Here's my Top 10 links from around the Internet at 1 pm in association with NZ Mint.
I welcome your additions in the comments below or via email tobernard.hickey@interest.co.nz.
I'll pop the extras into the comment stream. See all previous Top 10s here.
My must listen today is Satyajit Das on Radio Live at #5. He talks about how Europe and America's banks are exchanging the heroin of easy lending growth for the methadone of easy central bank funding.
1. A loonie idea - The Globe and Daily Mail reports Icelandic business leaders want to adopt the Canadian dollar or 'loonie' as their currency, arguing it tracks 'Iceland's commodity prices', including aluminium and fish, and is more liquid and less volatile.
The Canadians are not keen.
A speech scheduled for the weekend by Canada's ambassador to Iceland to a conference on the subject was cancelled when the powers-that-be in Canada got wind of it.
The ambassador was going to warn it meant Iceland would give up its monetary sovereignty.
And anything is better than the euro...
I'd stick with the krona if I was them.
Here's the thinking:
“The average person looks at it this way: Canada is a younger version of the U.S. Canada has more natural resources than the U.S., it’s less developed, has more land, lots of water,” explained Heidar Gudjonsson, an economist and chairman of the Research Centre for Social and Economic Studies, Iceland’s largest think tank.
“And Canada thinks about the Arctic.”
Officially, the Icelandic government is targeting membership in the 27-member euro zone. But support among Icelanders is slipping.
2. True innovation - The New York Times Sunday magazine has an excellent long piece here on the culture of innovation behind Bell Labs, which gave the world lasers, transistors, satellites, CCD memory and a whole bunch of essential technology.
The conclusion is that a soft monopoly planning long term and letting its scientists run riot does better than regular companies, or even the government.
An interesting piece because some argue the reason the global economy has struggled in recent years is a lack of truly innovative technology that creates high paid jobs and incomes, as happened in the 40s, 50s and 60s.
3. Three German brothers cloning the web - Here's a stunning BusinessWeek story about three truly frightening German brothers who are cloning successful e-commerce websites in a truly ugly fashion.
They use the word 'blitzkrieg'.
In December the blog TechCrunch published an internal e-mail from Oliver Samwer to his employees. In it, Oliver exhorts his team to do business like “a blitz-krieg invasion.” The e-mail continues (punctuation Samwer’s): “i do not accept surprises. i want this planned confirmed by all three of you: you must sign it with your blood … I am the most aggressive guy on internet on the planet. I will die to win and i expect the same from you!” The e-mail went viral in Germany, even inspiring a song called Blitzkrieg, the New Single By Oliver Samba, in which Samwer’s manic commands are set to a throbbing techno beat.
4. Punk economics - Irish economist and broadcaster David McWilliams explains the European plan for austerity and 'cash for trash'. HT Donald via email.
"We have insolvent banks lending to insolvent governments and that is called a success."
5. The problem with Europe's 'cash for trash' - Satyajit Das, the author of Extreme Money, speaks here with Andrew Patterson on Radio Live's Sunday Business about why the European Central Bank's lolly scramble won't work in the long run.
Well worth a listen.
6. How Britain's bankers really operated - Paul Moore, the former Head of Group Regulatory Risk at Halifax Bank of Scotland, whose claims about risk taking at HBOS led to the resignation of its former boss Sir James Crosby from the UK's financial watchdog, reveals some very interesting insider experiences with the practices of bank lending and sales culture in this video. HT
7. Not so easy - One of the ways the Greeks are increasing taxes is to connect a tax payment to electricity bills.
Not for much longer, it seems. Greece's constitutional court has ruled the power can't be cut off if Greeks don't pay.
In its ruling the CoS, whose plenary convened behind closed doors on Friday, said that the imposition of the emergency tax through the power bills is constitutional and legal provided it is not a permanent tax, as it has been imposed for just two years: 2011 and 2012.
However, cutting the electricity supply cannot be justified and runs against the country's constitution, the plenary of the CoS ruled.
8. Eventually the public says enough - Bloomberg has an interesting story about a nun in Spain who is helping home owners avoid foreclosure when they miss mortgage payments.
Youth unemployment in Spain is almost 50%.
Sister Inmaculada Torano, a 47-year- old Spanish nun, stepped in to negotiate when Bankia (IBEX) SA tried to repossess the home of a student at the school where she works over missed mortgage payments.
