Economist Jokes...

Today's Handelsblatt had, for the first time in human memory, a couple of jokes about economists that I thought I'd share...


Five arguements for studying economics:

1) when you're unemployed, you know why

2) You can talk about money without actually having any

3) when you're out drinking, you can justify continuing to drink as long as possible in order to find out the marginal utility of the last drink

4) You earn your money telling other people why they don't have any

5) Economists are dangerous and deadly: you cannot observe their "hidden hand"


Not so bad.

Aphorisms

An economist is someone who doesn't have an inkling of what he is talking about, yet manages to convince those listening to him that they are too dumb to understand him.

Economics is the most painful way of stating the obvious.

All models are wrong, but some are useful.


And as an aside: I've been on the other side of the table interviewing people for jobs, and you'd be really surprised what sort of people applying for jobs with "modelling experience".

If ANY of them had had even the tiniest qualification in econometrics, we'd have hired them in a moment. But their greatest qualities... sorry, won't go there.

And here is the link to the classic economist jokes page.

And here's another classic: How many economists does it take to change a light bulb? None: if it needed changing, the market would have done so.

A Comic Farce

Well, the forecast round is over. Damn that was a lot of numbers.

I went over to MEMRI while compiling something in the background and found this. Apparently Tom & Jerry are Agents of International Zionism, having been invented by that nefarious Jew, Walt Disney.

Walt Disney was Jewish?

This is indicative of what we are dealing with in the Middle East, or at least Iran.

Here you've got an Iranian professor, a member of the film council of the Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting, cultural advisor to the Iranian Education Ministry, Professor Hasan Bolkhari.

Who says that Tom and Jerry is designed to improve the image of Jews.

According to him, the Germans called the Jews "dirty mice". Tom's a mouse, so... I won't bore you with the rest: it is random noise at best.


No German uses the term "dirty mice" (dreckige Mäuse); they'd use the term "dreckige Ratten", or dirty rats. If anything, Germans use the word "Mäuse" to refer to money ("Hast Du die Mäuse", Do you have the cash?) or as a term of endearment ("Mäuschen", little mouse).


And these people are demanding to be respected?

Finding out that Disney had NOTHING to do Tom & Jerry, that Disney was a Congregationalist, and a rather devout one at that, and that indeed he became rather anti-semitic towards the end of his life (had to do with becoming ardently anti-communist), this all took me, what, 90 second or so? Googled on "walt disney religion" and on "tom & jerry copyright".

Having the internet means that when you're dealing with conspiracy freaks, it sort of is like shooting fish in a barrel. But this guy is a professor, a film professional, and fundamentally incompetent. Let me repeat: it took me no more than 90 seconds to find out that what he is saying is so bogus that it isn't even funny.

It's pathetic. Like I said: these people are demanding to be respected?

For what?







Oh, and I think Turner Entertainment now owns the rights to Tom & Jerry, although this isn't so clear. In any case, it's not Disney: Tom & Jerry were done by Hanna & Barbera for a while, but MGM started them up as theatrical cartoons. This site gives a link to a history of the cartoon, which is your basic slapstick. Barbera of Hanna & Barbera pretty much hated Disney: they drove a studio he was working for at the time basically out of business. Tom & Jerry received no less than 7 Academy Awards over 18 years during the Hanna & Barbera time period.


Oh, and yes, the first Tom & Jerry cartoon was made in 1939.  Before the Holocaust.

Short intermezzio...

Forecasting is almost done, but I thought I'd touch on two things.


First of all, the ports nonsense. This is an excellent example of sheer idiocy and ignorance of the press and of stupid politicians.

1) The ports are already run by foreigners: if this was a national security issue, then why hasn't it been adressed over, say, the last decade or so? I can give you the answer: because it doesn't matter. It doesn't matter who handles the day-by-day: what matters for national security is, duh, security of the port. Which is done by the US government. End of story: there is no story here, merely yet another attempt to drum up a tempest in a teapot.

2) Thanks to these fools, including the press, we've come close to insulting the folks who want to do business with us. Not a good idea, and it certainly gives rise to the notion that there is some institutionalized racism in certain circles in the US - Hi, Hillary - against them thar Ay-rabs.  Idiots. Idiots. Idiots.

3) Varifranks has it right: this undermines US logistics efforts.

For those who have never been in the military and have a disdain for it, this is a simple truth: professional soldiers do not study tactics and strategy, they study logistics. The US has won its wars because it has mastered the science of logistics, and other nations lose wars because they disdain it (Hi, Germany, Italy and Japan).


Second, Samuel Brittan has a column in the FT today (unfortunately behind the $ barrier...) that makes me just want to scream havoc and start swinging the axe.

Basically, he argues that having little or no growth is just peachy-keen and dandy-do because GDP doesn't really measure anything and there might be people out there who are just thrilled with working (and earning) less so that they have more leisure time.

Take it to the logical end, Sam! Look at all those folks out there who have lots and lots of leisure time and don't worry about GDP at all: the unemployed.

Jeez. What Brittan tries but ultimately fails to argue is that GDP doesn't take into account quality of life.


Duh. If I had a cent for each time this old canard is drug up, I'd be able to buy myself lunch.

Of COURSE GDP doesn't measure quality of life: it's NOT supposed to do that at all. All that GDP measures is an economy's ability to add value over time to the economic process. GDP is nothing more than that: fundamental GDP growth rates are a function of two and only two things: productivity and depreciation on capital.

Huh?

Adding value in the economic process is nothing more than a simple formula: you take goods and transform them into something else, using a combination of human and financial capital to do so. Human capital doesn't get used up, but increases over time (unless you're like some ex-colleagues of mine), while financial capital wants to be paid.

What Brittan appears to be arguing is that low rates of GDP growth are just fine as long as people make the choice to work less.

But that's not what's happening in the real world: European productivity growth is terrible, either way you measure it (per worker or per hour). There are exceptions, but generally speaking it's pretty abysmal.

And that is why European growth rates are low: they are not being as productive as workers elsewhere. It's an uncomfortable fact, but one that cannot be dismissed.

Brittan appears to be more than willing here to stick his head into the sand and ignore one of the key facts of modern day industrial capitalism: your competitors are getting better at making things. Either you adjust to that fact or you stick your head into the sand and talk about "leisure preferences" and how terrible GDP is because it doesn't take into account the feel-good factor.

Bullshit: GDP, as the value added in the economy, is basic to being able to measure how wealth, which is created in the economy, can be distributed. People can't make the decision to work less and have more leisure when the value added isn't there: this is symptomatic of ignoring the fundamental problem, which is fundamentally weak productivity.

And I don't have a solution (actually, I do, but that's another story entirely): but by choosing to ignore the problem, blaming it on externaltities, and hoping that weak growth rates is a function of people choosing to work less (because they have higher hourly productivity, meaning they can choose to work less and maintain their income, as opposed to working the same amount and earning more money), rather than indicative of much deeper, fundamental problems.

Sheesh. I wonder sometimes if historians will look back at our age and wonder how so many people could be so dumb. Sort of like a modern-day historian looking back at the actions that led up to WW2 and wondering how people could be so dumb and ignore the gathering storm.

Remember, history when it repeats isn't tragedy, it's farce.

In media res...

Sorry, middle of a forecasting round. I do so wish that statistical offices world-wide would just plain get their sh*t together and learn, finally, that they really, really, really need to simply do a couple of quality control checks. This is causing me, right now, no end of aggravation: a number of data updates have been, bluntly, less than worthless. Hard to forecast when the data is bent. It's being addressed, but it shouldn't really be happening in the first place. And no, I am NOT going to name names and show the data: got to get a forecast out.


For everyone involved: statistical quality control is actually very, very simple.

You need to have two databases: the one you've just updated and the archive copy without the update. Let's call the update T and the archive base T1.

Do a standard deviation on the absolute value of the Y/Y percentage change of the updated time series and store it as SDT, the same with the archive and call it SDT1. Do NOT seasonally adjust.

