I could also be writing about India, Brazil, and Russia, but each one of them is very different from the other, and China is bigger than any of the others.
Over the last 30 years, what has "The West" been exporting and importing? What has China been exporting and importing?
China gave up a lot of its best farm land to build factories and roads and airports and warehouses. China has become more dependent on the rest of the world for food. China imports more food than it did 30 years ago. China now has factories that make most of the consumer goods on which "The West" depends.
"The West" has been exporting much of this food to China. "The West" has exported its industry, (and the pollution that came out of the industry), to China.
You can see then, that the economy between China and the West has now reached the stage where even people in China are asking themselves, why are we doing this? Why are we polluting our best land, just to sell things to "the West", when now all we get back are Government bonds that are not even printed on paper? Now that we have got our electricity grid, our road network, our transport infrastructure, and all the basic tecnological know-how to go forward by ourselves, why should we get all the dirty work, while in "The West" all they do is grow cheap food for us to buy?
Isn't this why the Euro is collapsing? The Euro is in "The West", and is no better than the US dollar, especially since each one of its countries, Ireland, then Greece then Portugal and now Spain, has been struggling to roll over its government bonds. Even outside the Euro, the UK with its pound sterling is struggling to keep up the pretence at being worth lending money to. Today we have news that the UK trade deficit is still widening.
The only reason why the global economy has not collapsed yet is because the people who play with big sums of money cannot drag themselves out of the casino while they can still win money from all the little people. Meanwhile, everybody pretends that the little people need jobs, and governments and banks invent money to generate new ecomomic activity, even useless nonsense such as Facebook, just so that there are jobs to feed the little people. Surely socialism and communism, where little people were given handouts regardless of whether there were any useful jobs, deserves a look-in again compared with Facebookism.
How does China figure in all this? China is unique, because although it is not a democracy, it has the largest number of intelligent people whose interests are nonetheless protected by the state. Is China going to let this casino keep going, now that all its people can see themselves as the losers, and "The West" as the greedy winners?
It isn't politics. It is common sense. In the history of the World, we have never seen humanity come to this stage. We can only anticipate what happens next.
The Greatest Wealth is that of All the Species of Life on This Earth. Save it for Ever and Always.
Showing posts with label Economics. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Economics. Show all posts
Friday, June 15, 2012
Wednesday, February 24, 2010
Frank Field Against Neo Keynesian Views
Frank Field actually has an amazing argument. Niall Ferguson should get into bed with him. Will Hutton should go jump into a tar-pitch lake. There is no Left or Right. There is BAD economics, which in addition to all its other faults, is economics without enough regard for good accounting. And there is GOOD economics, which requires as a minimum that honest, truthful and balanced accounting is essential for a healthy Economy.
Never mind the fight between Good and Evil. Today the fight is between the GOOD economics and the BAD economics, not Labour, Liberal or Tory, nor Left nor Right. Politicos are dinosaurs if they don't get on message.
Never mind the fight between Good and Evil. Today the fight is between the GOOD economics and the BAD economics, not Labour, Liberal or Tory, nor Left nor Right. Politicos are dinosaurs if they don't get on message.
Wednesday, February 10, 2010
Overpaid Economists and Mervyn King whose jobs are protected by Employment Laws
Gosh, what a hard life has Mervyn King, the Governor of the Bank of England. Four times a year he has to present a Quarterly Inflation Report.
A Report which nobody bothers to read anymore, because they have already gotten all the trends from plentiful other sources, and in any case, in the years up to the Global Credit Crunch Financial Crisis of 2007, the reports completely failed to take into account useful measures of inflation other than the Mickey Mouse versions that your average Ten year old son could concoct, and hence failed to notice that the whole Global Human Economic Machine was like a Corrupted Software Fault requiring a Seldon Crisis Resolution.
Mervyn King's job is protected by UK and European Employment Laws, and so too are the jobs of the many economists and bankers who still cling to their overpaid positions because unfortunately they haven't the decency to commit seppuku in Traditional Japanese Style for their miserable failures.
Trade Unions think that these Employment Laws are for the "working class", but these laws have protected jobs in Management and jobs of non-productive employees, while ruining everything for everybody, which is why Britain today has a Manufacturing Output today that makes it an embarrassment compared to France and Germany.
And which is why today Kraft announced that they were closing the Cadbury's factory in Bristol and getting rid of 400 jobs. Because they only way you can get rid of jobs under these employment laws, is to shut down the whole organisation and shift the production somewhere else, in this case to Poland.
What did Peter Mandelson do about this? Oh, he farted. After all, don't forget, that Peter Mandelson and New Labour were Intensely Relaxed about Some People Getting Filthy Rich. Those were his Champagne Socialist words when they were sailing on what they claimed to be a healthy economy, although it was funded and enabled by the blood, sweat and tears of one billion people in China whom they were building up debt against. I was living in London the whole time, and I could see all the problems around me, but they were sitting in West London, eating free food at the House of Commons, and drinking endless champagne and parties thrown for them by filthy rich people.
I hate Peter Mandelson, but what I really hate more are the people who voted for Peter Mandelson.
A Report which nobody bothers to read anymore, because they have already gotten all the trends from plentiful other sources, and in any case, in the years up to the Global Credit Crunch Financial Crisis of 2007, the reports completely failed to take into account useful measures of inflation other than the Mickey Mouse versions that your average Ten year old son could concoct, and hence failed to notice that the whole Global Human Economic Machine was like a Corrupted Software Fault requiring a Seldon Crisis Resolution.
Mervyn King's job is protected by UK and European Employment Laws, and so too are the jobs of the many economists and bankers who still cling to their overpaid positions because unfortunately they haven't the decency to commit seppuku in Traditional Japanese Style for their miserable failures.
Trade Unions think that these Employment Laws are for the "working class", but these laws have protected jobs in Management and jobs of non-productive employees, while ruining everything for everybody, which is why Britain today has a Manufacturing Output today that makes it an embarrassment compared to France and Germany.
And which is why today Kraft announced that they were closing the Cadbury's factory in Bristol and getting rid of 400 jobs. Because they only way you can get rid of jobs under these employment laws, is to shut down the whole organisation and shift the production somewhere else, in this case to Poland.
What did Peter Mandelson do about this? Oh, he farted. After all, don't forget, that Peter Mandelson and New Labour were Intensely Relaxed about Some People Getting Filthy Rich. Those were his Champagne Socialist words when they were sailing on what they claimed to be a healthy economy, although it was funded and enabled by the blood, sweat and tears of one billion people in China whom they were building up debt against. I was living in London the whole time, and I could see all the problems around me, but they were sitting in West London, eating free food at the House of Commons, and drinking endless champagne and parties thrown for them by filthy rich people.
I hate Peter Mandelson, but what I really hate more are the people who voted for Peter Mandelson.
Friday, March 13, 2009
The US Dollar savings of China and others
The Chinese Premier said
This is amazing.
It has been known to me from spontaneous news surveying for over 3 years that the Savings of the Far Eastern nations has been financing the wasteful economic consumption of the USA and Western Europe, simply because there is no reliable Bond Market in the Far East.
What is amazing is that in the last 6 months, in the collapse of the Global Financial system, this awareness has not only permeated at last into the minds of ten-a-penny economists, political pundits, and journalists. It has also at last permeated into the official speeches of National politicians.
This is an official appeal to question the role of the US dollar as the basis of global trade. The time lag here is nearly 4 years after the facts were out in the magazines and the internet.
So why has the US dollar become so strong since autumn? The usual glib explanation is that this is because it is THE Global Reserve Currency. Yet here we have China making a public announcement that it is time to question this folly. The message will go out to the Korean, Japanese, Thai, and Malaysian governments and investors. The message is clear. They will now have to develop their own bond markets, and not depend too heavily on US Treasury paper. The Global Banking crisis has proven that their trust in each other should not be any less than their faith in the US dollar. Their trust in each other is the foundation of a bond market.
The recovery in the US dollar since last summer was recently explained by economists as this: Corporations and Institutions based in foreign nations (eg. from Britain and Korea) have in the main been issuing their Corporate debt in US dollars, not in local currencies, eg. Sterling or Korean Won. The money they raised was not kept in US dollars, and so there has been a scramble to cover their long term US dollar debts on their balance sheets. Say Globocorp in Britain raised 500 million US dollars on 5 year paper. Globocorp bought Sterling with its US dollar debt, to use as operating cash, and to spend on capital outlays. This made sense when the US dollar was declining everywhere. As soon as the US dollar became short on the money markets due to the credit crunch, Globocorp had to rush to cover their US dollars, because they would look expensive. They had to buy back US dollar positions, which can be done on the forex markets. Therein lies the recovery of the US dollar.
So the questions to ask yourselves if you are corporate financiers, economists, or politicians are these:
1. In the future, why bother raising debt in US dollars, when even China publicly throws doubt on the US dollar? Those US dollars were not even regulated by the USA Federal Reserve: they were money that was created through creative securitisation in now-defunct global Investment Banks. Even the Bank of England can invent sterling money with more substance behind it.
2. Although the US Dollar recovered as everybody scrambled to cover their long-term debts, why should it rise any more? Why should it stay up, when the money that it represented was as worthless as Dutch Tulips? Why should the US dollar stay up, when it is to the advantage of Globocorp, to raise new debt in the local currency?
The recycling of US dollars around the globe has been a joke since the Seventies game of Spot the Petrodollars. Why should anybody around the globe choose the US dollar as a global reserve currency, when it is no better than their own currency, or another neighbour's currency, or indeed of going back to gold? Why should the Saudis accept US dollars for their oil, when they can easily prefer Japanese Yen, Euros, and will now seriously even consider Chinese Yuan? Why should China hold US dollars, if the Saudis allow them to hold reserves of the Riyal?
Why should the USA provide the basis of international trust, when in fact it is no longer in a position to provide for itself?
Unlinking Oil prices from the US dollar will guarantee reduced global oil consumption. It will permit China to shift away from burning coal, which is much more climate-damaging than burning oil (there are more kilowatts per atom of Carbon in oil than there is in coal). It will permit the world to shift away from the American Dream, which even to lesser minds has at last become more obviously the American Nightmare.
A global shift away from the American Dream would help to save the Planet as much as the Global Financial Collapse. And it will help Americans learn once again how to be thrifty.
he was worried about the safety of the huge amount of China's foreign-exchange reserves invested in US government bonds.
"I'd like to take this opportunity here to implore the United States... to honour its words, stay a credible nation and ensure the safety of Chinese assets," he said.
