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Learning from Dogs
Man’s best friend, the dog, is an integrous animal. This Blog is about integrity of heart, mind and soul. We authors think there is far too much spin, deceit, half-truths, call it what you will, in the world around us. We want to write honestly and sincerely about a wide range of subjects but always endeavouring to demonstrate to our readers that openness of mind and heart makes sense.
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The EU and the European Taxpayer
Integrity? Here is your quiz question for today:
Which international, taxpayer-funded organisation has an unelected crony of the British Prime Minister in an important – but not the top job – who earns more than the President of the United States and double the salary of Hillary Clinton?
Clue!
Yes, you’re right. It is the European Union. This is an organisation of member states that in principle is supposed to be
Baroness Ashton
about creating a free, democratic and open market in Europe. It has turned into a proto-state (in the eyes of the Brusselocrats) which – therefore – has to have a “Foreign Minister”, in this case Baroness Ashton.
This is a person with very little knowledge of international affairs sent by Gordon Brown to Brussels because he couldn’t afford to lose Peter Mandelson or David Milliband. This is a person never elected to any public post, yet who receives a vast salary and benefits package higher than that of ANY of the Presidents and/or Prime Ministers of ANY of the member states of the EU.
As “The Daily Mail” points out, in addition to this very large salary the Foreign Minister also enjoys an extraordinary raft of other benefits:
“Her basic pay of £250,000 is double that of her U.S. counterpart, Hillary Clinton (who’s on £124,000). And on top of that, Lady Ashton is entitled to a raft of benefits including a £38,000 yearly accommodation allowance, £10,000 annual entertainment budget, two chauffeurs, plus thousands of pounds more in sundry allowances and – if she survives – a pension of £64,000 pa (three times the average salary in Britain) plus a “golden handshake” of over £450,000.”
All this goes hand-in-hand with billions spent on the new EU “diplomatic service”.
But hang on a minute! The EU is NOT A STATE!
The EU has no army! Baroness Ashton as “Foreign Minister” can decide on practically nothing that the key heads of government do not agree to. So what is going on here? Is all this vast waste of public money in a time of financial crisis either A) the bloated pretention of Brusselcrats who have a delusional idea of their own importance or B) another brick in the wall which one day WILL be a United States of Europe.
One can see how the thinking goes: “We’ll set up a “Foreign Ministry” so big and powerful that one day they will just have to agree to creating a single state to justify it. And of course the more it costs, the more important it obviously is and therefore the more powerful we ourselves will be. And naturally, the more jobs there will be for us to go to on the Brussels merry-go-round.
Of course, it is both A AND B. And how can they afford these humungous salaries? Well, because they can get away with it. In theory they are accountable, but in reality? How many people even know who their European MP is? Once you get onto the Euro Gravy Train it disappears out of sight. Nothing the voter says or does seems to stop the bloated upward creep of salaries, allowances and pretentions.
How ANY Brusselocrat can justify such a ludicrous salary for an unelected and essentially unimportant “minister” is a mystery. The main justification seems to be “self-interest”. The EU is NOT A STATE. States have Foreign Ministers.
It is dishonest and amounts to theft of public funds. But that is not the WORST of it. The saddest thing is that it damages the morale of those who – like me – used to believe in a Europe united but not “statefied”. I want a free and open market. I do NOT want a United States of Europe. But this is where they want to lead us, and – like a black hole – each year sees a tiny creep in that direction, or in the above-mentioned case, a BIG creep. I also do not want a venal, money-grabbing, bureaucratic elite in Brussels which makes 80% and rising of British law.
Once again, one wonders if delusional pretentions will bring the whole edifice crashing down and the baby go out with the bathwater …
By Chris Snuggs
Econned, by Yves Smith
Learning from Dogs muses the new book from Yves Smith
ECONned, by Yves Smith
In Econned, Yves Smith, founder of Naked Capitalism, argues that the economy was doing just fine in the regulated environment up to the 1970s. Then began the work of the Chicago economists who challenged Keynesian economics and touted the benefits of deregulation which eventually led to the financial crisis we have today.
Yves argument is internally consistent and well researched, but ignores some factors that I think would change the conclusions drawn from her work.