And this is the key: if SDT1-SDT > 0,01*SDT, then you have a change in the database that needs to be reviewed. The value 0,01 is arbitrary, but it's a darn good starting point, empirically speaking. This can be fine-tuned if you find you have too many false positives, but it should capture virtually all true negatives. What it is saying is that any new data that causes more than a 1% change in the standard deviation of the absolute values of the year/year nonseasonally adjusted data is something that needs to be reviewed. This has been empirically tested by yours truly on more than 100,000 time series, mostly industrial statistics, which have a significant amount of white noise ( i.e. changes month-to-month that have no underlying trend), from more than 20 countries.

It works. We use it here where I work to check no fewer than 1,000,000 time series and it is, for our poor data people, a godsend, since our database processing tools run the checks automagically and then plot them on the screen for review: it gets everything. Did the statistical office revise data from 10 years ago? It catches it. Did they change the data for the last 3 months? It catches it. Did they change the base year and forget to tell us? It catches it. Did they punch in a rate of change instead of a level? It catches it. Did they punch in a 0 instead of the proper value? It catches it. Did they make a mistake? It catches it. It has given us a reputation with several data suppliers of being extraordinarily on the ball: their own quality control didn't catch the errors.

What you capture with this are two things: first of all, a data point that is so completely out of the ordinary that it is more likely to be an error than a real datum; second, revisions that the statistical offices usually neglect to mention, or more likely, have mentioned, but it was buried somewhere so abstruse as to qualify for a mention in Hitchhikers' Guide To The Galaxy.

What you test for in the above is not merely how meaningful the new data point(s) are. but also of there is a significant change in the seasonal pattern. One data point does not a pattern make (except for Democrats clutching desperately at straws or German politicians trying to whitewash how badly they have mauled their economy), but you'd be surprised how often statistical offices make mistakes.

Unless, of course, you do industrial forecasting and see it every day. :-(

But that is why posting is otherwise parsimonious: but the forecast will be done shortly...

How much corruption can the Third World afford?

We all know how the NGOs pull at our heartstrings with pictures of starving children and destitute families. It's part of their massive guilt trip marketing: give us money and we'll alleviate misery.

We also know how much NGOs consume of their financing in self-perpetuation and luxuries for those that run them.

Oh? We don't?

That's right, we really don't. NGOs are notorious about not disclosing their funding. We really don't know how much they are actually doing with the money and how much money goes to fund things that have nothing to do with what problems they claim to be addressing. There is, to put it mildly, a major accountability problem with NGOs.

But that's not really the major point I want to make here.

The good folks over at The Brussels Journal have an excellent post up about the corruption problem that the world is facing: foreign aid is fueling the already endemnic corruption in many parts of the Third World, and we're rapidly reaching the point where corruption is winning the upper hand.

In other words, we're reaching the point where helping is hurting, because the need becomes institutionalized and therefore will never be eliminated.

In other words, the inmates are now in charge of the asylum and have discovered that you can induce psychoses with the mood-altering drugs used to combat them in different doses.


That's right: what has happened here is that in the name of doing good, the doors have been opened for corruption beyonds the dreams of mere local government, beyond the dreams of perhaps anyone but the most rapacious of despots.

The writeoff of Third World debt really, really bad for at least three reasons.

1) It makes a mockery of the concept of sovereign debt. International lenders take a look at country risks and place an interest rate increase on countries that are poor candidates for being able to service or repay their debts. They don't stop lending to poor risks: they simply charge them more. They have to in order to protect their investments, anything else would be incredibly negligent financial management. By eliminating sovereign debt risk, you remove any and all incentives for Third World countries to improve their risk standing by doing sensible things like getting their government finances under control; having the kind of economic policies that reduce the need to devalue their currencies constantly (see Brazil and Argentina); improving efficiency within the local economy so as to gain higher levels of productivity and return on investment and last but not least, investing in a sensible manner to maximize the utility of that scarce resource called capital. By eliminating sovereign debt risks, you open the door to wasteful prestige investment projects that actually don't help anyone but the few actually invovled in the project.

2) You are rewarding, in a big, big, hugely big, way institutionalized corruption. One of the major problems facing the Third World is not that they are so heavily indebted, but rather that their rulers pissed all that money away on projects that have turned out to be completely useless. This has been to a significant degree the result of corruption, either that of the East/West (we'll give you money to buy a power plant, but you gotta buy it from one of our companies, who will be charging you significantly more than what you would have paid for it if it had been publicly tendered) or local (building a steel plant in the middle of nowhere in order to reward cronies and political supporters). Given that many Third World countries rely heavily on aid, aid is a permanent player in government finances (check government budgets in the Third World to see what I mean) and the opportunities for abuse are manifold and institutionalized.

3) It ruins the playing field. While I am highly critical of NGOs - I think that they may well be the major reason for failed states and the increasing irrelavance of international law, but that's another post entirely - their fundamental goal, of helping the needy and alleviating distress, is laudible. Once you start writing off debt without eliminating corruption, you are rewarding corruption and telling everyone involved that the important thing isn't helping people, it's making sure that you get your slice of the pie. That is what is happening right now: countries are being granted debt relief on the premise that they at least put up the appearance of elininating corruption, yet these countries are in such dire straits as the result of corruption that the aid keeps on flowing despite the corruption, and the debt relief is granted despite the corruption. What this means is that Third World despots can maximize their income by agreeing to fight corruption, increase the corruption and ensure that your economy is in such a shambles that you'll be able to nonetheless pull in the cash without actually having to do anything about it.

Bono had an interview in Der Spiegel a couple of weeks ago that in many ways is heart-rending: he knows the endemnic corruption, he knows that these governments know that they can skim and scam, and he doesn't have any answer except to hope that it will get better.

The real challenge in fighting corruption is that corruption is its own best friend.

I'd like to make a modest proposition: that the aid that the West pays right now is more than adequate to improve the infrastructure of the Third World, i.e. to provide clean water and adequate hygiene and health care, as well as to provide the means for individuals to escape crushing poverty via microfinancing.

Instead, western aid is increasing the problem, making things so much worse that the West is rapidly heading to the point where it will be condemned to finance corruption on a scale we have never contemplated in order to prevent mass starvation and crushing poverty.

We already have a situation where a mixture of corrupt government, corrupt NGOs and corrupt supranationals (UN, WHO, etc) extracts monies from the industrialized west as more or less a form of institutionalized extortion, doing only the minimum necessary to prevent mass death and the maximum possible to ensure that the situation doesn't change.

The answer to my question, then, is simple: the Third World cannot afford any corruption. Every penny that goes to Switzerland in private numbered bank accounts; every penny that goes to pay for high NGO salaries and luxuries; every penny that disappear along the way to cover "administrative costs", all end up doing just one thing: continuing the problem, not solving it.

Corruption isn't some sort of petty problem: corruption kills. Corruption, when it becomes endemnic, destroys societies and renders economies.


What is the saying? That if you aren't part of the solution, you are part of the problem?

It's going to get worse before it gets better. A lot worse.

We can only hope, like Bono, that it will get better.

A further message to the clueless...

Well, how many messages are we supposed to get before we finally understand what is going on?

MEMRI, the Middle East Media Research Institute, is an excellent source of information. They simply document media articles in the Arab/Middle Eastern press, radio and TV.

This translation of an article is both chilling and illuminating.

Here's the key paragraph:

"The spiritual leaders of the ultra-conservatives [in Iran] have accepted the use of nuclear weapons as lawful in the eyes of the shari'a. Mohsen Gharavian, a disciple of [Ayatollah] Mesbah Yazdi [who is Iranian President Ahmadinejad's spiritual mentor], has spoken for the first time of using nuclear weapons as a counter-measure. He stated that 'in terms of the shari'a, it all depends on the goal.'

The key point here is that it all depends on the goal. While he speaks of counter-measures - but does not define them - this is the first justification of nuclear weapon usage by Iranian clergy: the chap in question is a disciple of the Ayatollah Zaydi, and we're not dealing with a loose cannon, here, but rather part of the conservative establishment.

