(If you want to check the data, see here and here.)
Wednesday, July 04, 2012
US Financial System has now been reset
For the first time in 40-plus years, the ratio of monetary base to credit in America has returned to 5%.
(If you want to check the data, see here and here.)
(If you want to check the data, see here and here.)
Tuesday, July 03, 2012
Is gold still fairly priced?
The nominal price of gold has soared over the last decade, prompting some to worry that it may be something of a bubble. And ceratinly its price path is erratic, reflecting sentiment more than monetary fundamentals.
But whether you look at the US monetary base, or alternatively at the growth of total credit market debt, gold is slightly below its 42-year average in relation to these benchmarks:
I didn't have the money in 2005 to pile in as I wanted to; but I'm starting to buy small amounts of physical gold now - no longer to make a killing in real terms, but as a hedge against inflation.
Why? A number of reasons:
In the medium term, I kind of expect UK housing (ex-London and some other chi-chi areas) to cheapen as unemployment, uncertainty and bank crises continue; by the time we get to sub-Weimar I hope to have moved house (using much of our spare cash) and then with what's left I'll hope to be in fairly defensive stocks (utility companies etc), gold and maybe Marc Faber's beloved emerging markets.
For now it's cash, plus gold plus anything officially guaranteed to hold its value.
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.
But whether you look at the US monetary base, or alternatively at the growth of total credit market debt, gold is slightly below its 42-year average in relation to these benchmarks:
I didn't have the money in 2005 to pile in as I wanted to; but I'm starting to buy small amounts of physical gold now - no longer to make a killing in real terms, but as a hedge against inflation.
Why? A number of reasons:
- the British Government is still not offering index-linked National Savings Certificates (I've written about this to my MP, who has written to the Chancellor, who has not replied so far);
- the high streets around my area are still boasting a number of shops buying gold, not selling it;
- China has (some time ago) announced its determination to build up a stock of 10,000 tonnes;
- other central banks are buying;
- you can still purchase gold in the UK without VAT.
In the medium term, I kind of expect UK housing (ex-London and some other chi-chi areas) to cheapen as unemployment, uncertainty and bank crises continue; by the time we get to sub-Weimar I hope to have moved house (using much of our spare cash) and then with what's left I'll hope to be in fairly defensive stocks (utility companies etc), gold and maybe Marc Faber's beloved emerging markets.
For now it's cash, plus gold plus anything officially guaranteed to hold its value.
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.
Is gold still fairly priced?
The nominal price of gold has soared over the last decade, prompting some to worry that it may be something of a bubble. And ceratinly its price path is erratic, reflecting sentiment more than monetary fundamentals.
But whether you look at the US monetary base, or alternatively at the growth of total credit market debt, gold is slightly below its 42-year average in relation to these benchmarks:
I didn't have the money in 2005 to pile in as I wanted to; but I'm starting to buy small amounts of physical gold now - no longer to make a killing in real terms, but as a hedge against inflation.
Why? A number of reasons:
In the medium term, I kind of expect UK housing (ex-London and some other chi-chi areas) to cheapen as unemployment, uncertainty and bank crises continue; by the time we get to sub-Weimar I hope to have moved house (using much of our spare cash) and then with what's left I'll hope to be in fairly defensive stocks (utility companies etc), gold and maybe Marc Faber's beloved emerging markets.
For now it's cash, plus gold plus anything officially guaranteed to hold its value.
But whether you look at the US monetary base, or alternatively at the growth of total credit market debt, gold is slightly below its 42-year average in relation to these benchmarks:
I didn't have the money in 2005 to pile in as I wanted to; but I'm starting to buy small amounts of physical gold now - no longer to make a killing in real terms, but as a hedge against inflation.
Why? A number of reasons:
- the British Government is still not offering index-linked National Savings Certificates (I've written about this to my MP, who has written to the Chancellor, who has not replied so far);
- the high streets around my area are still boasting a number of shops buying gold, not selling it;
- China has (some time ago) announced its determination to build up a stock of 10,000 tonnes;
- other central banks are buying;
- you can still purchase gold in the UK without VAT.
In the medium term, I kind of expect UK housing (ex-London and some other chi-chi areas) to cheapen as unemployment, uncertainty and bank crises continue; by the time we get to sub-Weimar I hope to have moved house (using much of our spare cash) and then with what's left I'll hope to be in fairly defensive stocks (utility companies etc), gold and maybe Marc Faber's beloved emerging markets.
For now it's cash, plus gold plus anything officially guaranteed to hold its value.
Sunday, July 01, 2012
UK baby boom since 2000
I'm picking up on an anonymous comment on conspiracy blog The Tap, in which the writer says they've noticed an increase in pram-pushers and it reminds them of an observation by Alan Watts that promiscuity increases before a major war.
I'm less sure about the cause - it may have more to do with a reaction to recession, possibly leading to more women deciding that in the absence of paid work it may be time to start or increase their family. But the ONS statistics do bear out the commenter's perception, and it seems not to be simply a quirk of demographics in his/her geographical area.
However, it's also not simply down to teenage mums - the average age of the mother is increasing (which could be because the births recorded are trending to more second or subsequent births).
The increase is also not merely in raw numbers (which one might expect as the total poulation grows) but also in births per 1,000 head of population.
Here's the data in graph form (ONS November 2011 update), starting with 1940 or 1997:
I'm less sure about the cause - it may have more to do with a reaction to recession, possibly leading to more women deciding that in the absence of paid work it may be time to start or increase their family. But the ONS statistics do bear out the commenter's perception, and it seems not to be simply a quirk of demographics in his/her geographical area.
However, it's also not simply down to teenage mums - the average age of the mother is increasing (which could be because the births recorded are trending to more second or subsequent births).
The increase is also not merely in raw numbers (which one might expect as the total poulation grows) but also in births per 1,000 head of population.
