Tag: United States

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Politics

Wake Up, America

The Statue of Liberty front shot
"Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses, yearning to be tired, to be poor, and to huddle."

Discussing the social frustrations that led to the riots in the UK, an American friend suggested that the situation was probably exacerbated by the British class system, which he characterised as “You’re born in your class, and you’re stuck there”. While not denying that the USA had its class system too, he thought that they at least had the illusion of social mobility.

Indeed. I don’t think the vast majority of Americans appreciate just how much that is an illusion now.

You have to differentiate between social class as culture and social class in the sense of income group. Traditional class, with all its funny accents and different tastes in wallpaper, may still be a major part of the British cultural tapestry, but just as in America, what really matters is how much money you have. And the really important thing, the thing the American Dream is based on, is your ability to change that. In both countries, social mobility is mostly about being significantly better off than your parents.

But surely it is more difficult to move up the scale in the UK, with all its prejudice about accents and schools and forks, than it is in the US where self-advancement is a core cultural value?

Prepare yourself for a shock.

2005 – Source, Other, better known Source.

In 2005, social mobility in Britain was as good as, or better than, in America. And that was after a period of decline.

In good news for team USA, it has edged back ahead of the UK in the last few years. Possibly because the UK also adopted neo-liberal low tax economics? But comparing social mobility in Britain and America is like comparing fuel economy in fires. The sad truth is, if you want the American dream these days, you need to go to northern Europe or Canada.

Strength of link between an individual’s and their parents’ earnings, 2010 – Source

Oh and where does Ireland fit on this scale, you may ask, if you’re in Ireland? Well it’s hard to compare because of our far smaller and less developed economy, but as the top diagram shows, income inequality tends to go hand-in-hand with lack of social mobility.

Income inequality in Ireland? Don’t ask. It ain’t pretty.

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Cosmography Politics

The Lusitania Mystery

A warning issued by the Imperial German Embass...
Don't say we didn't warn you

The Lusitania – remembered throughout the Western World as “you know, that other ship that sank”, but actually a disaster of virtually the same scale as the Titanic. And perhaps, far greater consequence.

Far greater, because its sinking in 1915 just off the Irish coast arguably brought the United States into the First World War, turning its tide and changing the course of history. Arguably, because if you say this historians will argue with you. And this is not the only aspect of the disaster that remains controversial. Hit by a single German torpedo, the ship was shocked by not one but two explosions. Was it secretly carrying munitions to Britain? If so, then sinking it wasn’t the mindless act of German aggression against civilians that the British made out in their propaganda, but a legitimate act of war. Right?

This rumour was exacerbated by the apparent fact that the British dropped depth charges on the wreck in the 1950s – presumably to destroy the evidence that the Germans were perfectly justified in sinking it. Because the Americans would be so pissed if they found out that they were tricked into joining a war they won by… by secretly smuggling weapons to the British unbeknownst to themselves.

Unfortunately for the theory it had been known since precisely all along that the Lusitania was carrying weapons. They’re in the cargo manifest. It’s just that it was rifle ammunition and the non-explosive parts of shell fuses, which wouldn’t explain the second explosion. There must therefore have been some other sort of weapon that they were keeping secret, but which would have justified the Germans sinking the ship if they did know about it – which they didn’t because otherwise they would have mentioned by now I think – if they needed any more justification, which they didn’t.

What I’m broadly saying here is that this is not a very good theory.

Besides, the Germans were trying to blockade Britain for Christ sake, they were going to make an exception for luxury liners? Just wave them on through? “Don’t mind us, we’re having a war.” They had even warned potential passengers that they considered the liners targets [See Illustration]. The Cunard shipping line just took a gamble, and it didn’t pay off. Not even a little.

It seems likely that the second explosion was merely the ship’s high-pressure steam turbine system rupturing. In all probability the US would have joined the war eventually. Even if they hadn’t the French and British should have won anyway, having access through their vast maritime empires to far greater resources than Germany and Austria-Hungary. So the sinking of the Lusitania is probably the greatest non-mystery in the history of disaster at sea. And it may soon be solved!

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Politics

Credit Raiding Agencies

Abraham Lincoln, the sixteenth President of th...
"In the longer term however, we can sell off the Union for its scrap value plus a small handling charge"

So now Standard & Poor’s has given the USA a lower rating than it did the mortgage-backed financial instruments that caused the meltdown. Does this mean America is in even worse shape than one of those?

Or does it mean that the criteria S&P use are arbitrary, inconsistent, and possibly reckless?