Further, his words are NOT being commented upon by the mainstream religious leadership. This doesn't necessarily mean that they agree with him, but it is important: they have also NOT jumped up and down on him, as they would have if he dared to challenge the orthodoxy.


This means that they are seeking justification for using nuclear weapons in their religion.


Great. At what point do government wake up? At what point does preventing a war come before crass commercial interests (Germans need not answer, we know that answer already)?

We're sliding on a slippery slope and no one is even listening to the loons to see what they are planning.

And the difference is?

Great. I open up this morning's Financial Times.

This is the paper that refuses to print the cartoons from Denmark because it might offend muslim sensibilities.


So what do I see?

Front page, a full 1/3rd of the page above the gutter, best possible positioning: hey, everyone, new pictures from Abu Ghraib! Lookie lookie lookie!


Like this doesn't offend muslim sensibilties?

So, FT and all you other jive-ass reporters and editors: What's the difference?

All you do is add oil to the flames. You are complete and total idiots.

And you can't even get your stories straight.


What little respect I had for journalists was just pissed away.

So, what's the difference?

Of course, it's something the Americans did. It's been sliced and diced and dissected what went on there. But nooooooooo, let's not put Abu Ghraib behind us.

Let's tear off the scab and pour salt into the wound and call up all of our friends to come on over.



The journalistic excuse of not wanting to upset sensible muslims for not showing the cartoons has just been blown away.

Idiots is much too much a nice word for this.

We're being played with...

So, let's correlate a couple of news items and make sense of them.


First of all, we've got European politicians already figuring out how much appeasement they think is necessary in order to get back on the good side of "Islam".

The Islamists involved are happy for the governments to take most of the blame. But not all of it: after all, they're muslims and therefore professional victims.


Second of all, they're doing this because of violently demonstrating muslims on the streets of key European countries.


Third of all, the Dutch police arrest at least two people who are apparently from Hamas who were instigating the riots.



Do you see a picture developing here? See the rough shape while the piece of photographic paper soaks in the developer? The contours of the picture are starting to show up...

When I was in Jordan in 1977, I learned one or two things that stuck with me. First of all, in terms of native intelligence there are smart people everywhere. There are also dumb people everywhere. But never, ever, assume that if you have an education that you're necessarily smarter than someone from the Third World: assume this and at some point sooner or later you will get you ass handed to you on a platter. Second, asymmetric information means that the average educated Jordanian will know vastly more about the US and the West than the average educated American or European will know about Jordan or whatever Third-World country we're talking about.

This is what we are facing here: the first concentrated attempt at intimidation using violence on the streets of Europe. The violence is not spontaneous, but rather carefully calculated and laid out.

The fact that we in the West really don't take politics seriously, dead serious as the Iranians and the Syrians do, is being used against us. We're being played with: the Iranians and the Syrians are playing with their new political tools.

These tools?

Unemployed muslim youths, manipulated and radicalized. Cannon fodder, ready to riot at the drop of a hat, coddled and the result of institutionalized belief in victimization, irresponsible, excitable, sexually frustrated. Street fightin' boys.

Craven western politicians whose unwillingness to fight the above on the streets of Amsterdam and elsewhere means, for the Iranians and the Syrians, that they are weak and easily dominated. More than willing to avoid conflict by appeasement and already halfway to dhimmitude.

The mere existence of western civilization: they don't need to wait for an excuse, the fundamental reason is always there.

The Iranians and Syrians behind the Danish brouhaha are clever people, dedicated and more than willing to spill blood on the streets of European towns. They are going to use western liberalism as a weapon against the West, the weapon that the West has given to them. They will be using tolerance as an excuse for intolerance; they will be using
demography as a weapon; they will play on their assumed role of permanent victim, complete with wailing women and hysterical elders, coupled with resolute, refined and slick spokesmen, playing good muslim/bad muslim games to keep the pot at the necessary simmer to take it to a boil whenever they want.


We're being played with. The Neo-Islamists - those abusing Islam for political purposes - are learning how to play their political game in western Europe. It's not our political game, as the street fighting days in Europe have become rare since Weimar and the assimilation of the '68 generation. But it is their game.

The question is how to play the game if we don't even know the rules (if there are any that we can understand in our western rationality).

We're being played with. And the appeasement will make things worse rather than better.

In their own words...

As if this isn't clear already, let's clarify this some more.

The leaders of Iran have massive superiority complexes.

They are making decisions that are dangerous at the very least and could well lead to war, with all its untold misery and destruction. They are actively seeking to defeat the West, smirking and smiling as they do so, unaware of what great dangers they are on the verge of inflicting upon their own peoples, let alone foreigners. We've seen this behavior before, of strutting dictators, lording their "power" over others, only to go down in ignominous defeat, but at what costs, what costs.


What am I talking about?

This. (Hattip: Regime Change In Iran)

Let's take a more detailed look at what is said:

The statements of certain western officials show that contrary to their absurd claims, westerners are disqualified, and impetuous, lacking any cultural background.

But this is just the start, and is based on the following:

Human beings, apart from Muslims, are animals who roam the earth and engage in corruption.

Has the clue coin dropped yet?

Classic superiority complexes are based an massive feelings of inferiority. That sounds contrary, but that is the problem with those who have superiority complexes: they are based on a feeling of inferiority which is then compensated by proclamations of superiority.

But Merkel et al. are only partially correct in comparing the Iranian government to pre-war Germany. It's appropriate in the context of the use of anti-semitism as a reactionary tool, but what people are missing is that Iran is more comparable to pre-WW2 Japan and not Germany.

Why? Because pre-WW2 Japan was still filled with its mythology of bushido and the superior nature of Japanese society: the Japanese, after all, were descended from gods and their emperor was, literally, god-like. It took his speaking of the capitulation to bring home to the Japanese that they had lost the war. Even today the Japanese believe in the superiority of their production methods and societal constructs.

Their philosophy leading up to WW2 has some fascinating parallels to Islam today: hakko ichiu , or "all 8 corners of the world under 1 roof", i.e. under Japanese domination for their own good.

They also believed that the West, personified by the US, was a mongrel mix that could not respond with any sort of singular resolve. In other words, based on their superiority complex, their belief that Japan was unique and better, they discounted the ability of the US to counter them. They felt that the Japanese were truly superior and that the US was a massive contradtiction in terms, lacking any sort of clear purpose and resolve.

In other words, they misunderstood the US.  Misunderstanding your opponent in times of crisis is a clear way to have the crisis escalate out of control despite the best efforts to defuse the conflict. The US tried to put a brake on Japanese expansion in China by placing an embargo on oil and steel scrap, to be lifted when Japan withdrew from China.

Sound familiar? Economic sanctions?

Doesn't work worth a damn when you're dealing with people who have a massive superiorty complex: instead of dissuading them from war to peaceful resolution, instead you are goading them into, in their eyes, slapping you to knock some sense into you. How dare you try and change our divine nature!

Sound familiar?

These are not some wild-assed mullahs that are speaking here: these are the Iranians who run the country. These are the people that Iran sent to the West when they were young for technical training and who came back more radicalized than when they went there.

Who are demonizing the West.

Who are denying even the fundamental humanity of those who oppose them

Who hide their engagement and support of terrorism throughout the world, aimed not only at the West, but at any Muslim that dares to deny their authority.


It's time to take them seriously at their own words.

It's time to cease doing business with them. All business including oil. It's going to be expensive in terms of jobs lost and growth delayed, but is there really an alternative?

Is there?

Besides surrendering?

We've reached the point where there are three paths to follow: surrender and dhimmitude; war and conflagration, and "other".

But no one has any idea of what that other might be.


I'll reiterate what I've said here before: it only takes one side to make war. Slowly but surely the options, the alternative paths, are fading away. The Iranians don't want war: they want us to surrender. We don't want war, we want to keep the status quo.

These two positions are not compatible. It's not a matter of what we want: it's a matter of what the Iranian government is willing to do. They are seeking the conflagration, for their own religious reasons, not us. We can try and stop them now, before the conflagration begins.