“The bank may have a right under the law to evict, but there’s a difference between what’s legal and moral,” said Torano, who teaches at a school run by the Sisters of Charity of the Sacred Heart of Jesus in the working class Madrid suburb of Villaverde. The intervention helped persuade Bankia, led by former International Monetary Fund head Rodrigo Rato, to delay eviction until the student finishes the school year in June, she said.
With Spain’s economy set to contract in 2012 for the third year out of five and unemployment at 23 percent, banks are increasingly easing terms for customers who are missing payments on mortgages underwritten during the country’s decade-long housing boom. Pressure to renegotiate debt and delays in repossessions are raising doubts that default rates on Spain’s 613 billion euros ($817 billion) of mortgages have stabilized.
9. Another reason why Europe is not solved - The likely (Socialist party) winner of the French Presidential race, Francois Hollande, wants to relax the Germanic focus on austerity if he wins in May.
The problem for the grand German plan to squeeze Southern Europe into a Germanic straightjacket of austerity and falling wages is that eventually the masses revolt in democracies.
Here's Bloomberg on the latest French plan:
Francois Hollande, the Socialist candidate in France’s presidential election, repeated his promise to renegotiate Europe’s latest fiscal treaty, saying it puts undue emphasis on austerity and offers little about the need for growth measures.
European Union leaders signed a German-inspired deficit- control treaty on March 2 that puts a tighter curbs on spending and mandates automatic corrections of deficits that stray from targets. It is due to take effect on Jan. 1, 2013, and must be ratified by at least 12 of the 17 euro-area countries. All 17 countries in the euro area, including France, and eight EU members outside the currency bloc signed the treaty.
“If tomorrow I’m president, I’ll say there are parts of this treaty we can accept, but we won’t accept sanctions that are against countries’ interests and, second, we’ll add growth, activity, big industrial projects, Eurobonds to pull the economy ahead.”
Hollande’s comments came the same day that Der Spiegel reported that German Chancellor Angela Merkel, U.K. Prime Minister David Cameron, Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy and Italian Prime Minister Mario Monti had all agreed not to host the Socialist candidate before this year’s presidential election because they are angry about his plan to renegotiate the new budget pact.
10. Totally a funny p.... take on the TED talks that I regularly link to. - There's something about rich, bright people thinking they can solve the problems of the world with technology... Hasn't worked so far. In fact, all it's done is made a few people very, very rich and has pressed down wages for the middle....
"We're going to invent our way out..."
36 Comments
Oil (lack of) supply getting a deal of coverage:
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/commentary/eric-regul…
"There's something about rich, bright people thinking they can solve the problems of the world with technology... Hasn't worked so far. In fact, all it's done is made a few people very, very rich and has pressed down wages for the middle...."
Rubbish.
Sure, technology won't solve all of the world's problems, but all one needs to do is contrast a low tech economy such as Nigeria with a high tech economy such as our own - where would you rather live? Technology won't solve all problems, but it will solve a great many: health care, food production, infrastructure, education, entertainment, transport, et cetera - they all benefit from advances in technology. How exactly are we worse off for having more advanced technology than 50 years ago...?
As for the issue of wealth distribution: yes, some middle-class (arguably) jobs have been lost, but that's the two-edged sword of creative destruction. How many readers would like to go back to the days of manual, in branch banking, or manually switched telephone exchanges? Forget the jobs in car manufacturing, why not protect the jobs of all those farriers who went out of work when the horse and carriage went out of use? It's incumbent upon individuals to keep up with technology so their own skill set doesn't become redundant - would you use a lawyer, accountant, or dentist who's not done any upskilling since the 1960's? Of course not. So why then should society preserve non-economic jobs just to cushion those who for whatever reason don't feel it necessary to get with the times?
Oh, and if you're not happy with how rich people like Steve Jobs can get, simply don't buy their products.
My grandparents pickled, cutneyed, jammed, preserved etc.....it was interesting, my grandmother was doing it until she died.....she had huge stocks of such stuff.......her answer to why was she has got used to allowing for 2 or so lean years in a row and used up the less desirable produce....such skills are far less common now. Ive experimented and the costs are significant...like buying empty new preserving jars that cost more than full ones for what I want to put in them, then you have to buy new seals as well....it makes no sense...today.
regards
Technological advancement over the last 50 years has been the application of cheap energy, more tech == more energy consumption.
You have it wrong, its not a case of living here or Nigeria...the former lifestyle uses too much energy...so the latter is where we will be, this isnt a choice we have.
