Extinction Rebellion In Cambridge

Do you notice how many Asian women, and particularly Japanese women, have very good dress sense? They wear elegant but not staid clothes. They wear stylish clothes and seem to know just what the phrase 'timeless classic' means.

And this woman in her throw-over scarf is so polite as she passes signs that tell her she is part of the problem as Extinction Rebellion sees it.

Just coming in off the street is a woman in a red jacket and leggings. She is carrying two shopping bags. Unless she is returning stuff, then she is shopping for more. 

Oh, what a world,

Gambling Harm Unawareness Weeks

I passed a betting shop a few weeks ago and saw a notice that said it was Gambling Harm Awareness Week. I just googled it and it says "The week is designed to encourage community discussions about why gambling harm matters. Harm from gambling isn't just about losing money."

All well and good, but Gambling Harm Awareness Week suggests that there are 51 unawareness weeks in the year where a gambler can do what he or she wants in blissful ignorance.

Maybe that is a bit harsh, but a betting shop advertising to be aware of the damage that gambling can cause? Come on!

Meanwhile, my bank interleaved a little graphic on my phone app to warn me about gambling. I don't gamble, but logic says there must be a lot of bank customers who gamble or the bank would not put out such a warning.

Choosing a company

Choosing a company to work in is fraught with problems for some people and as easy as falling off a log for others. So for those who have trouble falling off logs, here is the definitive guide to which company to choose.

Choose the one with people you like to work with. Of course you will be pulled towards working with the company that has the best career advancement opportunities, or the best health-care or pension plan, and they are important, but the most important thing - the one that will stand the test of time - is to choose to work with people you like to work with.

I don't recommend that you try to characterize these people. I don't think it pays to say to yourself that you want to work with nice people, or kind people, or honest people, though these might be exactly the qualities you find in the people you like to work with.

And I don't think it pays to want to work with fast people, or racy people, or people who are 'going somewhere', because you've got to work with them - and if you don't like working with them you are going to spend a lot of energy compensating for that fact.

And when all the reasons for you becoming an engineer rather than a painter or a chef have faded into the distance, you will still be working, then that is the time know - on your mid-morning walk from your desk or bench to the coffee machine - that you like to work with these people.

Why the economic downturn is good for the environment

In conversation with friends recently I've been saying that the economic downturn could be the best thing that has happened for the chance to stop the destruction of the environment.

I want to take a moment to say that there is a tremendous danger in arguing that the reason to stop polluting the Earth is to prevent the kinds of catastrophe that global warming is likely to bring about. Of course that is a very potent reason.

But let us suppose that someone came up with a sky-scrubber that sat ten miles up in the atmosphere and pulled all the hydrocarbons and excess CO2 out of the system. Let us suppose it was up there, chugging away and cleaning up the mess. Would that be a reason to treat the Earth like a toilet and keep on pumping rubbish into it?

No it wouldn't.

Treating the Earth with respect requires no more reason than a tree needs a reason to be there and to go on growing.

Having got that out of the way, I have been arguing that the economic downturn (a phrase I prefer to 'going off a cliff') presents the best opportunity we could hope for in order that responsible government would have the power to force big business to clean up its act.

And big business is more likely to be in a frame of mind to listen, quite apart from being weak and having to listen.

Psychologically, when you are running at 100 miles per hour, making money and the world is full of smiles, you are least likely to listen to that still small voice inside telling you that you are destroying everything around you.

But when things turn bad, you are more likely to listen.

Which brings me to the report by Reuters and the Wall Street Journal where President Obama is said to require the automakers to build a ‘company of the future' with clean and energy-efficient vehicles as a condition of giving financial aid.

The political administration would have had a much harder time bringing this about if everything business was doing well.

And this carries into every other field where government is strong. This decade could be just what is needed for the tipping point to tip the right way.

Purchasing Power Parity and value of the Chinese Renminbi

The sentence that I find most interesting in the following report from Bloomberg is where Mr Geithner is reported as saying

“We welcome China’s fiscal measures and continued commitment to move to a more flexible exchange rate, which should lead to continued appreciation of the Renminbi,”

I'd like to know more about how that works. And I'd like to know how China is supposed to have been keeping the value of the Yuan low - which it has been accused of doing. Not that I am saying it has not done that, or that I am casting doubt on its ability to do that. I'd just like to know how a country does that.

