No satnav for Lalaland

But there is really no scientific or other method by which men can steer safely between the opposite dangers of believing too little or of believing too much. To face such dangers is apparently our duty, and to hit the right channel between them is the measure of our wisdom as men.

William James - The Will to Believe

One of my ideals is believe nothing. I could have called it a belief rather than an ideal, but even I can see the pitfall in that. 

Yet as James implies in the above quote, it isn’t actually possible to believe nothing. We need beliefs as conceptual frameworks to communicate socially – to live even. It is possible try putting the brain into neutral and merely observe, but we observe via language and that's something we have to borrow.

So what’s the point of trying to believe nothing? I think it reminds us to be wary of generalisations, sentiment, cultural norms and especially language. Yet as Wittgenstein showed, we can’t become intellectual hermits and invent a  private language to solve the problem.

One difficulty with a cautious attitude to belief is how we delve into matters too complex for data or logic to flash up convenient answers. Political discourse for example is easy enough to engage in but not so easy to analyse in a neutral way. Political arguments veer off so quickly into Lalaland.

This presents few problems for anyone who enjoys the fun of debate, because Lalaland is easily navigated via a host of special aids – political ideas framed by an allegiance to one’s favoured Lalaland region and written in the regional dialect.

However these regional allegiances are only clearly visible to those who don’t share them. Those with no wish to settle in Lalaland – those who are not prepared to adopt one of its seductive cultures or learn one of its many languages. Therein lies the real difficulty doesn’t it?

To see any political allegiance for what it is, we cannot share it.

We can’t easily engage in political debates as a neutral critic either, because almost any criticism is seen as an enemy allegiance. Debate grinds to a halt or becomes lost again in the endless highways and byways of Lalaland.

Of course, politically ambitious cynics often profess undying allegiance to a Lalaland region without ever going there in person. Their sights are set far beyond its borders even though they find the inhabitants useful. 

Nick Clegg is an example.

All original material is copyright of its author. Fair use permitted. Contact via comment. Unless indicated otherwise, all internet links accessed at time of writing. Nothing here should be taken as personal advice, financial or otherwise. No liability is accepted for third-party content, whether incorporated in or linked to this blog; or for unintentional error and inaccuracy. The blog author may have, or intend to change, a personal position in any stock or other kind of investment mentioned.

Tickle a kitten!

What do stock market indices measure?

On both sides of the Atlantic, there is a tendency in the popular media to see stock indices (FTSE, S&P, Dow) as some indicator of the health of the economy or measure of our collective wealth.

But the implications can be misleading.

What's really being measured (and I leave out the tricky ways in which the individual stock prices are weighted in creating the index) is the current level of settlement between buyers and sellers.

Some will then extrapolate the index to value the entire market. But this is absurd, for if everyone was looking to sell and nobody wanted to buy, shares would be worth nothing. Conversely, if everyone wished to buy and nobody wanted to sell, the price would be pretty much limitless.

What stabilises the market is the degree of participation, and so we are also given figures on the volume of trading. But even this information is misleading, because thanks to computer-based high-speed buying and selling, and the huge amounts of almost interest-free money made available to banks to gamble with, the market may make us misread the shouting of a few for the murmurs of a crowd.

I've been on the loookout for evidence of what the rich are doing. Some say they are holding a great deal of cash - but then, they've captured most of it over the last 30 or 40 years anyway, as middle incomes stagnated but (the face value of) the economy grew.

Others think they're not trading stocks but simply holding - remember that after 1929, members of Chicago Stock Exchange pasted the walls with apparently worthless stock certificates, only to steam them off again five years later.

If you are truly wealthy, as I said recently, you needn't be concerned about buying and selling your shareholding, so long as you haven't borrowed  money to do it. That last is what stuffed the market in 1929 - a great banking crash - and we've had that again, but this time government have authorised unbelievable amounts of fiat money to rescue the perpetrators.

If, as it's said, 82% of individually-owned stocks are held by just 5% of the population, who also have lots of cash,bonds and real estate, then the only reason to sell is because you think you'll make a bit of a killing rebuying at bottom. But you don't have to do it.