Here's the data in graph form (ONS November 2011 update), starting with 1940 or 1997:
The end, and a new beginning
The Classic FM radio news said that "David Cameron" (the Prime Minister, apparently - Google him up) "may consider" a referendum on the UK's membership of the EU. (My position is that we're not in it.)
The Sunday paper (Mail, of course - I need to know what the gullible are thinking, they're - we're - the ones who vote) gave this a big front-page splash, though their (print-version) headline "BRITAIN TO GET VOTE ON EUROPE" might just as easily have been "PRIME MINISTER COUGHS." For a few seconds' further reading tells you his new sort-of-potential-policy is a bit of skirt-twitching, hinting that you might get lucky in 2015. It might be part of a General Election manifesto, or a stand-alone referendum (which might be in-out or might also include some alternative about staying in but clawing back some powers). Or it might be just a hand job, or maybe you should give up and buy a packet of chips.
We've had duplicitous bastards before. Think of John Major (who prided himself on being able to talk to "the man in the four-ale bar") and, of course, the lucky, hard-wriggling spermatozoon Blair who pierced the Labour Party and altered its DNA. But they only employed special advisers; Cameron simply was one, is one.
Perhaps everything that's happened since the 1960s has been a kind of reconditioning of our expectations, so that we become habituated to hoping and believing less and less every year. The end point will be when we don't buy newspapers (the proprietors are already starting to give up selling them), disbelieve what we see on telly news, stop voting altogether. Those with get-up-and-go will either run the country (how many modern politicians go straight into the machine from university!), own it (increasingly, from abroad, at least from a taxation standpoint) or leave it. The rest will lapse into a dumb brutishness quite, quite unlike that of the mediaeval peasantry.
I heard years ago (and it's plausible) that Allied soldiers taken prisoner in the Korean War were initially placed in a holding area, and their behaviour observed. Those who displayed signs of initiative were taken to smaller, heavily-controlled camps; the rest were herded into much larger pens with few guards. And when I taught in an inner-city school in Birmingham in the late 70s, I was interested to note that the very dumbest kids were white: anybody of the old population who had anything about them, had left, and the new incomers were entrepreneurial, legally or otherwise.
The British Left, with its self-loathing and penchant for anarchic mischief, and the British Right, with its love of money above all else, have conspired in a cultural subversion that I cannot see anywhere else on Earth. For decades, brains and talent have fled this country like Equitable Life investors scrambling to get out of their with-profits fund, while immigration has been keenly encouraged, by the Left on Gramsci-ite principles and the Right because cheap imported labour has helped in the transfer of wealth from the (increasingly indebted) working and lower middle classes to the rich.
But the last laugh will be on all of them. For as with America, the key is initiative: those who had the gumption to leave their country and try to make a living here will eventually acquire whatever schooling, skills and knowledge they need, but the jizz is hard-wired into their DNA. The Left will wither as a new class of entrepreneurs springs up that sees no need to support anyone who isn't family; the Right will find that the domination game is no longer so easy, and while they spent their time foxhunting and otherwise aping a class from which they did not spring, their businesses were outcompeted. Eventually they will be kept going in genteel captivity, like pandas, while a new class arises that works hard, protects their family and fears God in whatever form they worship Him.
As Alexander Pope, observing the self-indulgent decadence of the filthy rich in the eighteenth century, dared to hope:
Another age shall see the golden ear
Imbrown the slope, and nod on the parterre,
Deep harvests bury all his pride has planned,
And laughing Ceres reassume the land.
The Sunday paper (Mail, of course - I need to know what the gullible are thinking, they're - we're - the ones who vote) gave this a big front-page splash, though their (print-version) headline "BRITAIN TO GET VOTE ON EUROPE" might just as easily have been "PRIME MINISTER COUGHS." For a few seconds' further reading tells you his new sort-of-potential-policy is a bit of skirt-twitching, hinting that you might get lucky in 2015. It might be part of a General Election manifesto, or a stand-alone referendum (which might be in-out or might also include some alternative about staying in but clawing back some powers). Or it might be just a hand job, or maybe you should give up and buy a packet of chips.
We've had duplicitous bastards before. Think of John Major (who prided himself on being able to talk to "the man in the four-ale bar") and, of course, the lucky, hard-wriggling spermatozoon Blair who pierced the Labour Party and altered its DNA. But they only employed special advisers; Cameron simply was one, is one.
Perhaps everything that's happened since the 1960s has been a kind of reconditioning of our expectations, so that we become habituated to hoping and believing less and less every year. The end point will be when we don't buy newspapers (the proprietors are already starting to give up selling them), disbelieve what we see on telly news, stop voting altogether. Those with get-up-and-go will either run the country (how many modern politicians go straight into the machine from university!), own it (increasingly, from abroad, at least from a taxation standpoint) or leave it. The rest will lapse into a dumb brutishness quite, quite unlike that of the mediaeval peasantry.
I heard years ago (and it's plausible) that Allied soldiers taken prisoner in the Korean War were initially placed in a holding area, and their behaviour observed. Those who displayed signs of initiative were taken to smaller, heavily-controlled camps; the rest were herded into much larger pens with few guards. And when I taught in an inner-city school in Birmingham in the late 70s, I was interested to note that the very dumbest kids were white: anybody of the old population who had anything about them, had left, and the new incomers were entrepreneurial, legally or otherwise.
The British Left, with its self-loathing and penchant for anarchic mischief, and the British Right, with its love of money above all else, have conspired in a cultural subversion that I cannot see anywhere else on Earth. For decades, brains and talent have fled this country like Equitable Life investors scrambling to get out of their with-profits fund, while immigration has been keenly encouraged, by the Left on Gramsci-ite principles and the Right because cheap imported labour has helped in the transfer of wealth from the (increasingly indebted) working and lower middle classes to the rich.
