And another thing – the argument that we can all support Cameron’s leftward lurch because it’s all an act and he doesn’t really mean it – he is lying pretty low. I might be prepared to give someone the benefit of the doubt on the grounds that they are telling the truth, but to give someone the benefit of the doubt in the hope that they are lying through their teeth?
– Wolfie
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January 5th, 2006 | 8 comments - (Comments are closed)
 I have been wandering through the fascinating nation of China of late, so I have not had much time to peruse the blogosphere – I guess this means that for a month I had a life. I was fortunate enough to spend a few days in the beautiful city of Lijiang in Yun’nan province. This mid-sized Chinese town is famed for its wonderfully restored ‘old city’, a cobbled and confusing maze of shops, traditional inns with gorgeous courtyards and a grid of small canals filled with luminous fish and gushing clean water. A beautiful place to while away a few days, but Lijiang is not really known for its nightlife. So on the evening of the 25th of December, I got trawling through some of the past articles on Samizdata. Reading through the comments section on this post, I noticed that an article I wrote early in 2005 got a mention. It was a pity I was not around a computer regularly, because a debate raged in the comments section that I would have very much liked to have been a part of. For all my appreciation of China, I am one of the few Sino sceptics. I should explain. I am not a sceptic of the aspirations of the billions of Chinese people who sense greatness in the Chinese identity. After all, I’m mentioning a deeply rich culture backed up by a vast talent pool on the mainland and in the diaspora that has the capacity to change the world radically in the future. I am, however, deeply pessimistic about China in its current nominally Communist incarnation, for reasons I have outlined in a previous post. I will not go into specifics; if you’re curious, please read my rationale here. Some interesting developments have taken place between now and then, however. These merit further analysis. One or two of the commenters in the mentioned Samizdata piece stated that they were keeping abreast of banking developments in the Middle Kingdom. In 2002, Chinese officials admitted that 25% of the loans written by the state owned banks were non-performing. Standard and Poors and a number of others said it was closer to 50%, and possibly more. Within the space of four years, the Chinese administration has revised its estimation of the rate of non-performing loans down to an average of about 12%. How can this be done so fast? I’m not really sure. We are, of course, talking about the writing down or otherwise accounting for of many hundreds of billions of dollars of bad loans. I assume that it’s due to the fact that most or all of the bad loans have been transferred to special “asset management” companies set up by the government. I suspect that the banks have been able to revise their non-performing loans (NPL) ratio down so quickly by performing a debt-to-equity swap with these holding companies. The article linked to immediately above believes the asset management companies have taken a chunk of the banks’ loans and issued them with 10 year bonds in return. → Continue reading: Thoughts on China’s future January 5th, 2006 | 75 comments - (Comments are closed)
For those of you that have enjoyed your Festive break and have not been keeping up with political happenings ‘over the pond’, there has been an eye-opening little scandal going on in Washington. A member of the Most Honourable Order of Washington Lobbyists, Jack Abramoff, has pleaded guilty to the heinous crimes of fraud, bribery and tax evasion. In a plea bargain deal, Abramoff will face nine to eleven years of penal servitude in exchange testifying against the sundry Congresscritters that may face prosecution. Clearly, Mr. Abramoff is a menace to society:
An internet gambling measure? Not surprisingly, it turns out that Mr. Abramoff was getting a large part of his money from Native American tribes who have a large stake in gambling operations in the United States outside of Las Vegus.