Yves Smith, author and founder of Naked Capitalism
First, Yves notes that the primary reason that economists are not useful to the real world is that economic research presumes equilibrium. Smith misses the point here, but it is understandable. It took me years of study and contemplation to fully appreciate that an equilibrium simply gives economists a point of reference, a common base, from which to study shocks and movements. In and of itself, equilibrium is not interesting or important. But movements to and from equilibrium are of real interest because they enable us to study and try to predict how individuals will react to incentives and changes in market conditions.
Second, we have to put the contributions of the Chicago economists of the 1970s into context. Up until that time, the only real school of thought in macroeconomics was based on Keynes, who presumed that markets fail and that the government must play an active and large role – primarily through government spending and taxes — for the economy to perform well. Keynes’ work was a reaction to the Great Depression.
Friedman’s monetarism also sought to explain the Great Depression, but focused on the role of monetary policy on the economy. This work showed that the missteps of the Federal Reserve was the primary cause of the depth and length of the Great Depression, and that long-term accommodative monetary policy causes inflation. This body of work did not stress deregulation, although it did lean more heavily on enabling private market solutions than on replacing them with government solutions. Neither theory is complete; Keynes focused on the short run (“In the long run, we are all dead” is a rather famous Keynes quip) and Monetarism focused on the long run.
There was a second large body of work that came out of the University of Chicago during the late 1960s and 1970s. This research documented the tremendous costs of regulation. I know this literature personally and believe that its conclusions are very sound: it shows that any effective regulation limits either the quantity or price of a good or service away from what it would have been without the regulation. In fact, in my view, it was the passage of regulations requiring certain lending behavior that set off the series of events that led to the crisis, which is the exact opposite argument from what Ms. Smith makes.
By Sherry Jarrell
Shame on you, President Obama
President Obama’s lack of grace.
Shame on you, President Obama.
Presidents Obama and Bush
To publicly comment on the singular importance of the Iraqi elections without crediting President Bush for having the courage and fortitude to free those people from a tyrannical leader who threatened the security of the free world – shameful.
Of course, you also failed to acknowledge President Bush’s role in enabling the historic Afghanistan elections of 2009. I just hoped you would have matured a little since then.
The media is not doing much better on this issue. But then we expect less of our media than our President.
by Sherry Jarrell
A genius of a teacher
A lesson for all of us
An economics professor at a local college made a statement that he had never failed a single student before, but had once failed an entire class.
That class had insisted that Obama’s socialism worked and that no one would be poor and no one would be rich, a great equalizer.
The professor then said, “OK, we will have an experiment in this class on Obama’s plan“. All grades would be averaged and everyone would receive the same grade so no one would fail and no one would receive an A…
After the first test, the grades were averaged and everyone got a B. The students who studied hard were upset and the students who studied little were happy. As the second test rolled around, the students who studied little had studied even less and the ones who studied hard decided they wanted a free ride too so they studied little. The second test average was a D! No one was happy.
When the 3rd test rolled around, the average was an F. The scores never increased as bickering, blame and name-calling all resulted in hard feelings and no one would study for the benefit of anyone else.
All failed, to their great surprise, and the professor told them that socialism would also ultimately fail because when the reward is great, the effort to succeed is great but when government takes all the reward away, no one will try or want to succeed.
Could not be any simpler than that.
By Bob Derham
The Hypocrisy of Cutting Waste
Cut Waste Later? How about now?
I honestly cannot understand how President Obama can look the American people in the eye and tell them that Health Care reform will be paid for, in part, by finding savings and reducing fraud in Medicare over the next several years.
President Obama on Health Care Reform
If it is possible to operate Medicare more efficiently, why have we not done it already? Why must doing it right wait for new programs and new legislation? Why doesn’t Congress first prove to the American people that it can operate a program efficiently and then come back and ask for more?
Because it can’t, that’s why not. The plain and simple truth is that it cannot do so now, and will not do so in the future. So why are we letting our elected officials get away with such a charade?
I just don’t understand it.
By Sherry Jarrell
Nationalist Hysteria Yet Again
Politics, history and daftness!
Blah
The Armenian “genocide” of WWI is once again in the news. The Americans seem to be on the point of recognizing what happened as genocide, much to the fury of the Turks. (though Obama is – once again – apparently wobbling ….)