But that's almost impossible when they have so fundamentally misunderstood the West.


To paraphrase: By their own words ye shall know them...

Can This Get Much More Absurd???

Those that have even a remote inkling of German politics have got to know that the new Chancellor, Ms. Merkel, is not really a very dynamic person. She's a tad reserved, certainly isn't one like Schroeder, the ex-chancellor, certainly enjoyed his evenings out with the boys. She's got a PhD in Physics, so she's got some academic background, and she appears to be what she is: someone competent who has decided to be a political figure. She fought here way through the party, was the protege of Kohl, who would affectionately refer to her as my "eastern gal" (I'm taking liberties with the translation) and who more or less cleared her path to run the conservative party here (which is in many ways left of the Democrats in the US, but that's another story entirely) and win elections.

Which she did nicely against some rather crude campaigning.

And she's done, so far, a decent job: her approval rating is around 80%, but that needs to be discounted because people are just so damn happy to have gotten rid of Schroeder.

Anyway, the picture I'm trying to paint of her is that of an astute professional politician. But that's all she is: no one expects the equivalent of the kneeing at the concentration camp in Poland ala Brandt, or the statesmanship of Schmidt, let alone the political savvy and manipulations of Kohl (who could be compared to Lyndon Baines Johnson in terms of his political savvy).

Get the idea? We're talking major middle-of-the-road policy, straight-and-narrow, no adventures, no risks type of major politician.

So...

Remember when she criticized the Iranians, compared their president right now to Hitler in the 1930s? It's a legitimate beef, to say the least, and it's a fairly astute analysis. But she didn't call for him to dismembered by crazed Bavarians or wild-eyed Saxons.

Made no difference: one of the Iranian government spokesmen - I originally wrote spokesperson, but like a woman would have such a job in Iran??? - immediately said that women politicians should think before opening their mouths. Which, given the (official) Iranian attitude towards women, is about all you could expect to hear. Well, it's gone further now. This is only in German, as far as I know (can't be bothered to google on it right now), but this is the gist of it:

This is in German, but this gives the gist of it as well.

The communications chief of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards compares her - Merkel - to Hitler. Not only that she is inexperienced and weak, but "she sees herself in childish dreams of being as powerful and great as Hitler, so that she as chancellor can rule the world."

The guy saying this is Commander Seyyed Massoud Jazayeri.

He goes on and says she's merely a lackey of the US and Israel. And she's got a zionist background, so what can you expect?

Hey Seyyed, here's a hint (like he's gonna listen): keep what you learned from your $4.99 correspondance course in psychology to yourself, you're only proving what people already think: that the people in charge in Iran are a bunch of loons.

But they're a bunch of loons that are really trying hard to get nuclear weapons.

It seems like it can't get much more absurd - what I am trying to say is that Merkel is really the last politician in Germany to harbor any sort of world domination fantasies - than it already is.


But I'm afraid that it is only going to get more absurd as time goes on and the irrationality of the Iranians becomes more and more apparent. I can only hope that it goes so far that even the left in Germany recognize that there is no point in trying to talk to people like this at all - my peacenik friends will, of course, disagree - and that there will come a time to act.

So unfortunately, yes, it can get much more absurd. It already is.

Ouch. Ouuuuuuuuch.

This has to go down in recent history as one of the better nastygrams. (Hat tip: One Hand Clapping)

Obama approached McCain with the goal of once again trying to reform campaign financing, a topic held relatively dear by McCain. Apparently Obama has had second thoughts...

Why is this worthy of a comment?

Because it shows just how deceitful even young Democrats are apparently becoming. Further, Senator Obama is an up-and-coming star of the party: young, successful, charismatic, black, populist.

Which apparently doesn't mean a hill of beans to the Democrats: he has obviously been caught in being deceitful. But this is a surprise to McCain?

At least McCain has the honesty to publish this out there for all to read: that it's a tad embarrassing for McCain to have been caught believing that Democrats are interested in the public interest.

And it's interesting to see how little the public interest is served by the Democrats.

Semantics?

We all know that Islam considers itself to be the Religion of Peace. Heck, if you could trademark that phrase, they'd have done it a long time ago.

But consider the fact that what they mean by peace is not that which we mean by peace, much like what the Soviets meant by peace was anything like what the West meant by peace.

I don't want to go all-out semantic, but Islam means submission: the world of Islam is the world of peace, while those not of Islam are, per definitio, not of peace.

Just like what the Soviets meant back when: mir doesn't mean peace, but rather subjugation.


Beware those who claim to be the peacemakers.

Trust those who own the Peacekeepers.



And yes, there are multiple meanings there: the MX missile was called the Peacekeeper, and in one of my favorite TV series, Farscape, the bad guys were called Peacekeepers. :-)

But seriously: what the Religion of Peace means when it speaks of peace is the peace of submission and as a necessary correlary subjugation, purportedly voluntary but disingeniously so.


The religion of "peace" doesn't want the peace that we know: it wants the West to submit. The cartoon conflict is just the tip of the iceberg: what the muslims are demanding is that we submit to them.

And not merely avoid insulting them. It's intended to be a slow and insidious process, starting with "acceptance" of differing cultures, followed by allowing forced marriages and accepting public slaughtering of sacrificial lambs, followed by allowing the alternative of religious schools to state schools, followed by one small step after another. It involves a slow self-censorship, where there is no public outcry about female circumcision and female slavery in Islam; where feminists do not care about their muslim sisters because it would offend sensibilities; where prosecutors don't even think of investigating corruption among the mullahs to avoid controversy; where the newspapers are afraid to print something that might offend; where governments close their eyes when Islamic countries acquire nuclear capabilities and ignore the warnings because it would create controversy and harm relations...

Yes, it's perhaps a matter of semantics when pointing out what the religion of "peace" means.

But it's better than submitting. If after the cartoon conflict that true nature of Islam as it exists today - a religion taken over by extremists, dedicated to despotic rule and fascistic control, currently completey incapable of reformation - isn't crystal clear and obvious, then...

...perhaps you've already started on the road to dhimmitude, of submission, of surrender.


Enjoy your slavery. It'll be at first a comfortable one, safe and without conflict: but that of your children will be terrible.

Growing a pair...

Well, it seems that a German politician of note has finally understood the threat. This politician has finally grown a pair.


Well, on consideration, perhaps she's grown a backbone instead.

While I don't necessarily see war as imminent, we are definitely in a pre-war situation that has all the potential of developing into a major conflict. It's not a conflict that Iran can actually win: for them, winning would be for the West to adopt dhimmitude as a way of life.

The question is whether it actually comes to military conflict. Let's play a review of the run-up to WW2: Germany occupies the Saar, Allies do not react. Germany pushes for the end to Czechoslovakia; the Allies, in order to avoid a war, appease the Germans (Munich). Germany then annexes Austria, who jumps at the chance to the eternal shame of the nation; since this was accompanied by a plebescite, it's "OK", even though Austria under the Treaty of Versailles was never to join up with Germany in a political or military union again.

So in the name of peace, in the name of avoiding the war necessary to ensure international treaties and to ensure that a violent ideology not grow stronger, those who wanted war were able to prepare in peace to commit violence never seen before.

This is the problem facing the West today: the appeasers are here today, exquisitely trained and educated, nuanced beyond anyone's wildest imaginations, appeasing an enemy that has no considerations for education and nuances, but is rather interested in expanding ignorance and enforcing behavior by threat of death. In other words, the appeasers, the intellegentsia of the West, in their nuanced understanding of history and the human psyche, fails to understand simple and thuggish behavior that seeks not to argue and convince, but rather demands blunt and blind obedience to a scripture that brooks no discussion, no differentiation and no criticism.

So we're in a pre-war phase. The question is when the West will realize this and start to react.