As you can imagine, that part of the Washington elite that has emerged from their Holiday cheer is agog with the news. Wonkette, for example, took time out from promoting her book to pass comment on the latest news, which is that Republican politicians are falling over themselves to ‘return’ money that Abramoff donated to them. Starting at the top, President Bush is returning the $6,000 that he donated to his re-election campaign. Abramoff was a generous soul; 24 figures from both political parties in Washington have announced that they are following the President’s lead. Oddly enough, a leading Democrat Senator, Harry Reid, is declining to return his $47,000 booty, saying that it is basically a Republican problem. I was bemused that there was no follow-up from the media on that point. It would seem that it is okay for Democrats to take money from a crook, but not Republicans. It must be that ‘liberal media’ that they talk about over there. → Continue reading: Mr. Abramoff went to Washington January 5th, 2006 | Comments are closed
The Swedish city of Stockholm – in which I spent an enjoyable short stay last year – has introduced congestion charges, much like those which now operate in central London. The supposed aim (supposed being the key word) is to reduce car use and get people to use public transport. Public transport is said to be very good in Sweden and I found it to be so, though it comes with a heavy tax bill. The congestion charge issue is an interesting one because on one level, free marketeers can see a lot of merit in the idea of treating use of a road just like any other commodity. However, in today’s world, road tolls tend to be more of a revenue-raising device than part of a free market approach to transport. Roads are not built with the consent of other property owners, but mostly built at the behest of public authorities using compulsory purchase powers (what is called eminent domain in the United States). So the idea of road pricing, nice though it may sound in some sort of capitalist utopia, is in reality bound to operate in a monopolistic environment. And as the British police have found, the C-Charge has brought certain unintended consequences. Not a great surprise. January 4th, 2006 | 11 comments - (Comments are closed)
The Tories continue to reinforce my view that they are just Labour-lite by saying they ‘believe’ in the socialist National Health Service. So presumably David Cameron will soon want to extend this wonderful thing that he ‘believes in’ to other areas of the economy. If command economics are the best way to provide something as important as healthcare, why is that not also the best way to build cars, run banks, make computers etc.? Surely if the Tory party believes socialism works, why are they not planning to introduce it more widely? Is this what comes next? They talk in terms of how they can be trusted to ‘run’ the economy, as if the economy was something that requires politicians to function. And what is the ‘legacy of Thatcher’ if not the move away from a more command oriented economy? Well Cameron says he is breaking with that too. So, if the Tories are a party which can appoint Michael ‘a touch of the night’ Howard as leader, probably the only man in British politics today even more authoritarian than David Blunklett, then clearly voting Tory to protect civil liberties from the predations of Blairism is utterly pointless (sort of like suicide for fear of death)… …and now we see they are also a party which followed with a new leader who is promising to adopt Blairite economic policies, it does not really matter a whole lot which of those two parties actually end up in 10 Downing Street, does it? Why vote for Tory Blairism when you can vote for the real thing, Tony Blairism? January 4th, 2006 | 84 comments - (Comments are closed)
Veisalgia– the medical term for the common or garden hangover. I suspect that there has been a slight epidemic of veisalgia in the ranks of Samizdata’s contributors and editors lately. A useful word to know when filling out sick leave application forms for work. January 4th, 2006 | 18 comments - (Comments are closed)
noun. Software or websites that has options checked default-yes when you sign up that, if you are not paying close attention, will do things you have ‘consented’ to that you probably would rather not be done (for example, giving them permission to give your e-mail address to spammers). As landmineware relies on the fact that in the real world, people do not watch their every step and so do not read lengthy terms and conditions, privacy statements and disclaimers. They achieve their objective by preying on people’s unwary but typical behaviour. (also landmine-ware) (Coined by Perry de Havilland) January 3rd, 2006 | Comments are closed
There is an e-mail program called Goowy which is one of a species of software I call ‘landmine-ware’, which is to say during the sign up process, on one of those bits no one actually reads, there is a yes-by-default opt-in box that allows the software to do something very few people would agree to if they actually noticed what they were being asked to agree to. A friend of mine just signed up for Goowy and as a result Goowy just imported her entire contacts list from Gmail and spammed them all (including me) with invitations to sign up for Goowy. Now as this was technically permitted by the default-yes selected check box, there is nothing clearly actionable about this. However as no one would usually agree to their entire email address book being spammed by a third party, it would be fair to say Goowy counts on people just not realising what they are ‘consenting’ to and thus relying on people’s natural