But the last laugh will be on all of them. For as with America, the key is initiative: those who had the gumption to leave their country and try to make a living here will eventually acquire whatever schooling, skills and knowledge they need, but the jizz is hard-wired into their DNA. The Left will wither as a new class of entrepreneurs springs up that sees no need to support anyone who isn't family; the Right will find that the domination game is no longer so easy, and while they spent their time foxhunting and otherwise aping a class from which they did not spring, their businesses were outcompeted. Eventually they will be kept going in genteel captivity, like pandas, while a new class arises that works hard, protects their family and fears God in whatever form they worship Him.
As Alexander Pope, observing the self-indulgent decadence of the filthy rich in the eighteenth century, dared to hope:
Another age shall see the golden ear
Imbrown the slope, and nod on the parterre,
Deep harvests bury all his pride has planned,
And laughing Ceres reassume the land.
Saturday, June 30, 2012
The UK is NOT in the European Union
The Prime Minister has, despite his previous clear manifesto commitment, decided for us that there should not be a referendum on our membership of the European Union. He further claims to "completely understand" those who want us to leave it.
He does not understand.
We are not in the EU now.
It is unfortunate, but as the Bible shows, hardly without precedent, that opposition to the current unlawful state of affairs should begin with voices crying out in the desert. One such voice is Albert Burgess, whose website "A Case For Treason" calls for the arraignment of those in our political class who have agreed to make us subject to European law, regulation and institutions. He is calling for citizens (British subjects) to make official complaints to the police, requiring them to bring charges of sedition, treason etc.
Doubtless this will not succeed in the near future and he will be written off as a crank; but his case is founded on fact and logic and as Thoreau reportedly said, "Any man more right than his neighbors constitutes a majority of one." But look how long it took William Wilberforce to carry the anti-slavery vote in Parliament, and hope.
At the core of Burgess' case is his reading of the British Constitution, which is that rule requires the consent not only of the monarch and political representatives but also of the people themselves using their own voices. Like the US Constitution, this is something that cannot be countermanded by any court or statute; it lies outside and above Parliamentary law.
Nor, I (and doubtless Burgess) would argue, can it be simply be buried in a political party's manifesto; an issue of such tremendous importance cannot validly be muddled up in pork-barrel politics. Voting for a political representative in Parliament is completely different from deciding the manner in which we are to be governed, and in any case our current electoral process effectively disenfranchises millions of us.
To join with other nations in a supranational political entity, in defiance of the settlement of 1688/9, would be a monumental constitutional change requiring the express consent of the people. This has never been given, nor, according to Burgess, can it be imposed except after the successful invasion of our land by a foreign power.
Since we have never had the EU membership question put to us, even the slightest transfer of sovereignty to that entity is ultra vires and has no force in law.
We are not now in the European Union, and I ask everyone who reads this, if they agree, to say so to others at every appropriate opportunity.
ADDENDUM
The Talking Clock blog urges us to support Mr Douglas Carswell's Bill to repeal the 1972 Act that claimed to makes us members of the European Union. I comment:
I plan to write to Mr Carswell to ask him to withdraw his proposed Bill, on two (related) grounds:
1. Parliament had no power to pass the 1972 Act. Without the express consent of the people, this constitutional change could not have taken place and therefore never did. The Act is ultra vires.
2. Therefore, there is no point in repealing an Act that has no force in law. There is no such Act. It falls, and so does everything (all subsequent Acts, regulations, directives etc) that depends on it or in any way arises from it.
Logically, Mr Carswell would do better to submit for consideration a Bill to arrange a referendum for the UK to JOIN the EU, since we are not now members. This would confirm to us all that he shares our view that we are not now in the EU, and also that to join would require the consent of the people in propria persona.
He does not understand.
We are not in the EU now.
It is unfortunate, but as the Bible shows, hardly without precedent, that opposition to the current unlawful state of affairs should begin with voices crying out in the desert. One such voice is Albert Burgess, whose website "A Case For Treason" calls for the arraignment of those in our political class who have agreed to make us subject to European law, regulation and institutions. He is calling for citizens (British subjects) to make official complaints to the police, requiring them to bring charges of sedition, treason etc.
Doubtless this will not succeed in the near future and he will be written off as a crank; but his case is founded on fact and logic and as Thoreau reportedly said, "Any man more right than his neighbors constitutes a majority of one." But look how long it took William Wilberforce to carry the anti-slavery vote in Parliament, and hope.
At the core of Burgess' case is his reading of the British Constitution, which is that rule requires the consent not only of the monarch and political representatives but also of the people themselves using their own voices. Like the US Constitution, this is something that cannot be countermanded by any court or statute; it lies outside and above Parliamentary law.
Nor, I (and doubtless Burgess) would argue, can it be simply be buried in a political party's manifesto; an issue of such tremendous importance cannot validly be muddled up in pork-barrel politics. Voting for a political representative in Parliament is completely different from deciding the manner in which we are to be governed, and in any case our current electoral process effectively disenfranchises millions of us.
To join with other nations in a supranational political entity, in defiance of the settlement of 1688/9, would be a monumental constitutional change requiring the express consent of the people. This has never been given, nor, according to Burgess, can it be imposed except after the successful invasion of our land by a foreign power.
Since we have never had the EU membership question put to us, even the slightest transfer of sovereignty to that entity is ultra vires and has no force in law.
We are not now in the European Union, and I ask everyone who reads this, if they agree, to say so to others at every appropriate opportunity.
ADDENDUM
The Talking Clock blog urges us to support Mr Douglas Carswell's Bill to repeal the 1972 Act that claimed to makes us members of the European Union. I comment:
I plan to write to Mr Carswell to ask him to withdraw his proposed Bill, on two (related) grounds:
1. Parliament had no power to pass the 1972 Act. Without the express consent of the people, this constitutional change could not have taken place and therefore never did. The Act is ultra vires.
