Links 11/9/09 « naked capitalism

Monday, November 9, 2009

Links 11/9/09

Quest to save world’s rarest duck BBC

Japanese fishing trawler sunk by giant jellyfish Telegraph

Gold May Be Making a Short-Term Top DoctoRx

Right-Wing Unleashes Racism on Rep Cao Matt Yglesias

Why Are Banks Holding So Many Excess Reserves? Alea

Rick Bookstaber to join SEC Ed Harrison. This is very cool!

IMF exploring insurance levy on banks Reuters

G20 ministers agree on nothing EuroIntelligence

Phys Ed: Why Doesn’t Exercise Lead to Weight Loss? New York Times. The very existence of this article is an indictment of what passes for exercise physiology in the US. The information presented here has been known for at least a decade (and BTW, it is also misleadingly incomplete, it suggests exercise is less effective that it can be. This case study was a particularly poorly designed, but nevertheless common protocol). No wonder Americans have trouble losing weight. They get bad advice.

Paranoia Strikes Deep Paul Krugman, New York Times

Cash For Craters Bill Dahl

For brave investors, Zimbabwe could be the ultimate turnaround story Ambrose Evans-Pritcard

Obama has lost sight of the centre Clive Crook, Financial Times

Job cuts ‘will continue even as the economy starts to recover’ Independent

Economists Seek to Fix a Defect in Data That Overstates the Nation’s Vigor Louis Uchitelle, New York Times

Antidote du jour. I particularly like this one:

26 Comments:

Swedish Lex says:

November 9, 2009 at 5:40 am

“G 20 ministers agree on nothing”

The EU States should normally come to the meeting with a reasonably co-ordinated and ambitious agenda, which does not seem to have been the case. In addition, Gordon Brown appears to have made some kind of surprise visit arguing for a Tobin tax that, again from what is reported, apparently had not been parepared with his European partners ahead of the meeting.

It would appear that the Swedish EU Presidency did not manage to drive the EU herd efficiently, which, again, shows the uselessness of the system with rotating EU Presidencies. Hence the importance of the Lisbon Treaty which will finish with the rotating presidencies and instead have a new, permanent, “President of the Eurpean Council”. Wolfgang Münchau discusses the required qualifications for the new post in the FT today (as opposed to discussing possbile names).

Furthermore, the EU Commission is crucial in driving EU affairs, including supporting the EU position in G 20, but is about to be re-newed, barred from taking new policy initiatives and thus currently a lame duck.

Six months from now, the EU’s team should be full strength. What it will do then is entirely another matter, of course.

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Jon says:

November 9, 2009 at 7:30 am

See http://www.right2bet.net for a grassroots campaign actually lobbying for a change in Europe, rather than just moaning about constitutional issues or making noises about iron clad guarantees. Right2Bet seeks to give online gamblers genuine freedom of choice, thus restoring the EU to what it was originally intended to be! Sign the petition, make a difference.

Jon

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Swedish Lex says:

November 9, 2009 at 7:38 am

Another petition with the intention to stop Blair that had some success: http://stopblair.eu/en/

FYI, through the Lisbon Treaty a new citizens’ right is being introduced, whereby you can, with one million signatures, petition the European Commission to advance new policy proposals. So, your gambling friends could wait for the new Treaty to enter into force, get a million signatures, and become a force to be reckoned with.

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Swedish Lex says:

November 9, 2009 at 8:26 am

Another interesting take on thet G-20 meeting: http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/columnists/william_rees_mogg/article6908789.ece

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joebek says:

November 9, 2009 at 8:28 am

With its use of IOUs California has launched on the path of issuing its own currency. Once that currency is firmly established people will see, contra Krugman, that the fiscal situation of California is far better than the fiscal situation of the US.

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charcad says:

November 9, 2009 at 9:15 am

Economists Seek to Fix a Defect in Data That Overstates the Nation’s Vigor

Ancient history. Dr. Paul Craig Roberts was reporting this years ago. Along with declining employment, “jobloss” recoveries, falling real incomes, rapidly rising household debt (incurred to sustain consumer spending) and the unmitigated economic destruction of labor arbitrage (a/k/a “free trade”). All long before the Boomer yups of the Brave New Financial Blogosphere discovered these issues.

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lineside says:

November 9, 2009 at 9:19 am

what’s with the link to yglesias? he takes one tweet from one racist nut and, presto, “right wing unleashes racism on rep cao”. a more accurate headline would have been “random tweet from one racist”.

yves you do yourself a disservice by linking to garbage like this. i enjoy your economic blogging. your political blogging is really getting tired.

remember, ideology impairs cognition.