To my mind, what happened WAS genocide or as near it as makes no difference, but that judgement is best left to historians and is not what interests me in this matter. No, once again it is the absolute hysteria that nationalism can provoke that intrigues me. I take hysteria to be a form of insanity; it is certainly as potentially destructive. How can most of an entire nation be insane?
The point is – but logic seems to go straight out of the window when nationalist hysteria takes over – that this happened nearly ONE HUNDRED YEARS AGO. Any Turks involved are long dead. Present-day Turks cannot POSSIBLY be blamed for what their predecessors did, no more than Germans today can be blamed for Hitler or indeed today’s Mongols for Genghis Khan.
What is the POINT of Turks protesting so loudly about what was the appalling mass killings of Armenians? Nobody is going to blame TODAY’S Turks, are they?
The Turks’ current position could be described as anything from wrong through illogical to insane. For goodness sake, just admit the truth and let’s get on with the future. It happened, it wasn’t YOUR fault but THE TRUTH must be told. Without the truth, we are lost.
The irony is – and irony is never far from human experience – that one supposes the Turkish reluctance to admit that it WAS a genocide or as near as dammit is because to do so would mean they “lost face” or “were guilty”, whereas in fact what is reprehensible is the very FACT that they refuse to admit it, not the original events themselves for which THEY TODAY cannot be held responsible.
This seems to me such a self-evident truth that I truly do not understand the Turkish position. Perhaps someone else can help me here ……
As for “we must avoid damaging relations with Turkey”, I can only throw up my hands in despair. The truth is the truth, and what is the VALUE of “relations” based on lies?
As for joining the EU, forget it. There is enough hysteria within our borders already without adding another 90 million people’s worth.
PS And while we’re on the Turks and Armenia, it is time that the Japanese made a more convincing admission that their army was guilty of appalling atrocities in WWII.
By Chris Snuggs
Greece, Oh Greece!
Fancy a Greek Isle?
Fancy a Greek Isle?
Germany is baulking at a Greek bailout ….. 84% of the people are opposed according to polls, and Frau Merkel is decidedly lukewarm. This is no surprise; the Germans are pretty commonsensical after all. They are going through a “spot of fiscal turbulence” themselves and hardly in a mood to bail out a feckless, tax-avoiding, economic basket case on the flaky south of the Brusselian Empire ….
Instead, they have come up with a cunning plan; the Greeks should sell some of their islands. I can see the attraction; at knock-down prices, no doubt a good many Germans themselves – short of coast in the homeland – would be only too keen to snap up a firesale bargain.
But if I were Greek I would beware of Germans with cunning ideas. After all, it could be the islands today and the Acropolis tomorrow. Selling capital assets to clear debts built up on a binge of tax-avoided short-term consumption is hardly the long-term solution, and it is remarkable how we humans do tend to go for short-term, quick-fix solutions (see my post on the Fat Pill) . Of course, in Europe at least the Sun (can I capitalize it? It is after all the source of my existence …) plays a large part here, for the further south you go the hotter it is, the more corruptly-shambolic the taxation system, the flakier the economy and the higher the debt. Of course, Britain is an exception to the rule, since it must be put in the Mediterranean basket of cases even though it is far up in the north. Still, Britain was ever exceptional ….
No, I would advise the Greeks to hang on to their islands for a rainy day and do the right thing, which is take the medicine, invest long-term rather than on frivolous consumption and in general live within your means. Selling the islands is desperation stakes, even if the ultimate solution would be to sell the whole country to the Germans and let them sort out the mess, and – more to the point – pay for it all as they did with East Germany.
But though this is hardly a laughing matter – especially for innocent Greeks (I assume there are some!!) – I did have a chuckle yesterday when I saw the headline.
“Greece calls for EU to play its part.” – in other words, bung in billions to bail them out. I am I confess mystified to understand exactly why the thrifty Danes should play their part in bailing out the hapless Greeks, though I suppose we do still owe them for democracy and stuff. When does the statute of limitations run out on this?
Well, good luck Greece, but don’t count on my pfennig, and don’t sell the islands either!
By Chris Snuggs
A useful reflection on the economic crisis.
Will this prove to be an accurate analysis of what happened?