Advanced tech is a function of complexity of our society I suggest J Tainter and the collapse of societies on youtube as a starter,
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ddmQhIiVM48
Manual banking / switching used low technology....modern solutions are energy and technology intensive, I cant see they will be with us in 50 years...
I suspect we will live more in the lifestyle of the Amish, hopefully without the religion.
regards
How exactly are we worse off for having more advanced technology than 50 years ago...?
Check out the rising cost per person of Medicare in the US ... same would be true here. Advanced technology - such as blood pressure lowering meds - that didn't exist 50 years ago, are keeping retired citizens in poorer health alive for longer. They subsequently have more falls - and consequently multiple hip replacements; more treatments with antibiotics to fight minor infections that their aged immune systems can no longer cope with; more antidepressants/antipsychotic meds to try and combat the natural process of mental deterioration and so on and so forth.
I think I read a stat that said that 70-80% of all health-related expenditure is spent in the last two years of a person's lifetime. Seems completely and utterly dumb, doesn't it?
Edward Tufte in one of his excellent books on data and visualisation (I could tell you which one, but they're at the office, in the red zone... or perhaps a dumpster ... or sold on TradeMe, but I digress). He goes through the hospital records of a patient during their visit to the hospital and the cost of tests and procedures carried out. In the end the patient dies, but it's quite staggering the amount of money that's spent on different things, of course not all of them are necessary, and whoever it is dies in the end anyway, but not without trying everything ($$$) possible to save them first.
A question is, if you have the technology at your disposal and the money to perform the tests, should you perform them? Obviously, yes. What if you do not have the money. Should you take out a loan to 'fix' a loved one? The majority would say yes. What about if you put off paying back the bill to a following generation (effectively when the government borrows to pay day to day expenses and the next generation gets the debt load). Should you borrow then? Save a loved one at the expense of the next generation?
Ah, there it gets interesting.
If the saved one is needed to sire the coming generation, post-op? Would the coming generation approve/fund? You bet!
What if the saved one finished off the fossil fuels in the meantime though? Who owes whom what then? Seems the yet-to-be-born are being offered the Genghis Khan choice: slavery or death.
Um, let me think :)
Kate - no. I't isn't dumb. Entirely predictable; when else do you expect to need medicine?
Now whether we should all die gracefully two years early for economic reasons, that's a different question.
I tend to think that mother nature will do that job more thoroughly, unassisted. No species ever held population numbers when in overshoot. No exceptions.
Used to go out with a girl who's grandfather had been in and out of the emergency ward over 10 times. The man's son (her father), a pediatrician, said to me 'is it any wonder the health services are so buggered?'.
He was an old, old man! In the end he wanted to die.
Ridiculous situation and attitude towards life/death...
There is a clear distinction between having/developing the technology, and how it is applied.
Clearly US Medicare where a ridiculous amount of money is spent in ones last 18mnths of life is not sustainable, but you need to look at the incentives that have caused this situation to occur.
Nothing to do with technology per-se.
It is an interesting philosophical question however whether humankind needs every technological advancement that anyone might care to develop for whatever reason/end. Latour wrote a book called 'The Politics of Nature' which provides a proposed framework (purely in the theoretical sense) whereby an assembly, or collective might make decisions about what is allowed in (or out) of the future.
Take advancements in deep sea fishing methods for example. Present technology combined with the remianing fossil fuels gives us the potential to totally deplete global fish stocks - and hence we have quota regimes - but even these allow us the massive ability to be profligate and hence waste. Perhaps the purse seine method or the trawlling method should be technologies we 'toss out' of the future in 'allowing in' GM/stem cell research?
What Latour I think is getting at is the folly in separating facts from values. Technologists develop technologies because guised as 'science' or 'truth' (i.e. a fact seeking pursuit) it is a 'value neutral activity' - a license to develop anything and everything ... immune from the 'good or bad' for the future type considerations.
All very philosophical - but they are questions we just don't want to consider. I wonder if 500 years from now this era in human development might be looked back on as a sort of dark age where such moral/philosophical thought is concerned. Morality - it's almost as if our society has turned it's back on it as a concept because having it supresses 'individual freedom'. If we go back to the simplest of definitions of 'good' and 'bad' for mankind from Aristotle - he defines it as the mid-point between excess and deficiency.
Yeh, kill the bastards wasting our money.
The government can print the money interest free to build lots of gas chambers.
Pitty Germany lost the war as we would have had super efficient gas chambers today.
