Political Correctness: a straw in the wind

I deal with primary age children who are excluded from mainstream school. They have a variety of problems and we do the best we can to straighten them out. Without humour, we'd go under.

Currently we have a student social worker who comes in weekly for the experience. I told her the old joke, "How many kids with ADHD does it take to change a lightbulb? Ans.: Hey, let's go out and ride our bikes!"

Her mouth gave a small upward twitch and she said, "That shouldn't be funny."

Humour is anarchic and often contains a germ of truth. So it is the first target of the cold forces of repression.

I have been warned.

News for the confused

Bradley Wiggins is to be made Archbishop of Canterbury.

A translation of Guillaume de Machaut's "Un Po Apres Le Temps d'Autonne"

A little after autumn time

When those who cultivate the vine

Pick their grapes and fill the tun

And with work that’s lightly done

Each man offers to his fellow

Pears and grapes and peaches mellow

When in the soil the corn-seeds grow

And the leaf falls from the bough

By Nature’s or the wind’s design

In thirteen hundred forty-nine

On the ninth day of November

I was closed up in my chamber.

Had the sky been bright and clear

I should have gone to take the air

But the mountains and the meadows

Were hid in fog and deepest shadows

So I was taken by the gloom

Thinking in my lonely room

How all men everywhere are governed

By cronies meeting in the tavern

How truth and justice in the land

Are dead, slain by the hand

Of greed, who over them holds reign

As if she were a sovereign queen

How the rulers rob the ruled

Sack, plunder and assault the world

Crushing them in their distress

Merciless and pitiless

Great mischief seems it to my mind

When vice and power are combined

 

______________________________________________

 

(Translation by blog author, 03 November 2012. Copyright.)

 

Original text:

Un po apres le temps d’autonne

Que chascuns vandange et entonne

Qui a vingnes a vandangier

Et qu’on a a petit dangier

Pesches moust poires et roisins

dont on presente a ses voisins

Que li blez en la terre germe

Et que la fueille chiet dou cherme

Par nature ou dou vent qui vente

L’an mil trois cens nuef et quarante

Le novisme jour de novembre

M’en aloie par mi ma chambre

Et se li airs fust clers et purs

Je fusse ailleurs mais si obscurs

Estoit que montaignes et plains

Estoient de bruines pleins.

Si que la merencolioie

Tous seuls en ma chambre et pensoie

Comment par conseil de taverne

Li mondes par tout se gouverne

Comment justice et verite

Sont mortes par l’iniquite

D’avarice qui en maint regne

Com dame souvereinne regne

Com li signeur leur subgiez pillent

Roubent raembent et essillent

et mettent a destruction

Sans pitie ne compation

Si que grans meschies ce me samble

Est de vice et pooir ensamble.

From Le Jugement du roy de Navarre  by Guillaume de Machaut (d. 1377)

 

Paranoia

I like to browse other people's reading lists from time to time. Looking through Captain Ranty's today, I note:

• Letter From Amerika's blog has been removed entirely, the last post being one entitled "Junk Science and Big Pharma Evil Ruining Kids Lives". As someon who teaches children that are routinely prescribed medication for ADHD, I'd have read that if it were still up. Why the vapourisation?
• Lawful Rebellion's last post reproduced correspondence with a QC including the text of a petition to HM The Queen claiming that the UK's membership of the EU was illegally secured and that there have been numerous offences of treason committed in connection with that. Since then, zilch.

One could write a thriller about dissident bloggers being tracked down by State agents and "disappeared" - almost the perfect crime, since typically bloggers use pseudonyms and do not give geographic or other direct contact details. But would it be fiction?

British economy continues to slump

Shortly after the desperate clutching at straws ("1% Q3 GDP increase compared with the same time last year!") comes the bank lending figure: down another 0.9% annualised on the previous (also very disappointing) quarter.

QE is just buying time. The real economy is withering on the vine. Until debt is forgiven or defaulted, no real growth will happen. Demand is frozen because of debt and the overvaluation of unproductive assets.

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 money velocity at historic low

St Louis Fed figures show that the rate at which money changes hands is at it slowest since records began in 1959. The velocity of M2 is now 1.568, down from the historic high of 2.135 in mid-1997 - a reduction of 25.56%. The first 3 quarters of 2012 are all below the previous nadir in 1964.

Roughly speaking, for every 4 dollars spent at the end of the last Millennium, Americans are now spending 3.

But the money supply has not grown sufficiently to make up the shortfall (online figures only start from early November 1980, but the pattern is clear):

 

M2, the Fed explains, is a broad measure of money held by households, so in its way it reflects the state of the real or workaday economy.

 

The latest figure for M2 is $10.2 trillion, up from $4.03 trillion at the end of 1997, a year in which GDP was $8.33 trillion. If money velocity had not changed, current GDP would be not $15.78 trillion as it now is, but $21.8 trillion - 38% higher.

 

Quantitative Easing (not included in M2) is not to stimulate that kind of growth, but to avert or mitigate disaster.  So far, according to the November issue of Forbes magazine, $3.3 trillion has been poured into banks and quite a lot from there into the government, just to keep things going, but Mike Whitney of Global Research reports estimates of $4 - 10 trillion more needed. Even then, the cheap cash may be shoring up stocks and bonds, but is doing little to stimulate demand or support those who try to meet it.

 

The much-maligned Federal Reserve is buying time, but the question is whether anyone is doing anything useful during the reprieve. Governments of both parties have spent 30 years encouraging banks to funnel money into homes - largely unproductive and illiquid assets - and the drag of debt has finally slowed demand to a halt.

 

Meantime, productive capacity has been haemorrhaging Eastwards, and the pool of labour skills in the US are in danger of decay. Even if much consumer and real estate debt were forgiven now, it would be a challenge to rebuild and restaff factories; but all that, I think, is what has to happen.

 

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 money velocity at historic low

St Louis Fed figures show that the rate at which money changes hands is at it slowest since records began in 1959. The velocity of M2 is now 1.568, down from the historic high of 2.135 in mid-1997 - a reduction of 25.56%. The first 3 quarters of 2012 are all below the previous nadir in 1964.

Roughly speaking, for every 4 dollars spent at the end of the last Millennium, Americans are now spending 3.

But the money supply has not grown sufficiently to make up the shortfall (online figures only start from early November 1980, but the pattern is clear):

 

M2, the Fed explains, is a broad measure of money held by households, so in its way it reflects the state of the real or workaday economy.

 

The latest figure for M2 is $10.2 trillion, up from $4.03 trillion at the end of 1997, a year in which GDP was $8.33 trillion. If money velocity had not changed, current GDP would be not $15.78 trillion as it now is, but $21.8 trillion - 38% higher.

 

Quantitative Easing (not included in M2) is not to stimulate that kind of growth, but to avert or mitigate disaster.  So far, according to the November issue of Forbes magazine, $3.3 trillion has been poured into banks and quite a lot from there into the government, just to keep things going, but Mike Whitney of Global Research reports estimates of $4 - 10 trillion more needed. Even then, the cheap cash may be shoring up stocks and bonds, but is doing little to stimulate demand or support those who try to meet it.

 

The much-maligned Federal Reserve is buying time, but the question is whether anyone is doing anything useful during the reprieve. Governments of both parties have spent 30 years encouraging banks to funnel money into homes - largely unproductive and illiquid assets - and the drag of debt has finally slowed demand to a halt.

 

Meantime, productive capacity has been haemorrhaging Eastwards, and the pool of labour skills in the US are in danger of decay. Even if much consumer and real estate debt were forgiven now, it would be a challenge to rebuild and restaff factories; but all that, I think, is what has to happen.

 

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.