At the bottom of this, you can read this:
This is a parody and in no way expresses any political ideology, nor does it intend to defame the BBC.
But don’t let that put you off. My thanks to this guy.
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May 13th, 2009 | 2 comments - (Comments are closed)
 There is no doubt that – apart from some smart writers like Liam Halligan – not many people in the financial journalist profession saw the current crisis coming or predicted its full extent. Clive Davis, over at his blog, makes that point by linking to an article that goes into what is rather mysteriously called the “shadow banking” sector: ie, any institution that gets involved in trading in or holding credit, such as hedge fund. I wrote about misconceptions surrounding this issue the other day. So why were financial journalists or many economists unaware of the gathering storms? Well, assuming that they were oblivious, my explanations are as follows. I’d be interested in the comments. Here goes: First, over-specialisation in the economics profession. One of the great benefits to me in discovering those Austrian economists such as Ludwig von Mises and writers like Henry Hazlitt all those years ago as a callow youth was that it reintroduced me to the days when “political economy”, as it was known in the 19th Century, was not hung up on mathematical models or big, wooly macro-economic systems, but addressed the incentives, laws, and actions of man. I had the benefit of getting a good grounding in microeconomics, in understanding an economy as a dynamic process that changes through time, not a set of artificial “games” with nonsense such as models of “perfect competition”. Second, I think that for many journalists who did learn economics, the sort of ideas that have given me and other classical liberals/libertarians some insight into the gathering storms are simply not on their intellectual radar, or if they are, they are led to believe that people with surnames such as Hayek, or von Mises, or Friedman, are somehow eccentric, even malevolent creatures. Most of them have either read their JK Galbraiths, or their Krugmans, and get their views from the still-powerful tradition of Keynesian economics. The idea that fiat, state-monopoly money and Big Government – the two are related issues – lie at the core of the issue just does not apply to a group of folk who generally tilt left in their politics (although this is far less the case than in other parts of journalism, in my experience). Also, as a result of overspecialisation, a journalist who writes about, say, the government bond market may not always join the dots when it comes to information coming out in a different area of the economy. There is also the fact that as sectoral journalists covering their beats such as energy, retail, telecoms, etc, get involved in the day-to-day job of covering these things, that the broader trends get obscured because of the sheer volume of stuff that journalists deal with. Given how financial journalism has developed as a profession in the last two decades – I have some insight into this via my day job – I am not too sure how to deal with this. Part of the trouble may even be what I might call the “showbiz” trend in financial journalism: reporters at channels such as CNBC often talk about the market in a sort of sports-coverage way: who’s up, who’s down, etc. There are reporters – the FT’s Gillian Tett springs to mind – who have been very good at trying to keep on top of how the credit markets have evolved and some of the risks associated with that. And there are commentators and investors such as Jim Rogers, for instance, who have been pretty astute at seeing the disaster and warning about it. But a lot of people, as Clive Davis says, have not been aware of the magnitude of what has hit us. Maybe, however, Mr Davis has to remember the flip-side of this coin: we may now be blind to the chances of a pretty rapid recovery, at least in some parts of the world. April 23rd, 2009 | 14 comments - (Comments are closed)
In its ironically titled ‘Lexington’ section the Economist magazine attacks those who point at the influence of collectivist ideologies on American government policy. Rather than refuting the evidence and argument the critics of government policy produce, the Economist (in the best education system and mainstream media tradition) just ignores evidence and argument, and denounces those who point to Marxist and Fascist origins of much modern “Progressive” government policy. One example of the Economist approach really caught my eye: For years Glenn Beck has denounced wild spending Republicans (especially President Bush) and since moving to Fox News he has continued to do this. He has also (with the help of many people who have written scholarly books on these matters) continued to try and explain the influence of collectivist philosophies on American politics over the last century – from Teddy Roosevelt to Barack Obama. The Economist collapses all of this into – Glenn-Beck-claims-Obama-leading-the-United-States-to-Fascism. If ‘Lexington’ was attacking me this would make some sort of sense, as I have often pointed out the Marxist background of Barack Obama (and Marxists sometimes evolve into Fascists – as this involves no rejection of their basic collectivism). However, Glenn Beck has clearly stated (many times) that he does not believe that that Barack Obama is a Communist or a Fascist – what Beck is trying to do is to show how collectivist philosophies have increasingly influenced American government policies over time, often without the leading politicians being fully aware of the origins and nature of the principles they try and put into practice. Anyone who has seen the show, as opposed to tiny bits of the show taken out of context, would know this. However, ‘Lexington’ would rather write about something without bothering to watch it – getting his “information” from the far left smear site “mediamatters” instead. And the mainstream media wonder why libertarians and conservatives despise them. April 20th, 2009 | 36 comments - (Comments are closed)