tendency to not carefully watch every step they take (hence my description of Goowy as ‘landmineware’) Now just to spare all the obsessive libertarians reading this from getting their knickers in a contractarian twist, just because something may not be immoral theft (i.e. Goowy did not ‘steal’ permission to spam in your name) it does not mean it should be socially respectable to trick people into doing something either. Yes, ideally we should all read every line of the disclaimer on every single thing we sign up for on the internet. Yet other than a few obsessives, no one actually does that in the real world as there is a general expectation that nowadays companies understand how much spammers are hated and what bad PR can be generated by acting like a spammer. Sadly Goovy suggests that this expectation is not quite as dependable as it should be. At the very least, tricking people into in effect becoming spammers gets people like me writing nasty things about any company who would do that. In short, any company who resorts to abusing what is typical customer behaviour should not be trusted. Even if tomorrow Goowy announced it was going to make that option default-no rather than default-yes (i.e. permission to spam your entire address book of contacts), I would not allow them to be anywhere near my personal email and I suggest you do not either. January 3rd, 2006 | 35 comments - (Comments are closed)
Now that David Cameron has revealed to all but the most blinkered that he is just another social democrat who shares 99% of Tony Blair’s beliefs, I look forward to seeing how this will be spun by his apologists. No doubt they will still say Cameron’s utterances are just a cunning plan to get the Tories into office by stealing Labour’s best ideas but really he will rescue us from encroaching regulatory statism and socialist monstrosities like the dismal National Health Service. Oh sure, and how will that work, exactly? If your answer to my remarks is still “but we need to get them into office to replace the dreadful Blair”, tell me why that would make any difference even if it was true? What is the point in replacing Blair with someone who is so similar ideologically? Is trivial window dressing like removing Tory MEP’s from the preposterous EPP-ED grouping really enough to buy your vote when he is falling over himself to pledge his loyalty to regulatory interventionist government and expanding the role of the state? If you want to oppose Blair via The System, for goodness sake stop thinking about the Tory party. If you cannot kick your addiction to democratic empowerment fantasies, at least vote UKIP or even LibDem (who at least are less authoritarian on alleged security issues), but please do not reward the Tory party for becoming NuLabour with a Henley accent if you ever want to see the end of Blair-ism and its poison legacy. January 3rd, 2006 | 149 comments - (Comments are closed)
Last century over 170 million people were murdered by their own governments, and your government doesn’t want you to have a gun. Doesn’t that bother you just a little? January 3rd, 2006 | 26 comments - (Comments are closed)
Some time ago I referred to statistics on reported crimes in the UK, which prompted a rather heated discussion (that’s putting it mildly, ed) about the value of such numbers, given the obvious difficulties in knowing whether reporting of crimes gives an accurate picture of just how bad the situation really is. The British Crime Survey (BCS) which takes the public’s impressions of the impact of crime through interviews with thousands of people, can sometimes give a quite different picture. This story shows that reports of armed violence are on the rise, and also contains data showing that experiences of crime have also gone up. A rather sobering set of numbers with which to start the New Year. January 2nd, 2006 | 27 comments - (Comments are closed)
Putin is sending shivers through the world with his attempts to strong-arm the Ukraine back into the Kremlin’s zone of influence and no doubt more and more column inches are going to be directed at this emerging crisis. Yet it seems to me pretty obvious that that Russia, circa 2006, is almost hilariously weak to be throwing its weight around. The Russian economy is pathetic for a would-be imperial seat of power, running about half the size of India based on purchasing power. Its GDP per capita is about the same as such mighty global players as South Africa, Mexico and Trinidad. The antics of its kleptocratic and economically illiterate former KGB leadership makes the place less attractive to investors by the day. Frankly you would have to be crazy to put your money in Moscow. Even its military has repeatedly demonstrated that it is inept and corrupt in equal measure. All this talk of Russia’s importance is vastly over-stated. In short, Russia needs to be treated with respect, but only the sort of respect you give a drunk with a knife as he staggers down the street. The price of gas sold to the Ukraine is currently below market levels but the cackhanded way Russia has handled this makes it pretty obvious that markets are the last thing on Putin’s mind. But perhaps he is to be applauded for massively strengthening the hand of pro-nuclear power advocates with his preposterous posturing. Even the turgid political class of western and eastern Europe can now have few illusions that it makes sense to rely on an unstable place with delusions of grandeur for their energy supplies. Methinks it might be time for those with some spare dosh to invest some of it in nuclear energy stocks. January 2nd, 2006 | 21 comments - (Comments are closed)
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