Pension funds are in difficulties, but if they are not defined-benefit the pensioner bears the risk; and if they are, then it'll be what a shame, force majeure, you're not going to get what you thought. Even now, in the UK, the retirement age for state pensions and state-employee occupational schemes is being racked upward and calculations of benefits under the latter quietly rogered in ways the average worker can't understand (or is too busy to examine) until too late.

So it seems to me that the figures we need to watch are those relating to inequality, because of the threat to social cohesion when promises start to be broken and expectations disappointed. That's when we'll find out if we are truly "all in this together".

All original material is copyright of its author. Fair use permitted. Contact via comment. Unless indicated otherwise, all internet links accessed at time of writing. Nothing here should be taken as personal advice, financial or otherwise. No liability is accepted for third-party content, whether incorporated in or linked to this blog; or for unintentional error and inaccuracy. The blog author may have, or intend to change, a personal position in any stock or other kind of investment mentioned.

A reply from Mr Karl Denninger

         I'm struck by the vehemence of opposition to so-called "Obamacare".

 

Why are you struck by vehement opposition to anyone putting a gun in your face and demanding money? Can I send a few brigands over to your home because they need something and tell them it's ok to stick you up this evening? After all, it's for their children.

Am I correct in supposing that you are not in principle against the idea that poor, sick people might receive appropriate medical treatment?

 Define "appropriate" and, incidentally, how much of that medical care is necessary due to self-inflicted injury and illness? For example, it is clear that someone who has Type II diabetes requires treatment. Exactly why should they be able to force someone else to pay for it when the condition is evident because they have voluntarily eaten a crap diet for 30 years and weigh 350lbs?

Note that the real issue here isn't care -- it's cost. Even very poor people have access to some cash flow for the most part in the United States; those who don't (e.g. truly homeless) either are typically so by choice or relatively-severe mental illness. The former is a choice, the latter is a disease but in terms of percentages is a vanishingly-small percentage of the whole, and absent compulsion they don't want treatment.

It's not illegal to be crazy (nor should it be) so long as you don't harm others. Voluntary charity is more than sufficient to cover both needs in the main; it was for hundreds of years in the past and it is today -- provided we stop jacking up the cost.

Isn't the real problem, the fact that drug companies, doctors, medical lawyers, medical malpractice insurers and health plan insurers all make and take so much money that healthcare for the common man is seen to be unaffordable?

Yes, but.

If you look at the facts (as opposed to the rabid nonsense coming from the left and apologists for asset-stripping the entire nation to cover this crap) you will find that, for example, a routine birth in 1963, repriced under the CPI from 1963 to today, could be had (complete, all costs included) for under $1,000 US.

Now in 1963 this included not only the epidural and other medications and such but also all doctor charges and three nights in the hospital!

Today that same routine procedure cannot be had in this country for less than 500% of that price and they kick you out of the hospital within 24 hours. The only reason that's the case is monopoly protections, which in theory are illegal under The Sherman and Clayton Acts. The medical industry has finagled itself exemptions to said laws. If I tried any of what they do every day when I ran an Internet company I'd STILL be rotting in a federal prison (and with good cause.)

Now consider the poor couple. They have few assets or funds, but I refuse to believe that given nine months notice they could not come up with $1,000. Sure they could. They might have to give up the beer and smokes for the duration, but they can do it. Difficult? Yes. Impossible? Not even close in a nation (ours) where "poor people" have Xboxes, 60" flatscreen TVs and cars with $3,000 rims on them along with iPhones and $1,000 annual service plans (which, incidentally, is most of those so-called "poor") not to mention the Earned Income Tax Credit that is refundable, meaning that they typically get thousands in actual cash every year from the government in excess of the taxes they paid.

But can they afford an $8,000 bill for the same thing? No -- but they can afford a $1,000 bill.

So where does the problem lie? It's not in their cash flow, it's in the monopoly pricing.