Almost half of China's $2tn in currency reserves is thought to be invested in US treasury bills and other government-affiliated notes.
This is amazing.
It has been known to me from spontaneous news surveying for over 3 years that the Savings of the Far Eastern nations has been financing the wasteful economic consumption of the USA and Western Europe, simply because there is no reliable Bond Market in the Far East.
What is amazing is that in the last 6 months, in the collapse of the Global Financial system, this awareness has not only permeated at last into the minds of ten-a-penny economists, political pundits, and journalists. It has also at last permeated into the official speeches of National politicians.
This is an official appeal to question the role of the US dollar as the basis of global trade. The time lag here is nearly 4 years after the facts were out in the magazines and the internet.
So why has the US dollar become so strong since autumn? The usual glib explanation is that this is because it is THE Global Reserve Currency. Yet here we have China making a public announcement that it is time to question this folly. The message will go out to the Korean, Japanese, Thai, and Malaysian governments and investors. The message is clear. They will now have to develop their own bond markets, and not depend too heavily on US Treasury paper. The Global Banking crisis has proven that their trust in each other should not be any less than their faith in the US dollar. Their trust in each other is the foundation of a bond market.
The recovery in the US dollar since last summer was recently explained by economists as this: Corporations and Institutions based in foreign nations (eg. from Britain and Korea) have in the main been issuing their Corporate debt in US dollars, not in local currencies, eg. Sterling or Korean Won. The money they raised was not kept in US dollars, and so there has been a scramble to cover their long term US dollar debts on their balance sheets. Say Globocorp in Britain raised 500 million US dollars on 5 year paper. Globocorp bought Sterling with its US dollar debt, to use as operating cash, and to spend on capital outlays. This made sense when the US dollar was declining everywhere. As soon as the US dollar became short on the money markets due to the credit crunch, Globocorp had to rush to cover their US dollars, because they would look expensive. They had to buy back US dollar positions, which can be done on the forex markets. Therein lies the recovery of the US dollar.
So the questions to ask yourselves if you are corporate financiers, economists, or politicians are these:
1. In the future, why bother raising debt in US dollars, when even China publicly throws doubt on the US dollar? Those US dollars were not even regulated by the USA Federal Reserve: they were money that was created through creative securitisation in now-defunct global Investment Banks. Even the Bank of England can invent sterling money with more substance behind it.
2. Although the US Dollar recovered as everybody scrambled to cover their long-term debts, why should it rise any more? Why should it stay up, when the money that it represented was as worthless as Dutch Tulips? Why should the US dollar stay up, when it is to the advantage of Globocorp, to raise new debt in the local currency?
The recycling of US dollars around the globe has been a joke since the Seventies game of Spot the Petrodollars. Why should anybody around the globe choose the US dollar as a global reserve currency, when it is no better than their own currency, or another neighbour's currency, or indeed of going back to gold? Why should the Saudis accept US dollars for their oil, when they can easily prefer Japanese Yen, Euros, and will now seriously even consider Chinese Yuan? Why should China hold US dollars, if the Saudis allow them to hold reserves of the Riyal?
Why should the USA provide the basis of international trust, when in fact it is no longer in a position to provide for itself?
Unlinking Oil prices from the US dollar will guarantee reduced global oil consumption. It will permit China to shift away from burning coal, which is much more climate-damaging than burning oil (there are more kilowatts per atom of Carbon in oil than there is in coal). It will permit the world to shift away from the American Dream, which even to lesser minds has at last become more obviously the American Nightmare.
A global shift away from the American Dream would help to save the Planet as much as the Global Financial Collapse. And it will help Americans learn once again how to be thrifty.
Thursday, March 12, 2009
Wealth, Money and Planetary Ecosystem Economics
The recent Global Economic Hiccups of Financial Armageddon gave environmentalists their first real feeling of clawback in decades. Official human economic activity and consumption actually fell since last summer. A machete taken to the Global Financial System had more effect on mankind's carbon footprint than all the moralizing campaigns beseeching suburban housewives to use low-energy light-bulbs.
But oil prices collapsed last summer, and have stayed down. Nobody can be fooled into believing that the Global Human Economic Machine is defeated. The GHEM only choked on the ill-conceived biofuel mixture in its fuel lines. The GHEM is intact, still thriving, and without any designed alternatives.
Yes, in the continuing Age of Stupid, with the intellectual failure of academic economists now widely exposed and publicised, I notice the media are once again reminding us that the planet is staring into an environmental abyss. Today it is that the Amazon will become a local positive feedback process of ecosystem dieback from global temperature rises. (If you don't know what a "positive feedback process" is, count yourself lucky that you have lived in a bland and very controlled era, so go away and wake up before a Tim Kretschmer clone goes berserk in your neighbourhood! The Amazon is a very fragile ecosystem, and that's all you have to know.) Any number of scientists and academics are dancing around naked, waving their credentials, their scientific models, and their careful research, to draw attention to the vulnerabilities of the Amazon ecosystem. All these scientists are no more effective than the media that publicise their findings, aren't they? They are learned, intelligent, but they do not applythese two words: Carpe Diem.
Carpe Diem: Seize the Day. What use is a scientist if he/she predicts catastrophe, then stands by to analyse its progress without making any effort to halt it? What use are scientists, collectively, if they cannot seize control and prevent catastrophe?
So oil prices are low again. Too low. Carbon Economics is as yet the only notion so far driven into the thick skulls of our political Talking Heads. What to do?
Firstly, it is essential that oil prices should be driven sky high again. Secondly, scientists all over the world should be inserting Planetary Ecosystem Economics in place of either Finance, Politics, and Economics. Planetary Ecosystem Economics does not just get stuck on the gases of the element of Carbon. It takes into account all things in the Planetary Ecosystem, eg. water, light, space, habitat, air, salinity, alkalinity, species rarity. It accounts for the impact of humanity, and it costs all the effects of human economic activity. P.E.E. places a value on all things in the Planetary Ecosystem, not just those which are tritely recognized as essential for human consumption, comfort, or multiplication. Money is an essential currency for accounting in P.E.E, but unlike in ordinary Economics, values and wealth are not left to be established by markets of delusional people catering to their mass selfish wants. Values and wealth are established by specialists trained to view mankind as short-term guests of the planetary biological and physical resources. How are these values set? Now you're thinking.... They don't teach this at the London School of Economics, do they? Of course not... They who teach, cannot think original thoughts? Just see how long they were stuck on the ideas of communism!
But oil prices collapsed last summer, and have stayed down. Nobody can be fooled into believing that the Global Human Economic Machine is defeated. The GHEM only choked on the ill-conceived biofuel mixture in its fuel lines. The GHEM is intact, still thriving, and without any designed alternatives.
Yes, in the continuing Age of Stupid, with the intellectual failure of academic economists now widely exposed and publicised, I notice the media are once again reminding us that the planet is staring into an environmental abyss. Today it is that the Amazon will become a local positive feedback process of ecosystem dieback from global temperature rises. (If you don't know what a "positive feedback process" is, count yourself lucky that you have lived in a bland and very controlled era, so go away and wake up before a Tim Kretschmer clone goes berserk in your neighbourhood! The Amazon is a very fragile ecosystem, and that's all you have to know.) Any number of scientists and academics are dancing around naked, waving their credentials, their scientific models, and their careful research, to draw attention to the vulnerabilities of the Amazon ecosystem. All these scientists are no more effective than the media that publicise their findings, aren't they? They are learned, intelligent, but they do not applythese two words: Carpe Diem.
Carpe Diem: Seize the Day. What use is a scientist if he/she predicts catastrophe, then stands by to analyse its progress without making any effort to halt it? What use are scientists, collectively, if they cannot seize control and prevent catastrophe?
So oil prices are low again. Too low. Carbon Economics is as yet the only notion so far driven into the thick skulls of our political Talking Heads. What to do?
Firstly, it is essential that oil prices should be driven sky high again. Secondly, scientists all over the world should be inserting Planetary Ecosystem Economics in place of either Finance, Politics, and Economics. Planetary Ecosystem Economics does not just get stuck on the gases of the element of Carbon. It takes into account all things in the Planetary Ecosystem, eg. water, light, space, habitat, air, salinity, alkalinity, species rarity. It accounts for the impact of humanity, and it costs all the effects of human economic activity. P.E.E. places a value on all things in the Planetary Ecosystem, not just those which are tritely recognized as essential for human consumption, comfort, or multiplication. Money is an essential currency for accounting in P.E.E, but unlike in ordinary Economics, values and wealth are not left to be established by markets of delusional people catering to their mass selfish wants. Values and wealth are established by specialists trained to view mankind as short-term guests of the planetary biological and physical resources. How are these values set? Now you're thinking.... They don't teach this at the London School of Economics, do they? Of course not... They who teach, cannot think original thoughts? Just see how long they were stuck on the ideas of communism!
Sunday, March 08, 2009
The Age of Stupid
Nice banner on this website for this EcoGreen Movie...you can fly in a metal machine from the CN Tower, over smoking powerstations to the Petronas Towers. Through all the Globalist City towers, can you identify the others?
The Age of Stupid has nothing to do with Plane Stupid, which was recently famous again for smudging the Champagne Socialism on Peter Mandelson's face. It appears to be a populist film. An Inconvenient Truth, which I never bothered to see because I knew it all was not populist enough, and because of Al Gore, it was hardly apartisan. Maybe this film is intended to plug the gap, the way films about Nuclear Holocaust succeeded in motivating the decline of the Cold War?
It is of course well known that the Age of Stupidity had its beginnings in the Industrial Revolution in England in the 1700s, although it quickly spread thorughout Europe, the Americas, and the rest of the world. The measure of stupidity has been graphed by historians, and the Peak of this graph is arbitrarily somewhere between 1950 to 2008. Peaks don't matter if you're on a high-up plateau that has a few molehills! Stupidity, I expect, has been quantified as an aggregation of several parameters, primarily of course : 1) Quantity of devastation to Planetary Ecosystem Habitats. 2) Deliberate ignorance of available knowledge and failure. 3) Failure to identify and address the deleterious ecosystem effects of new forms of human economic activity. What other measure would be properly scientific? The Nobel Prize is no measure of scientific quality, and my qualitative science is as good as any current social science.
Well, for the price of a British Bank, especialy the part-Scottish banks, how many carrots and peas could you buy? Oh yes, Lloyds Halifax Bank of Scotland has become the second Royal Bank of Scotland Natwest Algemene Bank Nederland. It is owned by the British Government. For the price of a British bank, how many peanuts could you buy? If the price of a British bank is beyond your imagination, why not think about the price of an education in a "Developed Nation". Wonder how many carrots and peas can the average person in a developed nation grow by themeselves?
