Given enough time, the primary function of any bureaucracy becomes the employment of its employees.
– Daniel Hannan ruminates on the gap between what people think that NGOs do, and what NGOs do.
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July 23rd, 2011 | 3 comments - (Comments are closed)
 Guido reports that various opposition unworthies were at Lord’s today, watching England v India, “while Rome burns”, as he put it. Ed Balls, Charlie Whelan, and someone equally important called Kevin whom I do recognise from the picture and whose name I do know but have forgotten. MacGuire, is it? But it was far worse than that in the fiddling while Rome burns department. As soon as it started raining, they had no less a personage than Sir Mervyn King, Governor of the Bank of England, talking on the radio, with BBC cricket commentating supremo Jonathan Agnew. I know this, because I was listening. Is this not, I thought, rather an odd day for Governor King not to be at his desk? Sir Mervyn talked a lot about the Chance to Shine initiative which encourages school kids to play cricket. He has an interest in cricket and its organisation that goes way back, it would seem. It all sounded very encouraging for England cricket fans like me, provided we were able to set aside details like the world’s financial system going into melt-down. Sure enough, towards the end of their chat Aggers asked King about “events in Europe today”. Had he not done this it would have been even more surreal. King blocked all these queries with straight-batted cliches about how he and his various banking opposite numbers were in constant touch with each other, getting on top of the crisis, blah blah. If only. Geoff Boycott (scroll down here (17:23) for a report) had a go at King for bailing out failed banks. Boycott didn’t talk to King face to face, which I am sure they took very good care to prevent. But he did send a note, which Aggers read out:
King didn’t lose his cool, but he definitely sounded rather ambushed. Basically, his answer was: “When you are the BBC’s economic correspondent, I’ll answer your questions. I’m here to talk about cricket.” Was King doing that central banker thing of deliberately not cancelling irrelevant engagements, to give the impression of business as usual, no panic, steady as she goes and all that? If so, does he seriously think anyone will be fooled? Come to think of it, do you suppose that this is what the Emperor Nero himself thought he was doing, when he played on his instrument all those years ago? Fire? What fire? No no, just a little local difficulty. Soon blow over. Relax. Everything under control. Maybe Nero was just doing music so he could ignore awkward incoming phone calls. England are 127-2, this having been the somewhat disappointing (because cut short by rain) first day of a potentially very absorbing four match series. I’m watching the highlights now on the telly. India and England are, in that order, now to two top ranked test playing international cricket teams. If England can win this four match series by a margin of two matches or more, they will go top. England have a definite chance of doing that. As for the chance that Mervyn King and his various opposite numbers will manage to stop that financial crisis from getting any worse, well, that I wouldn’t rate quite so highly. July 21st, 2011 | 9 comments - (Comments are closed)
There is an interesting discussion at the Cafe Hayek blog about how much it matters that Americans don’t currently save very much. Well, given that real interest rates (taking into account inflation) are negative, and that holding cash means real wealth declines, it is not surprising that real savings have been steadily eroded. The blog’s author is certainly right about this point, however:
Of course if I can nit-pick, I would make the point that when, say, Chinese investors bought oodles of US government bonds in the years leading up to the credit crunch of 2008, it helped drive US long-term interest rates even lower, hence encouraging even more US domestic consumer spending and borrowing, a process we know went horribly wrong. (The main culprit in all this was the Federal Reserve, not China, I should point out). Of course, if non-domestic savers are channeling those savings into investments that yield a positive future return, such as investments in technological innovations, new products and services, then that’s all to the good. If we were to move away from fiat money to a commodity-based monetary system and 100 per cent reserve banking for demand deposits, then a savings culture would be encouraged considerably. At present, persuading people to save is understandably hard because people, even if they are not hard-money zealots like me, smell that there is something rotten with our money. In some ways, I see parallels between the loss of faith in paper money and the declining credibility of the AGW crowd. I think it was Brian Micklethwait of this blog who said something along the lines that we have had junk science, and now junk money. There is only so much junk that human civilization can stand. July 21st, 2011 | 17 comments - (Comments are closed)
Even by his standards, Detlev Schlichter’s latest blog posting is quite a read. Quote:
