It's that time of the year and as usual*, I simply can't wish you a happy new year considering what's going to happen in 2012:
January 2012: after David Cameron and Nick Clegg fail to reach an agreement on the 2011-2012 bonuses for City bankers, the Poundzone implodes.
February 2012: Queen Elizabeth II mentions the possibility that she might step down before the end of her second 60-year mandate. Charles is, as always, all ears.
March 2012: Dmitri Medvedev announces the suicide of his Prime Minister: Vladimir Putin swallowed two gallons of radioactive vodka and shot himself nine times in the head. Putin nonetheless appears the next day, sporting a ten feet long green beard: "now call me Ras instead of Vlad".
April 2012: South Koreans disagree on how to handle their own security after the dissolution of the Combined Forces Command. The country splits into Southeast Korea and Southwest Korea, with Dokdo as the new neutral capital.
May 2012: Sarkozy declares himself winner of the Presidential Elections with a score of 98%, has the police shoot at protesters, and rebrands himself Nicolas The First just to be called "His Highness".
June 2012: in Vietnam, the Arab Spring rolls.
July 2012: for budgetary reasons, Greece, Spain, and Ireland compete under the same banner at the London Olympics: the Commonpoverty.
August 2012: ahead of the 18th Party Congress, China launches its latest aircraft carrier and the Occupy Singapore Strait movement.
September 2012: for the first time in Burma, a woman becomes Head of State. Hillary nominates Bill as commander in chief with just this piece of advice: "don't bask your tail".
October 2012: the Nobel Prize in Literature goes to Ben Bernanke for his bestseller, the $100 banknote (789,566,122,708,110 copies issued in one month).
November 2012: Herman Cain visits the White House to decide on which floor to install the Second and Third Ladies.
December 2012: on 2012/12/12, at 20:12:12, Pakistanese PM downloads the Doom app on his smartphone.
blogules 2011
* see "Happy New Year 2010" (Jan 2009), "Happy New Year 2011" (Dec 2009), "Happy New Year 2012" (Dec 2010)... and in French: "Bonne Année 2009" (Jan 2008), "Bonne Année 2010" (Dec 2008), "Bonne Année 2011" (Dec 2009), Bonne Année 2012 (Dec 2010).
Showing posts with label Ben Bernanke. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Ben Bernanke. Show all posts
20111211
20090101
Happy new year 2010
Sorry, but I want to forget 2009 :
January - Tel Aviv hawks perfectly used the window of opportunity before Obama's inauguration, igniting a 3rd intifada and an attack from Hezbullah. The Likud is disbanded (too far left) and on February the 10th, Yigal Amir's National Nationalist Party wins in a landslide. All Israelis of Palestinian origin lose their citizenship and their rights to the Geneva Convention but as a compensation, receive a one-way ticket to the Gaza Ghetto. Moderate Jews are considering a secession and by April, medias start talking about a civil war.
February - in order to celebrate Darwin's bicentennary, Sarah Palin burns the Library of Congress and a few science museums to the ground : "Them scientists have been lying to us for too long, and this fake Santa deserves to fry. Burn'em all ! And let's check if they taste like monkeys ! If we descend from the apes, how come I'm dumber than a moose ?"
March - Bernanke is arrested for a massive pizza scheme : he traded all the Federal Reserves with anchovies and pepperoni. China saves the US from bankruptcy but the country has a new currency : the Western Yuan. A Big Mac costs about two redbacks.
April - Gordon Brown choses the 60th anniversary of the Republic of Ireland to become the new King of Scotland. And 20 years after Tiananmen, the Politburo proposes a new deal to the Chinese People : "a slower growth but even less freedom". Wu Jintao is ousted within one day, and Wen Jiabao becomes the new Leader of the Cultual Revolution. By the end of his first 5 year plan, he should become the next Dalai Lama.
May - Alberto Gonzales escapes prison and manages to fly to North Korea where he becomes Honorary Chairman of the Waterboard.
June - Europe votes : 75% abstention and 95% NO. NB: it wasn't even for a referendum but to elect members of the Parliament...