The British Government now owns majority shareholdings in half of its commercial banks. Mervyn King and the Bank of England has taken so long to explain Quantitative Easing, you would think it was nuclear physics, and at last it will be introduced. (Although in nuclear physics, nuclear bombs were tested in a controlled conditions, even if they never took into consideration Environmental effects). So UK Gilt prices have risen, and interest rates are tending to zero. Whoopee, for the wasteful Labour Government economic policy?
Meanwhile all this time, the European Central Bank has already been providing unlimited liquidity to its Member Nations, (as if we didn't guess), so has effectively been doing a sort of quantitative easing. Indeed, since the ECB has to play politics between supporting the Government Bonds of more than a dozen nations, it doesn't even have the simple economic system that the UK monetary system presents. (You can see why people will pay to read the Financial Times, whereas the Economist magazine is nothing but a propagandist tool used to destroy alternative economies that already existed all around the planet. Globalist Hegemony has of course been over-shadowed by Global Hedge Money.)
I can't decide. Is it worth saving some Economists, and retraining them to PEE (Planetary Ecosystem Economics)? Or should all pre-2009 economists be sent to landfill? New Ecosystem Economists can be designed, and a large factory can be set up somewhere on the planet, where they will be manufactured more cheaply due to economies of scale, and rapidly shipped around the planet and dumped cheaply on existing Human Ecosystems. It would be the quickest way of ensuring that the Global Human Economic Machine will never again arise. Oh Asimov would be laughing!
The Age of Stupid has nothing to do with Plane Stupid, which was recently famous again for smudging the Champagne Socialism on Peter Mandelson's face. It appears to be a populist film. An Inconvenient Truth, which I never bothered to see because I knew it all was not populist enough, and because of Al Gore, it was hardly apartisan. Maybe this film is intended to plug the gap, the way films about Nuclear Holocaust succeeded in motivating the decline of the Cold War?
It is of course well known that the Age of Stupidity had its beginnings in the Industrial Revolution in England in the 1700s, although it quickly spread thorughout Europe, the Americas, and the rest of the world. The measure of stupidity has been graphed by historians, and the Peak of this graph is arbitrarily somewhere between 1950 to 2008. Peaks don't matter if you're on a high-up plateau that has a few molehills! Stupidity, I expect, has been quantified as an aggregation of several parameters, primarily of course : 1) Quantity of devastation to Planetary Ecosystem Habitats. 2) Deliberate ignorance of available knowledge and failure. 3) Failure to identify and address the deleterious ecosystem effects of new forms of human economic activity. What other measure would be properly scientific? The Nobel Prize is no measure of scientific quality, and my qualitative science is as good as any current social science.
Well, for the price of a British Bank, especialy the part-Scottish banks, how many carrots and peas could you buy? Oh yes, Lloyds Halifax Bank of Scotland has become the second Royal Bank of Scotland Natwest Algemene Bank Nederland. It is owned by the British Government. For the price of a British bank, how many peanuts could you buy? If the price of a British bank is beyond your imagination, why not think about the price of an education in a "Developed Nation". Wonder how many carrots and peas can the average person in a developed nation grow by themeselves?
The British Government now owns majority shareholdings in half of its commercial banks. Mervyn King and the Bank of England has taken so long to explain Quantitative Easing, you would think it was nuclear physics, and at last it will be introduced. (Although in nuclear physics, nuclear bombs were tested in a controlled conditions, even if they never took into consideration Environmental effects). So UK Gilt prices have risen, and interest rates are tending to zero. Whoopee, for the wasteful Labour Government economic policy?
Meanwhile all this time, the European Central Bank has already been providing unlimited liquidity to its Member Nations, (as if we didn't guess), so has effectively been doing a sort of quantitative easing. Indeed, since the ECB has to play politics between supporting the Government Bonds of more than a dozen nations, it doesn't even have the simple economic system that the UK monetary system presents. (You can see why people will pay to read the Financial Times, whereas the Economist magazine is nothing but a propagandist tool used to destroy alternative economies that already existed all around the planet. Globalist Hegemony has of course been over-shadowed by Global Hedge Money.)
I can't decide. Is it worth saving some Economists, and retraining them to PEE (Planetary Ecosystem Economics)? Or should all pre-2009 economists be sent to landfill? New Ecosystem Economists can be designed, and a large factory can be set up somewhere on the planet, where they will be manufactured more cheaply due to economies of scale, and rapidly shipped around the planet and dumped cheaply on existing Human Ecosystems. It would be the quickest way of ensuring that the Global Human Economic Machine will never again arise. Oh Asimov would be laughing!
Sunday, October 05, 2008
Planetary Ecosystem Economics
I have not had one grape off my vine this year; what little crop was coming after the awful summer, has been denuded by birds in the last three weeks. The evidence of blue/purple bird shit underneath the vine is damning.
I had been wondering which birds were doing this. In past years I've seen the blackbirds go for it, but not so assiduously. So today, when in the deluge of rain we are having, my local robin popped in to perch on the grapevine, to survey the food, I was faced with the human quandary.
The robin has been a constant visitor this year, you see, and has been my confirmation that my organic garden feeds nature and wildlife, naturally.
The human quandary is based on this: how can humanity feed itself, without taking food away from other living things?
If I had to depend on that grapevine for my food, that robin would have been soup months ago. As with many nature lovers, I would rather delude myself that I am making a difference: somewhere else, a farmer is growing food chemically and mechanically on my behalf and denying it from the robins, yet I am trying to grow food and letting the robins eat my food.
Perverse? Perhaps. But then, I can console myself that most people in London are not nature lovers, and so I am creating diversity of opportunity for robins: just as some farmers will still protect their strips of nature now that set-aside payments have been withdrawn.
Nonetheless, I am peeved that I have not been left with one grape! And the lesson is this: despite the stubborn ignorance of anti-Malthusians, the fact is that a planetary ecosystem will never support an unlimited population of human beings, without substantial eradication, near-extinction, and absolute extinction of most other forms of life.
Food for humans takes away food for something else, and to allow humanity to proceed in deliberate ignorance of the value of other living things, is to be accessory to speciocide. For example, who are we to decide that a slug is an unnecesary and undesirable form of life compared to a lettuce, when in fact the slug is a juicy meal to a hedgehog, a bird, and even a fox?
Which brings me back once again to the Global Human Economic Machine, which is the Juggernaut composite of global human civilization and globalized human technology. It grows with inexorable, deliberate ignorance, and even in this era of Global Financial Collapse, there are NO economists who give any space to Planetary Ecosystem Economics.
The futulity of my endeavour to expand consideration of Planetary Ecosystem Economics, or at least to evaluate and question the Global Human Economic Machine, has landed me in despair many times this year. Despair will always be available. Let this be my record of persistence despite despair.
I had been wondering which birds were doing this. In past years I've seen the blackbirds go for it, but not so assiduously. So today, when in the deluge of rain we are having, my local robin popped in to perch on the grapevine, to survey the food, I was faced with the human quandary.
The robin has been a constant visitor this year, you see, and has been my confirmation that my organic garden feeds nature and wildlife, naturally.
The human quandary is based on this: how can humanity feed itself, without taking food away from other living things?
If I had to depend on that grapevine for my food, that robin would have been soup months ago. As with many nature lovers, I would rather delude myself that I am making a difference: somewhere else, a farmer is growing food chemically and mechanically on my behalf and denying it from the robins, yet I am trying to grow food and letting the robins eat my food.
Perverse? Perhaps. But then, I can console myself that most people in London are not nature lovers, and so I am creating diversity of opportunity for robins: just as some farmers will still protect their strips of nature now that set-aside payments have been withdrawn.
Nonetheless, I am peeved that I have not been left with one grape! And the lesson is this: despite the stubborn ignorance of anti-Malthusians, the fact is that a planetary ecosystem will never support an unlimited population of human beings, without substantial eradication, near-extinction, and absolute extinction of most other forms of life.
Food for humans takes away food for something else, and to allow humanity to proceed in deliberate ignorance of the value of other living things, is to be accessory to speciocide. For example, who are we to decide that a slug is an unnecesary and undesirable form of life compared to a lettuce, when in fact the slug is a juicy meal to a hedgehog, a bird, and even a fox?
Which brings me back once again to the Global Human Economic Machine, which is the Juggernaut composite of global human civilization and globalized human technology. It grows with inexorable, deliberate ignorance, and even in this era of Global Financial Collapse, there are NO economists who give any space to Planetary Ecosystem Economics.
The futulity of my endeavour to expand consideration of Planetary Ecosystem Economics, or at least to evaluate and question the Global Human Economic Machine, has landed me in despair many times this year. Despair will always be available. Let this be my record of persistence despite despair.
Tuesday, September 30, 2008
The failure of Central Banks to do central banking
Throughout the current turmoil over the last year in World Banking, there has been a constant reference towards the phenomenon of Banks being Afraid to Lend to Each Other.
What I fail to understand, and forgive me if I happen to have too much common sense, is:
Why weren't Central Banks borrowing money from the Banks who had surplus cash, and were hoarding it, so that they could re-lend it to the banks that lost access to direct wholesale funding?
That way, a Central Bank should have provided as much liquidity as existed before the Credit Crunch, but by acting as an intermediary between banks whom have cash, and banks whom wish to borrow it, they serve as guarantors as well as National risk managers.
As a national risk manager, the Bank of England could then have demanded tighter operation from the commercial banks, such as Northern Rock and Bradford and Bingley, which would have provided the most stabilizing method of downsizing the Banking and Mortgaging industry.
Or is this Mervyn King hiding behind his piggy glasses, saying that his only job is to sit at a meeting once a month and get an interest rate decision that stopped mattering over a year ago?
What I fail to understand, and forgive me if I happen to have too much common sense, is:
Why weren't Central Banks borrowing money from the Banks who had surplus cash, and were hoarding it, so that they could re-lend it to the banks that lost access to direct wholesale funding?
That way, a Central Bank should have provided as much liquidity as existed before the Credit Crunch, but by acting as an intermediary between banks whom have cash, and banks whom wish to borrow it, they serve as guarantors as well as National risk managers.
As a national risk manager, the Bank of England could then have demanded tighter operation from the commercial banks, such as Northern Rock and Bradford and Bingley, which would have provided the most stabilizing method of downsizing the Banking and Mortgaging industry.
