Engpasskonzentrierte Strategie

It would appear that we are all now expected to find work "fun" into our seventies to fulfil our mission as state unsubsidised (and progressively less healthy) consumers - even if there is no work available outside of a supermarket check-out counter - as most people trying to get a new job at 60 might confirm. And as these jobs are now staffed by recent university graduates there's not much of that about. To what end are we working then? The vast majority do it to get into and then out of debt - a microcosm of today's financial market model. The product of Politicians and their economic advisers that have read Ayn Rand (incomparable nincompoop) as non-fiction. And we've recently seen where that leads.

Economists are now spewing forth the should have, could have, would have insights that the whole resultant catastrophe was predictable using the very same indicators that they invented to create it in the first place. The commander of the 18th Panzer Division said, after the battle for Smolensk, that they were winning themselves to death. Free market economics have succeeded in doing just that. Not very surprising then that Goldratt espoused the "weakest link" theory by following on from the German Wolfgang Mewes' "power-oriented management theory " and his later "Engpasskonzentrierte Strategie" - both of which the Wehrmacht could, would, should have borne in mind when they got into but not out of Stalingrad. And that's the Germans and the Euro for you.

There is a geo-strategic phenomenon called the "Eurasian Funnel" that illustrates the inability of a given Western force as it advances East to saturate and control terrain leading eventually to the isolation, exposure and destruction of that force. The same could be said of Economic Globalisation. Unfortunately the cheerleaders for Globalisation didn't follow the first law of military success - Never invade Russia - or, indeed, never march East.

What we have in Goldratt is a Bottleneck theory that ends up as a Funnel - most, if not all, Growth theories do this. That all of this is blindingly obvious doesn't appear to have prevented numerous repeats - the result of over-imagination rather than a limited one. Which brings us to that other financial market chestnut - Risk. Risk is always used to explain why we lost not how we won. It is a weasel word. While banks and bankers thrive and corporations sit on a pile of money a large part of the population is told to expect to spend their old age behind a checkout counter or stacking shelves. Which is the logical conclusion of a finance/retail economy when Economics relies solely on a selfish Dogma.

Work, then, is so that you can buy things you don't need to impress people you don't like. Its the best marketed product in the world, unfortunately for the majority of workers, its not the best paid. Which brings us back to the fundamental Market Economy sine qua non of Supply and Demand. If there is no demand there is no supply so there is no work and thus even less demand- no amount of Goldratt can fix that.

The modern Olympic Games have yet again demonstrated that they are simply an expensive giant monopoly advertising campaign decorated with athletes wearing product. This is best illustrated by the 100m and 200m sprinters wearing wrist watches - what for? These folk shave off their arm and leg hair to go faster. It takes less than 10 or 20 seconds but as they get into their blocks the cameras linger on their arms and hands settling behind the start line. Product gets air time and the athletes get a few more bucks.

It cost NZ an estimated $4 million a medal in London (a rounding error in what it cost London to stage the Games) - a few hip replacements there - so there is very little justification to continue this sporting nonsensical extravaganza - when slashing every other budget. The Ugandans, Kenyans and Ethiopians won a few medals while millions of their fellow Africans starved.

A load of outdated Nation State bollocks that brought us 2 world wars. Move the games to Greece permanently (they really could use the money) and select the athletes on ability not nationality. Also get rid of all this French language waffle - slows the ceremonies down and confuses the Chinese.

Ecologists are to blame

So who is really to blame? Theophrastus is who. It is the Ecologists who asserted that all human existence and behaviour can be reduced to a formula and number that begat the rot. We're all digits in the computer of life. Hence the belief that all outcomes can be predicted by formulae - the best of which get a Nobel Prize - hence Game Theory et al. Thus, according to this poppycock, the chances of your best mate fucking your wife are the same as those for a, soon to be cuckolded, Rwandan Gorilla. And there is an elegant formula to prove it.

Never mind that these theories are disproved by reality - the relationship between wolf and bison populations isn't linear any more than a Credit Default Swap takes all the risk out of a Collateralized Debt Obligation. Given the Self excluding nature of these theories, "this is a load of bollocks" is an unapproved response as you can't be outside a universal, mathematically elegant, truth.