Malpractice and lawsuits (e.g. "tort reform") along with "uncompensated care" are often thrown around as the cause of this. That's a knowing and intentional lie; you could cut both to ZERO (the former of which would deny legitimately injured people compensation) and it would amount to less than 10% of what we spend on medical care. The problem simply doesn't lie there but it's a convenient foil for both the right and left to avoid talking about where the problem really DOES lie.

 Over here in the UK, the American Right seems insanely hard-hearted, homicidal even. And your general stance viv-a-vis the crookery of politicians and banksters doesn't seem to gel with your passionate denunciation of widening medical cover.

Of course it does. Theft is theft, fraud is fraud, and both are supposed to be illegal whether or not they are undertaken for a given person's benefit or not.

Is the explanation that you think the latter is actually OK as a project, but the way it's been done is misguided?

Not at all.

If you remove the monopoly games then even the poor can afford to pay cash, in the main. And virtually everyone who chooses to would be able to buy a catastrophic medical policy to cover the rare but possible situation that can arise, because it would cost a few hundred dollars a year. Those who choose not to do so, taking their chances, have the right to do exactly that.

But you have to break the monopolies and demand that insurance actually be insurance or you solve nothing.

Obamacare is designed to perpetuate theft in this portion of the economy and provide these firms and individuals involved in it with the guns of government. At the end of the day all monopolies and similar schemes rely on force of some form -- the medical industry ran out of their ability to use fear to power more extraction from the average American, and thus turned to government (literally, they wrote the bill) to continue the scam.

More to the point if we don't stop this the economy is doomed and so are federal, state and local budgets. That's a matter of arithmetic and no amount of trying to patch it by stealing one person's money to pay a monopolist will change it. We either cut this crap out or it is a mathematical certainty that our economy and the medical system will both collapse.

Incidentally, I assume that since you published this letter to me you intend to also publish, in full and unedited, my response.

All original material is copyright of its author. Fair use permitted. Contact via comment. Unless indicated otherwise, all internet links accessed at time of writing. Nothing here should be taken as personal advice, financial or otherwise. No liability is accepted for third-party content, whether incorporated in or linked to this blog; or for unintentional error and inaccuracy. The blog author may have, or intend to change, a personal position in any stock or other kind of investment mentioned.

"Obamacare": an email to Mr Karl Denninger

Dear Karl

I'm struck by the vehemence of opposition to so-called "Obamacare". Am I correct in supposing that you are not in principle against the idea that poor, sick people might receive appropriate medical treatment?

Isn't the real problem, the fact that drug companies, doctors, medical lawyers, medical malpractice insurers and health plan insurers all make and take so much money that healthcare for the common man is seen to be unaffordable?

Over here in the UK, the American Right seems insanely hard-hearted, homicidal even. And your general stance vis-a-vis the crookery of politicians and banksters doesn't seem to gel with your passionate denunciation of widening medical cover. Is the explanation that you think the latter is actually OK as a project, but the way it's been done is misguided?

Yours faithfully

All original material is copyright of its author. Fair use permitted. Contact via comment. Unless indicated otherwise, all internet links accessed at time of writing. Nothing here should be taken as personal advice, financial or otherwise. No liability is accepted for third-party content, whether incorporated in or linked to this blog; or for unintentional error and inaccuracy. The blog author may have, or intend to change, a personal position in any stock or other kind of investment mentioned.

FRB 13.3 and Dodd-Frank : an email to the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis

Dear Mr Fettig

I have read with interest your 2008 article on FRB 13.3.

Now I learn via Australian economist Professor Steve Keen that this provision was scrapped under the Dodd-Frank Act, allegedly in response to lobbying by commercial banks.

Can you provide any background information to this decision, and whether indeed it is now no longer possible for the Federal Reserve to assist individuals and businesses with direct credit?

Yours faithfully

All original material is copyright of its author. Fair use permitted. Contact via comment. Unless indicated otherwise, all internet links accessed at time of writing. Nothing here should be taken as personal advice, financial or otherwise. No liability is accepted for third-party content, whether incorporated in or linked to this blog; or for unintentional error and inaccuracy. The blog author may have, or intend to change, a personal position in any stock or other kind of investment mentioned.

