Tuesday, 22 May 2012
Telling Fortunes
Thin posts
this week, up to a point; but for today if others are saying a lot it is worth
pointing to them.
The first
item is a site that normally wants to see the markets doing well and things on
the up. So they tend to be optimistic
about finding some good news somewhere to encourage investments.
The item is
a longish one, but does say a lot from an American standpoint. It means that what some of us thought
possible, that the 2007-2008 Crash was just the beginning may well turn out to
be the case.
The second
is about the Clinton
Whatever
has happened to other people it seems that he has made a good living
since. You may make your own list of UK
http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2012/05/its-not-about-reelection-bill-clintons-80-million-payday.html
If there is
to be another period when the world economy wicket gets sticky and we return to
the breathless hush in the close with last man in the two obvious periods in
the immediate future seem to be early June or then late July into August.
In the
meantime the North Anatolian Fault has been “bracketed” both to the East and to
the West by earthquakes on either side of the suggested site of the long
predicted next big one.
And the
hurricane season seems to be starting early.
Monday, 21 May 2012
Happy Days
"Wow, just look at that Euro endonegous growth curve!"
Perhaps its the way you tell them.
Sunday, 20 May 2012
Five Year Planning For The Past
On Friday, 18 May, Fraser Nelson in “The Spectator”
had an article “No Time To Tinker” about government policy on the economy. One part of it dealt with the notion of Five
Year Plans, as below:
Quote:
3. There's no shame in Osborne thinking again.
I can understand why the Chancellor repeated Brown's policy of publishing a
five-year spending plan: the markets wanted a credible deficit reduction plan,
and Osborne has certainly given them one.
But no battle plan survives contact with the enemy. There is
no indignity in adapting to changing circumstances, nor in changing direction.
Osborne badly needs to. Because he's on a road to nowhere.
I once asked Black Swan author Nassim Taleb what he thought
of five-year Budget plans. 'Bullshit,' he replied with a smile. 'Look at past
five-year plans, how many have worked?
It's like someone getting married eight times, each time
thinking "this time it's for love."' I asked him how long should
governments draw their budgets for. 'One year at a time,' he said. 'The error
margin for five years is monstrous.'
Unquote
How the idea of “Five Year Plans” came to be I am not sure
but in my mind it is indelibly associated with the former Soviet
Union and its many capital projects. “The Plan” or rather the figures within it
had to be applied often almost regardless of the situation developing on the
ground.
It is arguable that the devotion of the USSR to statistics
and plans of this kind meant in effect that Gosplan (see Wikipedia) came to be
the dominant force and in the end the source of so many errors, inefficiencies
and unintended consequences that it was central not just to economic planning
but to the collapse of the Soviet Union.
Given the present uncertain, highly mobile state of the
world, the rapidity of change and the fragility of international markets and
political confusion in almost every major state over the last decade, the
notion of Five Year Plans is almost a collective madness or a dogma destined to
destroy those who believe in it.
In order to plan a train journey I need reliable
information. So I consult
timetables. How many times in the last
decade the actual services on the day have been at odds with the timetable or I
have had to make last minute significant adjustments to both timings and routing
is not known. What I do know is that the
number is a large one.
Economic data is a lot more complicated, difficult to
collect and sift with any certainty of reliability or truth or firm
analysis. As it is the past, perhaps
months old, it cannot be the present and predicating a future in an economy,
national or global that is in constant flux is at best a high class guessing
game.
All too clearly, all the fine plans, intentions and
certainties for the future of 2005 and 2006 have evaporated. The Treasury’s plans fell apart, other
countries plans fell apart and now the Euro may fall apart and for that matter
the current dollar zone is likely to as well given the leverages of the major US
finance corporations.
It is not going to suddenly get better and all that
information flowing about is no more reliable than at any other period. In any case the US Congress has decided to
make major economies in the collection of basic statistics which will add
immensely to the confusion.
Yet our Parliament and key machinery of government are still
devoted to the idea that we can proceed safely and wisely on the basis of
planning for a period of five years, with the implications that these will roll
on forward into the next and then the next.
Perhaps they think it is what we want to hear.
Can anyone in Whitehall
come up with a five year plan based on Chaos Theory?
Saturday, 19 May 2012
Look For The Silver Lining
Another
brief post; if only as a relief from all the long, very serious and complicated
ones being read on the web at present.
The answer
to the current Euro crisis is quite simple.
It is to reinstate the Maria Theresa Thaler (see Wikipedia) as the basic
currency of Europe , benchmarking a variety of
other currencies against it.
Furthermore,
fiat currency issue (paper money) should be one hundred per cent backed by
reserves of the MTT and credit creation by banks and others limited to four
times only of their holdings of the hard currency MTT reserve.
How could
this policy be put across to the general public? It could be called “Back To Basics”.
There would
need to be an appropriate regulatory regime in place in each country with an
adequate criminal law to guard against counterfeiting, fraud and financial
malpractice.