There is a Wikpedia article on the subject of purchasing power parity.

The opening paragraphs of the article state that:

The purchasing power parity (PPP) theory uses the long-term equilibrium exchange rate of two currencies to equalize their purchasing power. Developed by Gustav Cassel in 1920, it is based on the law of one price: the theory states that, in ideally efficient markets, identical goods should have only one price.
This purchasing power exchange rate equalizes the purchasing power of different currencies in their home countries for a given basket of goods. 

As the article says, and quite rightly it seems to me, PPP is based on the notion that goods have equal value in the eyes of the population in the countries being compared. And this is clearly not the case in countries as different as say China and the United States.

Which calls to mind the news item I saw on CNN Asia a couple of weeks ago that described how a very large number of small companies in China had gone into bankruptcy on account of the global downturn in trade, but that the bigger companies would be able to ride out the storm.

The news report was read out over a scene of the assembly line at a factory that was described as being one of those large companies that represented the real power of China's output. And what was it making? - black and white stuffed toys.

I remember thinking at the time it was laughable and sad to think that China's economy and its contribution to world economic stability was based in part on its ability to maintain output of fluffy toys.

But the point is, how could anyone possibly compare the value a soft toy has to someone in China and that value it has to someone in the United States?

And without that, purchasing power parity has limited meaning.

Reported at Bloomberg By Steve Scherer
Feb. 14 (Bloomberg) -- Group of Seven finance chiefs eased their criticism of China’s exchange-rate policy as the world’s most populous country moved to bolster its economy during the global recession.

Less than a month ago, U.S. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, who attended today’s meeting in Rome, said President Barack Obama thought that China was “manipulating its currency.”

“We welcome China’s fiscal measures and continued commitment to move to a more flexible exchange rate, which should lead to continued appreciation of the Renminbi,” the G- 7 said today in its final communiqué.

China announced 4 trillion yuan ($585 billion) in spending in November to support the economy amid the global recession. China, the world’s second-biggest energy consumer, may approve a stimulus plan for the oil refining and petrochemicals industries by next week to help spur the slowing economy, two industry officials said yesterday.

“We very much welcome the steps they’ve taken to strengthen domestic demand, and welcome” China’s commitment to exchange rate reform, Geithner told reporters today in Rome, a view echoed by French Finance Minster Christine Lagarde.

“The more conciliatory tone on China is the key departure from previous statements,” Geoffrey Yu, a London-based foreign-exchange strategist at UBS AG, said in an e-mailed statement. “The G-7 has realized that China needs to be brought into the fold of the global financial system rather than be treated as a pariah just because of yuan inflexibility.”

Shifting Position

Since first describing flexible exchange rates as “desirable” after a 2003 meeting in Dubai, the G-7 has swung between pressuring and praising China’s exchange rate policy.

Having cheered a July 2005 revaluation, the officials said the following December that further shifts would aid the world economy and four months later said China “especially” should adjust its currency.

In February 2007 the G-7 encouraged the yuan to “move” more on a trade-weighted basis and at the three meetings between October 2007 and last April pressed China to allow an “accelerated appreciation.”

Nine Billion Hungry People

Reprise: It's funny and it's irritating looking at the online financial news reports.

Each day for the past few weeks news reports have been coming out advising

- Stocks rally after crash

- Stocks pull back sharply after rally

- Stocks edge lower in choppy trading

All of which is fine and dandy except that the reports are posted throughout the day and yet read as though they sum up the day's trading.

But in the fast-changing trading of the past few weeks, with stocks going up and down and up again, and down again on any given day, it's not uncommon to see Yahoo Finance or Bloomberg carrying a list of news headlines with one talking about stocks going down, and another right below it talking about stocks going up.

So it's funny to see classic headlines in bald contradiction of one another, but it's irritating brushing them aside while looking for something of substance to read.

One thing I have learned being here in England over the past several months is that some people in the U.S. seem to have absolutely no idea that the economic fallout of the credit drought has been just as great here in Europe as it is in the States.

The United States has an area 39 times that of the United Kingdom and a population 5 times greater. So I can see that there is plenty to keep people entertained or worried or informed about in the U.S. without them wondering what is happening in other parts of the world. But it makes me wonder when I hear friends in the U.S. ask whether Britain has been affected by the economic situation.