Or is this Mervyn King hiding behind his piggy glasses, saying that his only job is to sit at a meeting once a month and get an interest rate decision that stopped mattering over a year ago?
Thursday, September 11, 2008
Production of a Piece of Paper
For some decades, maybe at least since the invention of the typewriter, so for 80 years, the production of a piece of paper has been the sole enterprise and ability of a huge portion of the population.
So it is today, although whether it is more so or whether it has begun to decline is debatable. The "piece of paper" is often in electronic form and never gets near the pulp of a tree.
Astounding as it seems, the rebellion in me extends even to here. Why should we have an economy that nurtures a sector of the population (piece-of-paper creators) so secluded and ignorant and uninvolved in the source of the essentials of their day to day survival, and yet so unduly proud and commanding of their share of that natural wealth?
So I face a piece of paper, and do I want to play this silly game? Or do I have to play it? Why should I have to play football if I don't like the rules, when I can make up my own?
So it is today, although whether it is more so or whether it has begun to decline is debatable. The "piece of paper" is often in electronic form and never gets near the pulp of a tree.
Astounding as it seems, the rebellion in me extends even to here. Why should we have an economy that nurtures a sector of the population (piece-of-paper creators) so secluded and ignorant and uninvolved in the source of the essentials of their day to day survival, and yet so unduly proud and commanding of their share of that natural wealth?
So I face a piece of paper, and do I want to play this silly game? Or do I have to play it? Why should I have to play football if I don't like the rules, when I can make up my own?
Thursday, September 04, 2008
Lex - Financial Times and The Economist
I used to be impressed with the Lex column in the Financial Times, which is so well respected that their website actually charges for it. Looking at today's in the paper has incited me to launch my nuclear missiles at economists again.
Lex was literally taking quotes from Adam Smith to interpret today's global economic situation. This is akin to meteorologists who quote passages from the Bible to interpret why Hurricane Katrina would have hit New Orleans! It would also be similar to physicists who delve into Isaac Newton's tomes to interpret results when the CERN Large Hadron Collider starts up on 10 September
It shows how completely addled by Adam Smith the entire field of Economics has become. I wonder if economics was ever heading for anything more? Here we are in 2008, at a point when the Global Economy is the largest human economy that has ever existed in history, and the people who should understand it and plot its future are mired in a Flat Earth Universe.
To confirm my assessment of the stupidity of economists, I was leafing through this week's copy of The Economist, and I swear it was one of the weakest issues I have ever seen. It completely lacked any new intelligence, and in the back they still quote tables of basic, vacuous and fundamentally dubious national economic monthly statistics, which are as useful as Woolworths quoting weekly Singles Charts for pop music.
The whole scene of Economics brings to mind once again Asimov's Foundation Series. It is as though the real economists, the clever psychohistorians, have long since been secreted in a hiding place, to plot and plan the course of the Global Human Economic Machine. Meanwhile, they have left a bunch of idiots and clowns in charge of the Economist, The Financial Times, The Bank of England, The London School of Economics etcetera, so that we are distracted from discovering the real economists.
If Asimov were going to hide some clever economists today, where would he hide them? In a hedge fund company? Maybe. In the Bank of England? Maybe. In Goldman Sachs? Oh that's so obvious...... So obvious that they could really be there! Guarded by a fortress of security, untouched by the Credit Crunch, and protected by cities (London, New York, Hong Kong) of cynical spoilt-brat know-it-all wasted liberals whom crush conspiracy theories more quickly than cockroaches. But the probabilistic calculation and prediction of mass human economic behaviour is well within the reach of modern technology, and anyone incapable of appreciating that might as well keep their sunglasses on and leave their Ipod earphones switched on.
Lex was literally taking quotes from Adam Smith to interpret today's global economic situation. This is akin to meteorologists who quote passages from the Bible to interpret why Hurricane Katrina would have hit New Orleans! It would also be similar to physicists who delve into Isaac Newton's tomes to interpret results when the CERN Large Hadron Collider starts up on 10 September
It shows how completely addled by Adam Smith the entire field of Economics has become. I wonder if economics was ever heading for anything more? Here we are in 2008, at a point when the Global Economy is the largest human economy that has ever existed in history, and the people who should understand it and plot its future are mired in a Flat Earth Universe.
To confirm my assessment of the stupidity of economists, I was leafing through this week's copy of The Economist, and I swear it was one of the weakest issues I have ever seen. It completely lacked any new intelligence, and in the back they still quote tables of basic, vacuous and fundamentally dubious national economic monthly statistics, which are as useful as Woolworths quoting weekly Singles Charts for pop music.
The whole scene of Economics brings to mind once again Asimov's Foundation Series. It is as though the real economists, the clever psychohistorians, have long since been secreted in a hiding place, to plot and plan the course of the Global Human Economic Machine. Meanwhile, they have left a bunch of idiots and clowns in charge of the Economist, The Financial Times, The Bank of England, The London School of Economics etcetera, so that we are distracted from discovering the real economists.
If Asimov were going to hide some clever economists today, where would he hide them? In a hedge fund company? Maybe. In the Bank of England? Maybe. In Goldman Sachs? Oh that's so obvious...... So obvious that they could really be there! Guarded by a fortress of security, untouched by the Credit Crunch, and protected by cities (London, New York, Hong Kong) of cynical spoilt-brat know-it-all wasted liberals whom crush conspiracy theories more quickly than cockroaches. But the probabilistic calculation and prediction of mass human economic behaviour is well within the reach of modern technology, and anyone incapable of appreciating that might as well keep their sunglasses on and leave their Ipod earphones switched on.
Tuesday, September 02, 2008
Chicken Licken ate Global is Good
"The Pound is Falling"
"The Pound is Falling!", Chicken Licken cries!
Surely not? London is the financial capital of a globalist world economy. If the pound is falling, then the Sky is Falling for global economics?
Oh no, don't be ridiculous. Every old person over the age of 40 still bleats to the beat of "Global is Good". Every day some professor, intellectual, politician or businessman still throws their hands up in the air, and says, "we live in a global economy, and we have to wait until it sorts itself out".
I have not heard one person, not one voice shouting against the mantras of Globalism. When I heard 8 years ago a small businessman shouting the Mantra "We must go global", I remember being dumbstruck by the significance of its pervasiveness.
Then for the last 8 years, all we have been hearing is "Global is Good. See how wealthy we are."
Now the Pound is Falling, the Pound is Falling, and Chicken Licken now says "Global is All There Is. We must sit under the Clouds and be rained on by worthless Falling Pounds."
It is fitting that Britain has endured officially the gloomiest (least sunshine) August since 1942. This is like being in World War 2. It IS World War 3. Instead of bombs and armies and submarines and destroyers, we have words, threats, gestures hissy fits, and Financial Market attacks. Just look at David Milliband and Russia. That whole Ossetia and Georgia affair has seen the Russian stockmarket collapse. I'm with Vladimir Putin on this. I admire a man with brains, and who has some shrewdness. Russia couldn't care less, and why should it? Its people will still be better off today with a collapsed stock market than 20 years ago with the rudderless Gorbachev in a collapsed Communist dream.
And isn't China finally getting revenge on Britain, more than a century after the Scots launched the Opium Wars and brought down millenia of Imperial society? When is it more fitting than when we have a Prime Minister, one Gordon Brown, who is Scottish, and the son of a sing-song preaching Minister of the Church? It is almost as though the ghosts of the mandarins of China have finally engineered the ultimate slap in the face: bringing down the British economy. Strange isn't it, that the British, whom prided themselves on being immune to occupation and revolutions ("We have never been invaded since 1066, and have a continuous monarchic and parliamentary history"), went so carelessly around the world to occupy other countries and seditiously incite revolutions.
I wonder how many Chinese people today understand where the Communists came from, and how their thinking was directed (dare I say toyed with) by European intellectuals. A whole century of occupations, revolutions and upheavals, instead of some continuity of adjustment, and now nothing but an environmental mess to clear up.
And Thaksin Shinawatra is selling Manchester City football club, even while the Thai government is trying to recover his assets. Will Britain be very popular if they give protection to rich globalists like him?
Meanwhile, in India, the floods in Bihar this past week have displaced 3 million people, and have been hugely overshadowed by the ddrama of the New Orleans hurricane panic attack. Oh yes, wasn't India part of the British Empire once? Obviously did it a lot of good, and the fact that it has a democracy is doing it just as much good. Everybody in India must surely understand by now that nobody is going to look after them in the world, but they have to look after themselves.
So "The Pound is Falling, The Pound is Falling". Why should China, India, Russia or any of the Asian countries rush to rescue "the Pound"? Britain drove Globalism and still wallows in Globalism as if it were Catholic Iconography. Gordon Brown has never bothered to understand history or Global Economics, but merely dreams of being like the U.S.A. So once again, Britain will have to be rescued by America. And nobody will ever understand any better what a mistake Globalist Economics have been.
There is only me here, writing, free of charge, unpaid, thankless. Soon I shall stop protesting against Human Globalism and start designing salvage plans for the Global Human Economic Machine... while machines are still worth a lot of money as scrap metal. So while everybody else is sitting on their bums, I shall be sitting on their faces for time immemorial?
One would think I was descended from a people who have spent thousands of years adapted to globalism. A people whom had to develop a culture that was adapted to having no homeland. Diasporas, gypsies and nomads come to mind. Maybe I am. Maybe the horrors of World War 2 are no longer able to blind people to the horrors of a future of Globalism.
No, I'm just not a brainless sheep. I might have a sheep's soul, but my brain is half wolf.
"The Pound is Falling!", Chicken Licken cries!
Surely not? London is the financial capital of a globalist world economy. If the pound is falling, then the Sky is Falling for global economics?
Oh no, don't be ridiculous. Every old person over the age of 40 still bleats to the beat of "Global is Good". Every day some professor, intellectual, politician or businessman still throws their hands up in the air, and says, "we live in a global economy, and we have to wait until it sorts itself out".
I have not heard one person, not one voice shouting against the mantras of Globalism. When I heard 8 years ago a small businessman shouting the Mantra "We must go global", I remember being dumbstruck by the significance of its pervasiveness.
Then for the last 8 years, all we have been hearing is "Global is Good. See how wealthy we are."
Now the Pound is Falling, the Pound is Falling, and Chicken Licken now says "Global is All There Is. We must sit under the Clouds and be rained on by worthless Falling Pounds."