If we were
to use the experiences of the past in these matters it might be difficult to
know where to transport convicts to but I am sure somewhere could be found.
It might
seem to be an outlandish suggestion but it could be better than the
alternatives we face.
Friday, 18 May 2012
Go Back To Start
Given the
course of events, it is clear that what is happening in the Eurozone and other
parts connected or adjacent to it is very like when my home computer
begins glitching and twitching.
Whilst it
might need a new operating system, world government or anarchy or tribal
reversion or back to hunter gatherings perhaps we should see if the problems
arise from any current programme in use.
We could
try re-installing the Europe programme to
begin again as above but the next time round do a better job on the settings
and temporary governing files.
We may
finish up with something like this in any case.
Looking at the most western areas if the current occupants of Ireland
If we get
automatic shut down when it does reboot then it might be similar, who knows?
The way
things are going anything might be worth trying.
Thursday, 17 May 2012
Back To The Past And Future
Last night,
Wednesday, we went cinema world wide in full HD, well not quite. It was a six camera live screening of a
performance and we were behind and alongside cameras and very likely nowhere to
be seen. This would have been a great
relief to those who paid up front to see something colourful and interesting.
Which they
did, it was of a very high standard and because I was able to detect what was
going out live from the back of a camera ahead of me, all those out there
across the globe will have had their money’s worth and got what they paid for.
Thinking
about the other screened live or recorded programmes or events we have attended
down the years and contrasting with the present is intriguing. There have been quite a number, but the
question was how many are still in the archives and what about all the events
that were not filmed?
From time
to time on TV there are programmes dealing with the past that rely on archive
footage of amateur film making. It is
clear that, although very expensive, it was possible at an early stage to film
in colour and also in black on white.
The problem was sound recording for the most part.
But this
was not impossible to achieve. By the
1960’s technical advances had made it all much easier and far less costly for
ordinary people, let alone others with funds.
But a great many of leading events are often only recorded by accident,
in heavily cut news reels or by people with no official standing.
Yet in the
Arts generally, never mind other sport and activities, there was a general
reluctance to resort to film productions or events. When I think about all the plays, music,
dance and other major events that might have been put on film, there has been a
huge loss of both history and record in these fields.
There are
some archives, notably the BBC one, but this is an intractable one to find
anything and involves penal charging.
The BBC often seems almost resolute not to have its lovely archive
material exposed to the view of common people.
The result
is that in documentaries or the study of something there are only scraps at
memories, fading partial memories and written only information. Yet the chance was there to record, store,
maintain and renew it from one time to another.
Perhaps
there were some people arguing that something should be done to create,
maintain and enable an archive or archives on film but it may be not. Why did it not occur to some group of far
sighted people that this could and should be done? It would not have been too difficult or too
costly at least to do a basic film of record so that a particular production or
event could be remembered as it was.
One can
understand all the querulous carping about copyright, who was to do what and
why it was to be done and who would be responsible. But the technology was and could have been
made available.
It is not
just that we have lost a way of understanding and appreciating the past, in a
way we have lost a part of what we are and will be.
Tuesday, 15 May 2012
Losing The Picture
Looking
around the media, the web and the rest it is quite clear that whilst there are
a lot of able, highly intelligent, well informed and well connected people the
pace of events and the complexity means that nobody can claim to have a full
understanding of what is happening financially and politically.
By
definition the politicians who are supposed to be making key decisions now work
on a lot less information, data and analysis and need to be advised by people
who do know more and have the ability to understand more fully.
The
difficulty then is that if what the people who voted in or critically support
those politicians do not like the advice and the implications then almost
inevitably there is a desire to delay, attempt compromise where none is to be had
or to evade making decisions at all.
Worse, is
that if the channels to those politicians are controlled or policed by people
with particular interests to serve then the distortions could be serious and
damaging in the process of determining policy.
We have been here a few times in history, think of your own examples.
At present
around the world it seems that all of them have not simply “lost the picture”
they do not know what they are looking at.
They want the picture to be a Renoir when at best it is a Jackson
Pollock. Not only that but it is one
which Pollock created intuitively or according to whim.
Even then
that picture is replaced by another one apparently quite different perhaps
shifting more towards one fractal shape before morphing suddenly into
another. In short not just the
politicians, or their advisers, but all the experts and commentators are behind
the game.
Those who
may be closer to any understanding in the present world crisis seem to be now
reaching the point where they feel no understanding is to be had because by the
time you have got the message out and circulated it has all moved on and fast.
But the
public and people as a whole want simple answers and clear policies and most
some sort of security and protection from economic storms and dangers. Inevitably, the come to feel they are being
lied to or the victims of conspiracies by “the other”.
This is how
in the past dictatorships and authoritarian governments have arisen in states
and polities where serious upheavals have occurred. It seems to be happening around the world one
way or another, including the UK
and the USA
So will
Western Civilisation as we know it today begin its end in Greece
There was a
twitch on the North Anatolian Fault Line yesterday; perhaps the ancient gods
are awakening.
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