2. Therefore, there is no point in repealing an Act that has no force in law. There is no such Act. It falls, and so does everything (all subsequent Acts, regulations, directives etc) that depends on it or in any way arises from it.
Logically, Mr Carswell would do better to submit for consideration a Bill to arrange a referendum for the UK to JOIN the EU, since we are not now members. This would confirm to us all that he shares our view that we are not now in the EU, and also that to join would require the consent of the people in propria persona.
Friday, June 29, 2012
Problem-Solving
The President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology has recently released a report on the impending shortage of people trained in the STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) disciplines.
They note that mathematics courses are a bottleneck in this process.
In a brilliant example of problem-solving, they have squarely fixed the blame on mathematics teachers, and decided that the cure is to have mathematics courses developed and taught by faculty in ‘mathematics-intensive’ disciplines instead.
As I have said on numerous forums, the study of mathematics has been honed, pruned and refined for 2,500 years. I would suggest that we might be doing something right. Perhaps, as some good educational and cognitive psychology studies suggest, ability in mathematics is a fairly rare talent, but nonetheless essential for the training of good scientists?
Wednesday, June 27, 2012
Speculators will starve the poor
Agricultural funds are, I think, a step too far, though the returns will of course attract other investors.
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.
Tuesday, June 26, 2012
Speculators will starve the poor
Agricultural funds are, I think, a step too far, though the returns will of course attract other investors.
UK credit card lending down 28% in last 12 months
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.
UK credit card lending down 28% in last 12 months
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.
Sunday, June 24, 2012
Much ado about nothing: Hayward Gallery's "Invisible" exhibition
And so yesterday we walked through a warm and busy London to the South Bank, where, after sharing a doughy cheese pierogi off the real food street market, we ascended bloodstained concrete stairs to the Hayward Gallery.
In we went, noting an avertissement that warned visitors that some might have difficulty reading the labels. Which were printed in white, on transparent plastic sheets, against white walls. Not that there were that many exhibits; now call me middle-browed, but if I'm offered nothing I want a lot of it for my money. In keeping, the gallery was sparsely attended, though one woman was making up for it by gazing very intensely at an empty section of wall. My wife speculates that she might have lost her glasses and thought she was looking at something. Or perhaps she was merely entering into the spirit of the thing (or the nothing).
The first item I inspected with any care was a press cutting from 1959, about Yves Klein's stunt "Zone de Sensibilité Picturale Immatérielle." Klein sold tickets in exchange for shreds of gold leaf (20 grams for the first exhibition - rising later to 80 grams, such are the effects of inflation). If the buyer opted to convert these into an immaterial experience, he burned his ticket (at least he got one first time of asking, I assume) and the artist threw half the gold into the river Seine; otherwise Klein kept the lot. So the artist got something tangible and conventionally valuable, whatever happened. Gallic cunning? But it's possible, of course, that I may be doing Klein an injustice, for in 1980 one of his pieces was discovered quite by accident in an Italian convent, having been anonymously deposited there in 1961 as a votive offering by the artist, who prayed for success and the increasing beauty of his works.
I do suspect that French philosophy is basically for impressing French chicks. It worked with Simone de Beauvoir, for one; and years ago in Paris, my beloved and I were watching TV and caught an interview with Serge Gainsbourg (conducted by Jane Birkin, as I recall) where he was acting the literary lion à la française - unshaven, Gauloised, possibly well-oiled as we used to say, and spouting un grand tas de testicules about la vie, l'amour etc. Fortunately we were well-oiled too, and understood him as drunks do each other. French women know that their role is to serve the gorgeous peacock; one remembers H E Bates' "A Breath of French Air", where muscular Adonises play ball on the beach, admired by mousy-looking girls with what the Irish call streely hair.
Good art (like radio plays) makes you do some of the work, and there's no shortage of clever people stropping their intellects on this one:
The exhibition is entitled "Invisible: Art about the Unseen, 1957 -2012". We paid, were given tickets after reminding the counter clerk (was this a foretaste of the installation?) and gave them to the attendant at the door, who said something we didn't catch, so we asked him to repeat it. It was "Can you see me?" with what I suppose he hoped was an appropriately ironic smirk; I guess we should have replied, "Yes, but we can't hear you."
In we went, noting an avertissement that warned visitors that some might have difficulty reading the labels. Which were printed in white, on transparent plastic sheets, against white walls. Not that there were that many exhibits; now call me middle-browed, but if I'm offered nothing I want a lot of it for my money. In keeping, the gallery was sparsely attended, though one woman was making up for it by gazing very intensely at an empty section of wall. My wife speculates that she might have lost her glasses and thought she was looking at something. Or perhaps she was merely entering into the spirit of the thing (or the nothing).
I do suspect that French philosophy is basically for impressing French chicks. It worked with Simone de Beauvoir, for one; and years ago in Paris, my beloved and I were watching TV and caught an interview with Serge Gainsbourg (conducted by Jane Birkin, as I recall) where he was acting the literary lion à la française - unshaven, Gauloised, possibly well-oiled as we used to say, and spouting un grand tas de testicules about la vie, l'amour etc. Fortunately we were well-oiled too, and understood him as drunks do each other. French women know that their role is to serve the gorgeous peacock; one remembers H E Bates' "A Breath of French Air", where muscular Adonises play ball on the beach, admired by mousy-looking girls with what the Irish call streely hair.
Maybe, as with Sartre in 1943, the concept of nothingness (or for others, the numinous) is a reaction to a time when you were supposed to join one team or the other, with no standing on the sidelines (it's getting like that again now, I sense). À bas les salauds, and all that; spit in the eye of those "assured of certain certainties"; let the spirit off the leash of Reason.