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charcad says:

November 9, 2009 at 9:58 am

your political blogging is really getting tired

imo Yves has contributed original material on investment banking, the shadow banking system and its tentacles. Otherwise I find Yves to be a tedious and boringly conventional Manhattan liberal.

The political opinions she echoes are standard for the NYC milieu. She’s highly dependent on “Old Media” contacts and thus keeps a weather eye on never offending their ingrained prejudices and blinkered orthodoxies on anything outside her ostensible area of expertise.

Of course it may be that N-C’s readership is declining, too. She and her webmaster would know for sure. Religion and politics are a proven way to generate adrenalin and raise blood pressure for a time.

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- curlydan says:
  
  November 9, 2009 at 1:58 pm
  
  A “traditional” NYC liberal would be much more in lockstep with the Obama administration, the NY Times, the New Yorker, etc. which Yves is clearly not.
  
  Read this site a bit longer and you’ll see “establishment” is not in favor here.
  
  Reply
Peripheral Visionary says:

November 9, 2009 at 1:17 pm

I don’t tend to side with Yves on political issues (and agree that the Yglesias post is, as usual, tiresome partisan pap.)

But I do appreciate her economic insights. And she is also a welcome independent voice from the left, where there is far too much groupthink. The right suffered from a certain level of groupthink during the Bush years, and the left is following the same route. To the extent that she is a credible liberal offering clear criticisms of this administration’s continuations of the previous administration’s mistakes, I think she’s performing a valuable service within the broader political context.

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- Skippy says:
  
  November 9, 2009 at 8:05 pm
  
  With the quality of thought that can be found around here it never ceases to amaze me that anyone adheres to the liner/horizontal/vertical thought process of *left or right* political mindsets..fences of the mind me thinks and holds all of us back from moving forward.
  
  Skippy…Its the oldest tool in the shed of manipulation ie divide and conquer..eh!
  
  Reply

rj says:

November 9, 2009 at 9:46 am

yves you do yourself a disservice by linking to garbage like this. i enjoy your economic blogging. your political blogging is really getting tired.

She’s linked to the “Rothschilds/New World Order/Jews are evil” nuts in the past too.

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rj says:

November 9, 2009 at 9:47 am

The EU States should normally come to the meeting with a reasonably co-ordinated and ambitious agenda, which does not seem to have been the case.

They don’t because they disagree amongst themselves, and because the three major EU countries (UK, France, Germany), want to use the EU as extensions of their own policies.

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Swedish Lex says:

November 9, 2009 at 10:21 am

You are quite wrong on this one. The EU’s position is a blend of national policies, spiced up to take the common interest into account. The EU has intentionally been designed to prevent a single state, or a small band of states, to run the show.

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- rj says:
  
  November 12, 2009 at 5:30 pm
  
  You are quite wrong on this one. The EU’s position is a blend of national policies, spiced up to take the common interest into account. The EU has intentionally been designed to prevent a single state, or a small band of states, to run the show.
  
  I’m quite right on this one. You cannot deny that Sarkozy and Merkel have allied themselves to push a Franco-German point of view on things inside the Union. For example, preventing Tony Blair from becoming the EU President and potentially putting in either Balkenende or Von Rumpuy. And there are examples of this domination in academic papers I’ve read from the Council for European Reform, Stratfor, Eurointelligence, and Euro Observer.
  
  Reply

squanto says:

November 9, 2009 at 10:23 am

I thought Ambrose Evans-Pritcard was perma-apocalyptic. Glad to see he’s turned bullish…on Zimbabwe?

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Steve2241 says:

November 9, 2009 at 10:40 am

Re: Duck Story
An excellent piece of poor journalism. But what makes the ducks rare! Do their tails grow out their noses?
Sounds more like a case of “The Full Employment Act of Bird Conservationists.”

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charcad says:

November 9, 2009 at 10:47 am

r.e. Why Are Banks Holding So Many Excess Reserves?

It’s based on this paper. http://www.newyorkfed.org/research/staff_reports/sr380.pdf

The authors seem to admit these reserves have mostly not flowed through to the “real economy” either.

Since this topic is bank-related Yves could usefully follow up this topic. One point I’m curious about is how this growth in “excess reserves” might have been influenced by the huge and invisible CDS sector.

It’s now well known that counterparty collateral requirements swiftly rise as CDS approach payment events, as many of them have been lately.

Has this massive FR-sponsored rise in “excess” bank reserves and apparent liquidity been influenced by the rising demand for increased cash collateral? Maybe these reserves aren’t “excess” after all.