The next question is what can be done: the answers are getting more and more difficult as time goes on, because the options are shrinking as Iran moves closer and closer to getting at least a container bomb. I fear they are not that far away from this. For those who would point out that many analysts say that it will take many years before Iran is that far along, let us remember what these analysts are actually saying, which is that it will take that long for Iran to weaponize their bombs to the point that they will fit on their rockets. That's not the threat, nor is that the problem: the problem is that Iran doesn't need to weaponize in order to use their bombs: getting them to fit inside of a standard shipping container is enough to open the threat of covert delivery and detonation, which fits the Iranian modus operandi much better than waiting 10 years for them to weaponize. It's an illusion of the West that only nukes on missiles mean anything: what is important for Iran is the ability to detonate a nuclear weapon in order to destroy Israel if the West doesn't make Israel go away. That, at the end of the day, is what Iran wants, for Israel to simply "go away." That's what they've demanded, that the Europeans solve the problem that they've created (let's ignore the absurdity of this for the time being) and make Israel go away, to disappear from the maps.

What will the West then do when Iran tests a bomb in March of 2006? And then puts up an ultimatum demanding exactly this? That is the point where it's going to be very hard to not either kill large numbers of Iranians, either conventionally or with nuclear weapons. Would Israel, faced with a nuclear-armed Iran, with the potential of a second holocaust, really hesitate to do the regrettable, of ensuring that Iran never be able to make its threats come true?

We're not talking the oh-so-lovely theoretical world of the calculus of nuclear deterrence, but rather an existential question of survival. We've seen how Iran has clearly stated that Israel can be destroyed and any return attack would perhaps damage Islam, but never destroy it. Is Iran bluffing? Is Israel willing to commit mass death in order to prevent its own destruction?

Personally, I have no answers to the problems: all I see are options dwindling away. Just as before WW2, no one in the West wants the war. It's the other side that does. The tragedy is that by trying to avoid a war, actions by the West, persuading Islamists that they have nothing to fear, have brought us to the position where the options are dwindling. Dwindling options are never the way to avoid wars, but makes them more likely as polticians lose their ability to manage crises, especially when one side wants the conflict, is demanding the conflict, believes that the conflict is not only necessary but, like the Marxists of the SovUnion, absolutely necessary.

And yes, Germany has an especially critical role to play. The sins of the past - and they are many - can be in part be started to be redeemed when the Germans do the right thing: what they must do is to to be righteous among nations. This means nothing less than simply doing the right thing, regardless of what the costs might be: of saving lives where the astute thing to do would have been to let evil reign.

And here's a further link underscoring the seriousness of the situation: on the second page, de Borchgrave points out that we may well be facing someone with whom deterrence doesn't work.

Desperate for work, are they?

I continue to have a hard time understanding actors. (Hat tip: CounterTerrrorism)

These two have chosen to act in a blatantly anti-American film , acting as the bad guys. Both have played bad guys in a number of movies, but how desperate for work are these actors that they will act as the bad guys in a anti-US propaganda movie?

Time to boycott their films: Zane and Busey, if you were desperate for work when you took this job on, you should really be desperate for work when people realize what sort of aid and comfort you've given.

Not so much despicable as really, really, really stupid. Confirms what I've always thought about Hollywood actors: underscores the absurdity of the left who adores them when they go all political on you...

The Fallacy of Recycling

In today's Nikkei Weekly - 30 Jan 2006, page 15 - there is an interview with Prof Kunihoko Takeda, of Nagoya University.

He has analyzed plastic recycling in Japan, specfically PET bottles.

And this is the key quote:

"In the case of PET bottles, the energy used to sort, transport and process them amounts to about 1.6 million tons of oil per year. This volume of oil can produce almost three times as many new PET bottles. In other words, it takes three times more oil to recycle PET bottles than to make new ones."

That's right: three times as much oil to recycle PET bottles as to make new ones.

He also makes the right call: if you want to reduce garbage, make products that are more durable and have consumers use them more wisely for as long as possible.


But what a concept that would be.


I wonder what the cost of the German Dual System is in recycling here as well?

Taken at face value, recycling is a good idea: it should lead to optimum utilization of resources.

Instead, it is wasting resources. And the only ones making money are the recycling companies, whose market is mandated for them.

Another example of waste and inefficiency as the result of government interferement in markets...

The Technocrat's $7 Trillion Scam

I ran across this as I was leaving work. I'm now at home and ready to fisk.

What a scam.

This is what is all about: power and control.

The most potent threats to life on earth - global warming, health pandemics, poverty and armed conflict - could be ended by moves that would unlock $7 trillion - $7,000,000,000,000 (£3.9trn) - of previously untapped wealth, the United Nations claims today.

Previously untapped wealth? Previously untapped wealth? This isn't about previously untapped wealth: this is about spending your money on what they think is the right thing to do, without you having any control over what the money is spent on.

The price? An admission that the nation-state is an old-fashioned concept that has no role to play in a modern globalised world where financial markets have to be harnessed rather than simply condemned.

Small price to pay, huh? Not the idea that the nation-state is old-fashioned, but rather the admission that it is: understand that the base postulate here is not something up for discussion, but rather a given fact. The idea is to harness financial markets: the reality is to create a parasitical body that lives off real commerce, taking profits from those who have earned them and, after skimming of an undisclosed portion, give them away.

But this is fundamental for the people behind this: the abandonment of the nation-state, of the abandonment of how humanity has been organized for the last 25 centuries or more, is not something that they are advocating, but rather they believe that this is the next necessary step: the withering away of the state.

In a groundbreaking move, the UN Development Programme (UNDP) has drawn up a visionary proposal that has been endorsed by a range of figures including Gordon Brown, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, and Joseph Stiglitz, the Nobel Laureate.

This is by far the best argument for the elimination of the UN, at least the UNDP. And has this really, really been endorsed by Gordon Brown and Stiglitz?

It says an unprecedented outbreak of co-operation between countries, applied through six specific financial tools, would slice through the Gordian knot of problems that have bedevilled the world for most of the last century.

No shit, Sherlock: if everyone were to cooperate and we take all the money from the rich, then we have utopia! Hallelujah!

If its recommendations are accepted - and the authors acknowledge this could take years or even decades - it could finally force countries to face up to the fact that their public finance and growth figures conceal the vast damage their economies do to the environment.

Now we see the method behind the madness: it's not a question of solving problems: it's a question of how environmentalists want to gain power over the economies of the world in order to implement their agendas.

At the heart of the proposal, unveiled at a gathering of world business leaders at the Swiss ski resort of Davos, is a push to get countries to account for the cost of failed policies, and use the money saved "up front" to avert crises before they hit. Top of the list is a challenge to the United States to join an international pollution permit trading system which, the UN claims, could deliver $3.64trn of global wealth.

To get countries to account for the cost of failed policies? Using money saved up front to avert crises before they hit? And the US joining Kyoto generates wealth?

This is their first mistake. They do not understand what wealth and wealth creation is: they think that having money means you are wealthy, which is deluded: it's not a question of having wealth, but rather more fundamentally how do economies generate wealth? This is fundamental: the problem in the developing world is that they are bad at creating wealth. But the notion of creating wealth is foreign to these folks: they're not interested in that, but rather in distributing what isn't theirs.

Inge Kaul, a special adviser at the UNDP, said: "The way we run our economies today is vastly expensive and inefficient because we don't manage risk well and we don't prevent crises." She downplayed concerns over up-front costs and interest payments for the new-fangled financial devices. "The gains in terms of development would outweigh those costs. Money is wasted because we dribble aid, and the costs of not solving the problems are much, much higher than what we would have to pay for getting the financial markets to lend the money."

First things first: who is Inge Kaul ? She's a Frankfurt School sociologist, meaning that she's basically a neo-marxist of the so-called critical school, which marked the beginning of a current of "Marxism" divorced from the organised working class and Communist Parties. It's an academic thing, dropping the pretense of actually caring about the working poor and gets its name not from being critical, but rather of daring to criticize orthodox Marxism. But we're off on a tangent: the danger here is that we are dealing here with those who have decided to take over the institution from within.

But look at what she is saying: the way we run our economies today...

Stop right there: the way we run our economies? Nobody runs an economy: the more people try, the worse things get. The economy is a living thing, and like all living things it really dislikes being controlled.

