*** FUTURE POSTS WILL ALSO APPEAR AT 'NOW AND NEXT' : https://rolfnorfolk.substack.com
Sunday, September 13, 2009
What's good for the [Dow] ISN'T good for the country
This is what I have been thinking - that the stock indices are now fundamentally disconnected from the health of the economy.
Predicting the 2010 General Election Result
Many voters and critics have been left confused by Prime Minister Gordon Brown's explanation of how he appeared to predict Thursday's General Election results.
Some 4.6m viewers saw him claim to have asked 24 people to guess the successful candidates for the 646 commons seats and use an average of the total for each to predict the result.
But some mathematicians have dismissed his explanation as "complete nonsense".
And on blogging site Twitter one fan said he was "still confused", while another called it a "massive letdown".
IT trickery
On Brown's own Twitter account, he said: "Well there you go. I trust all is clear now."
He also added that his blog, which has been set up for people to comment on his tricks, has received 5 million hits.
However, it is currently not working.
Thursday's show on Channel 4 attracted 2.7 million people - beating the actual Election 2010 programme on BBC One, which 2.4 million tuned in for.
Brown successfully produced the correct numbers during The Live Event programme, at the same time the actual results were announced on the BBC's coverage.
He then promised viewers they would discover the secret of the trick on Friday's Channel Four News.
During How To Win The Election - which attracted a peak of 4.6 million viewers - he revealed that he had worked out the election numbers by asking a group of 24 people to guess them.
Once he had their answers Brown said he added the numbers up for each candidate and divided them by 24.
However, Alex Newton, a professor of Pure Mathematics at the University of Oxford, has dismissed Brown's explanation.
"Mathematically it is complete rubbish. It is a bluff on his part," he said.
And Roger Penwiper, professor of psephology at the University of Cambridge added: "There is a difference between guessing between the weight of an ox and guessing election candidates, which is un-guessable.
"That is just a clear wind-up and complete nonsense. There is absolutely no way he did that."
Other theories, that have been suggested in the newspapers, claim Brown used IT hacking trickery or a wall of postal votes to help him complete the stunt.
Michael Pundit of The Times newspaper rated the show five out of five, saying Brown has turned from "most irritating man on television to the most intriguing".
However, he added: "It was, of course, still one hell of a trick — far too good for him to give away."
Twitter critics of the explanation show include dCameron1966, who said: "I'm still confused about what way he did it to be honest."
T-Benn called the 59-year-old a "massive letdown" and AnthonyCLB said: "Is it just me or was Gordon Brown's explanation last night very disappointing?"
But some voters enjoyed Brown's stunt.
Peterm&elson posted on his Twitter page that the show had been "very interesting & entertaining".
Kjongil added: "Gordon Brown is pretty cool... I can see why people are so skeptical [sic] about him, but I think he's on to something here."
Fashion and the stockmarket
PS: My wife says 80s-style shoulder pads are coming back in the Autumn catalogues. A bullish sign?
Saturday, September 12, 2009
Dow now, and then - "Brief Encounter"
Signs of a tipping point in the market again?
Stinking fish and red herrings
Those of us who are old enough will remember the history: how venture capitalist Jon Moulton came with a plan to reduce the money-haemorrhaging plant to a smaller, actually-profit-making outfit specialising in sporty cars. The rest of the enormous site would be cleared and developed as a residential and shopping area. Redundant workers would be suitably paid-off and their pensions preserved - and many of them might then have had a chance of employment with other car makers elsewhere in the country.
Oh, no, this would never do. The land was polluted and quite unsuitable for residential development. Rover still had a future. Moulton was a wicked chancer. His twopenny-halfpenny firm had no business meddling with a great bellwether of the British economy.
Now, the site has been cleared for residential and retail development. There is no car making at all. The workers didn't get the compensation they would have had, nor the pensions, nor the alternative employment. A few men have - legally - made about £9 million each, hardly worth mentioning in the same breath as the outrageous booty brought home by bankers and City gamblers.
And the Fourth Estate plays along with the distraction of the public's attention.
Robert Peston is the son of Maurice Peston, Baron Peston of Mile End, a Labour life peerage created for Peston senior on 24 March 1987.
Another collapsist
The question is, how bad is it for other countries (e.g. the UK) and what will trading partners do to stop their export markets being hit? If all major countries try to devalue their currency, then maybe only certain commodities will be worth holding on to while the winds blow.
And Keiser says the wealthy have been shifting their capital out of America since 9/11. He's been choosing defensive stocks, ones that will survive high unemployment, consumer boycott and anti-American sentiment. One big and possibly vulnerable name he mentions is Coca-Cola (remember Qibla Cola?) - a staple of Warren Buffett's portfolio.
Friday, September 11, 2009
Thursday, September 10, 2009
What's Next?
My father was a natural scholar, who was pulled out of school at age 14 by my grandmother, on the grounds that 'education would not do him any good'. My mother, raised in Nazi Germany, lost any chance of further education because of the war.
While raising my brother and me, they encouraged us to do our best, and to take advantage of the excellent (at that time) British education system. In doing so, however, they allowed us to find our own paths, and for that I am grateful.
Why do I make these comments?
It is my opinion that, even if we survive the current economic mess, there are cultural movements that threaten to cement in place a caste system worse than the old class system.
On one hand, we have the 'education experts', who have so meddled with schools on the grounds of inclusiveness and diversity, that the education system now produces people qualified on paper, yet unable to do anything useful.