Why bother?

From time to time, most serious bloggers hit the "futility wall".

I have read goodness knows how many good ideas for improving the lot of the ordinary person - logical, doable - yet nothing happens. Why not? Because those that could do them are determined not to, since it would mean they would get less.

But they go further than that. They actively remove the possibility of a remedy.

Take Section 13.3 of the US Federal Reserve Act, for example. This was used in 2008 to give JP Morgan $29 billion to buy Bear Stearns, but the legal provision dates back to 1932, when the Great Depression was on and businesses couldn't get loans from commercial banks.

Now, says economist Professor Steve Keen on Max Keiser's show, it's been removed under the Dodd-Frank Act, because the banks lobbied for its cancellation; otherwise the Fed could have given cheap money to businesses and individuals, instead of just funding safe,lucrative bank purchases of government debt, and trading desk speculation on real estate and the stock market.

So the Alamo line has been drawn, and you can stand still or step over. That is, you can go passive (or even try to make some money anticipating the next move by the selfish powerful), or resist. Because Santy Anny ain't going away by himself.



All original material is copyright of its author. Fair use permitted. Contact via comment. Unless indicated otherwise, all internet links accessed at time of writing. Nothing here should be taken as personal advice, financial or otherwise. No liability is accepted for third-party content, whether incorporated in or linked to this blog; or for unintentional error and inaccuracy. The blog author may have, or intend to change, a personal position in any stock or other kind of investment mentioned.

Pig hails deal to sell MPs' sperm to China

"UK and China agree £45m pig semen export deal" (Guardian, 4 December 2013)

The Palace of Westminster echoed to the sound of popping champagne corks yesterday, as the nation's top people celebrated an historic trade agreement with China. Addressing a meeting composed of members of both Houses, the Empress of Blandings announced a multimillion pound scheme to improve the human stock of the PRC by the export of highly-prized British sperm.

It all began when Chinese police officers came to the UK on the trail of international Triad connections. "They said they were looking for criminals," said the Empress, "and we told them to find their own, as we had spent centuries bulding up our collection. When the misunderstanding had been cleared up, they became interested in our ruling class.

"At first they couldn't believe that it was possible to combine a political career with multiple outside interests, from handfuls of directorships to consultancies, journalism, novel-writing and taxpayer-funded travel. In their world, those who neglect public duties in favour of private projects are, sooner or later, shot.

"We had to explain to them that we don't execute psychopaths here, we put them in charge. How else could we have got China hooked on opium just to earn silver to pay for our Lapsang Souchong? That's when they realised that their efforts to create an orderly society had led them to a national shortage of world-conquering shitweasels.

"Fortunately, they also noted the hyper-priapic nature of many of you, evidenced not only by extramarital affairs but -" [a legal adviser whispered urgently into the Empress' floppy ear. "Really? The ancient Greeks didn't see any harm in it."] Anyhow, all that top-quality jizz that has previously gone to waste can now be put to profitable use.

"Plastic collecting boxes will be fitted to the backs of all red and green benches - front-benchers will go on diplomatic missions to the Far East, as usual - and donors will be credited with half the sale proceeds. We expect a great improvement in attendance as a result, and with luck, Parliament will be self-financing by the end of the decade."

The Empress graciously acknowledged the standing ovation and returned to her country estate, leaving the assembled representatives to their troughs.

All original material is copyright of its author. Fair use permitted. Contact via comment. Unless indicated otherwise, all internet links accessed at time of writing. Nothing here should be taken as personal advice, financial or otherwise. No liability is accepted for third-party content, whether incorporated in or linked to this blog; or for unintentional error and inaccuracy. The blog author may have, or intend to change, a personal position in any stock or other kind of investment mentioned.

Pig jizz and politicians

Prime Minster's deal to flog pig semen to China is good material for jokes - like those made today on Radio 4's airhead News Quiz - but think what it really means: when the genetic material is in Chinese pigs, there'll be less need for our exports of high-quality pig meat.