As I was saying before, there is no line that can possibly be drawn between ratings that help investors profit because they guide them accurately, and ratings that help investors profit because they influence the market favourably. So the agencies may as well say things that benefit investors. Who has S&P’s downgrade actually benefited? Well China for one. Not only can they relish the prospect of charging Americans more to lend them cash, they can now talk down to them too. According to Reuters:

“The U.S. government has to come to terms with the painful fact that the good old days when it could just borrow its way out of messes of its own making are finally gone,” China’s official Xinhua news agency said in a commentary.

Xinhua scorned the United States for a “debt addiction” and “short sighted” political wrangling. China, it said, “has every right now to demand the United States address its structural debt problems and ensure the safety of China’s dollar assets.”

Burn.

So S&P are in the pay of China? No not really. They’re in the pay of money. The rating also benefits many of America’s wealthy; a loose affiliation of the sort of people who were being given money freely under a Republican administration, now using more forcible tactics to transfer funds from the public purse into private pockets. Even, the threat of the destruction of US Federal government.

Everyone can and will blame the Tea Party – after all, if they got into power these mentalloids really would repudiate American debts. They’re internal enemies of the United States, and not ashamed to say so. But they’re not going to get into power. They are just going to be used by the Republicans, as their suicide squad.

It’s not in the interests of the Republicans or their supporters to really bring about default – not when many of them are America’s creditors. But there is nothing to stop them taking it to the brink like this to get their way again. And again, and again.

 

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Humour Politics

Some Mild Economic Hassle Ahead

Third world market / mercado tercermundista
Sign of the Times - Image by Andreuchis via Flickr

Some may say I’ve been ignoring the global economic crisis, but the way I see it, if you’re at a funeral you don’t say “Jesus, it’s a dead guy in a freaking box!”

Let’s try to be positive. There has been a little good news in the last week. Some sort of half-assed budget deal was cut in the US, saving its economy from plunging to Third World status. Yet. The Euro still exists, even if it seems about as stable now as an upended pyramid. Full of nitroglycerine. On fire.

But otherwise, the outlook is not so good. The Americans cannot borrow and spend to get out of recession because the balance of power is held by political morons. In the eurozone, we apply band-aid after band-aid to a haemorrhage. Sooner or later we will need to face up to the facts: We either have one single economy with one single fiscal policy, or we can’t have a single currency. That’s not a decision we know how to even begin contemplating taking, and the longer we put it off, the more countries are going to be flung like screaming toddlers from the runaway merry-go-round.

And in a sure sign of economic brick-crapping terror, the gold price is skyrocketing again. Two weeks ago I pointed out that the world’s gold stocks were now worth eight trillion dollars. It’s estimated that in three months they’ll be worth over a trillion more. Funny how market chaos seems to be good for people who happen to own a lot of gold. But that’s probably just one of those coincidences.

We shouldn’t panic or despair yet though. There’s still China. China, that engine of the global economy, driving back collapse. Even when all of us in the West are too broke to buy each other’s stuff, we can always afford theirs. Guess what’s happening in China? Their buoyant, vibrant, export-fuelled high growth economy has led to – no go on, guess – has led to… Have you got it? Yep, that’s right. A housing bubble. China has a housing bubble.

But don’t worry, it’s bound to find a soft landing. Don’t they all? Ha ha ha. Oh God we’re so doomed.

Categories
Politics

America’s Praying Politicians

American cultural icons, apple pie, baseball, ...
No One Gets A Slice

Disturbing to watch Tea Party representatives talking about how they’re praying for guidance as the economy teeters on the edge. This is the American Taliban. They have their own fundamentalism, ostensibly Christian rather than Islamic perhaps, but like the original Taliban they hate the American government. Unlike them, they have a real chance of harming, possibly destroying it. And they don’t even need weapons, because they attack from within.

On whose behalf are they fighting? That of America’s greatest enemy: Its own wealthy.

Many of America’s rich want to divest themselves of any responsibility towards their fellow Americans. It’s not as if they were ever under a lot of pressure to help out anyway, but in recent history at least it has worked better that way. You would employ Americans to make things to sell to other Americans, who could afford to buy things because they were employed to make things… Not everyone was included within this benign circle of course, but the general upshot was an optimistic land where it was at least believed that everyone’s lot could be improved.