It is fitting that Britain has endured officially the gloomiest (least sunshine) August since 1942. This is like being in World War 2. It IS World War 3. Instead of bombs and armies and submarines and destroyers, we have words, threats, gestures hissy fits, and Financial Market attacks. Just look at David Milliband and Russia. That whole Ossetia and Georgia affair has seen the Russian stockmarket collapse. I'm with Vladimir Putin on this. I admire a man with brains, and who has some shrewdness. Russia couldn't care less, and why should it? Its people will still be better off today with a collapsed stock market than 20 years ago with the rudderless Gorbachev in a collapsed Communist dream.
And isn't China finally getting revenge on Britain, more than a century after the Scots launched the Opium Wars and brought down millenia of Imperial society? When is it more fitting than when we have a Prime Minister, one Gordon Brown, who is Scottish, and the son of a sing-song preaching Minister of the Church? It is almost as though the ghosts of the mandarins of China have finally engineered the ultimate slap in the face: bringing down the British economy. Strange isn't it, that the British, whom prided themselves on being immune to occupation and revolutions ("We have never been invaded since 1066, and have a continuous monarchic and parliamentary history"), went so carelessly around the world to occupy other countries and seditiously incite revolutions.
I wonder how many Chinese people today understand where the Communists came from, and how their thinking was directed (dare I say toyed with) by European intellectuals. A whole century of occupations, revolutions and upheavals, instead of some continuity of adjustment, and now nothing but an environmental mess to clear up.
And Thaksin Shinawatra is selling Manchester City football club, even while the Thai government is trying to recover his assets. Will Britain be very popular if they give protection to rich globalists like him?
Meanwhile, in India, the floods in Bihar this past week have displaced 3 million people, and have been hugely overshadowed by the ddrama of the New Orleans hurricane panic attack. Oh yes, wasn't India part of the British Empire once? Obviously did it a lot of good, and the fact that it has a democracy is doing it just as much good. Everybody in India must surely understand by now that nobody is going to look after them in the world, but they have to look after themselves.
So "The Pound is Falling, The Pound is Falling". Why should China, India, Russia or any of the Asian countries rush to rescue "the Pound"? Britain drove Globalism and still wallows in Globalism as if it were Catholic Iconography. Gordon Brown has never bothered to understand history or Global Economics, but merely dreams of being like the U.S.A. So once again, Britain will have to be rescued by America. And nobody will ever understand any better what a mistake Globalist Economics have been.
There is only me here, writing, free of charge, unpaid, thankless. Soon I shall stop protesting against Human Globalism and start designing salvage plans for the Global Human Economic Machine... while machines are still worth a lot of money as scrap metal. So while everybody else is sitting on their bums, I shall be sitting on their faces for time immemorial?
One would think I was descended from a people who have spent thousands of years adapted to globalism. A people whom had to develop a culture that was adapted to having no homeland. Diasporas, gypsies and nomads come to mind. Maybe I am. Maybe the horrors of World War 2 are no longer able to blind people to the horrors of a future of Globalism.
No, I'm just not a brainless sheep. I might have a sheep's soul, but my brain is half wolf.
Tuesday, August 19, 2008
That Global Human Economic Machine
It is a juggernaut.
It is the largest thing ever to exist.
It is just one living thing.
All over the Globe
Those Humans connected
Working, producing, consuming
In a Single Economy,
A single Organism
A super-organism greater than any ever seen
Upon this Earth.
Its advocates are clear.
Its advocates are confident.
Its advocates are wealthy.
Its advocates are the high-priests
That maintain and repair the machine.
Its prey are scattered.
Its prey are confused
Its prey are poor
Its prey are consumed
To feed its growth
That Global Human Economic Machine.
The biggest thing ever made that now makes itself.
Grows inexorably to consume all before it
All the Earth before it,
While its high-priests indulge in its tawdry boudoirs,
enticed by its lurid perfumes,
Convinced that they and all before them
Are richer for it,
And there are no other types of riches,
that they have overlooked.
That Global Human Economic Machine,
Sucks you in
With a Contract
You will be fed
You will be watered
You will have the cars,
the luxury dwelling,
the bright lights,
the ease of never having to lift a finger,
not even off your mouse
the trips abroad,
the laughing of those who have plenty
about you,
the misery and confusion of all the others,
hidden away,
here on the internet.
The Global Human Economic Machine
Will run and run and run,
And they will oil it and add to it
And it will grow ever bigger,
For they learned to make machines,
And with machines they could make the biggest machine of all
The Global Human Machine.
If you can't beat them
Join them,
But then it grows bigger
If you won't join them
Avoid them
But then it swallows you up.
You can try to hide,
But even the birds have less places to hide
And so too will you,
And all the time from your hiding place
You will watch fearfully
As it the Juggernaut comes ever closer.
You can take up a Faith
And protect yourself with some Words
And believe that you are only here on Earth
To be tested
And the test will be
how easily you are assimilated
Into the One
The Only,
The Single Global Human Economic Machine.
It is the largest thing ever to exist.
It is just one living thing.
All over the Globe
Those Humans connected
Working, producing, consuming
In a Single Economy,
A single Organism
A super-organism greater than any ever seen
Upon this Earth.
Its advocates are clear.
Its advocates are confident.
Its advocates are wealthy.
Its advocates are the high-priests
That maintain and repair the machine.
Its prey are scattered.
Its prey are confused
Its prey are poor
Its prey are consumed
To feed its growth
That Global Human Economic Machine.
The biggest thing ever made that now makes itself.
Grows inexorably to consume all before it
All the Earth before it,
While its high-priests indulge in its tawdry boudoirs,
enticed by its lurid perfumes,
Convinced that they and all before them
Are richer for it,
And there are no other types of riches,
that they have overlooked.
That Global Human Economic Machine,
Sucks you in
With a Contract
You will be fed
You will be watered
You will have the cars,
the luxury dwelling,
the bright lights,
the ease of never having to lift a finger,
not even off your mouse
the trips abroad,
the laughing of those who have plenty
about you,
the misery and confusion of all the others,
hidden away,
here on the internet.
The Global Human Economic Machine
Will run and run and run,
And they will oil it and add to it
And it will grow ever bigger,
For they learned to make machines,
And with machines they could make the biggest machine of all
The Global Human Machine.
If you can't beat them
Join them,
But then it grows bigger
If you won't join them
Avoid them
But then it swallows you up.
You can try to hide,
But even the birds have less places to hide
And so too will you,
And all the time from your hiding place
You will watch fearfully
As it the Juggernaut comes ever closer.
You can take up a Faith
And protect yourself with some Words
And believe that you are only here on Earth
To be tested
And the test will be
how easily you are assimilated
Into the One
The Only,
The Single Global Human Economic Machine.
Categories:
Economics,
Globalization,
Humanity,
Poetry
Tuesday, August 12, 2008
The Primary Produce of Economists is Shit
"This is why most analysts are now suggesting that the economy will at best only manage to stagnate in the coming few quarters, and that the growth prospects through 2009 and into 2010 look no better than anaemic," Mr Lambert said.
The CBI earlier cut its forecast for growth in 2009 from 1% to 0.4%.
And last week the International Monetary Fund again revised down its forecast for UK economic growth this year and next year.
It now expects growth of 1.4% this year and 1.1% in 2009, although the government still expects the figures for both years to be 2% or above.
How many times do you see the word "growth" in the above? Well done. So if you are able to construct three sentences, each using the word "growth" and throw in a couple of unscientific and mathematically worthless percentages:
YOU TOO can be an economist! You can walk around in a suit, get paid £40000 a year, and the rest of the time you can sit around producing shit. You will be superior to "consumers", because instead of having to go to the toilet and wasting your shit into a costly sewage system, your shit will be spread all over idiots and politicians who cannot count, think logically, or have any vision.
We as a nation have allowed our government (Labour, at that too) to willfully submit our lives into the flawed model of a Global Economy. Then we believed that we were growing, when the economists were actually shitting on us. Of course, lots of us knew something was not quite right, but were completely powerless to do anything about it, other than to withdraw from that unsustainable delusion called the Economy. Such is the power of Democracy. The power to change all men to sheep, and to make believe that they are free.
Thursday, August 07, 2008
An Individual in an Advanced Economy
Here I am, struggling as ever, to find how I can fit into this insane modern advanced economy, where every job is so specialized that it is unnatural.
What is so terrible about economic specialization? The fact that people enter into occupations and progress deeper and deeper into specialties, as if they are cavers going ever deeper into an endless cave system. Never will they ever again get to see daylight, until they are finally retired.
When in Marxist times there were oppressed workers who effectively were enslaved in industrialized factories, it was easy for intellectuals to observe how unnatural it all was, and thereby concoct all sorts of dreamy alternatives.
Now technology has moved on, so that much of the more manifest slavery has been replaced by more sophisticated machinery, electronical controls, and robotics. Or else the factory form of slavery has been exported to countries like China and India, or even less developed countries.
Hence today the unnatural condition of being part of such a specialized advanced economy is less obvious to the naked eye. Intellectuals themselves have become so specialized that they cannot comment on what is outside the caverns that they have gotten stuck in. The few people who are still on the surface in the daylight are generally not in any capacity to influence change.
Humans are having to evolve with their specialties, and unite occasionally under the Gods of Money, Music, Church, Sport, Television and other escapist communions. There can be no spontaneous uprising against this. The human super-organism will eventually grow to a size whereby it has exhausted all the resources the planet can afford, or else it will be so big and complex that it will become susceptible to catastrophic failures whenever various minute components have aged, worn out, or died out.
The many, such as myself, who do not fit in with the human super-organism, are laid to evolutionary waste and left to subsist under the rules of humanitarianism until we one day conveniently die. The malignancy of the unnatural condition of our over-specialized, advanced, global economy is disguised by the humanitarian contract: that we are until we die to have an uninterrupted supply of water, food, law and order, and healthcare.
Marx predicted all the wrong things. How can there be natural uprisings and revolutions, when the humanitarian contract guarantees that like our farm animals (e.g. in the film BABE) , our carefully maintained welfare will prevent us from ever seeing that we humans are not free. Once again, I have to conclude that we are already in The Matrix.
What is so terrible about economic specialization? The fact that people enter into occupations and progress deeper and deeper into specialties, as if they are cavers going ever deeper into an endless cave system. Never will they ever again get to see daylight, until they are finally retired.
When in Marxist times there were oppressed workers who effectively were enslaved in industrialized factories, it was easy for intellectuals to observe how unnatural it all was, and thereby concoct all sorts of dreamy alternatives.
Now technology has moved on, so that much of the more manifest slavery has been replaced by more sophisticated machinery, electronical controls, and robotics. Or else the factory form of slavery has been exported to countries like China and India, or even less developed countries.