Everyone over 50 is a wanker and should be gassed.
Well done kate
You will be glad to learn this is simplistic nonsense, Kate.
Firstly there is absolutely no future cost of social security,
http://www.forbes.com/sites/johntharvey/2011/04/08/why-social-security-cannot-go-bankrupt/
Secondly technology has been and is making all medicine cheaper, as well as more effective, but hardly more expensive. The only problem with the US medical system is that the US insurance industry doesn't want to compete with social welfare type medical insurance. The reason is that the social welfare type medical insurance is soooo much more efficient they can't compete.
The only 'cost' described is in fact the 'cost' of society becoming too equal, and some sectors of society loosing their advantage over others as a result.
P Rimmer - Nigeria is actually in the shyte because you and I (well, not I because since Ken Sarowiri's hanging I don't support one particular outlet) take it's resources, via corruption and force.
You're rich at their expense. As happens with all empire structures. The outliers get sucked dry of resources, to feed the body. Doesn't last. An unsustainable system.
The conflation of these different kinds of innovations seems to be leading us toward a belief that small groups of profit-seeking entrepreneurs turning out innovative consumer products are as effective as our innovative forebears. History does not support this belief. The teams at Bell Labs that invented the laser, transistor and solar cell were not seeking profits. They were seeking understanding. Yet in the process they created not only new products but entirely new — and lucrative — industries.
What people don't seem to get, is that once you've invented the wheel, you can never invent the wheel again. The ifone is still a phone.
The low-hung fruit gets picked, and it gets sequentially harder. The rate falls away at some point. It probably has little to do with the business model involved, many inventions are backyard tinkerers anyway and I've noticed that there seems to be a 'time' for inventions; several people will simultaneously come up with essentially the same thing. Which crosses one moreoff the list of 'possibles'.
Continually increasing complexity in systems also leads to the result that 'breakthroughs' are increasingly expensive, and are increasingly made only by companies with large budgets. When was the last time a single person working by themselves had a major breakthrough, in the established scientific sense? (astronomy seems to be an exception where some lucky person can still get a comet or other body named after them)
I see inventions as slightly different, typically just being an application using established, though perhaps recent parts/methods/ideas. Plenty of those still around, but probably only because life is getting more and more complicated all the time (for now). Haven't seen any new 'paperclips' or 'electricity' being discovered recently.
Something I was also pondering the other day regarding complexity - how is it that a person can be expected to operate in a system (a society) where it is no longer possible to know the rules of that system? Ten Commandments, yep, that's fine, but now in 2012... I read that the US tax law alone is something like 700 times the size of War and Peace. So is one supposed to just bumble along like some insect in a cruel lab experiment where we no longer understand why but just respond to the negative stimuli we'ere subjected to?
Which is why we should be putting more resources into it, not less. Science and technology doesn't function in a vacume, the wheel wasn't invented after a few years of navle gazing. It was the culmination of centuries of observations, learning and understanding. Electricity wasn't invented, it was observed, and the history of generating electricity goes back to egyptian times. So does the camera and many other things. Technology is the practicle application of scientific principals (mainly for industry). Science is the evolution of knowlege.
Yeah the Archdruid has written about the diminising returns of science. 100+ years ago you could be a basement tinker and discover an element. Now you need the LHC to plumb the depths of particle physics. Exponentially greater time/money investment by many orders of magnitude.
He expects science to return from whence it came.
Onto it fulla...
Regarding #3 copying websites, this is actually not that new. People have been copying the style of other websites just about since the WWW started. The copying of the services behind the websites is more recent, but lends itself well to coutries where you have a language barrier; Internet users in said countries are less likely to stray outside the realm of websites written in their own language.
As it turns out said companies are operating in New Zealand, presumably because we're cheap, native English speakers, are painfully aware of internationalisation issues, and Germans like living here.
#10 TED "we can change the world"
Ahh, no we can't because the banks won't let us!
To REALLY change the world we need to dump our debt ridden monetary ponzi scheme run by the Rothchilds & Co at the FED and RB 's around the globe.
That means making the rich POOR!
"the miracle of your mind is seeing the world as it isn't, we can imagine the future (WW3) we can remember the past" ( most people can't even remember there god damn pin number!)
There seems to be no real will "to solve problems". I think is is because real solutions end up destroying some corporations giant income stream.