This brings us to the truly head banging realisation that the same theory is used to prove opposite ends of the same argument. Those arguing for expansion of the planet's economy are using the same mathematical models as those bitterly opposed to it. Your Goldman Sach's Quant is more like a Greenpeace Eco-warrior than either of them care to admit - even if they realised it. Neither of them take individual behaviour into account as it isn't permitted by the model. Unpredictable individual behaviour is so anathema to an elegant mathematical solution that they invented a means to do away with it - Chaos Theory. When this was challenged by some bright spark that wondered how this could apply universally they invented Fractals. We're all predictably the same - have to be - or the models don't work. Then one day, somehow, somebody let the smoke out of the computer.

Now you'd wonder why any cognitive being would subscribe to an outcome where they're regarded as mathematical rather than biological. But it seems that rather than accept that not everything can be predicted by digits they concluded that there must be a "Theory of Everything". Which brings us, alas, to the purveyors of String Theory. Faced with the reality that most of the mathturbation that got them to this point is based upon giant assumptions that ignore the tricky bit between Particles and Relativity they spent decades introducing invisible dimensions and multiple universes but still couldn't get the numbers to work. The results have all been Infinity. Fear not say these intrepid number doodlers we'll insist that we're on the right track and give our grant money a new name "M Theory". Unfortunately this didn't stop the grants from shrinking so a lot of mathematical physicists were looking for a job just at the time that unregulated financial markets boomed. "I know a theory that takes all the risk out of stupidity" they said, "because we can predict the future - it's just like wolves and bison. Even if it isn't, we have another model that proves you can't lose." What they overlooked to mention is that they couldn't find Gravity and three quarters of Matter and Energy.

In a world where everything can be predicted in numbers and theories nothing else matters - yea, right! Unfortunately, economists didn't seem to realise that any theory that always ends up at Infinity wouldn't, in fact, work. Especially as the same theory could be used to arrive at both plus-infinity and minus-infinity simultaneously. Surely this would raise a few heads, you'd think - not if we're making so much money that it has to be right - QED. Wrong - somebody forgot that the rich like to, whenever and wherever possible, fuck the poor. The theory choked financial system, politically manipulated, permitted the rich to get richer and the poor to get poorer. The theory was that by exporting our poverty we'd all be better off and spend our time having our hair done or buying a flat screen TV. While the people that got our poverty would be delighted to have it as they live on less than $2 a day. Corporations loved it. The rich loved it. The poor, and increasingly the middle-class, got fucked.

Now what would have happened if chemists rather than physicists had come up with economic and financial theories. Well, chemists don't have any vague theories, they do have Principles. Principles, many and varied, are the key missing ingredients in mathematical financial theories - none of which have empirical proof outside of mathematics. So chemists would probably have done a better job. They don't join molecules together in an invisible dimension or another universe. Nor can they fill a test tube with ingredients that only exist in theory - they might try something that does exist. Not so Physicists - they just keep flogging this dead horse in the hope that it will, theoretically, come back to life - somewhere in the 15th dimension or in the billionth universe. If you believe String (M) Theory it is happening in a Universe near you right .... now.

My suggestion is that chemists round up all physicists and lock them up in a Silo. Where they can plan a theoretical escape.

Beware of gifts bearing Greeks

While the story line goes that it's all about saving the Euro it is really all about saving Banking. The ECB, with or without the assistance of other Central Banks, announces it has printed some fictional money and gives it directly to the banks exposed to Greek debt so they don't go bankrupt and the financial system doesn't collapse in Domino fashion. In order to pretend that this money is real they call it a loan to Greece and tell the Greeks they will have to pay it back with heaps of interest. This allows previous, unrepayable, Greek debt to be written down on the banks' balance sheets and makes them look healthier. It will keep going until the banks don't hold enough Greek debt to take them down along with the financial system when the inevitable happens. Then the Greeks will be allowed to default and leave the Euro. The Central Banks will by then own most of the Greek debt, write it off and invent more money to cover the gaping hole - they are the only ones that can do it. Until this happens the Greeks will continue to have the shit kicked out of them - austerely speaking - without getting so much as a sniff at the money. You'd be on the streets too.