Hence today the unnatural condition of being part of such a specialized advanced economy is less obvious to the naked eye. Intellectuals themselves have become so specialized that they cannot comment on what is outside the caverns that they have gotten stuck in. The few people who are still on the surface in the daylight are generally not in any capacity to influence change.
Humans are having to evolve with their specialties, and unite occasionally under the Gods of Money, Music, Church, Sport, Television and other escapist communions. There can be no spontaneous uprising against this. The human super-organism will eventually grow to a size whereby it has exhausted all the resources the planet can afford, or else it will be so big and complex that it will become susceptible to catastrophic failures whenever various minute components have aged, worn out, or died out.
The many, such as myself, who do not fit in with the human super-organism, are laid to evolutionary waste and left to subsist under the rules of humanitarianism until we one day conveniently die. The malignancy of the unnatural condition of our over-specialized, advanced, global economy is disguised by the humanitarian contract: that we are until we die to have an uninterrupted supply of water, food, law and order, and healthcare.
Marx predicted all the wrong things. How can there be natural uprisings and revolutions, when the humanitarian contract guarantees that like our farm animals (e.g. in the film BABE) , our carefully maintained welfare will prevent us from ever seeing that we humans are not free. Once again, I have to conclude that we are already in The Matrix.
Wednesday, July 30, 2008
British Monetary Economy and Mortgage Market
James Crosby was probably paid for this report, and that's what makes it shocking. If he hasn't found anything new or surprising about why Britain has landed in this mess, it means that we might as well have had Orangutans running the Bank of England and the Treasury.
Well here's my simple explanation for people who cannot count, let alone care about money:
Britain exposed its monetary economic control to global financial markets. It was borrowing money from global supplies, for example to sell mortgages. It thought it was keeping control of its money supply, through the Bank of England, but it didn't count how these inflows of global money were affecting its money supply.
Oh yes, could an anti-globalist wish for anything better? The global financial system failed in one part of its machine, and the whole damn machine broke down. Britain was so proud of being part of a global machine. Well globalists don't tell you the downside of globalism, do they? The bigger the machine, the bigger the breakdown when just one thing goes wrong in the machine. A bit like a whole Space Shuttle blowing up because one person used the wrong type of washer when they were fitting a bolt.
So now Britain's monetary economy has been left to recover on its own, and all they can manage to say is that:
The global system broke. There are no quick fixes. We will have to live without the global machine and learn to be self-sufficient again. This will take at least two years.
To which I add:
Stop eating mortgages. In fact, stop eating and wasting so much food, otherwise the global food system will break down too!
I hope the wide-eyed kids who studied politics in university who work at Westminster for our busy, simple-minded, Members of Parliament can explain these simple facts of Globalization to their bosses:
Global isn't always Good. Global always is dangerous. Take the collapse in World Trade Organisation Doha round talks for example.
De-Globalization is best managed, and not left to chance, or worse, to War. Everybody needs to have a Plan B, and people who walk around saying Globalism is Good never seem to give us a Plan B.
Well here's my simple explanation for people who cannot count, let alone care about money:
Britain exposed its monetary economic control to global financial markets. It was borrowing money from global supplies, for example to sell mortgages. It thought it was keeping control of its money supply, through the Bank of England, but it didn't count how these inflows of global money were affecting its money supply.
Oh yes, could an anti-globalist wish for anything better? The global financial system failed in one part of its machine, and the whole damn machine broke down. Britain was so proud of being part of a global machine. Well globalists don't tell you the downside of globalism, do they? The bigger the machine, the bigger the breakdown when just one thing goes wrong in the machine. A bit like a whole Space Shuttle blowing up because one person used the wrong type of washer when they were fitting a bolt.
So now Britain's monetary economy has been left to recover on its own, and all they can manage to say is that:
The global system broke. There are no quick fixes. We will have to live without the global machine and learn to be self-sufficient again. This will take at least two years.
To which I add:
Stop eating mortgages. In fact, stop eating and wasting so much food, otherwise the global food system will break down too!
I hope the wide-eyed kids who studied politics in university who work at Westminster for our busy, simple-minded, Members of Parliament can explain these simple facts of Globalization to their bosses:
Global isn't always Good. Global always is dangerous. Take the collapse in World Trade Organisation Doha round talks for example.
De-Globalization is best managed, and not left to chance, or worse, to War. Everybody needs to have a Plan B, and people who walk around saying Globalism is Good never seem to give us a Plan B.
Categories:
Economics,
England,
Globalization,
Politics
Wednesday, July 16, 2008
Guess Who is the new chair of the National Trust
As if he needs any more publicity. This man has more opinions than references, was an editor of The Economist at the height of Thatcherism, and because all newspapers are just as bad as each other, is now a columnist at the Guardian, as well as the Murdoch.
Yes, I first noticed his writing back in the Eighties because he launched a pro-dioxin tirade which was clearly ignorant both about Nature, Science, and the selfishness of Humanity.
With age he has become more moderate, and has been most noted for his focus on the architectural heritage of English Churches. Nonetheless, he seems to know nothing about life, but is one of those people who spews out words endlessly, even more quickly than he consumes them. Is it not fitting then that he has taken such a shine to bricks and mortar conservation, which until now has been achieved in isolation from cultural conservation?
The National Trust is so desperate for publicity that they think he will be a boon? The National Trust doesn't need publicity. It needs reality. It has been run by a host of affluent molly-coddled retired people who live in fantasy. Their fantasy has been to an olde worlde time of architecture and landscape. To a tourist, this is wonderful, compared to some other countries in the world. Indeed so. But where is the economy and culture of the people who lived with this architecture and landscape? Do you see it at Tesco, or on the M4, or in your office? Does it exist in London or Ludlow?
Back in the Eighties, Britain was accused of being like a giant Disney World. Never more so than now, when all its local culture has died out and been replaced by people who drive everywhere, watch TV or Youtube, and can't listen to anybody because of their Ipod.
What is the National Trust to do? Well, has Simon Jenkins grown up enough that he sees the error of his ways? Like the archetypal Tory Boy, when he was young and didn't care, he had no heart, and now that he is old and cares too much, he hasn't got a brain. For he will care and rhapsodize about the architecture of masonry, and because of his background in economics, he cannot see that the architecture of modern economics has killed the architecture of civilization and culture that needs to go with the masonry.
Yes, I first noticed his writing back in the Eighties because he launched a pro-dioxin tirade which was clearly ignorant both about Nature, Science, and the selfishness of Humanity.
With age he has become more moderate, and has been most noted for his focus on the architectural heritage of English Churches. Nonetheless, he seems to know nothing about life, but is one of those people who spews out words endlessly, even more quickly than he consumes them. Is it not fitting then that he has taken such a shine to bricks and mortar conservation, which until now has been achieved in isolation from cultural conservation?
The National Trust is so desperate for publicity that they think he will be a boon? The National Trust doesn't need publicity. It needs reality. It has been run by a host of affluent molly-coddled retired people who live in fantasy. Their fantasy has been to an olde worlde time of architecture and landscape. To a tourist, this is wonderful, compared to some other countries in the world. Indeed so. But where is the economy and culture of the people who lived with this architecture and landscape? Do you see it at Tesco, or on the M4, or in your office? Does it exist in London or Ludlow?
Back in the Eighties, Britain was accused of being like a giant Disney World. Never more so than now, when all its local culture has died out and been replaced by people who drive everywhere, watch TV or Youtube, and can't listen to anybody because of their Ipod.
What is the National Trust to do? Well, has Simon Jenkins grown up enough that he sees the error of his ways? Like the archetypal Tory Boy, when he was young and didn't care, he had no heart, and now that he is old and cares too much, he hasn't got a brain. For he will care and rhapsodize about the architecture of masonry, and because of his background in economics, he cannot see that the architecture of modern economics has killed the architecture of civilization and culture that needs to go with the masonry.
Sunday, July 13, 2008
Boring Drab Weather and Entrenched Employment Protection
Anybody who came to England for the first time in 2006, when the El Nino was on full, would have thought they had stumbled on the perfect paradise to hide away if Global Warming was becoming true.
Well this summer, the El Nino and La Nina effects are gone at last, and the cloudy, unpredictable, sometimes chilly, grey and wet weather have reminded me that this is much the typical English summer. If you get a sunny day, you grab it, because it might be the last one you see for a long, long time.
A small local Chinese Grocery supermarket that opened up only a year ago is closing down and they say they're going back to China. Quelle surprise, as Julian Clary would say! It doesn't take people long to figure out now that there's no point in hanging around in England, when things are so much better at home.
Walking down one of the nearby major High Streets last week, I counted at least 5 shops that were closing down. Nearly every shop had a sale on, even though summer sales do not usually start until end of July.
The recession is on everyone's minds and lips. It may have taken 6 months longer for it to happen than in the USA, but it has gotten through to the man in the street. This time round, the property market went down before the retail business, and before the job market. I suppose that should have been predictable, since the property market has been the main engine of the UK economy over the last 6 years.
Oh yes, the job market is disappearing, and of course, the private sector has gone first. The public sector is protected by unions and endless employment law, and with a Labour Government in power, there is no chance that they will have to absorb cutbacks. Nonetheless, the unions will still fight for above inflation pay increases, even though they are lucky to have jobs, when all the people outside the public sector are losing theirs and have no new jobs to go to.
Yes, if there were an election in 6 months time, the Conservatives would sweep into power, and things would be sufficiently bad that they could probably do the one thing that nobody has dared to do for 30 years:
Remove enough employment protection so that it is quick and easy to remove unproductive and no longer required employees.
You see, despite all the reform from Thatcherism, this was never actually achieved in legislation. No, the only way to get rid of employees was to make them redundant, and this required organisations to re-structure themselves, or be slyly driven into bankruptcy, just to get rid of dead wood. The other ruses by which dead wood could be removed were much more roundabout, but became so common that they defined corporate business practice from the late Eighties to the early Noughties. They were of course, firstly Privatisation, and then secondly, Outsourcing.
Privatisation was essential to revitalising the European and especially the UK economy. Anyone from overseas who saw in the early Eighties, the European PTT (post and telecoms) organisations, for example, used to laugh their heads off at their backwardness, incompetence, inefficiency and lack of productivity.