When Britain sold out a significant portion of Birmingham's car manufacturing to China, the program was structurally similar: teams of Chinese went round the giant factory, trying to get into every office to grab blueprints and any other paperwork that would fast-track their own industrial knowhow. The managers at Longbridge had to station men outside to prevent the loss of informational material that wasn't part of the deal.

Soon, we'll look back and realise that intellectual property rights was an even bigger issue than the imbalance of manufactured goods.

We may even come to realise that many important people knew that all along, but we live in a globalised world and they won't necessarily hang around for us to question them. DNA = Did Not Attend.

All original material is copyright of its author. Fair use permitted. Contact via comment. Unless indicated otherwise, all internet links accessed at time of writing. Nothing here should be taken as personal advice, financial or otherwise. No liability is accepted for third-party content, whether incorporated in or linked to this blog; or for unintentional error and inaccuracy. The blog author may have, or intend to change, a personal position in any stock or other kind of investment mentioned.

A question

Which of our own politicians might have benefited from 27 years on Robben Island?

All original material is copyright of its author. Fair use permitted. Contact via comment. Unless indicated otherwise, all internet links accessed at time of writing. Nothing here should be taken as personal advice, financial or otherwise. No liability is accepted for third-party content, whether incorporated in or linked to this blog; or for unintentional error and inaccuracy. The blog author may have, or intend to change, a personal position in any stock or other kind of investment mentioned.

N Korea has huge rare earth deposits

Rare Earth Investing News tells us that North Korea has the world's largest deposits of rare earth elements (REE).

SRE Minerals, a private equity firm exploring a rare earths project in North Korea, in conjunction with the Korea Natural Resources Trading Corporation, a North Korean entity, has announced the formation of a joint venture to advance rare earth deposits at Jongju, located 150 km northwest of the capital Pyongyang.

According to the press release, HDR Salva’s initial assessment indicates a potential 6 billion tonnes, including 216.2 million tonnes of total rare earth oxides comprising light rare earth elements such as lanthanum, cerium and praseodymium. Around 2.6 percent of the TREO would be heavy rare earth elements, or roughly 5.45 million tonnes.

“The Jongju target would appear to be the world’s largest known REE occurrence,” said Dr. Louis Schurmann.

Rare Earth Investing News reported in 2012 on the mineral potential of North Korea, which by some estimates is worth $6 trillion including a large number of rare earth metals. However trade with the reclusive, adversarial north Asian nation has been restricted to all nations but China, which does not currently adhere to the US and United Nations sanctions against North Korea.

So much for sanctions then. I wonder who the North Korean authorities have in mind for the unpleasant job of extracting the rare earths? From Wikipedia :-

Mining, refining, and recycling of rare earths have serious environmental consequences if not properly managed. A particular hazard is mildly radioactive slurry tailings resulting from the common occurrence of thorium and uranium in rare earth element ores. Additionally, toxic acids are required during the refining process.

All original material is copyright of its author. Fair use permitted. Contact via comment. Unless indicated otherwise, all internet links accessed at time of writing. Nothing here should be taken as personal advice, financial or otherwise. No liability is accepted for third-party content, whether incorporated in or linked to this blog; or for unintentional error and inaccuracy. The blog author may have, or intend to change, a personal position in any stock or other kind of investment mentioned.

In praise of Nelson Mandela

For some time to come, Nelson Mandela will be buried under a mountain of bullshit from people who didn't give a damn about him or wished him dead. I note how fast Bushes Senior and Junior have been to add their voices to the professional keening.

But I remember his comment when, at the height of their ephemeral fame, the Spice Girls chose to be pictured with him: " This is the most important thing that has ever happened to me."

He was not a false God to himself, and that tells me that he was a great man.

All original material is copyright of its author. Fair use permitted. Contact via comment. Unless indicated otherwise, all internet links accessed at time of writing. Nothing here should be taken as personal advice, financial or otherwise. No liability is accepted for third-party content, whether incorporated in or linked to this blog; or for unintentional error and inaccuracy. The blog author may have, or intend to change, a personal position in any stock or other kind of investment mentioned.