Well yes, Britain and the people of Britain have been affected.

Three of Britain's failed lending institutions have been nationalized. A clutch of high street names have disappeared. And one of its savings banks having its assets in Icelandic banks - which have defaulted - has defaulted in turn leaving some people stripped of everything.

And I have to say that I have the same blindness with regard to many parts of the world. For example, what is the current situation in poor parts of the world as a result of the volatility of food prices? There were headline news reports a few months ago warning that the rises in fuel prices were leading to a widespread risk of famine in the developing world.

I remember thinking at the time that if the recession turned into a depression, and if that became a worldwide depression on the scale of the Great Depression, then oddly enough it might be the poorer countries that could withstand it better because their infrastructure was not so tightly bound as in First World countries.

I could see s situation where people in developed countries would not be able to feed themselves if the supply chain broke down.  I could see sewage and water systems breaking down in developed countries and with nowhere for the people to go.

Whereas in poor countries where people are living subsistence lives, they might well be able to carry on.

Or maybe not. This report from Oxfam details the current risks to people in Africa as a result of the volatility in food prices.

Oxfam: global food crisis will worsen - 1bn hungry people need help now
Urgent action is needed to prevent hundreds of millions more people slipping into hunger as a result of volatile food prices and increasing energy and water scarcity, said international agency Oxfam today. Decades of underinvestment in agriculture coupled with the increasing threat of climate change mean that despite recent price falls, future food security is by no means guaranteed, and in fact the situation could get worse, said Oxfam on the opening day of a UN conference in Madrid to address the issue.

Oxfam’s warning comes on the day that two new reports are published, detailing the threats to global food security and exposing the lack of adequate coordinated international action to tackle hunger.

The reports, 'A Billion Hungry People and The Feeding of the Nine Billion' are published by Oxfam and the UK think tank, Chatham House respectively, and together are a call to action to politicians, and representatives from the private sector and civil society meeting to discuss the implementation of the UN Taskforce’s response.

Although global food prices have fallen in the last few months, they are not back to previous levels, and are likely to rise sharply again in the future.   Furthermore, price volatility itself is a problem, and more needs to be done to address the underlying structural issue that cause the chronic hunger affecting 1 in 6 people in the world today, says Oxfam.

Barbara Stocking, Oxfam Chief Executive, said: “This should be a wake-up call for all those who believe that the food crisis is over. World leaders have a window of opportunity to prevent a worse situation resulting from the triple crunch of the economic crisis, climate change, and energy and water scarcity. They must act urgently to turn their plans into coordinated action that addresses immediate needs and begins to implement long-term reforms. Failure to act will see millions more people falling into hunger.”

Oxfam said current severe food shortages in Afghanistan, Ethiopia, Kenya, Mozambique and Zimbabwe are evidence that the global food crisis is far from over (see annex). Even before recent price rises, there were over 850m people classified as undernourished. Now, there are nearly a billion, as a result of the price rises, alongside other factors such as political instability and conflict.

“Not enough has been done to tackle the situation. There is a lack of coordination at all levels and the opportunity for root and branch reform of the aid system has not yet been taken. International institutions and donors must reverse decades of under-investment in agriculture and scrap blatantly distortionary polices such as biofuels mandates that make things worse,” said Stocking.

“The recent decision by the EU to reinstate export subsidies for dairy is the direct opposite of what’s needed: a retrograde step that calls into question their commitment to longer term reforms,” she added.

The Feeding of the Nine Billion, published by Chatham House and part-funded by Oxfam, predicts demand for food will increase as the world’s population grows by 2.5bn to 9.2bn by 2050. It also notes a UN prediction that climate change will increase the number of undernourished people worldwide by between 40m and 170m.

Meanwhile, Oxfam’s A Billion Hungry People includes recommendations for reform of the humanitarian aid system and makes a strident call to poor countries to do their bit by investing more in agriculture, targeting women and small-scale producers. Developing countries must increase social protection measures for vulnerable populations - including cash payments and employment creation schemes for those at risk of hunger. Rich countries must ensure long-term predictable funding to developing countries for investment in agriculture and climate change adaptation.

Why locusts swarm

There is an article in the Financial Times (and other newspapers) today about why locusts swarm.

Basically they become stressed when they feel overcrowded due to there not being enough food to go around.

This causes them to produce serotonin which makes them gregarious, change color, and develop bigger leg muscles for a long flight.

