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“The stock market is pure capitalism. The stock you buy doesn’t know if you’re white or black, male or female, old or young, American or French. Prices are dictated by supply and demand and nothing else. It’s global, efficient, wildly volatile, always surprising: raw and beautiful.” Ken Fisher investment management chief and Forbes columnist. November 17th, 2007 | 5 comments - (Comments are closed)
 Anatole Kaletsky, writing in today’s Times (of London) has a justifiably ferocious piece about how the “loan” by the benighted British taxpayer to the stricken British mortgage firm, Northern Rock, has encouraged the latter to make all kinds of presumptions about its future behaviour. I knew this would happen. They may wear smart suits and talk the language of capitalism, but the truth is, City financiers can be just as infantilised by the prospect of taxpayers’ largesse as any farmer or coalminer getting a subsidy. At least the coalminers did a job that was physically dangerous. November 15th, 2007 | 7 comments - (Comments are closed)
“My faith in airport security has never been the same since I noticed that the man confiscating the shaving foam in my hand luggage (while leaving me with the razor) had the word HATE tatooed on his knuckles.” November 14th, 2007 | 35 comments - (Comments are closed)
I went to watch Elizabeth – the Golden Age – as I had mentioned a few weeks back and I was pretty impressed, despite a few jarring notes (Francis Drake barely gets a mention in the defeat of the Spanish Armada, rather like overlooking Nelson at Trafalgar). But the film was overall good entertainment, if not dead-accurate scholarship. One thing stuck in my mind on the way home: the man who played Philip II of Spain was very convincing in the role of a religious maniac, a man swinging between rhapsodies of hatred for Elizabeth and tearful despair. I thought to myself: “This guy looks like a stunt double for the current leader of Iran”. I mean, he really does. Creepy. November 12th, 2007 | 22 comments - (Comments are closed)
Just over 20 minutes from the time I am writing this, a quarter of a mile from my flat, people will line up around the Cenotaph, Whitehall, to commemorate the fallen. Wars involving our servicemen and women are being fought as I write. I leave aside for this post whether we should or not be fighting said wars, let us leave that for another time. There are various charities and organisations that people can support to help those who have suffered from their service as well as support the families left bereaved or in serious hardship. My old man was a RAF navigator in the 1950s and he has several old squadron buddies who served in combat and could use a bit of help. So this is the charity I’ll be supporting this year: the Royal Air Force Benevolent Fund. November 11th, 2007 | 21 comments - (Comments are closed)
Important data on the meaning of curves and wiggles. November 9th, 2007 | 14 comments - (Comments are closed)
The UK authorities issued warnings of a freak rise in water levels in the North Sea yesterday, caused by a combination of tidal/atmospheric forces. There was a fear that flooding along the east coast of the UK – in places like the Norfolk and Suffolk coasts that are familiar to me – could be as bad as in 1953. Fortunately, some of those fears have abated, but not disappeared. The Thames Barrier flood defence has been put up. The warning was made in good time, so hopefully no lives are at risk. The report linked to here makes little mention of what the situation is on the other side of the North Sea, such as in the Netherlands. Odd. November 9th, 2007 | 18 comments - (Comments are closed)
Every investor/economic commentator will have their own pet theories of when or if a market is going to hit the wall and the economy slow down. You would have to have been living in the upper reaches of the Amazon not to have realised that the global economic situation is looking dicier than for many months, at least as far as the West is concerned (emerging markets like India are a different story). Well, I wonder whether this story, about a disappointing art auction, is a harbinger. In the late 1980s, art fetched incredible prices: Van Goghs and Monets went for previously unheard of prices. But in the early 1990s the market sank before recovering as the dotcom boom took hold. November 8th, 2007 | 23 comments - (Comments are closed)
There is no society in human history that ever suffered because its people became too reasonable. – Sam Harris, rebutting the daft charge that a denial of belief in the afterlife or a supreme being must open the doors to hell on earth. November 7th, 2007 | 57 comments - (Comments are closed)
It is hard sometimes for someone who lives in what might be called the “Westminster village” to understand how monumentally boring are all the commentaries in the political press about Which Cabinet Minister is In and Who is the Favoured One of Gordon, etc. In the Daily Telegraph today, Rachel Sylvester ponders the fact that the Chancellor of the Exchequer, Alisdair Darling, is a puppet of Gordon Brown, the Prime Minister. Oh, the horror. To be honest though, much that I despise this government, it seems to show a lack of historical perspective to complain about the sheer dominance of a Prime Minister over Treasury affairs. I have been reading Douglas Hurd’s rather good biography of Sir Robert Peel, the Prime Minister of the mid-19th Century. As premier, Peel delivered budgets himself rather than get his Chancellor to do so. The budgets, which overthrew the Corn Laws – a system of trade tariffs – split the Tories at the time between the old landed gentry (who wanted tariffs) and the ‘Peelites’ (who wanted laissez faire). But Peel was using his old prerogative as ‘First Lord of the Treasury’ as the Prime Minister is known, to take the lead in economic and financial affairs. In the late 1980s, the same happened when Nigel Lawson, the Chancellor of the time, tried and failed to persuade Mrs Thatcher to accede to his demand that Britain join the European exchange rate mechanism (we did eventually join it, and a right disaster that turned out to be). Gordon Brown is guilty of many sins, but leading economic policy is not one of them. The problem is not the personnel, but the policies themselves. None of the major figures in the current government favour a more modest role for the state; everything else, my dears, is pure detail. November 6th, 2007 | One comment - (Comments are closed)
Good luck, Mr Dodge. Andrew’s recent diagnosis has reminded me – I am 41 – to get a health check done once a year and catch these gremlins early (I have been remarkably lucky with my health, but no point in taking it for granted). What a way to mark Guy Fawke’s night. November 5th, 2007 | 5 comments - (Comments are closed)
I started off wanting to cheer this article – an angry denunciation of the rich folk who often back Green causes – but I then began to wonder whether I was falling for what amounts to an ad hominem argument, and felt rather ashamed of myself. To be sure, it is true that many greenies are extremely well off, or comfortable members of a middle class that feels guilty about material wealth – the legacy of all kinds of crap cultural and political ideas – but is it really a killer argument that a cause X or Y is backed by rich folk like Zac Goldsmith or Peter Melchett? What counts in the end is are their ideas right or wrong? For instance, Bjorn Lomborg is a sharp debunker of eco-cant and I think his take on the more extreme forms of greenery is accurate, but what does it matter whether Lomborg is a middle class Danish academic, heir to a massive fortune, or a humble shop worker? There is a broader point here. At the Libertarian Alliance conference last weekend, I could not help reflecting on the many posh, incredibly rich folk who were old fashioned liberals (or Whigs, as they used to be called). The walls of the National Liberal Club – a fine institution – are adorned with wonderful portraits of gentlemen in frock coats and women in elegant dresses, or stern-looking 19th century businessmen and industrialists. One of the benefits of having an independent income is that it gives a group of people time to think about certain issues that cannot be done by someone working long hours for a salary and who has to please a boss; independence of means also can encourage independence of mind. So Brendan O’Neil is wrong on this occasion, although I share his skepticism on green scares 100%. I do not give a monkey’s whether Jonathan Porritt is posh or not; it is his reactionary ideas to roll back the glories of modern industrial civilisation that bother me very much. November 2nd, 2007 | 16 comments - (Comments are closed)
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