Pontian music

Some music is like "the call of the wild" and Pontic music does that for me. The above performance at the Athens Olympics gives a hint of it, and its inclusion in the ceremony underscores the long, unforgiving memory of the Greeks.

The Pontian Greeks, an ancient diaspora, are not like those from mainland Greece and there are still problems of their assimilation into the latter after the Turkish massacres and expulsions of 1922. More recently, some 5,000 have come to Paphos in western Cyprus and local internet comment boards evidence cultural friction there also.

There are or were communities in the lands circling the Black Sea, "south Pontians" from northern Turkey but also "north Pontians" (now often Russian-speaking) from the Crimea, southern Russia, Georgia.  I think you can hear the tragedy of exile in the singers' tones.

At its heart, Pontian music always has the three-stringed Pontic Lyre and the uneven rhythm of "tik" dancing. Dark and dangerous.

If you like it and wish to immerse yourself, there is Radio e-Pontos.

All original material is copyright of its author. Fair use permitted. Contact via comment. Unless indicated otherwise, all internet links accessed at time of writing. Nothing here should be taken as personal advice, financial or otherwise. No liability is accepted for third-party content, whether incorporated in or linked to this blog; or for unintentional error and inaccuracy. The blog author may have, or intend to change, a personal position in any stock or other kind of investment mentioned.

Book-burning in postwar Britain

Zere goes "Ze Art of Englisch"... !

"Textbooks are dying out in classrooms because teachers see them as 'regimented and old-fashioned', Elizabeth Truss said yesterday.

"The Education Minister said rampant ideology in schools that teaching should be 'unstructured and free-flow' meant just one in ten ten-year-olds are issued with them now."

- Andrew Levy, Daily Mail, today.

There are three reasons why teachers have abandoned textbooks and now labour till all hours of the night to lay the track on which their train will run the next day:

1. Revolutionaries. As I have said before, at the large comprehensive where I used to teach the head of English told me that the last act of the previous incumbent was to put all the English coursebooks into a skip in the playground and set fire to them, thus ensuring that the wicked old way of teaching from that sort of book would be gone for ever. This was in the mid-70s, and when I told this to others I found out that the same thing had happened in at least two other schools, at about the same time. I will bet my pension that, like the man who campaigned for the end of corporal punishment, the people who did this did not stay in the classroom, or possibly even in teaching.

2. Constant curricular change. How is it possible to write a textbook when the course content alters frequently? Every education secretary jerks the tiller in a different direction: grammar exercises, no grammar exercises, phonics, no phonics, Shakespeare, no Shakespeare.

3. Ofsted. Inspectors and advisers - some of whom may have been like those in (1) above, or taught or sponsored by them - not only don't want to see textbooks, they even frown on worksheets. We are expecting an inspection soon and we are told that our lessons will be classed as failing if they are text-based rather than activity-based.

Teacher is a fool. Education is a stupid job for clever people - you have to be clever to do it, you have to be stupid to take it on. Only periodic deep economic recessions and the institutional ageism in the British workplace keep the "profession" supplied, sucking in young idealists and middle-aged bankrupts and keeping them so busy that they fail to escape again.

And goodness know how much (colour, laser) photocopiers cost annually, compared with the wear-and-tear cost of replacing texts in the old days - the days when, as in modern-day China, South Korea etc children were set work to do and did it.

Still, we now get better, technicolour paper airplanes and higher-quality scrap in the recycling bins.

All original material is copyright of its author. Fair use permitted. Contact via comment. Unless indicated otherwise, all internet links accessed at time of writing. Nothing here should be taken as personal advice, financial or otherwise. No liability is accepted for third-party content, whether incorporated in or linked to this blog; or for unintentional error and inaccuracy. The blog author may have, or intend to change, a personal position in any stock or other kind of investment mentioned.