It seems to me that the final stepping stone in the logic trail is missing. OK, so they are feeling gregarious and the have big leg muscles and bright colors. But by the same logic, maybe that would trigger them to start a party and dance all night long.

Still, science has discovered a fact, which is that locusts produce serotonin and that when they do they swarm.

And we know that 10% of the world's human population suffers form locust attacks on their crops.

So here's an idea. Spray serotonin on locusts at a time of year when there is nowhere within reach that has crops for them to eat. They will swarm, not find anything and die of exhaustion.

If the experiment doesn't work then nothing is lost save the cost of an experiment that didn't work. It doesn't involve pesticides or genetic change and it is self-teminating.

Writing this, I feel bad for the locusts and for encouraging death by exhaustion - and maybe the idea is too good and would work, and cause unknown changes in the ecological balance. Who know?

Wispa - back by popular demand

In a supermarket yesterday I saw a stand of Wispa chocolate bars, and at the top of the stand was an advertisement that stated - Back by popular demand!

My first thought was that I didn't know they had gone but that's not saying a lot because I rarely eat chocolate bars.

But then it got me thinking about all the signs and notices we see that are so strongly associated with the idea of selling that just seeing the sign primes us to be ready to respond to the selling pitch.

Had I been a chocolate eater, then do doubt I would have salivated once the sign had hooked me, reeled me in and encouraged my eyes to be drawn toward the sultry dark blue of the wrappers of the chocolate bars piled on the stand.

Imre Kertesz: 2002 Nobel Prize for Literature

In the Sunday Times in 2002, I read that Imre Kertesz had won the Nobel Prize for Literature. I didn't know his name but I did know the name of the photographer Andre Kertesz, and I think that was the hook that kept me reading.

I read that Imre Kertesz had written <em>Fateless</em>, a semi-autobiographical novel of the experiences of a teenager in Hungary in the closing years of the Second World War. He is rounded up with other Jews and finishes up in Auschwitz and then Buchenwald.

I looked for the book and couldn't find anything translated into English. I remember thinking ruefully that it was ironic that there were no English translations of any of the books of a man who had won the Nobel Prize for Literature.

Then in Tel Aviv airport a couple of years later, I saw the book and read it.

I had read other accounts of experiences of the holocaust, but this one was different because it was written without the reflection of hindsight and as though without the benefit of an understanding of what was going on.

The writing is very immediate as in for example the moment when the transports reach Auschwitz and the doors of the cattle cars open.

The camp prisoners come in among them to get them off the train and the young man thinks they are criminals with their desperate hollow eyes and closed cropped hair and striped clothes.

In fact one of them saves his life by telling him to tell the guards he is 16 and not 15. Had he said he was 15, he would have been sent straight to the gas chambers.

<strong>State of mind</strong>
But what has stayed with me out of the book is another experience he describes. One where he reflects on his state of mind at a very difficult time.

What happened was that he became ill to the point that he was tossed into a wheelbarrow with corpses and dumped by a wire fence. By a stroke of fate he was left on the <em>other</em> side of the fence. The other side was where captured soldiers were held as prisoners of war.

Provided he was not discovered by the guards, and provided he survived his illness, he was saved.

So he is lying in the barrow, nearer to death than to life, and around him he can see men who are properly dressed; who look reasonably well fed.

And he reflects, as he looks back and sees his state of mind then, that even so near death he was too proud to lose his reserve and call out to ask where he was.

He comments that pride accompanied him even almost to his death.

He ran out of here with his hair on fire

He ran out of here with his hair on fire
screaming he’d never be back
but he came the next morning
begging for more
and practically jumped on the rack.

I'm standing in a bookshop looking for presents.

I'm standing in a bookshop looking for presents. I've been on the net all morning and as I look at the books on the shelves and the stands I find myself noticing that they don't move or blink or show pictures or scroll or link anywhere, or do any of the neat things that web pages do.

In fact the book covers suggest more about the insides of the books than actually happens. All the colorful images on the cover are often not reproduced inside. Usually there are just pages and pages of words - rows of the same letters in lines, over and over again. They just don't make a very stimulating visual image.

And I'm thinking that books are boring.

There was a time when the barrier I had to surmount in order to get into a book, was very small. I would bend my head a little, bring the book nearer, and I was into a world formed in my imagination.