Having said that, Sartre seems to have been able to redirect his gaze to concrete matters when it suited him, as witness the controversy over his stepping into a Jewish professor's job when it became forcibly vacant under the Nazis; and in the 1968 Paris student riots, he suddenly abandoned his fundamental stance on existentialism and became able to believe in collective freedom, at least for a while. Perhaps his volte-face and surrender to the authority of Marxism is the core of surreal rebellion. As a paper already cited says, "Hysterical questioning is critical of power (“Why have you done this? This is not just!”), but beneath it all is a provocation to the father figure to appear and to interpellate more successfully."
Back to the matter in hand. There was other stuff here, including Robert Barry's Energy Field (AM 130 KHz) from 1968 (a wooden box with a battery and coil), and a room with a couple of air coolers (my wife said she found these things very welcome after a sauna). One room was a blackout (pictured below; fortunately I captured another visitor, so I got both ground and figure, the essentials of all Western art).
Then there was a wide upper gallery. This space spoke to me: it said, 'You paid fourteen quid for this." And finally, something for the kids: Jeppe Hein's Invisible Labyrinth. You know, like those inlaid floor mazes found in some theme parks and gardens, only here you had to memorise the routes.
Of course, reviewers don't pay to get in, and on the whole, nor would we have, if we'd known what was in store. But surely every show must have a closing number, and to play you out here's the orchestral version of John Cage's 4' 33'' so you can have something to hum as you leave:
Coincidentally, the show we saw after, "Yes, Prime Minister" at the Trafalgar Studios (Whitehall Theatre as was), also featured a nothing, this time the Prime Minister, described in the play as "a vacuum". It was funny and beautifully acted, but edgier and darker than the old TV programmes - as with Stravinsky's The Rite Of Spring, we scent
in the artist's work
a storm coming to us in real life.
A shame then that five minutes down the road from there we have a PM who is the human equivalent of a German beach towel, merely keeping the place for a real person to come later. Like Jim Hacker, we now see Cam thrashing about with a handful of Blairite eye-catching initiatives to divert attention from his failure to achieve anything*. As we passed the now-gated entrance to Downing Street I said, make the most of it, you've got twelve months.
*... and, sadly for him, draw attention to his own "housing benefit".
Hayward Gallery: "Invisible" exhibition (2012)
And so yesterday we walked through a warm and busy London to the South Bank, where, after sharing a doughy cheese pierogi off the real food street market, we ascended bloodstained concrete stairs to the Hayward Gallery.
In we went, noting an avertissement that warned visitors that some might have difficulty reading the labels. Which were printed in white, on transparent plastic sheets, against white walls. Not that there were that many exhibits; now call me middle-browed, but if I'm offered nothing I want a lot of it for my money. In keeping, the gallery was sparsely attended, though one woman was making up for it by gazing very intensely at an empty section of wall. My wife speculates that she might have lost her glasses and thought she was looking at something. Or perhaps she was merely entering into the spirit of the thing (or the nothing).
The first item I inspected with any care was a press cutting from 1959, about Yves Klein's stunt "Zone de Sensibilité Picturale Immatérielle." Klein sold tickets in exchange for shreds of gold leaf (20 grams for the first exhibition - rising later to 80 grams, such are the effects of inflation). If the buyer opted to convert these into an immaterial experience, he burned his ticket (at least he got one first time of asking, I assume) and the artist threw half the gold into the river Seine; otherwise Klein kept the lot. So the artist got something tangible and conventionally valuable, whatever happened. Gallic cunning? But it's possible, of course, that I may be doing Klein an injustice, for in 1980 one of his pieces was discovered quite by accident in an Italian convent, having been anonymously deposited there in 1961 as a votive offering by the artist, who prayed for success and the increasing beauty of his works.
I do suspect that French philosophy is basically for impressing French chicks. It worked with Simone de Beauvoir, for one; and years ago in Paris, my beloved and I were watching TV and caught an interview with Serge Gainsbourg (conducted by Jane Birkin, as I recall) where he was acting the literary lion à la française - unshaven, Gauloised, possibly well-oiled as we used to say, and spouting un grand tas de testicules about la vie, l'amour etc. Fortunately we were well-oiled too, and understood him as drunks do each other. French women know that their role is to serve the gorgeous peacock; one remembers H E Bates' "A Breath of French Air", where muscular Adonises play ball on the beach, admired by mousy-looking girls with what the Irish call streely hair.
Good art (like radio plays) makes you do some of the work, and there's no shortage of clever people stropping their intellects on this one:
The exhibition is entitled "Invisible: Art about the Unseen, 1957 -2012". We paid, were given tickets after reminding the counter clerk (was this a foretaste of the installation?) and gave them to the attendant at the door, who said something we didn't catch, so we asked him to repeat it. It was "Can you see me?" with what I suppose he hoped was an appropriately ironic smirk; I guess we should have replied, "Yes, but we can't hear you."
In we went, noting an avertissement that warned visitors that some might have difficulty reading the labels. Which were printed in white, on transparent plastic sheets, against white walls. Not that there were that many exhibits; now call me middle-browed, but if I'm offered nothing I want a lot of it for my money. In keeping, the gallery was sparsely attended, though one woman was making up for it by gazing very intensely at an empty section of wall. My wife speculates that she might have lost her glasses and thought she was looking at something. Or perhaps she was merely entering into the spirit of the thing (or the nothing).
I do suspect that French philosophy is basically for impressing French chicks. It worked with Simone de Beauvoir, for one; and years ago in Paris, my beloved and I were watching TV and caught an interview with Serge Gainsbourg (conducted by Jane Birkin, as I recall) where he was acting the literary lion à la française - unshaven, Gauloised, possibly well-oiled as we used to say, and spouting un grand tas de testicules about la vie, l'amour etc. Fortunately we were well-oiled too, and understood him as drunks do each other. French women know that their role is to serve the gorgeous peacock; one remembers H E Bates' "A Breath of French Air", where muscular Adonises play ball on the beach, admired by mousy-looking girls with what the Irish call streely hair.