Why we should shut these bastards down now and add TV Licensing to the unemployment figures. Raze White City to the ground and cast salt upon the earth… Hat tip: Biased BBC April 19th, 2009 | 42 comments - (Comments are closed)
You probably missed it, because how the hell can anyone keep up with this stuff? But, I just happened to chance upon a couple of comments (numbers 269 and 276) on this at Guido’s, both of which had, copied and pasted into them, this:
Which they will, because it did. In short, matters are developing exactly as I told you they would in this posting. Brown’s ludicrous claim not to believe in dirty tricks has turned this from a few dogs chasing a small smear of dirt (The Emails and who knew what about them and whether anyone had tried to spread the particular smears in them) into a thousand dogs swimming happily in a quarter of a century of liquified shit, and now, too late, Downing Street realises it. But, like I say, it’s too late. These people are smart enough to realise the terminal mess they are now in. Good. Nobody is smart enough to extricate them from it. Good again. April 16th, 2009 | 8 comments - (Comments are closed)
This ridiculous Prime Minister of ours can’t now string two sentences together without talking drivel. If sentence one is true, then he is resigning, as Guido’s commenters are already queueing up to point out. But sentence two says he isn’t. Not yet, anyway. The BBC gets a lot of flak from right-wing bloggers, but the BBC is now objectively anti-Brown. Just by solemnly reporting everything that this ghastly and now absurd man says, with or without any further comment, they are destroying him. Brown’s problem, to spell it out, is that he created the atmosphere within which The Emails were exchanged, and we all know it. He has been a dirty trickster all his adult life. Yet, again and again, he is now taking every opportunity he gets to deny this universally known truth. Not only he is a liar, which in politics is very forgiveable. He is an obvious liar. The BBC’s caption under the video of Brown’s latest bout of self-strangulation says this:
LOL. In fact that is my LOL of the month so far. You probably read all this first everywhere else, the exact same quotes and the exact same complaints, but I don’t care. This is a chorus now. Maybe Instapundit, who does read Samizdata and link to it from time to time, will finally work out what’s happening over here (a libertarian blogger is destroying a Prime Minister) and copy out a chunk of something relevant and comprehensible. Here would be an excellent place to look. See also: this. April 16th, 2009 | 8 comments - (Comments are closed)
Alice Miles in the Times:
Which makes quite a change from: See what I mean about the dead tree dog pack? These people just are not scared of Gordon Brown any more, or of his dogs. They are now more scared of him getting booted out before they have each stuck their knives in. I can’t see Brown lasting into next year now, I really can’t. I give him a month at the most. UPDATE: Here‘s Guido. Summary: Now they tell us. Watch the film clip and note that the Cameron machine gets mentioned, not at all grovellingly. April 15th, 2009 | 7 comments - (Comments are closed)
This, as the robot bomb in Dark Star said to the astronaut who was trying to persuade him not to explode, is fun. I think that things are now developing on the Gordon Brown front very fast. As I have already commented today (I’ve recycled my comments earlier today here, and have added relevant links) on an earlier posting, I think that one of the key moments in this was when this got said, two days ago now:
If Downing Street had left it at “nobody in Downing Street knew of the e-mails”, all might have been well. I say “well”, for these things are relative. Well as in Brown might have been able to stagger on for another year. But, I think fatally, they continued to the effect that it is Mr Brown’s view that there was “no place in politics for the dissemination or publication of material of this kind”. This is a flat lie, and we all know it to be a lie. The spokesman knows it. Brown knows it. We all know it. Worse, from the purely tactical point of view, this lie turns the story from one of merely a few particular and, approximately speaking, deniable emails, into one where anything nasty presided over by Gordon Brown, and the longer ago the better, becomes relevant, because it proves that the Prime Minister not only does now believe in dirty tricks, but always has done. Suddenly, every newspaper hack in Britain knows what to ask, of anyone he can find with anything remotely like an answer. You were at school with Brown, were you? What was he like? Ran the University paper with him, did you? So, how did that work? Tell me about Scotland back in the eighties, the nineties, the noughts. Hm, sounds nasty. What’s that you