Now it takes a lot to make me turn my attention to the books on the shelf waiting for me to slide between their pages.

Which reminds me of something that happened to me some years ago. I had been studying in a secluded environment with other people for months. My mind was tuned to fine points of discussion. I had the architecture of a system of ideas in my mind.

Then I went into town one day to buy a roll of film and in the store there was a large screen video. It was showing a film with Sean Connery and he was in a scene where he outwitted somebody and it ended somehow with this person hanging defenseless from a rope over the edge of a parapet. I haven't seen the film since so I can't tell you what it was.

In an instant, all the architecture of ideas in my head was swept aside and the space was filled with images of Sean Connery and a two-bit movie (sorry Sean).

And it's a bit like that with the net. Images, movement, headlines - they drive out my attention span and my appetite for surmounting the barrier I have to climb over to get down to reading a book.

And I bought a book only very recently - about Ireland from 1939 to 1945, when it stayed neutral during the Second World War. And I started it and now I have to find a way back into reading on.

Saul Leiter: photographs and the art of not-gardening

I was in Waterstones bookshop today, leafing through a copy of the Photofile book of Saul Leiter's photographs, when I got to thinking.

I own a copy of Saul Leiter's Early Color, which is a hardbound book, and I wanted to see whether there was anything new or different in this smaller Photofile volume.

As I flicked through the book, I thought again about why I like Saul Leiter's photographs. The color is muted and pleasantly warm, and there is a consistency of tone throughout the book, and that is attractive. But that is not of itself enough of a reason to like his photographs. There is something else - and it took me until today to figure out what it is.

There are often not many elements in the photographs and they are quite large, which means that although the subject matter is street life, the photographs do not look cluttered.

But again that is not what I like about the photographs.

Quite often, the background subject matter appears partially covered by the foreground elements. So we have shots of people partly obscured by shutters or doorways or blinds or other people.

But in itself, that is not what I like about the photographs.

And then I thought of a term that is known to nature photographers. They call it 'gardening' and it means removing bits of twig or leaf or paper wrappers or anything that didn't look good in the frame.

And that is what Saul Leiter does not do. He doesn't garden. He doesn't move his body to 'move' obstructing bits out of the way. He sees something he likes and he allows in all the elements that are in front of him - the bits that obscure and the bits that reveal. And the result is that he gets it right.

And I could happily have many of his photographs hanging on the wall where I live - they are pleasant and rewarding and satisfying and interesting to look at.

Princess Diana, Barack Obama, and the fools on the hill

When Princess Diana died in a car crash in Paris, I wasn't in England so I didn't see all the newspaper headlines, or all the news programmes on TV. But I did see and hear some news from abroad.

When Diana died, the Queen refused or didn't allow the flag at Buckingham Palace to be lowered to half mast. She apparently stood on ceremony and took the view that because Diana was not a Royal, having been divorced from Charles, she was not entitled to the benefit of a lowered flag.

Soon, members of the public started to congregate outside Buckingham Palace. And people started to send flowers. And the numbers of wreaths and bunches of flowers and the numbers outside the palace rose and rose until they became a tide of public sentiment.

And in the end, the Queen ordered the flag to be lowered, and the public breathed out a little and continued their public keening and mourning.

Then the critics started to look at Diana's life. The pro-Diana critics pointed to how she had held AIDS patients; how she had stood in a minefield (no doubt a cleared minefield) dressed in mine-clearing protective clothing, protesting the number of mines lying around the world.

And the anti-Diana critics pointed out how she had a talent for publicity and spent a fortune on clothes, and had led the life of a celebrity.

And the anti-Diana critics called the public dupes for following a false star, and predatory for wanting to grab their own little 15 minutes of fame by stepping forward to lay a wreath at the Palace gates, or to stand in the crowd waiting and hoping for the TV camera to pick them out.

I didn't see it that way. I saw that the mass of people were yearning for something. Diana represented a warm touch, a human reaching-out, an attempt to bridge between people, and she was now dead. And where was anyone else among royalty or politicians or public figures of any kind who could lift the spirits just a little bit and bring people together as a force for good and for caring and for all the things that warm the heart?  There wasn't anyone - so they cried.

And to think otherwise is to denigrate, to slag off those millions of people who mourned her.

I have read several articles voicing uneasiness about Barack Obama and the fervour with which people are looking to him as the great hope.

