Dogs are animals of integrity. We have much to learn from them.
Tag: Politics
Who really understood the forces of destruction building up in the global economy?
(This Post is longer than usual but doesn’t lend itself to being divided into multiple Posts – trust it is worth the read.)
Part One – How investing in the 80s was so hit and miss.
My education with respect to the sound management of one’s wealth came from a propitious mistake by a global insurance company, one of Britain’s largest insurance companies as it happens. Here’s the story.
Steve Keen – Associate Professor of Economics & Finance at the University of Western Sydney.
I know didly squat about economics. I know a lot about the effect of economics in the sense of government policies, of inflation and debt, international trade and much more only in how they have impacted me over a lifetime of working, buying homes, raising a family, running a couple of businesses and now contemplating retirement. I can sum up my personal strategy – LUCK! I have been lucky. The other Post out today shows an example of that luck.
Frankly, economists haven’t figured widely in my role call of people that I admired, probably because I don’t really understand what they are talking about. (That’s why this Blog has a real live economist as part of the team, to help educate me and all the rest of the readers who come to this Blog!)
The other Post on this subject spoke of David Kauders, who clearly saw it coming. Now here’s an economist who also saw it coming, Steve Keen.
Important lessons from former East Germans.
Have you ever noticed how the most ardent supporters of capitalism and free markets are those who’ve experienced a world without them?
How those who speak out most poignantly against health care reform in the U.S. are those who’ve experienced nationalized health care? No?
If you can, then, take a moment and think back to the coverage, the news, the sound bites. Take a look, perhaps a second look, behind the headlines and I venture that you will find endless examples of this phenomenon. It is those who have done without freedom of choice, free markets, and self-determination who treasure it most, who most understand its value, who’ve lived with the consequences of its absence.
We need look no further than Chancellor Angela Merkel and her recent victory in Germany’s national election.
Chancellor Merkel grew up in communist East Germany and is now leading Germany out of recession with tax cuts and reduced government spending.
We should be listening to what the world is telling us. Very hard, and very quickly. We don’t want to have to lose it before we appreciate what we have.
By Sherry Jarrell
How clear, crisp September days echo 1940.
I was born in London some 6 months before the end of World War II. The echoes of that tragic event in human history rang around the torn roadways and ripped buildings of London for many years, certainly for sufficiently long that I was able to remember as a young boy, away on his bicycle, the bomb sites and and the gaps where once buildings had stood.
Sometimes, when the September weather is as it was during the Battle of Britain, it’s almost as though those echoes can still be faintly heard. Maybe all Londoners over a certain age hear them?
Baseline Scenario publishes an interesting post and triggers a wise comment.
Regular readers of Learning from Dogs will know that we greatly admire the job done by Simon Johnson, James Kwak and others over at Baseline Scenario in debating this global economic crisis.
The comments that flow in are fascinating and often deeply educational. Not surprising! Baseline Scenario has nearly 12,000 readers! But many of them show the level of anger and frustration felt by so many.
Anyway, a Post published by them on September 24th reminded me that hope is so much a more profitable emotion than anger. The Post starts like this,
The fragility of the economy shows in many areas.
Last Thursday, the mere hint of a fairly insignificant surplus in U.S. oil reserves pushed down current oil prices and energy-related futures and other speculative plays.
Oil prices have fallen sharply as weak US home sales data and high US oil inventories prompted doubts about a potential recovery in fuel demand. Source: BBC News, 24th September.
Can you imagine the reaction to an announcement of a new source of U.S. oil reserves? Or of renewed off-shore drilling capacity? Relaxed EPA standards? Additional refinery capacity?
Our energy prices would be cut in half and we’d be so much less likely to war with oil-rich nations on whom we now depend for the functioning of our economy and who, indirectly or not, limit our economic and personal freedoms.
By Sherry Jarrell
This is not comfortable reading.
Patrice published a Post on his Blog last September 11th. Not being an American it felt wrong to echo that publication by linking to the Post on the 11th as well. No logic, just the way it felt!
But it is so deeply interesting, that not to highlight the Post would be wrong. This Blog, after all, is about integrity. In that process, if the truth is uncomfortable, so be it. And if others think that Patrice doesn’t speak truthfully then they must speak otherwise. You see, integrity is really the pursuit of truth.
Patrice’s subject title is: Why France Is Bad: Profits Define Goodness.
US Government Policy encourages next round of foreclosures!
Call me crazy but I thought that the sudden rise in single-family home mortgage foreclosures that began a year or so back was one of the main causes of the current financial crisis.
And that many of these foreclosures resulted from families over-extending themselves, taking on too much debt given 
their income and other financial obligations, in part because of incentive programs designed to reduce the upfront cost of the home and the monthly mortgage payments during the first several years of home ownership.
So why is Washington pushing to expand and extend the first-time home buyer tax credit?
Britain’s excessive use of CCTV cameras and the shocking waste of money.
Even before leaving England a year ago, this was a subject that made me feel uneasy, to say the least.
Anyway, a recent article in The Daily Telegraph pointed out just what a complete cock-up this ‘investment’ in cameras 
has been.
Britain has 1 per cent of the world’s population but around 20 per cent of its CCTV cameras! Scary.
And don’t even think about the implications of RFID – Radio Frequency Identification.
G’rrrr.
By Paul Handover
Intelligence at the core of humanism
A while ago a comment on Baseline Scenario jumped off the screen at me. I was intrigued because the author of this comment used words with power and insightfulness. That author was Patrice Ayme. It’s a nom de plume. [NB. Not it isn’t, see comments below] The sub-heading at the top of this Post is from his Blog. Here’s an extract from the About section of that Blog.
This is a site that tries to find out what is really happening, and what is not, what is right and what is wrong, on many important questions, and in all sorts of ways. In other words thinking is applied relentlessly, the way evolution made it, as the ultimate instrument of domination of anything in sight (be it domination of oneself, of one’s own ideas and emotions, or domination of the universe). Thinking evolved to predict effectively and ambitiously, not to cower in a corner, modest and dazed. Prometheus’ punishment was a regrettable misunderstanding: we did not steal fire from someone, we created our mastery of fire, and fire made us what we are, as we wished. Mastering fire was not a sin, the Greco-Romans were wrong on that one. Fire was part of what we have evolved to be; masters of the universe, for better or worse.
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