior as a nation for the past 25 years has been worthy of us as a people.

I suggest you read this op-ed piece in the NYT (htp: Jesse). Revolution is in the air - here, too. That's why we need radical reform, instead.

He who pays the piper calls the tune

A couple of stories catch my eye:

China is requiring new PCs to come with factory-installed Internet filters (don't tell our government)...

... and may be buying American military secrets from the US Government (I believe I suggested this as a possible development quite some time ago, but I'm still looking for the reference.)

Recession - not even halfway there

Karl Denninger "does the math" and reckons that as Americans retrench, the economy will contract far more yet - at least 20% in total.

So anyone who has real money wants out: "The Chinese, Saudis and others with actual money that we are attempting to borrow to kick that can once again have figured out our scam and they are headed for the exits."

Coming soon: austerity, a devalued currency and high interest rates. And in the UK, it'll be worse.

A good time to save money, while you're still able to; and to bet against the crippled Anglo-American horses. No point piling up savings in our rotten fiat cash.

The Mogambo Guru continues to chirrup his commodities song.

Return of the Mighty Marmite Machine

They've put a new fuse in the Large Hadron Collider and found a few more shillings to run it on off-peak through the coming winter. Ex-D:Ream bandmember and nucular scientist Brian Cox has said "Anyone who thinks the LHC will destroy the world is a twat".

I've often suspected that those who employ the ad hominem strategy do so because they are on dodgy ground. I'm not a fan of logical proof by abuse, but it has its adherents.

Nevertheless, surely handsome, trendy Cox has heard of the possibility of a "Vacuum metastability event", explained thusly in Wikipedia:

"If our universe is in a very long-lived false vacuum, it is possible that the universe will tunnel into a lower energy state. If this happens, all structures will be destroyed instantaneously, without any forewarning."

How could this happen? A further link in the infallible Wiki universe considers the possibility of cosmic annihilation by particle accelerator:

One scenario is that, rather than quantum tunnelling, a particle accelerator, which produces very high energies in a very small area, could create sufficiently high energy density as to penetrate the barrier and stimulate the decay of the false vacuum to the lower energy vacuum. Hut and Rees,[3] however, have determined that because we have observed cosmic ray collisions at much higher energies than those produced in terrestrial particle accelerators, that these experiments will not, at least for the foreseeable future, pose a threat to our vacuum.

"...at least for the foreseeable future": a phrase to treasure, when set beside the earlier phrase, "...without any forewarning."

Not that I'd mind. After all, we'd know nothing about it. And it'd end the debate about global cooling / global warming / climate change - no guilt, either. And it'd make the Bible a nice bookend for both ends of the history of the universe, starting with "Let there be light" and ending "the day of the Lord will come as a thief in the night."

Throw that switch, Twatfinder General.