Outsourcing was a far more ridiculous and devious solution to the need for organisational restructuring while keeping Seventies employment protection. It was also far less effective, because TUPE was upgraded to protect the rights of employees who were part of the organisation that was sold to an outsourcing company. What resulted was that dead wood ended up being transferred to an external outsourcing company, and only by extensive attrition and sidelining and eventual redundancies were useless and ineffective employees eventually removed from being paid to do nothing, or worse, being paid to do harm to the rest of their organisation.
None of the outsourcing would have been possible if Britain had not welcomed with open arms every illegal immigrant who was willing to work without being able to answer back to their boss in English. Yes, they took their pay, and didn't complain, which made them far more desirable than local employees. Of course, this eventually pissed off everyone in the country, because guess what? We have had a Labour Government since 1997, and this was what they were encouraging.
The French might only now be catching up with the UK, but the UK still has employment protection that defies economic sense. In this recession, I think the Tories when they take over the government, might be given the democratic power to remove the last nonsensical employment protection from the rulebooks. Is this a good thing? Yes, but it is sadly much too late. All that employment protection was the reason why British manufacturing stayed so uncompetitive that today, none of it is owned and managed by themselves, and what there is left of manufacturing survives because of factory robotics.
Well, robotics use oil, and human beings need physical work, so this is a silly state of affairs. This is the time to ask for a democratic mandate to remove obstructive employment protection laws. This can be done now because all the industry is gone, and because the welfare and social security system can be kept operational without the need to keep employees in jobs where they are producing nothing, or even less than nothing.
Well this summer, the El Nino and La Nina effects are gone at last, and the cloudy, unpredictable, sometimes chilly, grey and wet weather have reminded me that this is much the typical English summer. If you get a sunny day, you grab it, because it might be the last one you see for a long, long time.
A small local Chinese Grocery supermarket that opened up only a year ago is closing down and they say they're going back to China. Quelle surprise, as Julian Clary would say! It doesn't take people long to figure out now that there's no point in hanging around in England, when things are so much better at home.
Walking down one of the nearby major High Streets last week, I counted at least 5 shops that were closing down. Nearly every shop had a sale on, even though summer sales do not usually start until end of July.
The recession is on everyone's minds and lips. It may have taken 6 months longer for it to happen than in the USA, but it has gotten through to the man in the street. This time round, the property market went down before the retail business, and before the job market. I suppose that should have been predictable, since the property market has been the main engine of the UK economy over the last 6 years.
Oh yes, the job market is disappearing, and of course, the private sector has gone first. The public sector is protected by unions and endless employment law, and with a Labour Government in power, there is no chance that they will have to absorb cutbacks. Nonetheless, the unions will still fight for above inflation pay increases, even though they are lucky to have jobs, when all the people outside the public sector are losing theirs and have no new jobs to go to.
Yes, if there were an election in 6 months time, the Conservatives would sweep into power, and things would be sufficiently bad that they could probably do the one thing that nobody has dared to do for 30 years:
Remove enough employment protection so that it is quick and easy to remove unproductive and no longer required employees.
You see, despite all the reform from Thatcherism, this was never actually achieved in legislation. No, the only way to get rid of employees was to make them redundant, and this required organisations to re-structure themselves, or be slyly driven into bankruptcy, just to get rid of dead wood. The other ruses by which dead wood could be removed were much more roundabout, but became so common that they defined corporate business practice from the late Eighties to the early Noughties. They were of course, firstly Privatisation, and then secondly, Outsourcing.
Privatisation was essential to revitalising the European and especially the UK economy. Anyone from overseas who saw in the early Eighties, the European PTT (post and telecoms) organisations, for example, used to laugh their heads off at their backwardness, incompetence, inefficiency and lack of productivity.
Outsourcing was a far more ridiculous and devious solution to the need for organisational restructuring while keeping Seventies employment protection. It was also far less effective, because TUPE was upgraded to protect the rights of employees who were part of the organisation that was sold to an outsourcing company. What resulted was that dead wood ended up being transferred to an external outsourcing company, and only by extensive attrition and sidelining and eventual redundancies were useless and ineffective employees eventually removed from being paid to do nothing, or worse, being paid to do harm to the rest of their organisation.
None of the outsourcing would have been possible if Britain had not welcomed with open arms every illegal immigrant who was willing to work without being able to answer back to their boss in English. Yes, they took their pay, and didn't complain, which made them far more desirable than local employees. Of course, this eventually pissed off everyone in the country, because guess what? We have had a Labour Government since 1997, and this was what they were encouraging.
The French might only now be catching up with the UK, but the UK still has employment protection that defies economic sense. In this recession, I think the Tories when they take over the government, might be given the democratic power to remove the last nonsensical employment protection from the rulebooks. Is this a good thing? Yes, but it is sadly much too late. All that employment protection was the reason why British manufacturing stayed so uncompetitive that today, none of it is owned and managed by themselves, and what there is left of manufacturing survives because of factory robotics.
Well, robotics use oil, and human beings need physical work, so this is a silly state of affairs. This is the time to ask for a democratic mandate to remove obstructive employment protection laws. This can be done now because all the industry is gone, and because the welfare and social security system can be kept operational without the need to keep employees in jobs where they are producing nothing, or even less than nothing.
Monday, July 07, 2008
The Scarecrows of Whatfield Suffolk in the Global Food Economy
A week away from the internet, and most other media, is a refreshing joy which I intend to extend. But while the cat's here, let the mice seer.
As I wandered through the arable farmlands of Suffolk on my bicycle, I came into a village and was greeted by a large doll sitting in somebody's garden. It was brown-faced with woolly hair and probably 4 feet long, and I thought I had passed through a time warp into a gollywog-loving age.
As I progressed, I found that several more houses had large dolls in their front gardens, all in different clothing, constructions, and colours, in various attidunal poses and with props. I began to imagine that I had come upon some retirement village for an order of lunatic witches. One memorable exhibit had two dolls sitting on a tandem bike, but that memory is a reflection of the mental bias of a proper cyclist.
The village at this end was a few twee chocolate-box cottages, some with thatched roofs, evidently inhabited by affluent retired upper-middle class types. The more modern,dowdy, apparently council-built part of The Street was not participating in the doll display.
Eventually I came upon a doll of a publican with props such as a bar, keg, stool and towel. Everything became clear. There was a sign/advertisement:Make a scarecrow, any style and display it in your front garden, from 28 June onwards until this weekend.
For this was the weekend of the village fete, and surely enough, what remains of blue-rinse culture (for that generation has nearly all died off) was driving in cars to the village fete, on the green by the school, with the requisite marquee. It is wonderful to see a village where community exists at all, and see evidence of the Church of England helping it along.
But wonderment is seldom left alone on Love and the Planet. I could have just used a digital camera to copy some images of these modern scarecrows onto the Internet for some Americans to ape. This would be too common, too lazy, and not what blogs are about.
No, no, because, today Gordon Brown, our beloved and sage Prime Minister whom has been manager of the United Kingdom economy since 1997, finally told his country "to stop wasting food", and to "waste not want not". I shall not waste my vomit on his contribution (and that of many Guardian readers, I want to add) to the wasteful globalized economy that Britain has been party to, where all manner of waste has been sent to the dump, the tip, to landfill, and worst of all, to China and Bangladesh etcetera where they have permanently poisoned with pollution hitherto organic human ecosystems. So let me hurry along.
Scarecrows in Suffolk. Well.... my examination of the fields I saw in Suffolk revealed that they are 99% arable (no livestock), and most commonly growing, in order of quantity, wheat, oats, oilseed rape, broad beans, turnips/swedes/beets, potatoes. Almost all the fields are industrially farmed, with large fields worthy of tractor management. I never saw one person in any field I passed, although I passed at least one tractor on the road. Interestingly, by the end of June, the oilseed rape was already in finaly ripening stage - all the leaves were gone and the plants were down to taking what was left in the roots and stems and putting it into the seeds. Why is this interesting? Because with nearly half of the summer season (see my earlier posting for an understanding of how summer should obviously be defined according to day-length) left to go, vast acreages are already spurning the energy that reaches Britain from the sun.
Scarecrows? What crows? None of the fields had much sign of insect life or soil life. The broad beans were the most unblemished plants I have ever seen, with nary a blackfly upon them, let alone a ladybird. Most of the wheat fields appeared to be the same commercial seed variety. The hedgerows provided just enough tree cover to fool the ignorant into believing they were living in a conserved rural landscape. How many crows do you expect to find here?
So now Whatfield, which clearly was named after its Fields of Wheat, has perverted what was once a useful and necessary activity into a community-building aesthetically pleasing fun activity.
Waste not, want not? The wealthy and retired middle classes invaded the rural settings of England. They saw the rural economies transform into the Tesco Economic Model of production, distribution and consumption. But now the best that they can do (and believe me, most villages in England are ghostly shells compared to Whatfield) is to make dolls if ever the crows should come back.
People who don't know where food comes from, will never give a damn about saving it. It is considered rude to tell people not to waste food, because in Britain they consider wasting time to be a greater crime than wasting food. Yet all the time they save is spent sitting in their cars, or on their sofas, or on their office chairs, producing nothing, while consuming the earth.
So it is, but not so be it. For so shall it not be. Recession? Bring it on. A global economic system runs on a global financial system, and only a few people in the global financial system have already triggered a global banking crisis. Just a few farmers could trigger a national food crisis. Scarecrows were once the ultimate definition of food security. Now food security depends on global capital flows, GM seed, globally manufactured pesticides and fertilizers, and keeping the rest of Evolution at bay (lest a fungus, virus, bacteria or insect should suddenly arise that wipes out the mono-culture wheat or rice around the world faster than you can say "call an agricultural scientist").
As I wandered through the arable farmlands of Suffolk on my bicycle, I came into a village and was greeted by a large doll sitting in somebody's garden. It was brown-faced with woolly hair and probably 4 feet long, and I thought I had passed through a time warp into a gollywog-loving age.
As I progressed, I found that several more houses had large dolls in their front gardens, all in different clothing, constructions, and colours, in various attidunal poses and with props. I began to imagine that I had come upon some retirement village for an order of lunatic witches. One memorable exhibit had two dolls sitting on a tandem bike, but that memory is a reflection of the mental bias of a proper cyclist.
The village at this end was a few twee chocolate-box cottages, some with thatched roofs, evidently inhabited by affluent retired upper-middle class types. The more modern,dowdy, apparently council-built part of The Street was not participating in the doll display.
Eventually I came upon a doll of a publican with props such as a bar, keg, stool and towel. Everything became clear. There was a sign/advertisement:Make a scarecrow, any style and display it in your front garden, from 28 June onwards until this weekend.