But now that circle has been broken. The simple fact of the matter is America’s rich don’t need other Americans anymore. They buy, make and sell globally. America is just one market, and they don’t need to invest in it. Americans do get cheaper goods that way, but less and less are they buying them off each other. So though the super-rich are making more money than ever before, a large part comes from effectively taking a cut out of the export of America’s jobs and wealth. We can only watch in horror as what was once a country of opportunity for the poor grows an ever-widening gulf between a tiny minority that becomes more fantastically rich all the time and the vast majority whose position is deteriorating.

How can that ever happen in a democracy, when it is up to the people how the country is run? It’s simple really. The super-rich sponsor all the parties. But the Tea Party is taking it to new extremes, preaching a blatantly wealth-favouring agenda while using prejudice, fear and religion to manipulate others into voting against their own interests.

The irony is that it’s named after the Boston Tea Party, an incident leading up to the American War of Independence, yet the people its policies favour want to run America exactly like an exploited colony –  milking it for what can be got, giving as little as possible back. The US has a new aristocracy, and they will be a lot harder to dethrone than one based far overseas.

Categories
Cosmography Politics

A Few Inadequate Words

John Stuart Mill
"I don't think you fully grasp the concept of Liberty"

The extremists of all flags, whether they laughably describe themselves as Christians, Muslims, nationalists, or what they will, have far more in common with each other than with those they claim to represent. They can hate and kill who they choose because they cannot or will not identify with them as people. This is not fighting for a cause, this is failure of humanity; self-involvement on a horrific scale.

You have to wonder about their mental processes. What does a man think he will achieve by murdering cold-bloodedly? Did he seriously believe that Norway could be terrorised out of allowing immigration? Maybe he thought he could spark a nationalistic uprising by the heroic shooting dead of teenagers.

It seems he wrote a 1,500 page document to explain his actions, but I doubt it will tell us anything – except the incredible lengths an insecure man will go to, to justify himself.

Categories
Cosmography

A Gift From China

Unfortunately China is the name of my mother’s cat, and her feline idea of a neat gift is a small mammal. In this case, about as small as they get – a pygmy shrew. Poor little thing. I’ve shown it here with a credit card as they’re the same size the world over. As you see, it’s no bigger than your thumb.

Well, it’s nature’s way I guess. I mean, we actually have this cat around in order to murder small mammals, so I can’t be mad with her when she catches a non-verminous one. Though I notice there’s an ongoing debate in the US about whether cats are a major threat to the balance of nature as they’re not a native species. Well I suppose nothing is a native species if you go back far enough, but as domestic cats have only been in North America for a few hundred years you could see how the native birds aren’t prepared for them, and though it would be surprising if there wasn’t a native predator in the same niche, I can’t actually think of one. What catches small wild birds in North America? I don’t think coyotes do. Fisher cats perhaps, and related weasel-like things. But they are only found in some climates.

I don’t know; as far as I’m aware, cats in North America have never really gone feral and therefore are only found where humans live. And with a few exceptions, the balance of species in such places is never going to resemble what it did before farming and industry. So I suspect removing cats would be like trying to make a shopping mall more like a forest by painting it green.

But perhaps I should know better than to get into an argument between cat people and bird lovers.

Categories
Humour Politics

Gold Panic

gold cast bar
Fifty-One Thousand Sexy Dollars

Brace yourself for more irritating, hyperactive adverts on TV, more men with laptops and weighing scales in shopping malls, and more burglaries. Gold has reached a new record price of over $1600 per ounce. This means that, for the first time ever, gold is now actually worth its weight in gold.

But I shouldn’t get surreal, the reality is ridiculous enough. Buying gold is the global economy’s answer to popping valium and praying. Whenever the markets don’t know what’s going to happen or what to do next, they run to the yellow metal. There is no clear reason why, it just has this talismanic ring to it. Weight. Historical value. Shininess.

Also of course, it’s an actual thing. All those brave traders out there, wildly speculating all day on derivatives and futures and other fanciful ways to bet on how other people will make bets on how you will bet suddenly realise that all they own are pieces of paper written in the conditional mood, and succumb to an urge to possess something that you can actually hold and touch and hug. Or at least, a piece of paper that says you possess something you can hold and touch and hug.

This superstition-based value is highly dysfunctional. The problem with the flight to gold is that there is not enough room in gold. You’ve heard that factoid about how much there is in the entire world? Enough to fill just two Olympic swimming pools. It depends of course on how deep those pools are, but this is roughly right. There are something like 155,000 tonnes of gold lying around. Assuming that ounce price is for troy ounces, the normal ISO (International Silly Old) unit, and that comes to about eight trillion dollars ($8 000 000 000 000).