Maybe, as with Sartre in 1943, the concept of nothingness (or for others, the numinous) is a reaction to a time when you were supposed to join one team or the other, with no standing on the sidelines (it's getting like that again now, I sense). À bas les salauds, and all that; spit in the eye of those "assured of certain certainties"; let the spirit off the leash of Reason.
Having said that, Sartre seems to have been able to redirect his gaze to concrete matters when it suited him, as witness the controversy over his stepping into a Jewish professor's job when it became forcibly vacant under the Nazis; and in the 1968 Paris student riots, he suddenly abandoned his fundamental stance on existentialism and became able to believe in collective freedom, at least for a while. Perhaps his volte-face and surrender to the authority of Marxism is the core of surreal rebellion. As a paper already cited says, "Hysterical questioning is critical of power (“Why have you done this? This is not just!”), but beneath it all is a provocation to the father figure to appear and to interpellate more successfully."
Back to the matter in hand. There was other stuff here, including Robert Barry's Energy Field (AM 130 KHz) from 1968 (a wooden box with a battery and coil), and a room with a couple of air coolers (my wife said she found these things very welcome after a sauna). One room was a blackout (pictured below; fortunately I captured another visitor, so I got both ground and figure, the essentials of all Western art).
Then there was a wide upper gallery. This space spoke to me: it said, 'You paid fourteen quid for this." And finally, something for the kids: Jeppe Hein's Invisible Labyrinth. You know, like those inlaid floor mazes found in some theme parks and gardens, only here you had to memorise the routes.
Of course, reviewers don't pay to get in, and on the whole, nor would we have, if we'd known what was in store. But surely every show must have a closing number, and to play you out here's the orchestral version of John Cage's 4' 33'' so you can have something to hum as you leave:
Coincidentally, the show we saw after, "Yes, Prime Minister" at the Trafalgar Studios (Whitehall Theatre as was), also featured a nothing, this time the Prime Minister, described in the play as "a vacuum". It was funny and beautifully acted, but edgier and darker than the old TV programmes - as with Stravinsky's The Rite Of Spring, we scent in the artist's work a storm coming to us in real life.
A shame then that five minutes down the road from there we have a PM who is the human equivalent of a German beach towel, merely keeping the place for a real person to come later. Like Jim Hacker, we now see Cam thrashing about with a handful of Blairite eye-catching initiatives to divert attention from his failure to achieve anything*. As we passed the now-gated entrance to Downing Street I said, make the most of it, you've got twelve months.
*... and, sadly for him, draw attention to his own "housing benefit".
Wednesday, June 20, 2012
NHS - spiralling out of control
Utterly horrible. And not only confined to the elderly - a youngish friend who had an infection / fever would have died from lack of hydration had her husband not come in gangbusters, taking names and generally making it clear what would happen to them (legally) if they didn't get a line in her NOW.
Tuesday, June 19, 2012
The System, Part 2: There really is a class war, and the Right knows it
Yesterday, I attempted a jokey and simplified graphic to illustrate the result of "free trade" - the initial response from James Higham has been very sniffy, something to do with hats I gather (though he seems to have no similar objection to barrels or Chinese junks). Apparently it shows I'm a Leftist, even though I've never voted for Labour - or anything further left, before you ask. Or perhaps he's merely provoking me to greater effort, despite the sense that so many bloggers are getting now, of how they are wasting their time when they could instead "sport with Amaryllis in the shade ." Nevertheless...
The "System" graphic (see sidebar) is, of course, much too simple - where is the Federal Reserve, where are the bankers (NOT the banks) who make (extract*) money at every turn, including and especially when they receive government bailouts and organise the purchase of government securities?
But a striking aspect of this cartoon update of what is, in effect, a class war is that the conflict was identified and described in class terms by speakers for what one might loosely call the Right, 18 years ago. They anticipated our present economic crisis and the resulting social instability and they did not at all welcome the prospect, as I shall show. I'm not generally fond of embedding long videos, because I like to skim and scan for essential points, but I'd like to share a couple here and having watched them in full myself I recommend them to you. Neither of the speakers makes reference to the other, but in relation to GATT and untrammelled free trade generally they are saying the same prophetic things.
The first is a talk by Dr John Coleman (whose website is here); the occasion is not explicit but from the content and tenor of his remarks I think he is addressing a broadly Republican-supporting audience in New Mexico in 1994, at the time of the GATT talks. Think of this 100 minutes as an investment, saving you the trouble and expense of reading his several books, as much of his material appears to be summarised in this tour through Conspiracy Central: Guelphs, the Black Nobility of Venice, the coming New World Order etc. In the final 5 minutes, he predicts that the US economic system will collapse and destroy the American middle class, and the varied and extensive banking system will concentrate into five majors. I'm reluctant to accept the alleged motives of the alleged secret players, and think that short-sighted greed and venality are more plausible drivers of the process, but the end result is the same, with or without the comic-book villains.
Next is an interview (also in 1994) with billionaire Sir James Goldsmith, where he correctly sees that GATT will (as he says) tip the balance between labour and capital sharply in favour of the latter, and that it will cause social disruption in Western societies.
Goldsmith, like Dr Coleman, was emphatically anti-Communist and spent his cancer-riddled last energies campaigning for a referendum on the UK's membership of the EU; he describes himself in this interview as pro-free trade; but he is very clear on the destructive effects of putting our workforce in direct competition with foreign workers whose labour is dramatically cheaper in currency-adjusted terms. (Since then, we have seen the Chinese manipulate their currency so that this price advantage is maintained, whereas according to the idealised system described by classical economists the renminbi would rise against the dollar, certain US exports would be encouraged, certain Chinese exports discouraged and there would eventually be a new equilibrium).