Schlichter seems to me also to be rather worried about something else. What if, in the words of one of our recent commenters (on this), Lee Moore, “the roof falls in” before Schlichter’s book comes out? Given what Paper Money Collapse says, Schlichter will never be an entirely happy man until the world is back on the gold standard, but he won’t be at all a happy man until his book sees the light of day, on both sides of the Atlantic, given the current state of the world’s financial system. If all hell breaks loose before the book even goes on sale, he will merely look like he is analysing the catastrophe, but with the juicy details stripped out. But, if doomsday obliges by not happening quite yet, he will, when doomsday does come, be a prophet of doom proved right. Far better. Given that timing with books, especially books about soon-to-be-current affairs, can be so important, I am puzzled as to why Schlichter’s book is due out on August 31 2011 here in the UK, but not until October 4th 2011 in the USA. Its American publisher confirms this date discrepancy, although they only talk about August and October (I did the comparison by using this page). Can anyone talk me through this? I know nothing of what the rules are for publishing books on both sides of the Atlantic at nearly but not exactly the same time. Maybe this kind of gap is routine. Maybe, for instance, they figure that what with Schlichter being based in London, London should get to read it first, because maybe London will be particularly friendly. Or, maybe it’s something to do with local book the markets. More specifically, can any Samizdata reader advise me about what exact date it would make sense for me (given that I am already reading an advance pdf of it) to publish my review of this book? I have already emailed the publishers about this, but they were rather vague. I said “early September” and they said fine. But exactly when would make the most sense? If, now that I have gone public with this question, they want to tell me a more precise date, that would be most helpful. July 21st, 2011 | 5 comments - (Comments are closed)
When I first began to read that David Cameron could soon be toppled by all this News of the World stuff, I was amazed, just as I was amazed when I first heard about the News of the World itself being shut. I still don’t know how badly Cameron is threatened, but if he is threatened, he has only himself to blame. Cameron got the job of leading the Conservatives because enough of them thought that he would make a satisfactory Blair the Second, to replace the original. The question was, remember, during the Blair years: How shall we spend all this money? The answer was: nicely. Blair is the answer to the question: What sort of chap do you want your daughter marrying? A nice one, that’s what sort. But well before Cameron became (only just) the Prime Minister, the questions had all changed, from being about niceness to being about what the hell was happening and what the hell should be done about it. Yet Cameron exudes no sense of crisis. On the contrary, he makes a point of not doing so, of suggesting that all will be well provided we don’t panic and just carry on carrying on, when in reality the situation is very troubling and getting worse and worse by the day. It’s as if Stanley Baldwin was still the Prime Minister in 1939. I have a friend whose take on Britain’s political party leaders has been an infallible guide to their success or failure, during the last two decades or so. Blair? Nice one. Major? No. Hague? Thumbs down. The next bald Conservative chap, ditto. The next Conservative bloke – Howard was it? – ditto again. Brown? A definite thumbs down. But Cameron? I remember particularly asking her about Cameron. What do you make of him? Shrug. → Continue reading: Is Britain about to shrug off David Cameron? July 19th, 2011 | 15 comments - (Comments are closed)
Liam Halligan has written a not unreasonable article called We should have listened to Zhu Min years ago – don’t ignore him now:
‘We’ westerners? To hijack an old joke about the Lone Ranger and Tonto, Who is “we”, Pale Face? What he is saying is just what Austrian school economist have been pointing out for years. But he is wrong about sovereign default being a ‘disaster’. On the contrary…the sooner the better, I say. The only cure for the absurdity of bloated state borrowing is for it to become a great deal harder for states to do it… and as there is clearly no political will to tell all the vested interest with their snouts in the trough that the binge is over, not just for the well connected bankers but for the ‘innocent’ voters who are state funded parasites, then the only solution is for lenders to learn that sovereign risk is now actually… risky. Let even one of the Big National Players default and the money states borrow will dry up like morning dew… and that is a good thing, not a bad thing. July 17th, 2011 | 10 comments - (Comments are closed)
Step by step, the world is edging towards a revived Gold Standard … – Ambrose Evans-Pritchard. My thanks to Detlev Schlichter for alerting me to this piece. Schlichter‘s forthcoming book would appear to have been timed to perfection. I am reading an advance pdf of it now. If you want a copy I recommend you advance-order it now, or you just might have a rather long wait. July 15th, 2011 | 2 comments - (Comments are closed)