For this was the weekend of the village fete, and surely enough, what remains of blue-rinse culture (for that generation has nearly all died off) was driving in cars to the village fete, on the green by the school, with the requisite marquee. It is wonderful to see a village where community exists at all, and see evidence of the Church of England helping it along.
But wonderment is seldom left alone on Love and the Planet. I could have just used a digital camera to copy some images of these modern scarecrows onto the Internet for some Americans to ape. This would be too common, too lazy, and not what blogs are about.
No, no, because, today Gordon Brown, our beloved and sage Prime Minister whom has been manager of the United Kingdom economy since 1997, finally told his country "to stop wasting food", and to "waste not want not". I shall not waste my vomit on his contribution (and that of many Guardian readers, I want to add) to the wasteful globalized economy that Britain has been party to, where all manner of waste has been sent to the dump, the tip, to landfill, and worst of all, to China and Bangladesh etcetera where they have permanently poisoned with pollution hitherto organic human ecosystems. So let me hurry along.
Scarecrows in Suffolk. Well.... my examination of the fields I saw in Suffolk revealed that they are 99% arable (no livestock), and most commonly growing, in order of quantity, wheat, oats, oilseed rape, broad beans, turnips/swedes/beets, potatoes. Almost all the fields are industrially farmed, with large fields worthy of tractor management. I never saw one person in any field I passed, although I passed at least one tractor on the road. Interestingly, by the end of June, the oilseed rape was already in finaly ripening stage - all the leaves were gone and the plants were down to taking what was left in the roots and stems and putting it into the seeds. Why is this interesting? Because with nearly half of the summer season (see my earlier posting for an understanding of how summer should obviously be defined according to day-length) left to go, vast acreages are already spurning the energy that reaches Britain from the sun.
Scarecrows? What crows? None of the fields had much sign of insect life or soil life. The broad beans were the most unblemished plants I have ever seen, with nary a blackfly upon them, let alone a ladybird. Most of the wheat fields appeared to be the same commercial seed variety. The hedgerows provided just enough tree cover to fool the ignorant into believing they were living in a conserved rural landscape. How many crows do you expect to find here?
So now Whatfield, which clearly was named after its Fields of Wheat, has perverted what was once a useful and necessary activity into a community-building aesthetically pleasing fun activity.
Waste not, want not? The wealthy and retired middle classes invaded the rural settings of England. They saw the rural economies transform into the Tesco Economic Model of production, distribution and consumption. But now the best that they can do (and believe me, most villages in England are ghostly shells compared to Whatfield) is to make dolls if ever the crows should come back.
People who don't know where food comes from, will never give a damn about saving it. It is considered rude to tell people not to waste food, because in Britain they consider wasting time to be a greater crime than wasting food. Yet all the time they save is spent sitting in their cars, or on their sofas, or on their office chairs, producing nothing, while consuming the earth.
So it is, but not so be it. For so shall it not be. Recession? Bring it on. A global economic system runs on a global financial system, and only a few people in the global financial system have already triggered a global banking crisis. Just a few farmers could trigger a national food crisis. Scarecrows were once the ultimate definition of food security. Now food security depends on global capital flows, GM seed, globally manufactured pesticides and fertilizers, and keeping the rest of Evolution at bay (lest a fungus, virus, bacteria or insect should suddenly arise that wipes out the mono-culture wheat or rice around the world faster than you can say "call an agricultural scientist").
Saturday, June 21, 2008
The Political Shufflings of the Dominant British Economists
Can I be a bitch about this please? It is ridiculous that an insular and incestuous academic organisation such as the London School of Economics is now the most supreme modern exponent of the "Old Boys Network" that used to run Britain.
We can now comfort ourselves that the planet's tolerance of Human Economic Growth will be stabilized and moderated by a cerebral man born after World War 2, into the Liberal and Idealistic Baby-boomer generation, who can mull over grave thoughts affably in the ghetto-mentality confines of the Royal Opera House, the E.N.O, and Lords Cricket Ground.
Who said we want the Economists from the LSE to pilot our future? I didn't, and I haven't even heard anybody else asking the question! As individuals, we get to vote for one lousy MP, and that is the full extent of our democratic power. Why does everybody think democracy is so wonderful? The traditional institutions of the Church, the Press, and the Judiciary which were supposed to act as checks on the State do not seem to have any comprehension of what is going on here. This is a lovely example of how Democracy is just as prone to despotism, ignorance and negligence as other political systems. Or is the fact that we get to watch Big Brother on Television the ultimate proof that democracy is superior to blatant oligarchy?
I would like someone to expose and subject the London School of Economics to a ruthless analysis of its intellectual and political machinations. As a member of the public, I am not paid to do this, so where are the intelligent journalists that were all directed into Media Studies five years ago?
We can now comfort ourselves that the planet's tolerance of Human Economic Growth will be stabilized and moderated by a cerebral man born after World War 2, into the Liberal and Idealistic Baby-boomer generation, who can mull over grave thoughts affably in the ghetto-mentality confines of the Royal Opera House, the E.N.O, and Lords Cricket Ground.
Who said we want the Economists from the LSE to pilot our future? I didn't, and I haven't even heard anybody else asking the question! As individuals, we get to vote for one lousy MP, and that is the full extent of our democratic power. Why does everybody think democracy is so wonderful? The traditional institutions of the Church, the Press, and the Judiciary which were supposed to act as checks on the State do not seem to have any comprehension of what is going on here. This is a lovely example of how Democracy is just as prone to despotism, ignorance and negligence as other political systems. Or is the fact that we get to watch Big Brother on Television the ultimate proof that democracy is superior to blatant oligarchy?
I would like someone to expose and subject the London School of Economics to a ruthless analysis of its intellectual and political machinations. As a member of the public, I am not paid to do this, so where are the intelligent journalists that were all directed into Media Studies five years ago?
Charles Bean, the new deputy governor, is a respected economist with eight years experience at the Bank of England. Known as affable and cerebral, the fan of cricket and opera was a successful academic before being lured to Threadneedle Street. Born in 1953, he studied at Cambridge and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology before working at the Treasury, and then becoming professor of economics at the London School of Economics in 1990. - Graeme Wearden
Paul Tucker, the Bank of England's executive director for markets, is the frontrunner to be the first head of the central bank's new financial stability committee from next spring, when Sir John Gieve leaves. Tucker, 50, has long been considered a rising star. He has extensive financial markets experience, at the Bank and in the commercial banking world, and is well respected in the City and internationally. He has also been on the Bank's rate-setting committee since 2002 so has extensive experience of monetary policy. Some suggest he could replace Mervyn King as governor in five years' time. - Ashley Seager
Friday, June 20, 2008
Will Hutton - a typical over-informed globalist journalist?
Have started to read his book, The Writing on the Wall, China and the West in the 21st century. Don't buy it, because I disagree with people running out to buy books and then ingesting them without applying sufficient criticism.
Not having read much of it yet, I am about to hazard a guess that he is an economist by training, and hence belongs to the Simon Jenkins school of journalism. I will now check Will Hutton out on Wikipedia. Lo and behold, I am nearly 100% spot on: introduced to A level economics, worked in equity sales, and then went to do an MBA, he is a governor of the London School of Economics, amongst other things.
How predictable. The intellectual pedigree of economists should be subjected to more ruthless analysis than currently exists, because economists have for the last few decades been allowed to wield influence far in excess of their experience, intelligence, and vision.
I shall reserve judgement until I read more of this book, but meanwhile, de-globalization is slowly becoming more topical. How do you explain to an economist that economies of a global scale cannot be coupled with the evolutionary history of Man and all other Life on the planet? They can't figure it out for themselves. Take away their jobs, and economize on economists. Hire common-sense instead.
There was a man today exercising five cages of his pigeons, by letting them fly home to Harlow. They were all this year's brood. He drove a taxi part-time, as he was semi-retired, and he was quite happy in himself, but appalled at what the world has become. "Nobody ever does anything, except sit at home watching telly, or in front of the computer, and driving to the supermarket." No, he was the last of his breed, an earthy pigeon fancier. He understood the problem with globalization, in that peer pressure from the younger generation and the demise of local focus has impoverished the pastimes, hobbies, and ability to be content that was so easy for the pre-television generation. And today, on the radio, it turns out that Peter Mandelson is becoming unpopular because of his liberal trade politics, whereas there is a growing understanding even in Europe (at last, and too belatedly to escape the damage) that globalization has a flawed and vapid vision.
Oh dear, maybe I shouldn't waste my time finishing Will Hutton's book. Just the usual idiotic scribings of the over-educated, over-informed, egocentric, self-publicizing journalist who claims to be intelligent, but cannot induce any new truths from all that he knows. As I said, he reminds me of Simon Jenkins.
Not having read much of it yet, I am about to hazard a guess that he is an economist by training, and hence belongs to the Simon Jenkins school of journalism. I will now check Will Hutton out on Wikipedia. Lo and behold, I am nearly 100% spot on: introduced to A level economics, worked in equity sales, and then went to do an MBA, he is a governor of the London School of Economics, amongst other things.
How predictable. The intellectual pedigree of economists should be subjected to more ruthless analysis than currently exists, because economists have for the last few decades been allowed to wield influence far in excess of their experience, intelligence, and vision.
I shall reserve judgement until I read more of this book, but meanwhile, de-globalization is slowly becoming more topical. How do you explain to an economist that economies of a global scale cannot be coupled with the evolutionary history of Man and all other Life on the planet? They can't figure it out for themselves. Take away their jobs, and economize on economists. Hire common-sense instead.
There was a man today exercising five cages of his pigeons, by letting them fly home to Harlow. They were all this year's brood. He drove a taxi part-time, as he was semi-retired, and he was quite happy in himself, but appalled at what the world has become. "Nobody ever does anything, except sit at home watching telly, or in front of the computer, and driving to the supermarket." No, he was the last of his breed, an earthy pigeon fancier. He understood the problem with globalization, in that peer pressure from the younger generation and the demise of local focus has impoverished the pastimes, hobbies, and ability to be content that was so easy for the pre-television generation. And today, on the radio, it turns out that Peter Mandelson is becoming unpopular because of his liberal trade politics, whereas there is a growing understanding even in Europe (at last, and too belatedly to escape the damage) that globalization has a flawed and vapid vision.
Oh dear, maybe I shouldn't waste my time finishing Will Hutton's book. Just the usual idiotic scribings of the over-educated, over-informed, egocentric, self-publicizing journalist who claims to be intelligent, but cannot induce any new truths from all that he knows. As I said, he reminds me of Simon Jenkins.
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