July - No fireworks on the 4th. Need more ammos for Afghanistan, Iraq, Georgia and Estonia.
August - A new Putin blitz : invades Vatican the 5th, becomes Pope the 6th, canonizes Stalin the 7th.
September - Black Thursday the 24th. Quotation suspended for the S&P500. As of today, it's still uncertain whether it will become the SubStandard & Poorer 300 or 200. The latter wording has the favor of people who want to be at least once ahead of the market.
October - The corpse of Francis Bacon, 100, paints a vivid portrait of Hank Paulson screaming on the electric chair.
November - George W. Bush collapses at the end of a gigamass in his honor. The autopsy shows he choked on the Eucharistic bread. Human right activists who wanted him to share Dick Cheney's cell find it hard to swallow.
December - The Nobel Peace Prize goes to Robert Mugabe for his role in the reconciliation between the ANC and COPE. He also gets the Nobel Prize in Medicine for his eradication of AIDS and all other human diseases in Zimbabwe (no more Zimbabwean alive to celebrate at home).
January - Tel Aviv hawks perfectly used the window of opportunity before Obama's inauguration, igniting a 3rd intifada and an attack from Hezbullah. The Likud is disbanded (too far left) and on February the 10th, Yigal Amir's National Nationalist Party wins in a landslide. All Israelis of Palestinian origin lose their citizenship and their rights to the Geneva Convention but as a compensation, receive a one-way ticket to the Gaza Ghetto. Moderate Jews are considering a secession and by April, medias start talking about a civil war.
February - in order to celebrate Darwin's bicentennary, Sarah Palin burns the Library of Congress and a few science museums to the ground : "Them scientists have been lying to us for too long, and this fake Santa deserves to fry. Burn'em all ! And let's check if they taste like monkeys ! If we descend from the apes, how come I'm dumber than a moose ?"
March - Bernanke is arrested for a massive pizza scheme : he traded all the Federal Reserves with anchovies and pepperoni. China saves the US from bankruptcy but the country has a new currency : the Western Yuan. A Big Mac costs about two redbacks.
April - Gordon Brown choses the 60th anniversary of the Republic of Ireland to become the new King of Scotland. And 20 years after Tiananmen, the Politburo proposes a new deal to the Chinese People : "a slower growth but even less freedom". Wu Jintao is ousted within one day, and Wen Jiabao becomes the new Leader of the Cultual Revolution. By the end of his first 5 year plan, he should become the next Dalai Lama.
May - Alberto Gonzales escapes prison and manages to fly to North Korea where he becomes Honorary Chairman of the Waterboard.
June - Europe votes : 75% abstention and 95% NO. NB: it wasn't even for a referendum but to elect members of the Parliament...
July - No fireworks on the 4th. Need more ammos for Afghanistan, Iraq, Georgia and Estonia.
August - A new Putin blitz : invades Vatican the 5th, becomes Pope the 6th, canonizes Stalin the 7th.
September - Black Thursday the 24th. Quotation suspended for the S&P500. As of today, it's still uncertain whether it will become the SubStandard & Poorer 300 or 200. The latter wording has the favor of people who want to be at least once ahead of the market.
October - The corpse of Francis Bacon, 100, paints a vivid portrait of Hank Paulson screaming on the electric chair.
November - George W. Bush collapses at the end of a gigamass in his honor. The autopsy shows he choked on the Eucharistic bread. Human right activists who wanted him to share Dick Cheney's cell find it hard to swallow.
December - The Nobel Peace Prize goes to Robert Mugabe for his role in the reconciliation between the ANC and COPE. He also gets the Nobel Prize in Medicine for his eradication of AIDS and all other human diseases in Zimbabwe (no more Zimbabwean alive to celebrate at home).
20080711
This is not a financial crisis
This is not a financial crisis but a crisis of finance.
This is not an economic crisis but a crisis of economics.
This is not a strategic crisis but a crisis of strategy.