It's a good cautionary note. We have to beware of saviours. We have to know who is a fanatic and who is an agent for good and who is not.

But we have to be aware that the desire for change for the good is a wonderful and powerful feeling. It does not arise the hearts of fools and dupes only. It arises in the hearts and heads of people who have been through personal hardships and tragedies - who are fools on the hill and want a better society -  a society where social justice is a continuing touchstone.

So it is 'down' with ridicule and self-loathing and the scrabble for the top, and 'up' with caring and hope.

Therefore in a triumph of irony in history, it is particularly moving that at the very time when we ask for these things, we are tested - tested by the worst financial crisis in a (fill in the blank here) years.

Because if anything is guaranteed to test the limits of one man's care for another, it is when it hits his pocket.

Franco Death Squads

I read in the Sunday Times, October 26th edition (page 27 of the News section, that Judge Baltasar Garzon in Spain is pursuing the finding and exhumation from mass graves of 114,266 bodies of people killed by Franco's death squads in the years 1936-51.

The romance of Hemingway novels, of the Europeans who went to volunteer to fight for a just society in Spain - somehow I thought of it as a fight between fascism and social democracy, and of repression and subjugation and of Guernica.

But I did not appreciate the depth of the continuing horror; of killings year in year out through the 1940s of people who were got rid of because they were a nuisance.

114,266 people killed is not a small thing.

Jonathan Ross has been making borderline aggressive comments for years

Published 2008

____

I believe in public modesty. I side with those who believe that and I want to assert with them that we are still a society that values proper public behaviour.

Public sexual morality in England today is indistinguishable from private sexual morality.  A lot that is in the media encourages an 'anything goes' mentality.

Jonathan Ross has been making borderline aggressive comments for years. He is admired because he is observant about people and what makes them tick. But he stands for hurting people. And he has a "who, me?" innocent schoolboy charm when he is accused.   Well this time too far. He should be fired.

The BBC should gives its own feedback to the complainants and to society - tell us all that you stand for the proposition that there is a society and that it is a society that has values that respect public sensitivities.

And don't stop there. Fan it and nurture it and use your enormous power to help turn the tide of 'anything goes' around.

Help people feel there is something worth working for, because at the moment a lot of people despair that there is any society with a commonality of public values that treasures and respects individuals.

Presidential Material

Published October 2008

___


A few nights ago David Letterman interviewed John McCain.

Letterman gave McCain a difficult time and McCain's dealt with each difficult question by giving a lighthearted answer and then turning away and doing a pantomime for the audience. It was a pantomime of a boy who had narrowly escaped being caught with his fingers in the cookie jar.

He would roll his eyes, pretend to pant and wipe his brow and then share with the audience his mock relief at 'not being found out'.

Cue to Sarah Palin, who should have renounced her candidacy the moment she realized she couldn't cut it. She should have renounced her candidacy the moment she realized she didn't have the tools to take on such a serious job - one where ineptitude can have such serious consequences.

And McCain should have jettisoned her the moment it became clear she wasn't going to resign.

Instead he stands transfixed, wondering why no-one has called him to account. He looks glazed, as though he is surprised to be still standing. And he gives his goofy grin and says in mime, "Aw shucks, am I still here? Are they still falling for my tricks? Ah well, it's just the presidency."

Whatever else he might be, McCain is not showing himself to be presidential material.

Terminator

Originally published October 2008

____

There is a sentence, which I have put in italics, in the following extract from an article in the Washington Post that reminds me of the film Terminator, when the machines took over. 

Stocks are on track for their worst year since 1937

By RENAE MERLE, MICHAEL A. FLETCHER and NEIL IRWIN Washington Post

Oct. 9, 2008, 11:33PM

Some attribute Thursday's market plunge to mutual funds' waiting until mid-afternoon to execute sell orders from a growing number of investors who are cutting their exposure or bailing out of the market altogether. Others say that hedge funds, which have leveraged returns in recent years by using borrowed money, are having to sell holdings to raise collateral against their borrowings.

Still others say that computerized trading, which has grown significantly in recent years, often kicks in later in the day, when certain thresholds are breached.

