Just wondering if you've got an elegant solution to the world's economic problems - because somebody has to or we're all toast - the smoke alarms are squealing.
The world's most erudite financial gurus have exhausted their usual panoply of platitudes and recklessly thrown our fiscal survival into the embrace of politicians. There is a flaw in this as politicians are local and the problem is global - so any solution from them will be more about re-election that resurrection. What makes this even more unlikely is that politicians don't know the full extent of what they're dealing with. As a result they are having a panic attack. Prior to being pressed to assume the mantle (stress position) of economic saviours politicians were told to "get off out of it" by the very same financial professionals that are now demanding that they take over.
Is this because the money-men know the size of the problem and their inability to solve it or another attempt to have the public purse bail them out of losses on innumerable bad investments and protect their bonuses? How, one may ask, does a bank that passed the health check "Stress Test" a few months ago suddenly find itself close to bankrupt - if they were telling the truth? Certainly a few billion for Greece wouldn't bring the world's economy to the suburbs of Armageddon were it not for the other tens of trillions of morally hazardous toxicity out there. The political terror that it is all about to collapse has led to a reluctance to save nobodies' banks but our own - it may be dirty, underhand and morally hazardous but it's our dirty, underhand, moral hazard.
The PIIGS (note the extra I for Italy) go under and the BRICS hoard money while I'm particularly amused by the choice of terminology for an economic disaster prognosis - as in "hard" or "soft" landing. It strikes me that if you are going to end up dead it hardly matters. This brings to mind the advice given if the parachute fails to open - "Cross your right leg over your left leg as it is easier to screw you out on a left hand thread".
Now is about time to eviscerate the hubris of economists - a delusional sense of esteem best illustrated by the self-bestowal of a Nobel Prize. It is not one of the Nobel prizes established by Alfred in 1895. Economists invented this one for themselves in the 1960's - they must have regarded themselves as too important to be left out. So they got the money from a bank, appointed their own committee of economists, and gave themselves prizes for coming up with ideas that looked good on paper but demonstrably haven't worked. Were it not for the prestige of the Nobel name most if not all of these ideas might have met the abortive fate they deserved. There should be a reverse Nobel Prize in Economics committee that takes back these awards based on performance and the whole groundless aggrandisement immediately abandoned. I too would like a Nobel Prize, in what hardly seems to matter, unfortunately it would be hard to find a bank able to cough-up the dough right now.
The world's most erudite financial gurus have exhausted their usual panoply of platitudes and recklessly thrown our fiscal survival into the embrace of politicians. There is a flaw in this as politicians are local and the problem is global - so any solution from them will be more about re-election that resurrection. What makes this even more unlikely is that politicians don't know the full extent of what they're dealing with. As a result they are having a panic attack. Prior to being pressed to assume the mantle (stress position) of economic saviours politicians were told to "get off out of it" by the very same financial professionals that are now demanding that they take over.
Is this because the money-men know the size of the problem and their inability to solve it or another attempt to have the public purse bail them out of losses on innumerable bad investments and protect their bonuses? How, one may ask, does a bank that passed the health check "Stress Test" a few months ago suddenly find itself close to bankrupt - if they were telling the truth? Certainly a few billion for Greece wouldn't bring the world's economy to the suburbs of Armageddon were it not for the other tens of trillions of morally hazardous toxicity out there. The political terror that it is all about to collapse has led to a reluctance to save nobodies' banks but our own - it may be dirty, underhand and morally hazardous but it's our dirty, underhand, moral hazard.
The PIIGS (note the extra I for Italy) go under and the BRICS hoard money while I'm particularly amused by the choice of terminology for an economic disaster prognosis - as in "hard" or "soft" landing. It strikes me that if you are going to end up dead it hardly matters. This brings to mind the advice given if the parachute fails to open - "Cross your right leg over your left leg as it is easier to screw you out on a left hand thread".
Now is about time to eviscerate the hubris of economists - a delusional sense of esteem best illustrated by the self-bestowal of a Nobel Prize. It is not one of the Nobel prizes established by Alfred in 1895. Economists invented this one for themselves in the 1960's - they must have regarded themselves as too important to be left out. So they got the money from a bank, appointed their own committee of economists, and gave themselves prizes for coming up with ideas that looked good on paper but demonstrably haven't worked. Were it not for the prestige of the Nobel name most if not all of these ideas might have met the abortive fate they deserved. There should be a reverse Nobel Prize in Economics committee that takes back these awards based on performance and the whole groundless aggrandisement immediately abandoned. I too would like a Nobel Prize, in what hardly seems to matter, unfortunately it would be hard to find a bank able to cough-up the dough right now.
Rather than have the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra and the New Zealand Choral Federation go to the trouble of learning all the Rugby World Cup participating nations' National Anthems - given the economic condition of most of them - it would have been easier, and possibly more appropriate, to have learned only Meatloaf's "I want my money back". This, at least, would more accurately reflect the attitude of the players who are complaining that there's not enough money for them in it. So little in fact that the NZ All Blacks might not show up for the next one. Not much of a threat as a team of NZ economists could find a bank to pay them to form their own team. Global Rugby looks to be heading the same way as Global Finance - Money Rules, OK - except when there isn't any.
