Why America has a future

I always enjoy reading James Howard Kunstler, and I'm sure he's right in saying - as he does again, today - that we're looking at a future in which basic food production will become a more significant part of the economy.

But America does have a future.

Everybody knows that the USA has by far the largest economy on the planet. And although her debts are huge, so are her assets. Seen in the context of net international investment position, America is in much less trouble than the PIGS, and a little less than the UK or Italy.

And here's the picture where population and food production are concerned:

I've just been watching a TV programme about the development of a new Chinese city 1,000 miles west of Beijing, and wondering why there is such a rush to urbanise, especially when it means building on productive farmland. It seems to me that one consequence must ultimately be an extra incentive to look for more resources in other people's countries.

But the USA still has enormous resources - land, capital, people and skills. So does Europe. If we can reform and wrest power from the greedy and incompetent uberclass, there is time to recalibrate without horrible disaster, at least for ourselves.

INVESTMENT DISCLOSURE: None. Still in cash (and index-linked National Savings Certificates), and missing all those day-trading opportunities.

DISCLAIMER: Nothing here should be taken as personal advice, financial or otherwise. No liability is accepted for third-party content.

Drugs: et tu, "Brute"?

I note that Bruce Anderson wants to legalise drugs. The usual arguments: the war on them has failed,  and we could have all sorts of safeguards if we legalised them (I'm reminded of the New Labour stock phrase, "make sure").

Then the commenters weigh in: hey, just look at the damage done by alcohol and tobacco. They skate over the fact that the damage with A&T occurs despite all the ostensible safeguards.

Besides, the war on every crime has failed. Except possibly body-snatching.

Back in 2009, I reproduced an article by a doctor who really knows about drugs and alcohol, and addiction, and who is far from sure that legalisation would increase our liberty. I was even promised a reply / rebuttal by "Charon QC", who I'm sorry to say (he's a courteous man and argues fairly) never got around to it.

So here's the challenge: don't answer me - answer Anthony Daniels' arguments. Here they are, yet again.

Or at least explain the real agenda. Because I've yet to be convinced decriminalization would (taking all effects into account) save money, cause less inconvenience or improve health or productivity. We might like to think so, but it's funny how reality differs from our expectations.

Will somebody on the libertarian side please, finally, take the debate seriously?

Education's secret revolution

Peter Hitchens' column today includes, as side issue, the following:

"So millions of people can’t do simple sums? Of course they can’t. This is because so many snotty teachers, who think proper education is ‘authoritarian’ and ‘learning by rote’, refuse to make children chant their times tables.

I am no mathematician, but got every single one of the test questions right with ease, simply by using my tables."

I have submitted this comment for approval:

Re times tables: children ARE now taught to recite times tables - but in a different, and much less useful way. What follows may seem a little petty but there are, I think, wider implications.

In the bad old days, if asked "six sevens?" you'd reply "forty-two" straightaway, because the times table chant included the line "six sevens are forty-two". Simple association: say "Ant and..." and you get "Dec".

Now, the children I see have been trained in a sort of stepladder routine, climbing laboriously up all the rungs: "7, 14, 21, 28, 35, 42". Not only does this take longer, but they only have to misremember one of the rungs and it'll become "... 29, er, 36, er, 43". Or not infrequently, a petering out into a defeated silence.

This is partly to do with not enough practice: the item will have been ticked off the teacher's planning (as in  "we cover the apostrophe in Y4 Spring Term Week 5 Day Three"). God forbid you should bore children with dull, repetitive learning. But without anything else to link to, it's just a list of numbers with no obvious connexion - it may as well be the combination to a safe.

The child may also sometimes climb correctly but go past the required answer because in this painfully slow recital he's lost count of how many rungs you've asked him to climb.

I'm not certain why we didn't simply reinstate the ancient method, but I have a suspicion that it might be something to do with not admitting that we've been wrong about this since somewhere in the 1970s; like phonics, grammar exercises, precis, comprehension and so on. Whatever is brought back is reinstated not only late, slowly and grudgingly, but in some revised form so that crusty teachers and grandparents can't say "I told you so."

I know of one case in the 70s where a departing secondary Head of English burned the department's coursebooks in a skip in the playground, to ensure that the bad old ways could never return; and I've heard of two others who did the same. We have had a revolution; and the revolutionaries (many now leading lights or self-employed consultants) are just now beginning to fade from the scene.

Equitable Life: climbing back up?

Equitable Life, the British mutual insurance company that burned its fingers very badly by offering high guaranteed annuity rates (in the period 1956 - 1988) as a marketing incentive to prospective pension investors, has announced a deal that will help it off the hook.

Canada Life will be offering annuities for maturing EL pensions in future (though EL will remind customers that they have the open market option also). This follows the 2006 deal in which Canada Life took over £4.6 billion-worth of existing EL annuity business.