Short-selling

What happened on Thursday partly reflects the unintended consequences of regulators' attempts to bolster stock prices several weeks ago, when the Securities and Exchange Commission temporarily banned short-selling in nearly 1,000 stocks. That restriction was lifted at midnight on Wednesday. Short-selling is a practice in which investors sell shares they do not own in the hopes of buying them back later at a lower price. Many money managers use it to hedge their investments against future losses. Analysts said those investors were probably forced to sell shares short Thursday to protect themselves.

Robert Solow, who won a Nobel Prize in 1987 for his work on economic growth, said the "potential for instability was always there" but he is surprised at the magnitude of the problems. "I'm as puzzled as anyone else," he said. "I don't have any particular wisdom to sell."

Dramatisation

First published October 2008

____

There is an advertisement for a counter-top spray on television at the moment. The spray kills 99% of all germs.

The setting is a kitchen, with a mother cutting a carrot and a small baby in a high chair. There is a flashback to a few moments earlier when the mother had cut up raw chicken on that self-same cutting board. And we see the germs from the raw chicken attach themselves to the carrot, which the mother hands to the baby.

Then we see the baby holding the carrot up to his mouth, ready to eat it, and as he does so, the carrot transforms itself before our eyes into a raw chicken leg.

And just in case we think the carrot could really change into a raw chicken leg, a little sign appears in a corner of the screen, which says 'dramatisation'.

Who do they think we are?

The credit crunch, sub-prime, and opportunity

First published September 2008

____


We know that sound business principles should have told certain institutions not to go out on a limb and borrow to support lending that might turn bad if the economy suffered a downturn.

We know that government did not impose regulations on lenders to rein in on extending credit to people who could only continue to meet their payments so long as the economy did not suffer a downturn, or the interest on the interest on their debt started to become unmanageable.

But all the same, why some few months ago, did the lenders who lend to the mortgage lenders, stop lending to them?

I understand that the mortgage lenders lend on long term loans, and in the absence of a default, they cannot ask for their money back early. And I understand that the lenders who lend to the lenders, lend on short term loans, of six months or so.

And I understand that the lenders who lend (or did lend) to the mortgage lenders might have looked with concern at the rising number of defaulting mortgagors. For it would make them realize their borrowers' assets were overvalued for the reason that the inevitable consequence of defaults would be to drive the prices of houses down.

And I understand that the lenders who lend (or did lend) might have looked at the rising jobless total, which would signal that there were likely to be more defaulters.

But I can't help thinking that some of the bigger fish saw all this coming and saw an opportunity to make a killing.

On the subject of how to be guided in what to do

As Robert Persig has said, it is quality that guides us, and quality will not be cut into pieces and made the subject of science or reason.  And as we all say, all you need is love.

I used to think of that when I lived in the centre of an old, historic town in England. On a holiday day, people would buy an ice-cream from the little van and stand in a reverie with a slightly lost and dreamy look. And I asked myself why they chose to stand there and not in the street where they lived.

And I think it was because of the Norman cathedral, the ancient castle, and the Elizabethan buildings that leant against one another in the square at the top of the hill.  Those buildings were put together by craftsmen who loved.  That single understanding helps anyone to sort the wheat from the chaff.

Russia, the West, sanctions, and the changing economies.

I wrote this in September 2008. Does it still apply?

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Just a few weeks ago Russia and the West were facing off against each other over Georgia and its provinces of South Ossetia and Abkahsia. And when the West told Russia that if it didn't back off and allow Georgia to regain those two provinces, it would impose economic sanctions. Russia responded by telling the West that any sanctions would hurt the West more than it would hurt them.

When Russia came out of the Soviet Era it was weak, and the West ripped it off by forcing it into deals that Russia had no choice but to make but over which it has been brooding ever since.

And the feeling in Russia was that now that it had a strong economy it wasn't going to put up with being pushed around with the threat of economic sanctions.

And that's what we heard from Russian diplomats and ministers. I love their plain speaking. When asked about the consequences of sanctions, the Foreign Minister said in that dry kind of Russian voice we all like to imitate, "we won't lose any sleep over it."

Oh how those past few weeks have changed things. The Russian stock market is heading for catastrophic failure and the government is pumping cash into its economy to stem a failure in the markets that must be making the U.S. and the West smile, and the Russians wishing they hadn't spoken.

Spot The Tune

That are a few things, that when I look back on them, make me chuckle. Even if I drag the recollections up from my memory with the intention of reliving that fun, they still start that wave, that ripple, that starts deep in my insides and spreads out into my shoulders and up into my head.