It is all part of the same financial Shell Game. The Central Bank lends other banks invented money at zero interest to buy Government Bonds and accepts bad, invariably worthless, investments as collateral for the loans - a toxic for good paper shuffle.  The banking sector looks to have solid(ish) Government Bonds as investments. The Government is charged less interest on it's Bonds for which there appears to be a market, hopefully resulting in a negative yield. It also works the other way round - the banks issue paper and the government, by one means or circuitous other, buys or provides the money for them, thus injecting liquidity - it has to be this way since the public won't stand for another bank bail-out.  By this sleight of hand the risk is taken out of the private banking sector and made public. The theory being that the present system can survive a near-death experience - until things get better. Extend and pretend at it's best. Unfortunately for this scenario Greece isn't the only problem. There are several more countries on the brink of default. The hope is that the Central Banks can extract the banking sector out of the bad national debt, one debtor country at a time, by printing money in controlled quantities that doesn't result in massive inflation. This is what they mean by a controlled default. An uncontrolled default is one where the banks are still nostril-deep in bad loans when a nation implodes - nothing to do with the manner of the country defaulting. There is only one way a country can default and that is neither controlled nor uncontrolled it is simply "Goodbye!"

The question is how long will the public go on letting this happen before they rebel. Something that politicians, bankers, economists, fuck-wits and the rest of the 1% don't seem to have asked themselves. Not as long as you'd need is the answer, despite assurances that it'll all get better just so long as you do what we say and don't argue. If the Greeks manage to bring down their own government and default before the next round of loans then the game becomes extremely difficult if not cancelled due to bad economic weather. "Pour encourager les autres" is the great fear of Greece defaulting. The Portuguese, Irish, Spanish, Hungarians and even the Italians might see this as a good idea when Greece is still there the next morning. Why spend years paying off debt for money that went directly to banks.

It all gets a bit more emotionally complicated because the Germans are in charge - never overly popular in Greece - so it is a pity they're telling the Greeks what to do and insist on running their country - again. Especially as Germany is the main beneficiary of the Euro - and plays a big part in the reason several countries are now in the financial latrine. Wehrmacht dressed as bankers to most Greeks.

As recent research has shown, the poorer you get the stupider you get the more right wing and religious you become - doesn't bode well. A quick glance at the USA will confirm this. What are the odds that the Greek Army will make a comeback; this time it won't be communism but finance as the excuse the US uses to support a Junta. Spain, Italy and Portugal all have histories of Juntas. Will the real revolution come onto the streets after Armies try to usurp power to save Liberal Capitalist Democracy? An interesting proposition.

Of course an aristocrat fed-up with the nouveaux riche might follow the example of the derided Marquis de Sade. A man capable of not only deviant writings but of both philosophical and political musings that point to him as a materialist atheist, rabid left-winger as well as a sadist. He is rumoured to have played his part in the storming of the Bastille. Will Robespierre ride again?

The Mayan Economic Forum

As the elites, that brought us to the outskirts of economic armageddon, fly into Davos in their private jets and helicopters, stay in $1000 a night hotel rooms and have $500 dinners, I just thought that a few of the hurdles they'll have to jump over in the next day or two include:

225 million people unemployed around the world

A third of the people on the planet either poor, unemployed or both
1% of the world's families own 40% of the wealth
Wages as a percentage of GDP at an all-time low
Corporate profits as a percentage of GDP at an all-time high

Jump over them they will with the usual clap-trap - austerity, non-regulation, free-trade, market-forces, more loans, less debt and all the usual conflicting advice all wrapped-up and tied-off with a neat bow of "confidence" cheer-leading. Undoubtedly the word "innovation" will be bandied about until it becomes even more meaningless. Also expect to see the brief rise of the "Austrian School" of economic gibberish.

What is missing from the debate in Davos is the Mayan School of Economics. A school that predicts the end of the world this year and therefore, by definition, offers no pie-in-the-sky long term solutions. The best feature of the Mayan School is no matter what advice they give they simultaneously admit that, given the circumstances, it is totally pointless. In contrast, the other Schools of Economics won't admit to the pointlessness of their advice even after it has proven disastrous. Given that the Mayans have vanished well prior to their expected 2012 departure date it would seem appropriate to call the present deluded fiasco "The Mayan Economic Forum" as the attendees world will end about the same time.

Just to add to the upcoming potential for even greater misery the Gulf Arabs are planning – along with China, Russia, Japan and France – to end $US dollar dealings for oil - the last guy who attempted this was Saddam and shorthly thereafter a heavily armed $US dollar invaded him. The old "weapons of mass destruction" fable is raising it's ugly head about Iran and Seal Team 6 is at it again. All in the cause of driving stakes through the hearts of imaginary evil empires.