And its vastly expensive and inefficient? How? Because we don't manage risk well and don't prevent crises?

Like Ms. Kaul would be able to recognize a crisis when it came up and smacked her upside her head? The road to hell - or the faceless dictate of the technocrat, basically the same thing - is paved with good intentions: this is the personification of the technocrat, not merely implying that she can do it better, but actually insisting that it must be so. What follows is the usual drivel: the gains aren't, however, in termns of development, but the gains in powers for the technocrats easily outweigh the costs. After all, the technocrats aren't going to be risking anything.

The UNDP is determined to ensure globalisation, which has generated vast wealth for multinational companies, benefits the poorest in society.

Earth to Kaul: those that benefit the most from globalization aren't the multis; they are consumers everywhere, who are getting increasingly better goods for less and less money. And that is benefitting the poorest in society more than anything the technocrats can ever do.

It urges politicians to embrace some groundbreaking schemes put in place in the past 12 months to tackle global warning, poverty and disease, based on working with the global markets to share out the risk.

Which of course translates from "working with" to "serve": the technocrats want global markets to carry the risk.

These include a pilot international finance facility (IFF) to "front load" $4bn of cash for vaccines by borrowing money against pledges of future government aid.

In other words, tie any sort of long-term government aid up right now, preventing government's abilities to change plans independently. They seriously want to have the money NOW to work on vaccinations: work that means that pharmaceutical companies won't have to work efficiently in order to recoup their costs. But more devestating is the fact that this means that these technocrats will, literally, hold the power of development funds for their favored clientle: I dare say that this means that when scientists say they don't have a cure for AIDS, this will only mean more money thrown at the problem, instead of aiming the money at prevention.

The scheme, which is backed by the UK, France, Italy, Spain, Sweden and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, was born out of a proposal by Gordon Brown for a larger scheme to double the total aid budget to $100bn a year.

Nice name-dropping there: Bill and Melinda Gates now are elevated to the same status as countries. And the scheme isn't backed by the governments of these countries, but rather by technocrats in these countries.

In an endorsement of the report, Mr Brown said: "This shows how we can equip people and countries for a new global economy that combined greater prosperity and fairness both within and across nations."

Greater prosperity? Greater technocrat control is more bloody likely, with less fairness.

The UNDP says rich countries should build on this and go further. It proposes six schemes to harness the power of the markets:

* Reducing greenhouse gas emissions through pollution permit trading; net gain $3.64trn.

This is actually the only thing that makes sense. But, as usual, the devil is in the details...

* Cutting poor countries' borrowing costs by securing the debts against the income from stable parts of their economies; net gain $2.90trn.

Whoah, nelly: what does this mean? Securing debt against the income from stable parts of their economies? Securing debt against the income? In other words, the technocrats want to be able to take the income from "stable parts", whatever *that* means, of the economy. But stop right there.

You see, they are transferring sovereign risk to the commercial sector: they are taking the profits from the companies, local companies, who are actually out there making money - generating income - and use that income to ensure that any default on the government debt is born by the commercial sector of the economy. Hey, great deal if you can find any of those companies actually willing to sign up on this: sure, let's see... yep, I'll pledge my cash flow for the next ten years in order to allow the government to borrow money at reduced rates.

I don't think so. There is a reason why there is something called sovereign risk: we've seen too much government corruption and incompetence waste literally billions in aid in the developing world. This gives these governments carte blanche: they no longer carry the risk, since they're able to mortgage the future cash flows of any sector actually making money in order to transfer the risk. This, of course, reduces any incentive for these companies to actually show any cash flow whatsoever.

* Reducing government debt costs by linking payments to the country's economic output; net gain $600bn.

In other words, being able to weasel out of debt repayment by having a bad economy. That sounds really brilliant: sort of like a homeowner being able to say "sorry, lost my job, won't be able to pay the mortgage for the next couple of years". Again, there is a reason for soveregn risk: if you remove this, you also remove any incentive for countries to actually perform. And this sort of deal would only mean that governments would have massive incentives to avoid showing any economic output, since as long as growth remains below the threshhold for repayment, you don't have to repay.

* An enlarged version of the vaccine scheme; net gain (including benefits of lower mortality) $47bn.

Lower mortality? Sorry, we all have to die, mortality to date is always 100%. And that is, of course, assuming that the vaccines as per ut supra actually are developed at all....

* Using the vast flow of money from migrants back to their home country to guarantee; net gain $31bn.

Again we have the appropriation of private monies to guarantee government loans. Which you can safely translate as meaning the appropriation of private monies to guarantee government irresponsibility.

* Aid agencies underwriting loans to market investors to lower interest rates; net gain $22bn.

Subsidized interest rates: huh? Anyone look at what interest rates are lately? Interest rates are at historical low levels, not high levels. Oh, except for high-risk investments, of course. In other words, aid agencies are looking to underwrite projects that on a commercial basis are considered to be such high risk that investors have to be paid a lot to make it worth their while. Gee, aid agencies are such paragons of efficiency and such experts on risk analysis that I'm sure they will make really excellent decisions here. Not.

Professor Stiglitz, the former chief economist of the World Bank and a staunch critic of the way globalisation harms the poor, said: "Globalisation has meant the closer integration of countries, and that in turn has meant a greater need for collective action.

This is embarrasing for the economics profession: is Stiglitz really in on this? Collective action, of course, is a term tied closely to unions, implying that one of the goals would be increasing union importance, rather than the decline of union importance of the last several decades.

"One of the most important areas of failure is the environment. Without government intervention, firms and households have no incentive to limit their pollution." He said a global public finance system would force countries to acknowledge the external damage their policies had, "the most important being global climate change".

First: what they mean here is failure to listen to the technocrats. This is the naked attempt of the technocrats to take control of the means of production via the UN: this is the call for government intervention to control the economy.

Solving the environmental crisis tops the UN's $7trn wish-list. It calls for an international market to trade pollution permits that would encourage rich countries to cut pollution and hit their targets under the Kyoto protocol.

Ignoring of course the failure of Kyoto, which is a dead-end street. Kyoto doesn't help against global warming: it's about control.

But - and the UN admits it is a big "but" - the US would have to sign up to Kyoto and carbon trading to achieve the $3.64trn that it believes the system would deliver over time.

No shit Sherlock: the US isn't going to do this. There is a reason the US isn't part of Kyoto: the Senate of the US voted 99-0 to specifically reject the idea of giving faceless technocrats the power to funnel money to pet projects.

"We are dealing with a global problem as pollution can only be dealt with internationally," Ms Kaul said. Richard Sandor, the head of the Chicago Climate Exchange, added: "Many encouraging signs are emerging. When the business case is clear, private entrepreneurs step forward."

Translation: When the subsidies and other market-distorting mechanisms are apparent, then the profiteers arise to suck on the tit of government subsidies.

But, the proposal is unlikely to get support from some green groups who believe that action to curb consumption, rather than market incentives, are the way to reduce carbon emissions.

Ooooh, boogie man: some green groups aren't happy. But shucks, given the low growth rates that such policies would accord, carbon emissions would drop as the world enters a major depression, curbing consumption anyway...

Andrew Simms, director of the New Economics Foundation, said it left unanswered questions over how these markets would be managed and how the benefits and costs would be distributed. "We have nothing against markets so it would be missing the point to get into a pro- or anti-market stance. The point is how you distribute the benefits."

BINGO!

I'm surprised they left that one in: the technocrats don't care about where the money comes from, as long as they get to distribute the benefits. Naked grab for power: as long as they get to decide how to spend the profits, they don't care where the money comes from...

He said the Nineties, the zenith decade for globalisation, had seen just 60 cents out of every $100 worth of growth reach the poorest in society, compared with the $2.20 in the Eighties.

I'd really, really like to see a source for these numbers. But they well make the case: in the 80s, raw material prices were higher than they were in the 90s, reflecting relative poor efficiencies. In the 90s, raw material prices fell as demand fell in the face of increased materials productivity. Has nothing to do with globalization and everything to do with companies learning to be more efficient with raw materials.