Cameron's Chinese puzzle

(1) BBC News (2) Financial Times (3) Wikipedia

 

All original material is copyright of its author. Fair use permitted. Contact via comment. Unless indicated otherwise, all internet links accessed at time of writing. Nothing here should be taken as personal advice, financial or otherwise. No liability is accepted for third-party content, whether incorporated in or linked to this blog; or for unintentional error and inaccuracy. The blog author may have, or intend to change, a personal position in any stock or other kind of investment mentioned.

Democracy: who should have the right to vote?

The self-governing Welsh colony on the Chubut River in Patagonia, established in the later 1860s, allowed all men and women over 18 to vote.

In Britain, no woman could vote until 1918, and even then it was restricted to women over 30. The minimum voting age for women was reduced to 21 ten years later. The voting age for both sexes was lowered to 18 in 1969, under the premiership of Harold Wilson, who hoped that the young would help him return to office in 1970; he was wrong.

Ironically, the United Kingdom's 1832 Reform Act, designed to correct the corruption of the electoral system, was the first to formally exclude women from voting by including the word "male" in the legislative text. Until then, the right to vote had been largely related to property.

In the United States, the State of New Jersey in 1776 permitted propertied widows to vote; this right was rescinded in 1807.

In 2010, a female Russsian journalist, Yulia Latinyna, argued in the Moscow Times that poor people should not be allowed to vote:

Poor people are capable of feats of bravery and revolution. They can storm the Bastille, overthrow the tsar or stage an Orange Revolution. But impoverished people are incapable of making sober decisions and voting responsibly in a popular election.

It may be that poor people don't want to, anyway. In 1950, the voter turnout for the UK General Election was 83.9%; in 2010 it was 65.1% (up from 59.4% in 2001). In the US, turnout for the Presidential election of 1876 was 81.8%; in 2012, 57.5%.

According to MORI, in the 2010 General Election, 66% of men cast their vote, but only 64% of women. Age, however, is a more significant determinant:

Data: Mori

The "democratic deficit" is getting dangerous. On Zero Hedge, "George Washington" said this week:

"... a May 2013 poll by Fairleigh Dickinson University found that 29% of registered voters think that armed revolution may be “necessary” in the next couple of years. In other words, the number of Americans who think that armed revolution may be “needed” dwarf the number of Americans who approve of the job that Congress is doing."

Before a call to arms, how about a call to exercise your right to the franchise?

All original material is copyright of its author. Fair use permitted. Contact via comment. Unless indicated otherwise, all internet links accessed at time of writing. Nothing here should be taken as personal advice, financial or otherwise. No liability is accepted for third-party content, whether incorporated in or linked to this blog; or for unintentional error and inaccuracy. The blog author may have, or intend to change, a personal position in any stock or other kind of investment mentioned.

Fado

All original material is copyright of its author. Fair use permitted. Contact via comment. No liability is accepted for third-party content, whether incorporated in or linked to this blog; or for unintentional error and inaccuracy.

Stockmarkets, inequality and investor behaviour

Yesterday, Michael Snyder gave us a doomster report on the stock market, which he sees as being in an "absolutely massive" bubble. The redoubtable Marc Faber agrees, as do many others.

Noting that 82% of individually held stocks are owned by just 5% of Americans, Snyder comments:

"When this stock market bubble does burst, those wealthy Americans are going to be in for a tremendous amount of pain."

This is the point at which I have to say, "hairy, spherical objects!" What pain?

If you are truly rich, you do not need to sell your stocks. Once you have ownership, and assuming that you have lots of cash and income from other sources, the notional sale value of your shares is an irrelevance. How much of his 700 acres of land in central London has the Duke of Westminster sold off whenever the property market was in a slump? Exactly.

There's still some fantasy that the Dow (or the S&P, whatever) is a measure of the well-being of the nation. Actually, it's a distraction. What matters is whether you have a sustainable economy, and what social arrangements you are prepared to tolerate. The answers appear to be "no" and "terrible".