For instance, if we heated all hot water in NZ by heat collectors on our roofs, we would solve a ton of power supply problems. Using electricity (which can run a computer, TV microwave etc) to heat water is like feeding the cat crayfish (IMO)- just stupid wasteful use of a premium form of energy.
another for instance
Using a car to transport one person from home to work and back again 5/6 days a week is boring and exhausting for the driver and a ridiculously wasteful use of fuel, roadway and inner-city parking. Again, like feeding the dog filet steak and parmesian cheese!! Wasteful and soul destroying for us all.
if we made all public transport (trains, buses and ferrys (just for passengers, not for cars) in NZ free- within towns/cities and between towns/cities-
anybody can just jump on/off a bus or a train, which will go almost everywhere, and go fequently to popular destinations, we would save afortune in inported fuel, attract tourist from around the world and most importantly, improve the health and well being of the members of our society. People would walk more and intermingle more. Air polution in the cities would decrease and we wouldn't have to be building more and more and more roads and tunnels and bridges. People could still have their cars if public transport didn't suit.
Most REAL solutions are common sense, lowtech, proven, inexpensive and generally more fun, but will never ever be allowed to happen, in spite of the crap spin about "thinking outside the box".
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/financialcrisis/9122365/Greek-defaul…
"However a poll of more than 1,000 Greeks for the Kathimerini newspaper
yesterday found that 67pc said a return of the drachma would make the
country's situation worse compared with 13pc who believed the country would
be better off with its own currency."
Ahh - The magic of the purchasing power of the DM (Euro) in the pockets of the Greeks - it is a fatal addiction for the Greeks.
The real cruelty is that the Greeks voluntarily continue to demonstrate to the world that they are not Germans.
But there is a lesson here for us too - scocialism strips people of their dignity to the point where they can no longer understand that equal purchasing power is not a right but rather it must be earned.
But for many in the UK the same socialist mindest is well ingrained - a right to equal consumption, whether it be health services, education, food, clothing housing, without reference to the market value of their own output.
Many in the UK, like in Greece would die in a ditch to keep their ill-gotten gains from the insidious moral hazard that lies at the heart of the socialist worldview.
Is it not an irony that Germany, a socialist country, with rampant internal moral hazard, cannot tolerate moral hazard when applied to them by the equally socialist Greeks?
Perhaps this defines the limits of international socialism - cultural / national self interest will always trump international socialism in the long run because moral hazard is only tolerated to a degree within the same family.
Jonathan
moraymint
Spot on Jonathan.
I've posted this before, but your comment reminds me of Alexander Fraser Tytler's observation in his "Decline and Fall of the Athenian Republic":
"A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the voters discover that they can vote themselves largesse from the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidates promising the most benefits from the public treasury with the result that a democracy always collapses over loose fiscal policy, always followed by a dictatorship."
BazzaMcKenzie
The authors of the US Constitution, who were intelligent, educated men with far greater knowledge of history and politics over the ages than modern politicians, well understood this. Which is why they applied such stringent restrictions on the US federal government, including no income tax.
Over time, judges and politicians have progressively loosened those restrictions, corrupting the US Constitution and its interpretation.
Because they were intelligent and insightful, I doubt its authors would be surprised by those developments. Which is captured in Jefferson's statement "The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time, with the blood of patriots and tyrants."
And politicians who, on the pretext of a corrupted and manipulated version of "democracy", intervene regularly in everyone's lives, steal through massive taxation and currency debasement, and demonstrate a complete disregard for any constraints of law, are indeed tyrants.
Well, scatter my datter, as Riddley Walker would say: auto registrations in Eurolalaland are dropping like - cars from a crane?
FWIW Bell Labs is reported to have gotten the breakthrough that gave us modern technology from pieces of alien craft .. Roswell crash and others. So I would not credit them with any great ability. http://www.anomalies.net/archive/cni-news/CNI.0814.html
We got a huge leg up from this..in the end it may not save us.. but it has been fun...
European govt bonds start to look and smell like used toilet paper !
"Speculation that other bodies who helped to grease the wheels of the region's logjammed credit market like the European Investment Bank could also seek the same protection as the ECB, has hardened the resolve of investors not to pay senior prices for bonds that are actually riskier than they look.
"Did you spot the clause in your bond documents that said that you were buying the subordinate tranche of the government bond market?" M&G Fund Manager Jim Leaviss said. "Of course it never existed...the law is torn up and rewritten."
http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/03/05/uk-eurozone-creditors-idUSTRE8240Y020120305
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