He said a pollution trading regime had the potential to deliver "enormous" benefits to poor countries, but said the UN report failed to show a detailed plan.

I'll give them that: it gives poor countries enormous incentives not to invest, but rather keep their population unproductive, since if they start setting up factories, they'll have to use their pollution certificates instead of selling them. Making it more expensive to build up an industry, ensuring that the downtrodden of the third world stay where they are.

"Our view is that you have to cap pollution, allocate permits and then you can trade. But it depends on how it is set up. Because you are dealing with a global commons of the atmosphere, the danger is that you could be effectively dealing in stolen goods."

Capping pollution means capping not only industrial production, but more fundamentally life-style choices. I'm not talking SUVs here, but rather taking away the option to actually live in the suburbs and drive to work: it's off onto public transportation instead, for instance. And note the nice little boogieman of setting up anyone who pollutes as a thief, stealing from everyone else...

He said a system set up now to trade in pollution permits could end up permanently depriving poor countries that joined the system further down the road.

In other words, join up now or shut up when we shaft you later for being such stubborn bastards...

International problems - and solutions

PANDEMIC DISEASES

Millions of people across the developing world have died from malaria, tuberculosis and HIV/Aids, as well as from other pandemics. Vaccines needed to avert them require much-needed investment.

SOLUTION: An advance commitment by rich countries to buy $3bn (£1.7bn) worth of vaccines would be enough to encourage pharmaceutical giants to invest in finding medicines that would eliminate these pandemics.

Again, faith in the ability of pharmaceutical companies to produce results on government contract work instead of profit motive. Right. Buying a promise that if the vaccine is developed, say, for AIDS, that the government will buy it. Like that wouldn't happen already?

Further, any company successful in developing an AIDS vaccine, right now, is doing so in order to make a huge amount of money. They invest to do so, spending money of their own or borrowed in one way or another, based on whether any given approach is correct. Money has a price and this is the incentive to killing lines of research that are unlikely to lead to any results: this removes the incentive to do so.

SAVING: $600bn

ALTERNATIVE SOLUTION: Vaccines are needed but more should be done in the meantime. Extra aid is needed for simple tools such as mosquito nets that would curb spread of malaria.

The alternative is more like use the tools you have now to stop the transmission vector of diseases you can't cure. Use DDT to kill malarial mosquitos and use nets, fine: but if you want a real success story, look at the reduction in AIDS deaths in Africa in the cohort of young people that have decided that sexual abstinence is really more attractive than dying of AIDS. AIDS can be brought under control by removing the disease vectors: unprotected sex, sharing drug needles and the like. But that means infuriating special interest groups.

PARIAH STATES

Big business and global money ignore countries where they see the risk of conflict outweighing their potential profit margins.

Bulllllshit. They don't ignore countries like this: they just don't want to do business there. And for damned good reasons: there is little chance that the loans would be repaid or that the investments would show a profit. So instead:

SOLUTION: Guarantees by international organisations such as the International Monetary Fund to lower the cost of borrowing for poor nations by underwriting investors' loans to conflict-torn states.

SAVING: $22bn

Meaning that hey, don't worry: if your govenrment is repressing you to the point of open rebellion and conflict, we'll use the money of taxpayers elsewhere to make sure that this is a no-brainer, so go ahead, drive the villagers out from their fields and do your ethnic cleansing, we will see to it that it doesn't cost ya a cent.

ALTERNATIVE SOLUTION: Sometimes large volumes of cash are needed and this is one. Live8 showed there was huge support among taxpayers for higher aid to countries in distress.

Neat trick: shifting from conflict-torn states to countries in distress. Only they're not necessarily the same thing.

Hitting a commitment made in the 1960s of 0.7 per cent of GDP would unlock $140bn a year.

And we see enough waste and fraud already, thank you: NGOs don't need $140bn in additional funds, since this will only increase waste and fraud.

NATIONAL BANKRUPTCY

Once great nations such as Brazil and Argentina were reduced to the status of beggars after poor economic policy combined with debts with national and international lenders.

SOLUTION: A system to enable countries to take loans linked to their average economic growth rate to ensure that they do not have to cut public spending to raise the money to borrow needed funds during the hard times.

SAVING: $600bn

Oh. My. God. Hey, brilliant! Remove the risk of making stupid mistakes: Brazil and Argentina are poor because they made the mistakes and didn't correct them, but rather allowed populists to squander what took generations to build up. Enabling countries to take out loans linked to average growth rates? Hmmmm.

Could this mean that when growth stops, the countries don't have to pay back? Haven't we been here before?

ALTERNATIVE SOLUTION: A system to allow countries to seek protection from their creditors in the same way that US companies can take so-called Chapter 11 bankruptcy.

Except that countries can't do this, any more than a city can garnish the profits of companies operating locally to pay for mistakes: the technocrats are mixing public and private monies again...

SPECULATIVE INVESTORS

Poor countries suffer most from swings in investment tastes by the big global investors that means money can leave as soon as it arrives.

SOLUTION: Enable countries to buy "insurance policies" against big swings in growth that would ensure that they did not have to cut public spending every time. In 1997 it wreaked havoc across South-east Asia.

SAVING: $2,900bn

Um.... Buying insurance is quantifying risk, depreciating future cash flow alternatives to arrive at an affordable coverage. Interest rates are the cost of capital. And doesn't this really imply capital controls, preventing the fungability of cash? And this really isn't the problem: foreign direct investors, for instance, buy land, buy companies, build factories: this converts the cash into assets, locally. These assets can be sold, but their physical presence remains. What moves rapidly is cash: keeping cash means paying the cost of capital, interest rates...

ALTERNATIVE SOLUTION: Curb speculative investment by imposing a tax on foreign exchange transactions aimed at destabilising a currency. It could directly raise funds for development while preventing the worst excesses of the markets.

And who gets to decide when this happens? Nice tool to control currency fluctuations, but currency fluctuations are THE major control mechanism in the world economy, allowing equilibriums to exist.

GLOBAL WARMING

Scientists believe human activity has led to climate change and disappearing Arctic ice. The world's poor also have to live with lethal storms and floods.

UN SOLUTION: A system of international trading in permits to allow pollution that would encourage countries to cut their emission of greenhouse gases so they can sell their "right to pollute" to other states. UNDP says it is more effective than just setting targets.

SAVING: $3,620bn

Replace "Scientists" with "Some climate scientists" and I'd still disagree. Anyone living where storms and floods are have to live with the results. And there's a contradiction in terms here in the solution: a system of international trading in permits implies a target, whereas the UNDP says setting targets isn't effective. It's just hiding behind another name. The name of the game here is control.

ALTERNATIVE SOLUTION: An international approach is needed but one that prevents people from causing harm by setting pollution targets rather than trying to bribe them not to. Also agree global airline tax.

This says it all: these people see trading in pollution permits to be nothing less than bribery, rather than letting markets work. Further, it clearly states that setting targets isn't effective, but fails to actually offer an alternative.

BRAIN DRAIN

Millions of skilled workers leave their home countries every year in search of a better life in the West. In some states nine out 10 professionals have left.

SOLUTION: Enable countries to borrow on the open markets against the money workers send home. The capital would be used to invest in the country to build infrastructure that would discourage people from leaving.

SAVING: $31bn

Again, we have here the expropriation of private funds for government purposes. The goal is further explained in the next point...

ALTERNATIVE SOLUTION: An international code of ethical guidelines overseen by bodies such as the World Health Organisation (for doctors and nurses) to monitor the harm that migration of professionals causes.

In other words, certain kinds of people are to be enslaved. You can't let them out of your country, these folks don't know what's good for them.




Ye pagan gods of Lovecraft.

Where to start?

Let's start with a quote from the first UNDP conference on this nonsense, back in 1999: again, here's Inge...