The canal analogy I used in my graphic has two functions: first, it suggests that the removal of all barriers to international trade triggers financial flows and economic developments at a rate that neither side can properly cope with. Second, it illustrates a system that is indeed intended to foster trade, but with a series of control points (lock gates) that manage the rate of change.
Time is the key. Given more time to adjust, capital and labour in the West would be reallocated to relatively more competitive enterprises; education and training could mutate to support the required new skill sets. But certain individuals saw an opportunity to make massive personal fortunes by helping to dislocate the society that nurtured them, with the result that the West is experiencing growing disparities of income and wealth, as well as national accounts that can't achieve a balance, and the development of a kleptocratic and tyrannical overclass in government.
Well, it it so now, despite the best efforts of the Jeremiahs and Cassandras. Perfectly ordinary, stable, hard-working people that I meet as a financial adviser are saying, unprompted, that their government doesn't care for them, even that we are headed for a revolution. Some of it is jokey (a taxi driver I know wants to start a new political party called Dilligif, after the Oz saying "Do I look like I give a f***", to show we care as little for them as they do for us); some, less so.
And it wasn't just the Left then, or now, that was saying it.
* Jesse's discussion of Acemoglu and Robinson's "Why Nations Fail" is enlightening, with its polarised pair of terms "extractive" and "inclusive".
The "System" graphic (see sidebar) is, of course, much too simple - where is the Federal Reserve, where are the bankers (NOT the banks) who make (extract*) money at every turn, including and especially when they receive government bailouts and organise the purchase of government securities?
But a striking aspect of this cartoon update of what is, in effect, a class war is that the conflict was identified and described in class terms by speakers for what one might loosely call the Right, 18 years ago. They anticipated our present economic crisis and the resulting social instability and they did not at all welcome the prospect, as I shall show. I'm not generally fond of embedding long videos, because I like to skim and scan for essential points, but I'd like to share a couple here and having watched them in full myself I recommend them to you. Neither of the speakers makes reference to the other, but in relation to GATT and untrammelled free trade generally they are saying the same prophetic things.
The first is a talk by Dr John Coleman (whose website is here); the occasion is not explicit but from the content and tenor of his remarks I think he is addressing a broadly Republican-supporting audience in New Mexico in 1994, at the time of the GATT talks. Think of this 100 minutes as an investment, saving you the trouble and expense of reading his several books, as much of his material appears to be summarised in this tour through Conspiracy Central: Guelphs, the Black Nobility of Venice, the coming New World Order etc. In the final 5 minutes, he predicts that the US economic system will collapse and destroy the American middle class, and the varied and extensive banking system will concentrate into five majors. I'm reluctant to accept the alleged motives of the alleged secret players, and think that short-sighted greed and venality are more plausible drivers of the process, but the end result is the same, with or without the comic-book villains.
Next is an interview (also in 1994) with billionaire Sir James Goldsmith, where he correctly sees that GATT will (as he says) tip the balance between labour and capital sharply in favour of the latter, and that it will cause social disruption in Western societies.
Goldsmith, like Dr Coleman, was emphatically anti-Communist and spent his cancer-riddled last energies campaigning for a referendum on the UK's membership of the EU; he describes himself in this interview as pro-free trade; but he is very clear on the destructive effects of putting our workforce in direct competition with foreign workers whose labour is dramatically cheaper in currency-adjusted terms. (Since then, we have seen the Chinese manipulate their currency so that this price advantage is maintained, whereas according to the idealised system described by classical economists the renminbi would rise against the dollar, certain US exports would be encouraged, certain Chinese exports discouraged and there would eventually be a new equilibrium).
The canal analogy I used in my graphic has two functions: first, it suggests that the removal of all barriers to international trade triggers financial flows and economic developments at a rate that neither side can properly cope with. Second, it illustrates a system that is indeed intended to foster trade, but with a series of control points (lock gates) that manage the rate of change.
Time is the key. Given more time to adjust, capital and labour in the West would be reallocated to relatively more competitive enterprises; education and training could mutate to support the required new skill sets. But certain individuals saw an opportunity to make massive personal fortunes by helping to dislocate the society that nurtured them, with the result that the West is experiencing growing disparities of income and wealth, as well as national accounts that can't achieve a balance, and the development of a kleptocratic and tyrannical overclass in government.
Well, it it so now, despite the best efforts of the Jeremiahs and Cassandras. Perfectly ordinary, stable, hard-working people that I meet as a financial adviser are saying, unprompted, that their government doesn't care for them, even that we are headed for a revolution. Some of it is jokey (a taxi driver I know wants to start a new political party called Dilligif, after the Oz saying "Do I look like I give a f***", to show we care as little for them as they do for us); some, less so.
And it wasn't just the Left then, or now, that was saying it.
* Jesse's discussion of Acemoglu and Robinson's "Why Nations Fail" is enlightening, with its polarised pair of terms "extractive" and "inclusive".
Monday, June 18, 2012
Sunday, June 17, 2012
Time must have a stop: was there actually NO "Big Bang"?
"A fool may ask a question which forty wise men cannot answer."
I have a question about the supposed origin of the universe, and perhaps you may be the forty-first wise man (or woman):
Time slows down in the neighbourhood of massive objects. There is no object more massive than the entire Universe, when (some 14 billion years ago) it is supposed to have been compressed into a space smaller than the nail on my little finger. In that case, seen from our present frame of reference, was time then effectively at a stop? In which case, is the Big Bang effectively separated from us by an infinite duration, and therefore did not happen?
Another correspondent tells me, "Good question. Before Planck time, there isn't even matter, and energy doesn't experience time."