Aside from rapidly building up gold reserves and planning to dispense with the US dollar as the world's settlement currency, China is now cashing out of the casino and buying land and businesses in America. The 5% will still be just fine, thank you, as the elites are in many of the worst countries in the world, but a growing number of Americans will find that they have become indentured slaves and their masters have sold them; billionaire Hugo Salinas Price thinks this is historically inevitable and the dream of democracy is due to end soon.

Unless you act.

All original material is copyright of its author. Fair use permitted. Contact via comment. Unless indicated otherwise, all internet links accessed at time of writing. Nothing here should be taken as personal advice, financial or otherwise. No liability is accepted for third-party content, whether incorporated in or linked to this blog; or for unintentional error and inaccuracy. The blog author may have, or intend to change, a personal position in any stock or other kind of investment mentioned.

Dr Not-So-Strangelove

While the BBC screens a season on the Cold War, it's worth knowing that, for reasons of speed and just in case higher authority was uncontactable, all the ballistic nuclear missile silos in the USA had the same launch code for a period of 20 years: 00000000.

And never mind Dr Strangelove's General Jack D. Ripper, here is the real Commander-in-Chief of Strategic Air Command, General Thomas Power, talking in 1960 to a nuclear war strategist from the Rand Corporation: "Restraint! Why are you so concerned with saving their lives? The whole idea is to kill the bastards! At the end of the war, if there are two Americans and one Russian, we win!"

And here's Power's boss, who was in charge of the whole Air Force: "At a Georgetown dinner party recently, the wife of a leading senator sat next to Gen. Curtis LeMay, chief of staff of the Air Force. He told her a nuclear war was inevitable. It would begin in December and be all over by the first of the year. In that interval, every major American city -- Washington, New York, Philadelphia, Detroit, Chicago, Los Angeles -- would be reduced to rubble. Similarly, the principal cities of the Soviet Union would be destroyed. The lady, as she tells it, asked if there were any place where she could take her children and grandchildren to safety; the general would, of course, at the first alert be inside the top-secret underground hideout near Washington from which the retaliatory strike would be directed. He told her that certain unpopulated areas in the far west would be safest."

When I was in my teens at a Welsh boarding school, I studied the map to see where in Wales might be best to head for if the balloon went up - somewhere central, but avoiding the vicinity of military bases and any of the valleys leading away from target cities on the southern coast, I decided.

I should have been better prepared; I never had a bag and a bike ready. All over now? Are we now run by sane and sensible people?

All original material is copyright of its author. Fair use permitted. Contact via comment. Unless indicated otherwise, all internet links accessed at time of writing. Nothing here should be taken as personal advice, financial or otherwise. No liability is accepted for third-party content, whether incorporated in or linked to this blog; or for unintentional error and inaccuracy. The blog author may have, or intend to change, a personal position in any stock or other kind of investment mentioned.

"I me mine": gender and the possessive pronoun

Commenting on the latest twist in the Lawson-Saatchi feud, John Ward says:

"For me, Nigella had always represented a figure of fun: the personification of how too much money and bubble-based privilege can lead to idiotic comments such as “The best vinegar to add at this stage in the cooking is cider, but if you’ve run out, Champagne vinegar will do just as well”. But behind all that, I felt a background unease about the sheer size of her ego: how every dish was ‘my’ Christmas Turkey or ‘my’ summer salad."

Actually, this is something many women do, if you take the trouble to listen to them. This is (I venture to suggest) because they are more relationship-focused; they are also (I think) more likely to invest inanimate objects with personalities.

If you watch Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall's cookery programmes (at least the early series) you may note - it stuck me quite forcefully at the time - that he does this "I/my" thing consistently. At first I found it irritating, but then I came to admire him, for I realised that he was mimicking the feminine use of language to appeal more strongly to his audience.

My wife says that in the quoted context, it's also about food as giving something of yourself.

All original material is copyright of its author. Fair use permitted. Contact via comment. Unless indicated otherwise, all internet links accessed at time of writing. Nothing here should be taken as personal advice, financial or otherwise. No liability is accepted for third-party content, whether incorporated in or linked to this blog; or for unintentional error and inaccuracy. The blog author may have, or intend to change, a personal position in any stock or other kind of investment mentioned.