I wish to congratulate all of you, and in particular, the originators of the GDN 'idea' on this meeting. The past three days have been exciting and encouraging. First of all, they have been extremely well organized. But most importantly, they allowed us to glimpse the beauty of a more just and equitable world:

• A world of horizontal dialogue;
• A world of listening to each other; and
• A world that recognizes and tolerates differences - differences in circumstances and views.

The beauty of a more just and equitable world?

The beauty of a more just and equitable world?????

Words fail me. The world that these people imagine is anything but just, anything but equitable.

Here's a radical concept: let people choose for themselves what they want to do .

And the only way that this really works is by letting markets work out supply, demand and prices. Anything else is a waste of time and money.

And that is the critical point.


These people understand nothing, but nothing about economics. Sure, they might be able to talk about GDP, about some bizarre development scheme, but they understand nothing.

They do not understand that economics has everything to do with how to get maximum utility from scarce resources . Nothing more, nothing less. This is fundamental: if you are not getting maximum utility from your inputs, you are being wasteful. Don't want waste? Then listen to the markets, as imperfect as they are, they will tell you, if you bother to learn how to look and understand, how resources are allocated via price mechanisms.


But this isn't something that the technocrats want to even hear. Markets are imperfect for them because they don't deliver the desired results.

That's because people don't want "the desired results".

People want to live their lives as they choose, not to live their lives under the completely despotic thumb of some PhD sociologist whose dreams of a just and equitable world would necessarily lead to policies that are unjust and inequitable.


Don't get me wrong: I care, too, about poverty in the Third World. I directly support a school in India and one in Nepal, as well as foster kids in El Salvador. But this isn't the solution, but rather would lead to the institutionalization of poverty, of managed economies that misallocate resources and destroy value, all in the name of a distant utopian goal. That of course will never be met.

Hasn't the world seen enough of the damage that communism and its idiot nephew socialism have inflicted, the millions and millions of dead, the wars and gulags, the misery and suffering?


This is nothing but a naked attempt of technocrats to gain absolute power over the entire world, a naked power grab of those who have marched through the institutions and want to change the world by decree.



The best thing that could happen to the UNDP is it to be drastically cut. The best thing to happen to the Third World is for markets to work to allocate resources optimally. The best thing that could happen to the people of the Third World is for them to learn how to create value, to create wealth, instead of squandering it as their governments have done over the last 50 years.

The war on poverty has been fought. Poverty won.

Hamas And Israel

I'm just going to make one comment on the election of Hamas.

Hamas is financed by Iran.

So is Hizbollah, Islamic Jihad, etc.

So the pathetic editorials you can now read in the press, how important it is to engage Hamas in constructive political dialogue, is a continuation of fundamental ignorance of the nature of the threat that Israel is facing: it's not about the Palestinians.

The Palestinians are, tragically, pawns in the greater game. The greater game is the destruction of Israel.


So Europe will push for Israel to work out some sort of settlement, a quid pro quo, for dealing with Hamas, Hamas will put in place a cease-fire that will be worthless, and the killing will resume, this time without the necessity of hiding anything from the PA.

Any commentary on Hamas and what it all means must be read with this thought in mind: Hamas, or "Zeal", is an organization dedicated to the destruction of Israel, financed largely by Iran and the Saudis, with its own brown-shirts and stormtroopers dedicated to the use of violence to achieve political aims.

The real tragedy of the whole situation is that there are so many in the West who think that one can persuade Hamas to be peaceful and accept the right of Israel to exist.


And leopards change their spots, too.

Gore Lies and Credibility Dies

Can anyone tell me why Al Gore is listened to any more?

This shows how disconnected from reality he is.

According to big Al, he of "no controlling legal authority" fame, now has the absolute gall to put spin on the election in Canada.

Of course, his ignorance of Canadian politics was no barrier to his drivel. Nor did apparently anyone in his office check a fact or two.

This is the man that almost became president. We should count our blessings each and every day that Al Gore isn't president: he is, bluntly, an unmitigated disaster.

He broke the law in soliciting campaign contributions from his office, and his only defense was that there hadn't been a court case for precedence.


Think of that for a moment: maybe the reason that there hadn't been a court case is that every holder of that office before him wouldn't have thought twice about using the offce to get campaign money.

What Gore's comments show is desperation: if the Canadians turn conservative, rejecting the corruption of the liberals and get back to the business of running the country efficiently, then Gore's cronies in Canada will have to go and find real jobs.

So unemployment in Canada will increase slightly this year.

What Gore loses here is the last shreds of his credibility. Critizing party contributions, intimating that big oil "bought" the election, while being completely ignorant of Canadian campaign financing laws, which cap donations by companies at $1000/year, while private citizens are allowed to donate $5000/year. In other words, Gore doesn't know what he is talking about.

If Gore were a Republican - shudder - then the left would call him a liar. I'll just say that he has lost all credibility.

But this comes as a surprise?

Iran's Straw Man Tactics

One of the critical arguments that Iran apologists bring when discussing the Iran nuclear problem is that Iran has, under the tenets of the Nonproliferation Treaty, the "right" to the development of peaceful nuclear energy.

And indeed Iran has a history of nuclear research that goes back to the the Atoms For Peace program, where the US provided a small (5MW) research reactor.

But these research programs all but disappeared when Khomeini took over.

The problem is that the distinctions between peaceful and military nuclear research, even for experts, are sometimes not very simple.

But this shows why there is a problem.

The key is maraging steel.  Maraging what?

Maraging steel is a low-carbon martensite that is highly resistant to cracking under stress. It has only a few uses: thinner rocket and missiles skins; firing pins and breech blocks; high performance engine components; dies and high-wear assembly line components; fencing foils for competition (foil and epee); golf club shafts; centrifuges for uranium enrichment.

Bingo.

Why are the Iranians buying maraging steel?

The kind of centrifuges that you use for normal uranium enrichment, the kind that is allowed, don't use maraging steel. The kind that Iran uses are called the P1 centrifuges. The other kind, called P2, use maraging steel, and they enrich uranium far in excess of the requirements for reactor use.

When the Iranians broke the seals at Natanz, they broke the seals on a significant supply of maraging steel that it needs to continue work on the P2 centrifuges.

Smoking gun.

But it goes further: where did Iran get the blueprints for these centrifuges? They didn't design them on their own, but rather acquired them from the Pakistani Dr. Khan, part of an 18-year old plan of deception that Iran used to hide its nuclear technology development from the IAEA.

This documents how Iran has hidden its actual research. So does this.

Iran knows at this point how to build centrifuges and also knows the processing chain from yellowcake to weapons-grade uranium. Knowing what needs to be done puts them way ahead of the learning curve: the Iranians are not stupid and their scientists are competent. Buying the blueprints from Khan meant skipping years of tedious design work: they're not interested in learning how to build the processing on their own: they want to be able to process uranium up to and including weapons-grade quality.

That is why the Iranian argument that they have the right to process uranium for peacful purposes is a straw-man argument. A straw-man argument uses the rhetorical trick of refuting not the argument that the opponent is bringing, but rather an alternative that appears to be related. Iran is accused of trying to enrich uranium for weapons; they reply that they have a right to enrich for peaceful purposes. This isn't an answer: it's a misrepresentation that is set up to be easily defeated.

But Iran still hasn't answered the questions asked: what are they doing with a development program that leads to weapons-grade uranium, a program that they have been actively hiding and misrepresenting to the IAEA, a program that only has the goal of making weapons-grade uranium?

Smoking gun. The answer the Iranians are giving has nothing to do with the question asked.

Remind Me Why...

Answer me this:

The world has rules and regulations, right?

International law shapes international relationships, right?

NGOs, international and supranational organizations are all there to take care of the problems that arise when things fall between the cracks, right?


Then take a look at this and tell me how much I should respect any NGO, any international organization, any supranational organization.

I can't. And won't until the clamor from them about this is as great as the marches against the Iraq War.


You are all hypocritical bastards. Don't want to upset the Chinese and French, do you? Don't want to upset big oil interests, do you?

Bastards. Your reputation lies drowned in the blood of innocents murder for Chinese and French oil profits.