Possibly we should be hammering imaginary stakes through some of the 1%'s hearts - in the manner of one of those cocktail hors douvers with several comestibles impaled on one stick. Banker - cheese - politician - green pepper - economist - olive.

While we all descend into poverty and deprivation preventing us from affording either the weed killer or alcoholic beverage of our choice I leave you with the enlightened view of one Henry Ford who chose voluntarily to raise the pay of his workers — so they could afford to buy his cars - unfortunately he was a Nazi.

Financial Costa Concordia

There's a modicum of attention being paid to the apparent US economic resurgence in comparison to the UK et al. Attributed to the efficacy of assorted US economic policies. I want to get in early and disabuse you of such thoughts.

While, on paper, the UK's total debt burden is 5 times GDP as against the US's less than 3 times GDP and UK financial institutions have, on paper, 5 times as much debt as US ones - it is actually a load of bollocks. This is because the US banks are not marking to market by using access to cheap Fed money and are relying on Credit Default Swaps to deny and hide inevitable losses. Granted that US national coffers are benefitting from repatriated money and illusionary safe-haven status - as is the UK - but this won't protect either of them from a global financial collapse - France, Italy, PIGS and latterly the BRICs, Australia and Asia in general will succumb to fear.

When, not if, there is a default on a large national debt the CDS market will implode and there'll be a global Costa Concordia moment. The critical moment is when does the Captain leave the ship - Captain Greece, Captain Portugal and Captain Ireland are at the rail and Captain Italy, although a little behind them, could well accidently fall off on purpose. Captain France will go down with the ship while blaming Britain. Captain Germany, like the Captain of the Olympic, will not answer the distress calls.

I'd also like to steer the proletariat towards understanding that overpayment of CEOs and Bankers is a symptom not a cause - a few billion is neither here nor there in the present catastrophe. And that it's present high profile is just a ruse to divert attention away from the real problem - that the system itself is beyond fucked.

Incredibly, for example, General Motors, a company that never made a car worth owning, is claiming to be back in profit. In the usual manner they have achieved this by lending cheap money to purchasers to buy their products and then counting the money they've borrowed then loaned as profit. Even you and I can see the flaw in this as would a blind man on a galloping horse. Bearing in mind that there is no remaining ecosystem to support, never mind grow, manufacturing as the route out of recession. There is no supply chain outside China, nor are there enough low-wage workers; so celebrating the survival of a company based on lower wages and benefits to support more consumer debt doesn't appear to solve anything.

Your belief that one can - with generous public cash donations of course - Innovate out of the abiss is counter to all accepted business methodology. If a widget can be made in China for $8 or made in the UK for $80 then how many UK workers will benefit from the $250 profit made on the widgett? Answer: none. How many CEOs? Answer: one.

Stoking my higher than usual level of Outrage are the Hedge Funds that bought Greek debt for cents on the dollar that now want paid out at face value before agreeing to any deal. They bring to mind the last thoughts of the Mr. Black Husband spider when he asks Mrs. Black Widow "How was that for you"?

Pro tempore

In the same way as after "The Big One" Earthquake along the San Andreas Fault everything East of it, from the Rocky Mountains to New York City, sinks - Germany will leave the Euro. It may take a few small economies with it but France, Italy, Spain and the rest of them will be left floundering in Euro mire. Belgium, Hungary and Austria are about to admit defeat any day now. Angela is fervently denying she's riding that horse into town - all the more reason to believe she will. By extracting Germany it takes the Euro off the equivalent of a Gold Standard and immediately allows for it's devaluation. This will solve nothing for those left in it other than not have Germany tell them what to do. Brilliant!

The Euro is saved - pro tempore - somehow the beleaguered remnants have to come up with about half a trillion in new money a year for the indefinite future to save their rotten banks - even Binary Fission wouldn't suffice. As the ECB will have gone back to being the Bundesbank they'll have to open another central bank rapido, presto, tout suite to run the printing press.