Listening to Henry Paulson or Ben Bernanke is quite depressing. Not because of the news they carry but because of their absolute lack of vision. Along with the crowd, they postponed the realization of the crisis* in a comical state of denial : look back at the past year and tell me what's been said and done. A total waste of time and money, which will make reforms even costlier. And we are far from having seen it all (ie masses of small stock exchange gamblers in China, real estate bubble in Korea, global wake-up call for "real economy"...).
I haven't heard of any strategic measure for years and key decision makers are only talking about tactics. Yes, there are rumors of a reform in the monitoring and the regulation, but I'm not certain this casting is up to the task. Especially since such rumors started years ago.
A consensus will eventually emerge from a free market to a fair market**, but no one is actually tackling the issue. The world leaders have other fishes to fry... starting with our planet : the G8 members unanimously decided to start curbing their CO2 dogs circa 2050, when Dubai have the same chances of hosting the Winter Olympic Games as Sapporo.
Think tanks ? They are basically lobbying groups. And right now, conservative think tanks are focusing on how to ignite a war in Iran**... while left now, liberal think tanks are focusing on how to impeach Rove / Cheney / Dubya (too little, 4 years too late).
Analysts ? Even the few independent ones are struggling for relevance.
The thing is capitalism died when the Soviet Union collapsed : deprived of the last supervillain, Superman grew lazier and fatter, forgot how to fly and used his X-ray vision only for despisable reasons. Meanwhile, John and Jane Smith became the new superheroes. Because all of a sudden, superpowers became mainstream : the web abruptly shrunk all time-, distance-, and information-gaps, putting them on par with the best financial gurus*. Overwhelmingly, "commoners" have swarmed all the "expert"'s favorite spots. There are no more safe havens, nor profitable niche markets, even off market (stock exchanges have lost their status of key indicators, bubbles also struck the private equity arenas...). There is no speed limit, only a succession of bubbles in an ocean of microbubbles.
Posting 10-20% yields makes a living, not a life. And finance as the aim of the game is over.
Winning against misery, that's a life. Not to be confused with winning against poverty : what is the point in making hundreds of million people pass a certain revenue threshold if you confront them with new unbearable challenges ?
Winning against underdevelopment, that's a life. Not to be confused with posting high GNP growth. Think supranational, smart infrastructures, pooling limited ressources and sharing world class education and health care experts.
Winning against desertification, that's a life. But the sound, microcultural, African way... not to be confused with the suicidal, Dubai way (earning big on desert lands in the short term, losing bigger in the long term).
Luxury is about doing whatever you want whenever you want with whomever you want. Not about purchasing when you can what everybody wants.
---
* and the reality of the ineluctable recession (see "The end of financial safe havens" - 20070303)
---
* see "Mondialisation : du "free market" au "fair market" (20070726) and the utterly awful self-translation below :
---
** see "Iran : who wants war and why" - 20070925
This is not an economic crisis but a crisis of economics.
This is not a strategic crisis but a crisis of strategy.
Listening to Henry Paulson or Ben Bernanke is quite depressing. Not because of the news they carry but because of their absolute lack of vision. Along with the crowd, they postponed the realization of the crisis* in a comical state of denial : look back at the past year and tell me what's been said and done. A total waste of time and money, which will make reforms even costlier. And we are far from having seen it all (ie masses of small stock exchange gamblers in China, real estate bubble in Korea, global wake-up call for "real economy"...).
I haven't heard of any strategic measure for years and key decision makers are only talking about tactics. Yes, there are rumors of a reform in the monitoring and the regulation, but I'm not certain this casting is up to the task. Especially since such rumors started years ago.
A consensus will eventually emerge from a free market to a fair market**, but no one is actually tackling the issue. The world leaders have other fishes to fry... starting with our planet : the G8 members unanimously decided to start curbing their CO2 dogs circa 2050, when Dubai have the same chances of hosting the Winter Olympic Games as Sapporo.
Think tanks ? They are basically lobbying groups. And right now, conservative think tanks are focusing on how to ignite a war in Iran**... while left now, liberal think tanks are focusing on how to impeach Rove / Cheney / Dubya (too little, 4 years too late).