Even now, thinking of that funny recollection, I can feel my shoulder blades and my ears alive with a tingle like popping sherbet in the mouth. Oh it is so good to be alive to that feeling.

So here is one of the things that gets me every time. It's not even something I was involved in except as a listener.

It was on the radio. Two men talking. They are doing a spoof or take-off of Spot the Tune, a quiz programme where contestants would listen to the opening bars of a piece of music, and the first to identify the tune would win. Sometimes contestants could identify pieces after hearing just three notes.

So they are doing this spoof of the quiz. And the 'compere' played just one note.

And the 'contestant', seemingly searching his memory for the tune, said: "Give me a moment; I know that one. I think I've got that in the car."

It still gets me.

Nouns, adjectives, and other parts of speech

Ever have the feeling you know what you want but you are stuck for words? Well now you can leave all that behind.

Adjectivalist is pleased to supply unlimited numbers of words for all your needs. They can supply nouns, adjectives, adverbs and other parts of speech at discounted rates. Whole sentences supplied to order - just ask and I am sure they can meet your needs.

And the savings don't stop there - owing to their long association with carefully chosen language, they can supply gramatically correct and meaningful paragraphs and chapters. Chapter headings are extra.

A little bird told me they have, currently, a job-lot of mixed adjectives and adverbs only recently brought to the West. Some are not known to have been seen or heard in public before. Be the first to use them!

(Ask about their latest offers.)

Thoughts On Power and Position

There's a perennial question about power and equality and opportunity. In the 14th century during the Peasant's Revolt in England, the priest John Ball asked:

When Adam delved and Eve span, who was then the gentleman?

He was asking this rhetorically, of course. He meant - 'who made you the boss?' But of course, in the real world anyone who wants to grab the crown is free to do it.

Overall I believe that social and economic justice are preferable to an unbridled power grab and that we would all be better for it, even those who say they want to be boss.

Tuesday

It will be a Tuesday, around 11am. He (or 'she') will get up from his desk and walk out because he isn't going to do this any more. He will walk out onto the street. He will be struck by how strongly he feels that he is going to do this.

He is going to stop the merry-go-round of the office and this way of doing things. He sees the whole structure and he isn't going to be part of it. There has to be a better way.

He feels slightly dazed, but his heart pounds when he reaches the street and finds that many, many people are there on the street like he is.

Favourite Quote

My favourite quote is a long one - so if you are looking for something short and catchy, you might want to skip this.

The quote is from Isaiah Berlin's 1957 Herbert Samuel lecture on Chaim Weizman, in which Berlin said:

Weizman had all his life believed that when great public issues are joined one must above all take sides; whatever one did, one must not remain neutral or uncommitted, one must always - as an absolute duty - identify oneself with some living force in the world, and take part in the world’s affairs with all the risk of blame and misrepresentation and misunderstanding of one’s motives and character which this almost invariably entails.
Consequently .. he (Weizman) called for no compromise, and denounced those who did. He regarded with contempt the withdrawal from life on the part of those to whom their personal integrity, or peace of mind, or purity of ideal, mattered more than the work upon which they are engaged and to which they were engaged and to which they were committed, the artistic, or scientific, or social, or political, or purely personal enterprises in which all men are willy-nilly involved.
He did not condone the abandonment of ultimate principles before the claims of expediency or of anything else; but political monasticism - a search for some private cave of Adullam to avoid being disappointed or tarnished, the taking up of consciously utopian or politically impossible positions, in order to remain true to some inner voice, or some unbreakable principle too pure for the wicked public world - that seemed to him a mixture of weakness and self-conceit, foolish and despicable.

Number and Colours

Numbers and Colours: a teacher told me this that happened to him

He was working in a school that used a progressive approach to teaching mathematics to young children. One method they used was to assign a colour to each number. So '1' was white, '2' was blue, '3' was yellow, etc.

The idea was that children would see the colour relationships more easily than the number relationships because colours are more concrete.

The teacher's niece was a pupil at the school, and one weekend the teacher was at his niece's home, and she was painting a picture. She was looking a little worried so he asked what the problem was.

"I don't have green paint for the grass." she said.

"Oh, that's not a problem; you can mix paints. What do blue and yellow make?" he said.

"Five", she said.