Meanwhile the population of the remaining Eurozone take to the streets in an anti-austerity avalanche of protest and a bunch of Fascists get elected. All non-citizens are thrown out. The Deutschmark becomes the new reserve currency, forms a fiscal union with Switzerland, Lichtenstein and the Cayman Islands - the City of London empties and moves to Frankfurt. The pound overvalues against the Euro and everybody in Britain goes shopping in France and the Republic of Ireland - the UK borrows money from the Germans to survive under a deal where the Bundesbank runs Britain - ex-servicemen storm the Houses of Parliament - Chancellor of the Exchequer beaten to death with Zimmer frame. The USA foolishly pegs the Dollar to the Deutschmark in an attempt to keep oil priced in US Dollars, goes into a Depression and invades the usual suspects and several unsuspecting countries - they elect a Montana Militiaman as President and the Capitol is moved to a small shack near Helena. The Middle East falls apart. The Taliban invades Pakistan causing a war with India and China buys Africa when nobody is looking. The UN moves to Beijing and Israel is thrown out. The Greeks find oil. There is an Influenza pandemic started by a sick chicken in Baluchistan, due to a lack of funds a third of the world's population dies. Notts County win the FA Cup.

Is this something like the solution you are suggesting?

Return of the Gooh Gooh

The exchange rate is the least of it. Protectionism and all the monetary constraints of economic collapse ensue. But the gist of your argument is that, as with the UK, Sweden and Denmark, you're better-off out of the Euro so why then propose an expensive (unworkable, unaffordable) solution to save it? You're knocking down your own argument. Rather than a single economic zone the Euro is an economic chimera of smoke and mirrors developed from an original treaty designed for the benefit French farmers.

The UK's economic performance is abysmal - so unfair to Sweden and Denmark to compare their performance based solely on a shared ability to flex exchange rates. The only thing that keeps the UK out of an Italianesque tradgedy is, as you say, that it is fortunately not in the Euro -  as a result, they are able to devalue against it - the saving grace along the way is the US Dollar weakness - already ending as American money heads for home in panic. This does not mean that the UK economy is doing any better or that their banks aren't just as vulnerable as the likes of France's when debtor nations try to repay loans with garbage currencies - however they are aligned. By the way, aligned to what?

When you devalue your Mickey Mouse currency against the Euro you can't buy as much in Euros (or anything else) as you used to which then impacts on all those that remain in a real currency - badly if enough countries revalue - so they have to try to hold down the value of their real currency. This can't happen. Result Mickey Mouse inflates.

Usually the country invents a name for it's new Specie (I've always liked "Gooh, Gooh" - as in the Italian Gooh Gooh or the Spanish Gooh Gooh) and defaults on any debt not marked in that currency - basically declare bankruptcy without the discharge. Their economies immediately go into several years of ass tightening and reappear when enough time has passed for everybody to have gotten over being stiffed by them. Of course, up to now, this hasn't included the likes of Italy - new territory indeed.

What we have here is a problem that can't be solved within the Box of present economic theory - why? - because the Box is a mirage with vaporous walls of synthetic debt. A faith based belief economic system with one commandment - growth. The only requirement to be a supplicant is to have "confidence". No lasting solution can be found within the confines of this thinking - just more of the same. Given the all-pervading nature of the present belief system an alternative can not be found in time to prevent an economic equivalent of The Rapture, slash, End of Times.  If the Box is an illusion then there is no "outside the Box" to think in. As Weed used to say to the Flowerpot Men - "Time to go home" - or was that the Wooden-tops?

Germany's biggest advantage is that it's labour costs have remained reasonably flat (they started high in line with their productivity) while the others' shot up by 30% with little or no increase in productivity - who in their right mind drinks Retsina. Italy has gone nowhere in a couple of decades thanks to Berlusconi and a peculiarly Italian version of the free-market. One of the few things that sets Italy apart from the other failing economies was the lack of a property bubble. This is of little consolation.

I advise that in order to come up with a successful solution to the Euro shenanigans you might resort to recreational narcotics, hallucinogenic drugs or go into a trance - an induced coma might be a better long term condition.Which is what the likes of EC Commissioners and The ECB must have been in when they allowed Greece in.

The Bankers' last Haka

We appear to be well into the Uncertainty Principle already - if the Market reaction is anything to go by. Germany and France are at opposite ends of this principle. Germany has stopped so it knows where it is and France has to keep moving to avoid finding out. Unfortunately the two of them have to come up with a compatible solution. Germany knows it has just about enough money to deal only with it's own problems but France hasn't. So France wants to keep the fiction going long enough for time to heal the wound while Germany - no stranger to overwhelming debt - sees no point in securing what amounts to France's, and the rest of Europe's, debt as part of any deal. Meanwhile the British are baffled - at the mercy of the banks that created the problem in the first place. The City of London runs the country via political proxy.