Regular readers of Learning from Dogs will know that Yves Smith of Naked Capitalism is held in high regard by this author. She was one of the authors mentioned in a recent Post titled Free Speech and then a little later on there was a Post from me specifically praising her.
Last Friday the US Business News Network, BNN, ran a piece which included Yves discussing her new book ECONNED.
Yves Smith - ECONNED
The reason for publishing this Post is that the video clip covering Yves contribution is a very clearly articulated account of how we got ourselves into this economic mess. For those like this author who don’t really understand many of the sophisticated economic terms used widely elsewhere, this was a refreshing ‘tutorial’.
Do watch it – Yves is brought in around 3 min 45 secs.
By Paul Handover
Attraction
The difference that makes the difference!
Nature's 'law' of attraction
As a follow-up to my last Post on Learning from Dogs “Managing in a mad world“, I got to thinking about the so called “Law of Attraction“.
I say that because I beginning to believe that this ‘Law’ is more about what we think about and focus our attention on than anything that has a tangible force of attraction. But it is well known that the brain (to protect our sanity!) filters out on a huge scale so this ‘attraction’ may be our minds remaining receptive or, as it were, allowing us to ‘resonate’ with others sharing our ideas and emotions.
Again, I notice this common ground between my psychotherapy clients and my business clients. Successful people tend to focus on the positive and usually have a strong belief in themselves and their abilities, and unsuccessful people who have suffered any sort of difficulty for an extended time, tend to be preoccupied with focussing on the negative and tend to have a negative self-view.
Naturally, we become orientated around our belief systems. This, I believe is where good, consistent parenting comes in because many of our beliefs are taken on from our parents. Even if the parenting style has been ‘tough’ as long as there’s consistency, balance is maintained and there is a solid reference point for the youngster to come away from.
Management styles resemble parenting styles, and why shouldn’t they, as the higher qualities of facilitating structured learning in a safe environment is exactly what good management is all about. Delegating is about empowering and confidence building. Parenting styles that are loose or have little or no structure or that are overbearing and dictatorial tend to be damaging.
Of course, there are no hard and fast rules here, just tendencies but it’s interesting how these are played out everywhere, in every situation where we are in relationship with others. Even more interesting in a recession where companies are really struggling!
How fascinating to clock the number of companies struggling badly who have an autocratic management style, where staff are told what to do and there is little empowerment, and then compare them to ones where the opposite is true and people are free to interact, communicate, feel they’re reasonably empowered and work together in an environment of mutual trust.
The correlation in this part of the South West UK where I mainly work is significant. It’s as if when we feel empowered and we’re working together with a group of like-minded people, all problems and challenges are solvable, because our self-belief is high and we visualise success. Also, adversity is seen as a challenge and one that can be mastered.
We certainly are living in interesting times!
By Jon Lavin
Assumptions can be fun!
An old aviation theme has a wider message
In flying, mistakes have the power to inflict harm way beyond the immediate significance of the mistake. Thus the flying community have created a whole load of sayings that serve constantly to remind all those charged with the safe transport of aircraft. For example we have ‘If there’s any doubt, there’s no doubt‘. Or ‘There are old pilots and bold pilots, but no old, bold pilots‘. However the saying that underlines this story is ‘Never assume, always ask!’
Who is that in the LH seat?
His request approved, the CNN News photographer quickly used a cell phone to call the local airport to charter a flight. He was told a twin-engine plane would be waiting for him at the airport.
Arriving at the airfield, he spotted a plane warming up outside a hanger. He jumped in with his bag, slammed the door shut, and shouted, ‘Let’s go‘.
The pilot taxied out, swung the plane into the wind and took off.
Once in the air, the photographer instructed the pilot, ‘Fly over the valley and make low passes so I can take pictures of the fires on the hillsides.‘
‘Why?‘ asked the pilot.
‘Because I’m a photographer for CNN‘ , he responded, ‘and I need to get some close up shots.’
The pilot was strangely silent for a moment, finally he stammered, ‘So, what you’re telling me, is . . . You’re NOT my flight instructor?‘
By Bob Derham
Paul Handover
Chris Snuggs
Jon Lavin
Bob Derham
Sherry Jarrell
John Lewis