That’s hardly the current account deficit of a small South American republic these days. With the Euro in dire straits, there is clearly a lot more money needing somewhere to hide than that, and all the gold in the world is not a big enough hiding place.

Unless, of course, its price goes up even further and even faster.

You can almost hear the new wars starting in Africa, as it becomes lucrative once more to arm some children and turn over a neighbouring country. (Arms manufacture is always a good secondary bet when gold goes up.) Oh and if you have any gold fillings, now would be a good time to cash them in. Before someone else does, with a brick.

Categories
Humour

Trickster Idiots

Slotted Spoon
A Complicated Spoon

Some email scamming attempts are so idiotic, you wonder who is ever taken in by them. And then a rather sad vision appears, of the Internet as a place where even a scammer who is no mental marvel can succeed, because they find victims who are well into needs-spoons-explained territory. You want to go out and find the dumb people who are taking advantage of the even-dumber, and mete out terrible if partially mitigated punishment.

But all you can do is make fun of them. Here then, straight  from my personal in-box, are some Stupid Scammers:

“I have been diagnosed with esophageal cancer. It has defiled all forms of medical treatment”

That is some mean disease.

Subject line: “Your Email Please.”

I could have sworn I gave it to you.

A file attachment named “Please kindly open this file attachment”.

I admit, I was tempted by the Alice in Wonderland approach. But is was an odd file type so I couldn’t.

More inches in your pants, less steps to success.

Leg-extension spam, I hate it.

We produce the cheapest and the best watches

Best, cheap, and watch. Choose two.

Add Bahcelors, Masetrs or Dcotorate Dergees to your resume

You think that’s just to get around spam filters, but I ended up with a degree from TIM.

Dear Friend, I’ve teamed up with Citizens United, Newt Gingrich, Ann Coulter, Fred Barnes and a bunch of other good people to do a film entitled Battle for America.

I don’t know you anymore.

By having a beautiful luxury designer replica watch, your girlfriend will be surely inclined towards you at once. All of a sudden, natural feelings of love, peace, comfort, romance, and sex will be restored again between you and your girlfriend for long time

You seem to be confusing my girlfriend with some sort of hooker.

“i am far from attributing any part of mr. bingley’s conduct to design,” said elizabeth; “but conclude will be the case, you send me full powers to act in your name throughout the whole of this

The classic “Jane Austen hustle”.

This is my new address. Here you may email me about what food I am going to have later that day. I can also give you updates on senior staff meetings and let you know what is getting in the way of my sleep routine. Thank you for cleaning out my poohouse today – I am very grateful to have clean gravel. Yowl, Mrs S

I’m really not sure if this is a scam at all, or just an email I got by mistake. From a cat with a job.

When was the last time you were abel to discover a High Profile Hollywood production company on the ground floor?

One day it might be as big as Univresal or Wanrer.

Are you currently paying too much on your monthly payments?

No actually. Quite the opposite problem.

Please, I urge you to make this transaction confidentiality within your mind for security purposes.

How do you know my mind is secure?

Categories
Politics

They Really Are Out To Get You

©Crookedtimber.org
Goalposts In Motion (click to enlarge) ©Crookedtimber.org

Many have asked recently whether ratings agencies like Moody’s, Fitch, or Standard & Poor’s really are the neutral commentators they claim to be. Do they provide advice to investors without fear or favour, merely giving their assessment in a disinterested way? Or are they out to get us?

To think the latter would seem just downright paranoid. And yet… This post on well-respected politics blog Crooked Timber suggests that there is something rather difficult to explain going on with the agencies’ assessments of the Irish economy. Every time Ireland complies with the conditions of the EU-IMF deal by cutting spending, the agencies downgrade it further. This downgrade means that the goal of raising money on the markets moves still further away.

Let’s just repeat that – the more we cut our budget spending, the less likely it is we’ll be able to borrow the money we need to pay for our budget.

It really does seem they’re out to get us.

Why would they be? They’re not there to frustrate our economic recovery or undermine the EU’s plan. They’re there to give the best advice to investors. That’s how they make their living.

But wait – Can’t it be both? The thing is, the ratings agencies do not – cannot – issue predictions while pretending the prediction itself is not going to influence the market. If they did, the predictions would be wrong. They must have long accepted that they help shape the market they pronounce on. Yes, they are there to give good advice to their clients. But that can mean giving advice that is good for their clients.

They also know that when a currency collapses, there’s a killing to be made. The Euro’s fall could be the biggest free money explosion in history, and what easier way to cause that fall than to bring down one of its more vulnerable economies?