It's not clear what Canada Life has paid or will pay EL for this linkup, or how.

EL's "intention is to stop writing Equitable Life annuities where possible" (PDF). Over time this arrangement will further reduce EL's outstanding annuity commitments and some of the freed capital is to be used to increase payouts by 12.5% on maturities and transfers.

INVESTMENT DISCLOSURE: None. Still in cash (and index-linked National Savings Certificates), and missing all those day-trading opportunities.

DISCLAIMER: Nothing here should be taken as personal advice, financial or otherwise. No liability is accepted for third-party content.

Occupy St Paul's finally evicted, life to return to normal

Leave those poor bankers alone; haven't they suffered enough? Harry Mount seems to think so, at any rate: those oiks fair spoiled the view, so they did.

Of course, the modern thing is for the bankers to scourge the protestors. And since they're on the Board controlling St Paul's, they can. And a jolly good thing, too.

The news media: the cock crows on the dunghill

I think it was William Morris who said that the first step in literacy was being able to read a newspaper, and the second was not to read one.

Liz Jones gives cause why in the Mail on Sunday: fashion "journalists" at London Fashion Week are given seats of honour, or pent-up "some several hundred feet above the action", according to their willingness to toady; but a vengeful article by the victim gets results: "I was couriered a fabulous gift of perfume, shower gel, body lotion and chocolates (vegan, hopefully), and a handwritten note from Stella herself. Was this an apology? Or a bribe so I would play nicely next time?" (Both, obviously.) Sir Philip Greed gives her a light touch of the whip, saying he would have sent her a lovely olive coat for her review of TopShop - until he read the last para. Designer houses mark coverage by the glossies on a points system - nil for blacks and fatties - and so on, in a litany of bribery, schmoozing, banning and sacking. I think Jones is one to watch: when she finally tears her gaze away from her navel in the back pages of You magazine (there is a hopeful reticence about her human relationships this week), she might yet prove a Samson and bring the whole unholy edifice crashing down.

Meanwhile, Toby Young has taken the Murdoch shilling - as he boasts in the Spectator - and dutifully produced some wallpaperese in the new Sun on Sunday. His bet's on education sec Gove for PM, the free-schooler opines, entirely without any consideration of how (one of) his interests might in any way be congruent with Gove's (or Rupe's). Like so many of our modern celebs, Young has recognized the power of brazenness, adopting "@toadmeister" as his Twitter ID. And like former transport minister Stephen Byers, he's a "bit like a sort of cab for hire", only it's more acceptable in journalism, or so he seems to think: "(Go on Private Eye, stick me in Order of the Brown Nose. See if I care)", sez 'e in the Speccie, a magazine I now read principally because of Jeremy Clarke's luminous column (shame they let go Christopher Fildes and Mark Steyn, among other talent).

Young's is the authentic voice of the new Fourth Estate establishment: offensively triumphalist. Like the bankers who've ruined us, the yacht-visiting politicians who've sold us out, the rich who've looted us. These have learned how to manage news and opinion: dining with, leaking to, treating, flattering and employing the writers who (like the ancient bards) can foster or wither reputation. By and large, the newshounds have been luxuriously tamed, their necks enclosed in velvet collars with silver chains. There are exceptions, like Peter Hitchens, serving but to prove the rule; as "Anastasia" in his latest piece on Russia says, "The only rational conclusion is despair."

Tyler Durden, Greek bonds and "odious debt"

Here, Tyler Durden discusses at length issues around the process of restructuring Greek debt.

It seems that we have to take into account the difference between bonds issued under Greek law and those issued under don-domestic law. One of the technical points is whether all holders of the debt have to agree to a new deal, and whether or not a minority can hold the majority to ransom by refusing to agree.

If, in desperation, Greece is driven to outright default whatever its creditors might think, this tears up the rule book and anything could happen. Other European nations are also severely distressed by debt and might try to follow suit. The very rule of international law would be challenged.

But there is an angle that Durden has not explored in his essay: the principle of "odious debt". There is precedent for a country repudiating damaging obligations, e.g. Mexico after the fall of the Emperor Maximilian, and the USA itself in relation to Cuban debt incurred under the previous Spanish regime.

Could Greeks be justified in arguing that bailouts imposed by their new, undemocratic government are not binding on the people? Could this argument also apply to debts incurred previously, directly and indirectly and consequently, in the process of acquiring EU membership, which it now transpires was based on fraud, assisted by bent accounting by Goldman Sachs and quite possibly connived at by the other EU states?

INVESTMENT DISCLOSURE: None. Still in cash (and index-linked National Savings Certificates), and missing all those day-trading opportunities.

DISCLAIMER: Nothing here should be taken as personal advice, financial or otherwise. No liability is accepted for third-party content.