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Michael says:

November 9, 2009 at 12:08 pm

The weight problem bugs me too. Some is bad advice, some is bad food manufacturing (that corn syrup is nasty stuff), portion sizes, laziness, and so on. It’s too easy to blame the person but that is just starting to sound like a cop out to me.

One major issue has to be urban planners that need a right kick up the backside for some of the crap they’ve come up with. New suburbs around here (in my part of Australia) have narrow winding roads without even foot-paths that make it too dangerous to ride a bike and impossible to walk anywhere. That’s if you had something to walk or ride to anyway, centralised shopping malls and strip-malls at least a 5-10 minute drive away, consolidated mega-schools even further away, overpriced public transport that doesn’t run often enough and doesn’t run ANY connecting services for longer trips (if they schedule to connect but don’t run on time, tough luck).

The whole system is designed around the quality of life of the cars we drive, not the quality of life of humans and the other animals around us.

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ndk says:

November 9, 2009 at 12:27 pm

One major issue has to be urban planners that need a right kick up the backside for some of the crap they’ve come up with.

This is demonstrably a large contributor. Car Use Drives Up Weight, Study Finds

Each hour spent in a car was associated with a 6 percent increase in the likelihood of obesity and each half-mile walked per day reduced those odds by nearly 5 percent, the researchers found

And a half-mile isn’t that far at all — 10-15 minutes at a leisurely clip.

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- SidFinster says:
  
  November 10, 2009 at 7:16 am
  
  Remember, my trolls, my little ones, my clowns!
  
  If your dog is too fat, you are not getting enough exercise.
  
  Meditate on that.
  
  Reply

MyLessThanPrimeBeef says:

November 9, 2009 at 1:07 pm

Please do not save the world’s rareest duck.

Just change our modern way of life would do.

As for overweight people, it’s the main reason the sea levels are not rising as much as the contentinals are sinking from too many overweight people.

My solution? Instead of serving in the army for 2 months a year as is the case in many countries around the world, men and women over the age of 12 enroll in hunters and gatherers’ nature camp once a year.

Also, for me, health care reform starts with making sure organic food is not more expensive than non-organic food, so that the common people can afford it (again, my thanks to science and technology for giving us all those wonderful chemicals and pollution that make non-organic food possible).

So, health care reform starts, for me, with affordable organic food and 2 months of hunters and gatherers’ nature camp. I believe it will do wonders for reducing cancer and diabetic cases.

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tgmac says:

November 9, 2009 at 1:34 pm

Be the hokey, swede lex, get off your hobby horse. One would think the EU is and has been the best thing since sliced bread. There are no problems with the EU? How about publishing some accounts so we can transparently see where the money’s going.

You can’t envision any problems at all with Lisbon? One president talking for over 25 countries, not to mention the myriad of of regional areas. There aren’t several clauses, at least, that aren’t open to interpretation?

Enthusiam is one thing. Blind, blinkered obedience to the an ever shinning future based on sweet nada is just becoming nauseating.

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Swedish Lex says:

November 9, 2009 at 4:37 pm

Please read before you write. My last sentence says that the proof of the pudding will be in the eating.

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KareninCA says:

November 9, 2009 at 4:49 pm

Yves, if you write a weight-loss book, I will buy several copies. I am serious.

p.s. You mentioned people who eat loads of fried food and junk food and are content with being fat. I don’t doubt that such people exist, and I’d probably find them frustrating, too. But growing up in New England in the 70s, every female relative of mine a) ate very healthfully, and not, as far as I could see, in excess; b) was constantly desperately trying to lose weight, usually via Weight Watchers or some other sensible program, and c) was fat. Thirty years later, they’re fatter still, STILL dieting, and healthy.

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not a scientific study says:

November 9, 2009 at 11:01 pm

TV is the cause of all our troubles; the high cost of political campaigns, reduced attention spans, problems with child rearing and education from advertising directed at children, government enhanced propaganda opportunities, advertising for sickness and pharmaceuticals, on and on.

With both food quality and walking down, and more at home entertainment up -TiVo, cable, sports, documentaries and Netflix movies in a more complicated world and more rude one -–heaven is just lying on the coach with a bag of some new flavor of chips and a carbonated drink. You can just keep changing the channel -something will happen or you’ll just go to sleep.

With TiVo alone there are at least 40 hours of spectacular TV for anyone’s taste every week without adverts. I’ve seen at least one friend get fat after a year of TiVo, and I had to get rid of mine; its just too good. And I don’t watch TV at all without it except for brief excerpts on the Internet usually linked by NC or another economics blog.

Reply

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