I love David Thompson’s ephemera postings, which he does every Friday. Buried in among the fun and games are often things with a bit of a message, in favour of Thompsonism and against horribleness. So, today, for instance, there is a link to three lists, of top migrant destinations, top emigration countries, and top “migration corridors”, migration corridors being country pairs, from and to. List one says how many people in each country were not born there, and the second list says how many people who were born there have now gone. I have always believed that how people have been voting with their feet is one of the most potent judgements there can be at any particular moment in history, on the varying merits and demerits of different countries and different political and economic systems. The USSR bombarded the world with high decibel claims about the wonderfulness of itself and of its various national possessions, but could not explain why so many people wanted out, and so desperately, and so few in. How come the Berlin Wall only pointed in one particular direction? How come they were the ones who built it? Contrariwise, the world’s anti-Thompsonists of an earlier time cursed the hideous exploitation of the emerging sweatshop (then) economies of South East Asia, but could not explain why people would swim through shark-infested waters, in order to be hideously exploited. Such numbers also register how welcoming or unwelcoming different countries are towards being “flooded” with incomers. The USA, of course, is the country that positively defines itself as the country of migrants. That the USA, now as always, is by far the top migrant destination, leaving the rest in a clump far behind, says it all about the continuing vitality of the USA as the go-to superpower of the world, still, despite all the blunders its rulers are now making and which the USA itself is so good at drawing everyone’s attention to. Russia and Saudi Arabia must also be doing something right, despite the stories you hear, and at least compared to the alternatives for those flooding in. Money plus labour shortages would be my guesses, in both cases. The UK features in the top ten both for migration in and emigration out. That is a telling fact, is it not? India and Russia are also on both lists. The biggest upheavals are surely the big numbers that pertain to countries with small populations. When you talk percentages, Australia looks to me positively USA-like in its eagerness to attract newcomers. That China, despite its colossal size and formidable recent economic vitality, is not on the top destination list is also quite telling, is it not? These numbers are more than just ephemeral curiosities, I would say. July 15th, 2011 | 27 comments - (Comments are closed)
In this, which is about some guys from Loughborough who have decided to mark cities (scroll down a bit) like they are undergraduate essays (Alpha+, Beta+, Beta-, etc.), NickM waxes lyrical about Prague:
But he adds a warning:
Well, EU membership doesn’t seem to have fucked London yet, despite decades of the EU trying everything they can think of to accomplish that. London, according to the Loughborough guys, is equal top (Apha++) with New York. NickM goes further. He reckons New York is overrated and has London top on its own, as the greatest city in the world “bar none”. He doesn’t say why, however. Personally, I love London, because I live here and I just do. But I do not know where I think it ranks in the great city stakes because I seldom leave it, and hence can’t compare it with other urban greatness contenders. I have been to Prague, which I thought was pretty good. The middle is amazing, wall-to-wall listed buildings, as we would say in London. As I assume is the case in Prague too, i.e. you may not smash it down and replace it with a concrete blockhouse, just because you “own” it. Which I understand. But the uninterruptedly historic nature of the centre means that nothing new can now be built. In other words, the centre of Prague feels like a film set, and will feel more and more like one as time passes. See also: Paris. July 14th, 2011 | 13 comments - (Comments are closed)
Steve Baker, the MP whom we here actually rather like, has a piece in the latest Jewish Chronicle, which makes what seems to me like a very important point. I have this point alluded to vaguely, but never spelled out. It is that the outrageous behaviour of the merchant banking fraternity in recent years is as much a product of bad bank regulations as it is of mere capitalistic greed. It being the Jewish Chronicle he’s contributing to, Baker alludes to some scales that are criticised at the beginning of the Book of Proverbs, Chapter 11 (which American readers may consider rather appropriate, what with the times we (and they) are now living in). The particular rules that Baker zeroes in on are the accounting rules that define profit:
I am not qualified to second guess Baker on this. But I do know, as a general principle, that when one observes something going wrong with the world, one should not immediately assume that yet more laws and regulations are needed to curb whatever it may be. Rather, one should ask what laws or regulations – laws or regulations already in place – are causing or at the very least greatly exacerbating the problem in question, and should accordingly be got rid of. July 12th, 2011 | 7 comments - (Comments are closed)
I came across the following in a research paper about the benefits of “clustering” of financial services and other industries:
Seems like a classic example of how some places are actually blessed by a dearth of natural resources. July 7th, 2011 | 9 comments - (Comments are closed)
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