Analysts ? Even the few independent ones are struggling for relevance.
The thing is capitalism died when the Soviet Union collapsed : deprived of the last supervillain, Superman grew lazier and fatter, forgot how to fly and used his X-ray vision only for despisable reasons. Meanwhile, John and Jane Smith became the new superheroes. Because all of a sudden, superpowers became mainstream : the web abruptly shrunk all time-, distance-, and information-gaps, putting them on par with the best financial gurus*. Overwhelmingly, "commoners" have swarmed all the "expert"'s favorite spots. There are no more safe havens, nor profitable niche markets, even off market (stock exchanges have lost their status of key indicators, bubbles also struck the private equity arenas...). There is no speed limit, only a succession of bubbles in an ocean of microbubbles.
Posting 10-20% yields makes a living, not a life. And finance as the aim of the game is over.
Winning against misery, that's a life. Not to be confused with winning against poverty : what is the point in making hundreds of million people pass a certain revenue threshold if you confront them with new unbearable challenges ?
Winning against underdevelopment, that's a life. Not to be confused with posting high GNP growth. Think supranational, smart infrastructures, pooling limited ressources and sharing world class education and health care experts.
Winning against desertification, that's a life. But the sound, microcultural, African way... not to be confused with the suicidal, Dubai way (earning big on desert lands in the short term, losing bigger in the long term).
Luxury is about doing whatever you want whenever you want with whomever you want. Not about purchasing when you can what everybody wants.
---
* and the reality of the ineluctable recession (see "The end of financial safe havens" - 20070303)
---
* see "Mondialisation : du "free market" au "fair market" (20070726) and the utterly awful self-translation below :
"Globalization is first about incredible shrinking gaps that used to be key in economics : gaps in time, space, level of information... the sector which used to benefit the most from those gaps logically dominated the last few years. But finance is meeting a crisis. Not a financial crisis, but a crisis of finance as the aim of the game.
Speculation thrives upon gaps in time, space and knowledge, and speculators are among the first to embrace innovations in transports or communications, but such tools have become commodities and the number of speculators exploded. Nowadays, the bulk of speculators are non-experts, like those Chinese pensioners sipping tea and chit chatting in now countless shareholders parlors. In this new Far East like everywhere across the World, speculative niches pop up and pop out one by one, and experts can't find any safe spot to plant their tents. The loss of influence of traditional stock exchanges and the Gold Rush for private equities illustrate as much the aversion for irrationality and the need to de-virtualize economics. But even at that level, frontiers are melting and bubbles are inflating.
An "elite" of experts kind of manages to survive : I call "instant players" these creatures fitted for life in unstable environments which roam more frequently on the Thames than the Yellow river. They are very good at burning : money, bridges between friends and reality, cocaine on spoons, and ultimately their own wings.
It's become obvious for a couple of years now : there is too much greedy money in too many hands for the suicidal rush to last much longer.
This young millenium is looking for clues at the root, browsing through pages written by great economists from past centuries. The answer won't come from Adam Smith or Karl Marx but somehow, for economics to restore its own dignity, it needs to review its fundamentals (capital, value, means and aims...) and go much further.
Many signs let us envision the emergence of a consensus on the diagnostic, similar to the one reached about global warming. Economics are about the impacts of human activity anyway, and theoretically they should take into account all environments, all ecosystems... not to mention the fact that there again, diversity and evolutivity are key to survival.
In economics like in environmental studies, major improvements are more likely to come from recent converts, those who resisted to evidences in order to maintain priviledges instead of embracing the future and its opportunities.
Most movements denouncing globalization are "against" and don't offer solutions. Alter-globalization activists often recommand the end of economics and thus the end of mankind, that global parasite which will kill the planet before it finds a new spot to colonize.
A consensus will emerge on more pragmatic basis : a market economy that would be open but regulated and based on mutual respect. A "fair market" rather than a "free market". A global market because globalization requires a global approach of our ecosystem as a whole, but we are far from there. And in this transitional period where free trade fanatics are pointed out, protectionism is back. Far beyond what is needed and sometimes a rather subtle way.