say? Wales as well, well well. What exactly did he say about Blair? How exactly was Blair toppled? … The whole miserable litany of nastiness going back about three decades suddenly roars back into the centre of British politics, right now. The Prime Minister, with his fatuously excessive denial, has made this happen. (As always with these things, it is not the thing itself that does the fatal damage, it is the denials. See the prediction to that effect in this, although I had no idea then how quickly the fatal denial would come.) For all the surreal daftness of the Daily Telegraph printing Guido stories after he’s blogged them, but mentioning him only to call his a “Tory blog”, Janet Daley does have a point when she says that this story only really got seriously going when the clunky old dead tree media got around to printing it. But now, printing it they are. The dog pack has now assembled and is baying for blood. Even Brown’s demise will not quieten them, for as soon as he is gone, which I now think could happen very soon, the next cry will be: general election, general election, general election. Not only might the country soon be slightly less disastrously governed, it might be less disastrously governed before this week is finished. Because if a general election campaign does start in a week’s time, there is at least the faint hope that the politicians will – and call me a mad dreamer but I just cannot help saying this – stop doing things. Well, maybe. We shall see. What I do definitely know is that when The Sun starts saying that Brown must go, that must count for something. The story is adorned with a picture of one of the mere Brown creatures (an MP and Minister called Watson), but pretty soon it is clear who is the main target:
Men in white coats? How Guido, who has been blogging for month after month about the Prime Mentalist, must be loving that. The Prime Minister is not just disastrous. He is mad. Every Labour politician in the country must now be in despair. Will this despair finally cause them to make the decision they should have made about Brown (“Oi! Brown! No-o-o-o-o!”) decades ago? Maybe, maybe. I really think that this time, they might. If you doubt this, do what these people are now doing. Consider the alternative. UPDATE (see the update here): April 14th, 2009 | 25 comments - (Comments are closed)
Douglas Carswell, who is still merrily blogging away despite the happy intrusion of fatherhood, wonders whether the days of the spin doctor might be starting to fade. He says the internet is seriously starting to cut into the middleman of the spin doctor. I am not so sure about that – presumably, spinners will use the internet to try and prolong their role. But there is no doubt that spin doctors, rather like old fashioned advertisers, are seeing their roles changed, and in often uncomfortable ways, by the Internet. Look at how the traditional “gate keepers” of the media castle have been sidelined by outlets such as YouTube, for instance. Talking of advertising, I just love the series, Mad Men. April 6th, 2009 | 4 comments - (Comments are closed)
The BBC does not even pretend to be impartial these days. Iain Dale, the blogger for those junkies of Westminster politics, notes that for the second week running, the Andrew Marr Sunday politics show did not have a single guest from the opposition Conservative or Liberal Democrat parties. There may be a suggestion that the broadcaster is going along with the government’s refusal to put on any ministers if their opposite numbers appear on the show. I happen to think this is, unwittingly of the BBC perhaps, a good thing. By making the bias of that channel so blatant, it advances the BBC closer to the guillotine. At least when Fox News puts “fair and balanced” on its strapline, we know it is having a bit of a snigger. March 16th, 2009 | 20 comments - (Comments are closed)
Here is a website that is obviously produced by people very, very angry about what they see as the one-sided coverage of Mr Obama in his recent victorious campaign. You do not have to buy into conspiracy theories to be alarmed at the fawning press coverage that Mr Obama received during the campaign. As for the treatment of the McCain/Palin ticket, while I am certainly no great fan of either, the hysteria over Mrs Palin’s personal life or supposed wing-nuttery over religion seemed totally out of proportion. In the end, we get the media we do because the underlying philosophical assumptions of the public at large are reflected by it and at the same time, those assumptions are held by the media outlets themselves. It pains me to say it but in many respects, the US is now closer to the social-democratic, corporatist model of Europe than many in the US will want to admit. There will, I hope, be a backlash, but whether that backlash is a particularly libertarian one is not something I am very confident about at this point. Thanks to fellow contributor Paul Marks to alerting me to this website. February 24th, 2009 | 74 comments - (Comments are closed)
…and so they face the final curtain:
Their friends will say it clear, they’ll state their case of which they’re certain:
But there were times, I’m sure you knew, when they’d print off something not quite true. But through it all, when there was doubt, they’d make it up and churn it out. The record shows, the public chose….
….to do it our way. February 3rd, 2009 | 24 comments - (Comments are closed)
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