Saturday, June 16, 2012
London Metals Exchange: another one bites the dust
Founded in 1877 but with 16th century roots in Gresham's original Royal Exchange, the London Metals Exchange has just been sold to the Chinese.
Ironically, the LME is the last "open outcry" market in Europe. Apart from a few brave individuals like Brian Haw (whom Parliament, to its everlasting disgrace, attempted to outlaw), and the Occupy London protestors against which the City, major newspapers and that refuge of the poor and oppressed the Church orchestrated a campaign of condemnation and legal action, we hear very little open outcry against our negligent, incompetent, venal, corrupt, secretive, dictatorial and treacherous overclass. A class that has sold its soul to the money men, who have sold the freehold and seed corn of our economy in the name of "free trade" that is progressively costing our freedom and is only beneficial to the trader. It does not take a conspiracy theorist to see a pattern in the invitees to Bilderberg 2012.
The complacency of the traders and their agents in politics is astounding. Martin Hutchinson was warning of the future decline of the City back in 2007, and around the same time a smirking financier at an Oxford college reunion was assuring us that we'd be cheating foreigners for a long time to come.
How many bricks can you take out of the bottom course of your house before the structure caves in? We don't have leaders; we have Destructors.
Ironically, the LME is the last "open outcry" market in Europe. Apart from a few brave individuals like Brian Haw (whom Parliament, to its everlasting disgrace, attempted to outlaw), and the Occupy London protestors against which the City, major newspapers and that refuge of the poor and oppressed the Church orchestrated a campaign of condemnation and legal action, we hear very little open outcry against our negligent, incompetent, venal, corrupt, secretive, dictatorial and treacherous overclass. A class that has sold its soul to the money men, who have sold the freehold and seed corn of our economy in the name of "free trade" that is progressively costing our freedom and is only beneficial to the trader. It does not take a conspiracy theorist to see a pattern in the invitees to Bilderberg 2012.
The complacency of the traders and their agents in politics is astounding. Martin Hutchinson was warning of the future decline of the City back in 2007, and around the same time a smirking financier at an Oxford college reunion was assuring us that we'd be cheating foreigners for a long time to come.
How many bricks can you take out of the bottom course of your house before the structure caves in? We don't have leaders; we have Destructors.
Tuesday, June 12, 2012
Controversy continues over Chinese foreign farm purchases
Further to my recent post on this subject, here's a WSJ article about resistance from New Zealand farmers to the purchase of 16 farms there.
According to Wiki, Crafar Farms was NZ's largest family-owned dairy concern until a crash in milk prices forced it into receivership. The receivers had two goes at getting official clearance to sell to Chinese businesses and got the okay in April this year.
Other farmers are worrying that it's the thin end of the wedge and cash-rich foreign buyers may now start to flood in, snapping up land at prices the locals can't match and ultimately turning Kiwis into tenant farmers. Australians share their concerns - though at least one business commentator there is blowing the free trade trumpet and warning of international tension if it's unheeded.
It's an issue here, too: last month saw a £50m deal between the UK and China, to sell pork products, which is OK in itself, but indicative of the potentially vast demand from the Chinese, so our food may not stay cheap for much longer.
The Daily Telegraph, reporting on this year's Hay Festival, included an interview (see 18:00) with Conor Woodman, author of Unfair Trade - How Big Business Exploits the World’s Poor and Why It Doesn’t Have To. The title is self-explanatory, and the issue is becoming live for us here; as Woodman says, "What concerns me more than monopolies is Chinese investments in parts of the developing world where they are buying up land, fishing, mineral and mining rights. The Chinese have been going round buying up the world and we ought to be concerned by that."
On the one hand, there's land-grabbing going on inside China, where speculators are illegally seizing and converting precious agricultural land to building projects; and on the other, Chinese business is purchasing blocks of food-producing land around the world, including the South-East of England.
Don't expect our negligent, venal and treacherous ruling class to do much about it. Daily Mail business expert Alex Brummer's new book, "Britain for Sale: British Companies in Foreign Hands - The Hidden Threat to Our Economy" shows how, unlike our foreign counterparts, the UK has long been happy to sell off key British enterprises; flogging the very ground we stand on is only an extension of that process.
According to Wiki, Crafar Farms was NZ's largest family-owned dairy concern until a crash in milk prices forced it into receivership. The receivers had two goes at getting official clearance to sell to Chinese businesses and got the okay in April this year.
Other farmers are worrying that it's the thin end of the wedge and cash-rich foreign buyers may now start to flood in, snapping up land at prices the locals can't match and ultimately turning Kiwis into tenant farmers. Australians share their concerns - though at least one business commentator there is blowing the free trade trumpet and warning of international tension if it's unheeded.
It's an issue here, too: last month saw a £50m deal between the UK and China, to sell pork products, which is OK in itself, but indicative of the potentially vast demand from the Chinese, so our food may not stay cheap for much longer.
The Daily Telegraph, reporting on this year's Hay Festival, included an interview (see 18:00) with Conor Woodman, author of Unfair Trade - How Big Business Exploits the World’s Poor and Why It Doesn’t Have To. The title is self-explanatory, and the issue is becoming live for us here; as Woodman says, "What concerns me more than monopolies is Chinese investments in parts of the developing world where they are buying up land, fishing, mineral and mining rights. The Chinese have been going round buying up the world and we ought to be concerned by that."
On the one hand, there's land-grabbing going on inside China, where speculators are illegally seizing and converting precious agricultural land to building projects; and on the other, Chinese business is purchasing blocks of food-producing land around the world, including the South-East of England.
Don't expect our negligent, venal and treacherous ruling class to do much about it. Daily Mail business expert Alex Brummer's new book, "Britain for Sale: British Companies in Foreign Hands - The Hidden Threat to Our Economy" shows how, unlike our foreign counterparts, the UK has long been happy to sell off key British enterprises; flogging the very ground we stand on is only an extension of that process.
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