For instance, the Bush Administration are supposedly promoting free trade across the globe but their politics are basically multi-bilateral and self-centered, systematically blocking all multi-lateral attempts : after "less UN, more Coalition of the Willing", after "less Geneva, more Abu Ghraib", after "less Kyoto, more Alaska drilling", they delivered "less WTO, more FTAs". The said "Free Trade Agreements" being as "free trade" as the Patriot Act was "patriotic" : asymetrical, full of exceptions, and by nature protectionist, these FTAs can sound profitable for the States but only in the short term, and only for Dubya's base of "haves and have-mores".
Paradoxically, this strategy illustrates the negation of globalization because it means the refusal of a global approach to globalization. Drawing a parallel with today's crisis within each of the great monotheist religions (see "Universal Declaration of Independence from fundamentalism"), the wise thing to do is not to fuel extremists of all sides by accepting their fake "war of civilizations", but to respectfully reach beyond the frontiers and collaborate on what brings us together, and to be ready to make concessions in order to eradicate collectively the most fundamental injustices."
---
** see "Iran : who wants war and why" - 20070925
20070303
The end of financial safe havens - Red blogule to speculation
Shanghai sneezed, Tokyo coughed, the whole world panicked... but avian flu had nothing to do with it. According to Ben Bernanke, Chief Futurologist Officer at the Fed, this week's small bump on the eternal path of glory of the World's greatest stock exchanges doesn't mean the big naughty R will strike anytime soon.
Yet it shows how nervous investors are, globally. There is a lot of greedy money everywhere and not only from your usual suspects (the so called developped countries) : everybody is well informed and almost free to invest almost anywhere anytime. Speculation remains good business but demands better nerves than ever. Hedge funds were the first to collapse under their own weight and now, even traditional players struggle. The money is there, growth is there too, but the place is so crowded with both experts and beginners that nothing is guaranteed.
There is no such thing as a financial safe haven anymore, and this greedy money will somehow have to focus on tasks more useful for a larger community. No wonder some people have been rediscovering The Capital lately. But with a fresher look.
I like to compare Karl Marx with Louis Pasteur : both were great observers and could deliver pertinent diagnosis, but Carlito couldn't go all the way of experimentation and would often wander too far along the path of interpretation, coming back with irrelevant prescriptions and leaving to other doctors the honor of delivering counterproductive treatments.
I know this is the kind of excuses used in the past by the Supreme Soviet or the CPC (Communist Party of China), but I do think the time has come for the cast of pure speculators to feel the heat and join the Hall of Shame : you have a right to sell weapons, tobacco, alcohol, casino chips, and to make a lot of dough with it, but don't expect to be respected for that.
Yet it shows how nervous investors are, globally. There is a lot of greedy money everywhere and not only from your usual suspects (the so called developped countries) : everybody is well informed and almost free to invest almost anywhere anytime. Speculation remains good business but demands better nerves than ever. Hedge funds were the first to collapse under their own weight and now, even traditional players struggle. The money is there, growth is there too, but the place is so crowded with both experts and beginners that nothing is guaranteed.
There is no such thing as a financial safe haven anymore, and this greedy money will somehow have to focus on tasks more useful for a larger community. No wonder some people have been rediscovering The Capital lately. But with a fresher look.
I like to compare Karl Marx with Louis Pasteur : both were great observers and could deliver pertinent diagnosis, but Carlito couldn't go all the way of experimentation and would often wander too far along the path of interpretation, coming back with irrelevant prescriptions and leaving to other doctors the honor of delivering counterproductive treatments.
I know this is the kind of excuses used in the past by the Supreme Soviet or the CPC (Communist Party of China), but I do think the time has come for the cast of pure speculators to feel the heat and join the Hall of Shame : you have a right to sell weapons, tobacco, alcohol, casino chips, and to make a lot of dough with it, but don't expect to be respected for that.
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