Seeing that most of the transactions take place Offshore beyond regulation any threat to withdraw from the City of London is pretty hollow. All the foreign banks are already outside most UK regulation and taxation which is why they came to London to begin with. The UK banks are only subject to UK authority on the money they earn domestically or repatriate - largely used to pay themselves. Regulating this is a bit of a problem as the whole convoluted system is designed to avoid oversight. It is also designed to avoid jail. Any solution, to the inequity of bankers' moral hazard being taken at the expense of taxpayers, would have to remove the Offshore ability of accumulating unregulated debt globally while the risk falls domestically upon those with clean hands. This would require the regulations to apply universally, bring offshore havens into the fold and remove any burden on the public purse to bail out banks and private financial institutions. This will mean reversing most of what has happened over the past 40 years. Not a bit of wonder that bankers won't tolerate the thought of it. To make the present financial behaviour illegal would see most of them end up in prison.

What is a decent salary for a banker? They already get a base salary that is well above the norm and, under the present circumstances, more than they deserve. The bonus culture is their way of winning the bet before the result is in. The bonus culture in corporations is not that much better than in banking. This time the fools that carry the risk are the shareholders. Guaranteed minimum 100% of salary bonuses, stock options, retirement plan contributions are all based on numbers manipulated by the recipients of this largesse. The growing importance and influence of CFOs reflect this apparent anomaly as they orchestrate the numbers. The movement of vast quantities of money into private retirement plans, under favourable government tax rules drafted on the advice of financial institutions, guaranteed rising stock price P/E ratios that allowed corporate management to falsify omniscience and overpay themselves. All very comfy until there is a market crash. At which time the shareholders take the hit and management continues to pay itself more than they are worth or are the recipients of, wholly undeserved, giant redundancy packages.

Economies run on infrastructure and spending - any money not designated to improve those should be dropped from the plan. The beneficiaries of this infrastructure should be properly and proportionately taxed for it. This would include equitably apportioning corporate and finance profits towards national prosperity rather than individual wealth. By this means the possibility of a popular revolution on the street may be avoided.

You're wrong about Libya being the first no troops (or very few) on the ground example of regime change by us. Afghanistan was rid of the Taliban with similar minimal help - unfortunately keeping it Taliban-free has resulted in many more boots on the ground than originally estimated and an open-ended obligation. We'll have to conjure up the war on terror though to justify our arrival in Libya in large, heavily armed, numbers. Not beyond the realm of possibility once the Libyan factions start a civil war. Syria will become our new best friend when US troops leave Iraq and Iran gains more influence there. Hence the lack of action against Assad Jr. - unless of course he looks like actually losing at which point we'll back the most friendly looking, non-islamic, alternative. There is an interesting Middle East dynamic developing where their democracy is a challenge to our democracy. Let's not forget all our oil bearing despotic arab allies fearfully eyeing the rise of democracy. We're in a bit of a conundrum.

By the time NZ won the Rugby World Cup I was prepared to support anyone else, including France, winning the bloody thing just to get it over with. You've got to start thinking that it is all a set-up with the winner pre-arranged on an as-needed basis (a bit like Formula One motor racing). I'll be truly relieved when the last flag, poster and sign of the World Cup is removed from every nook and cranny of this country. A country that, sadly, believes that rugby is the world's most important game and, even more sadly, is the only game their boys can play reasonably well. The Haka thing at the start of the game should be banned - a time-waster and unfair to those without their own Haka to perform. Although every nation that has more than 8 vowels in the players' names has one. When Tonga or Samoa play NZ they try to out-Haka each other. The French walk-up is only news-worthy because NZ (and the IRB) expects the other team to stand around doing nothing while on the receiving end of loud noises, rude signs and throat-slitting actions. My suggestion is that all teams have a pre-game dance routine. Highland dancing for the Scots, a Jig for the Irish, coal-mining movements for the Welsh and a Morris dance for the English. The possibilities are endless, Line-dancing for the Americans, Tango for the Argies, some sort of Ninja deal for the Japanese, Can-Can for the French - what the fuck the Canadians and Suth Ifricins do is up to them.

Immoral Hazard

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.

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.