In the US, we have religious extremists on the right trying to kill public education for many reasons, and attacking science and its funding at every turn. In the UK, students now have to pay tuition, leaving them deeply in debt, just like in the US.
We also have a relatively new phenomenon, the 'helicopter Mom' of the middle class, who micro-manage every aspect of their childrens' lives. I have interviewed students for a select medical school program. Full 3/4 are of Indian descent, with both parents in the medical field. They have been groomed from birth to do just the right things to follow their parents.
Just how free will the next generation be?
Compassionate Conservatism
Even the Soviets recognized that this trust was inviolate. Not so the corporate raiders, who started in about 1980 to raid the funds to pay for their purchases, totally destroying many of them in the process.
Today, the conservative US columnist George Will published a piece blaming California's financial ills on over-taxing the rich, and the 'generous' state pension system.
I find it a very odd coincidence that the very same day, conservative Republican lawmakers in Ohio announced that their public pension system is in trouble, and requires a major overhaul, to be done on the backs of the current retirees.
Tuesday, September 08, 2009
Hi-yo Silver, away!
And gold briefly cracked the $1,000 ceiling today. Naturally, there'll be a reversal at some point, but I have a hunch that much money and effort have been expended trying to put off this psychologically important event. Once you've made the first crack in the eggshell, it gets a lot easier.
Monday, September 07, 2009
Every little thing's gonna be all right
United 93
Sunday, September 06, 2009
A positive step: solar cooking
Will Tony Blair take Irish nationality?
That is not to say that the parents might not later choose to apply. Advantages would include the famously lenient Irish tax treatment of writers and artists (once entirely exempted, but now lightly taxed at 1% on annual income up to €100,000 and 2% for those earning above that figure). Eire is a good country for those who specialise in popular fiction.
Not that the people of the Irish Republic are afraid to call people to account*; they take their religion and morality quite seriously there, still. I watched the Gay Byrne Show on 28 October 1994, when Gerry Adams faced political opponents and a far from sympathetic Southern Irish audience and was called a murderer to his face (he remained lethally calm and turned the point into an issue of good manners).
Perhaps Tony Blair, that son of Proteus, will one day be seized and held until verity is forced from him.
Update
*The current PM is ostentatiously backing compensation claims against Libya for supplying the IRA with explosives. Could we start a leetle closer to home? How much are the IRA, PIRA and the rest prepared to pay?
Fisk this - Jack Straw on oil and Al-Megrahi
Mr Straw also claims today that Mr Brown had nothing to do with his change of heart over the PTA [Prisoner Transfer Agreement], adding: “I certainly didn’t talk to the PM. There is no paper trail to suggest he was involved at all.”
Even if literally true, the above statement is consistent with the possibilities that:
- Mr Straw communicated via a third party with the PM on oil-for-Lockerbie-bombers (or, the PM raised the matter with others)
- Mr Straw communicated directly with the PM, but not through speech
- There were once paper-based records to show the PM's involvement, but they have been destroyed
- There were, or still are, records held in other form (e.g. email)
A good example of a "non-denial denial"?
PM to quit?
What will all these people do for a hate-figure if Mr Brown quits, as I think he will probably do on ‘health grounds’ before the Election?
I reconfirmed our electoral register details by phone yesterday; but I really don't know whether I will be able to vote for any of the candidates. Have we got to the point where mass abstention sends a stronger signal than positive choice?
It occurs to me that even using the phrase "sending a signal" reveals how much the political class has lost touch with us.
UK public debt worse than USA
Saturday, September 05, 2009
Lone wolves and the herd instinct
It's true even now. British PM Gordon Brown is down, heir-presumptive David Cameron is up. We shall see what Balloon Head makes of the economy when he gets in.
The problem with Brown is that he is, in my (educationally experienced) opinion, mildly autistic. He's the kind that academically dumber, normal kids pick on and wonder why he doesn't fight back. He hasn't helped himself by aiming obsessively at a job which requires quite different skills, which the flashy Blair has in spades; but self-knowledge comes hard for ASD types. Star Trek fans will understand that Scotty could never take Captain Kirk's seat in the Starship Enterprise; but maybe he harboured ambition, all the same. Had Kirk made Scotty his deputy, it could have lit the touchpaper.
The autistic child senses his vulnerability, and will make compromises to be part of the flock. Desperate for acceptance and respect, Brown has paltered with the truth throughout his political career, as commentators on his time as Chancellor have often noted. The brawling pit of the House of Commons has never been the place to nurture an inner-directed, analytical man's integrity.
But the pack is blind, too. Unrestrained, the instinct to group-bully the outsiders, the different ones, would send the human race well back into the Stone Age. And then look at the ones they instinctively, collectively follow. How many years was it before the Press revealed what they must have known all along, that the overjoyed crowd that greeted Blair in Downing Street after the 1997 General Election, was a handpicked mob of Party members? I shall believe in journalistic independence when a new incumbent is promptly probed and criticised.
And what is the pack now saying about Afghanistan? Are they correct? Would it solve our problems to withdraw and concentrate on more achievable aspects of domestic security (some British Army regiments stationed by our ports, airfields and the Channel Tunnel might not go amiss); or would it be a sign of weakness, the crumbling that in ancient times not only ceded the provinces formerly under the Pax Romana, but at last saw Alaric's Visigoths rampage through Rome itself?
Friday, September 04, 2009
Income mobility and income structure
Elsewhere, I've read that the middle earning bracket as a whole has not advanced, and the top end has become wildly richer. But if individuals can progress up this ladder, does it matter that the gap between the rungs has stretched?