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Jul. 2nd, 2009 @ 01:22 pm
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- The new buzzword in finance circles is macro-prudential regulation. We'll see how that works.
- FT on Iran.
- Fascinating piece on stem cells.
- The size of the British state, aka why we are fuckkked.
- The legacy of Madoff.
Mr Madoff’s most important legacy may in the end be suspicion. A man known as “the Jewish T-bill” and considered so trustworthy that his clients clamoured for him to accept their friends and family has helped destroy the clubby atmosphere on Wall Street and elsewhere, bankrupting entire families and charitable foundations in the process.
Regulators, investors and fund managers alike will have to live with the consequences: more inspections, higher legal fees and a host of tougher new regulations. As one industry professional says: “Trust has gone out the window.”
- Fed just went two sets up vs Haas in the Wimbledon semis. Hurray. Fuck Murray! |
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Jun. 29th, 2009 @ 10:52 am
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- Mike Brearley, psychoanalyst and Ashes-winning English captain.
- Fascinating exploration of Rio's failed engagement with Chinalco. There's a P-Alo op-ed in here for sure.
- I saw Ashik use something called the EEE. Looks like the ASUS EEE is the hottest thing in the gadget segment called netbooks. Cheap too, relatively speaking. My old laptop's now two years old and clogged to the nostrils with stuff. Time to scale up (I mean, down)?
- King of Pop. And more King of Pop - why this won't ever happen again.
- The FT claims that there was NO CONSUMPTION BOOM in the UK prior to the crash. Talk about turning conventional wisdom on its head. I find the claim just a bit outlandish but I can't be bothered to read up on it any more. The recession is so yesterday. I've lived with it for well over two years, going on three. Enough is enough. |
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MJ
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Jun. 26th, 2009 @ 04:43 pm
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Midnight last night, on the internet, as soon as I'd come back from Matu's place. Someone had said something like it outside Mile End station but I paid no mind.
But then, truth. Numbing shock. Facebook status updates by the score. Staying up half the night to follow the news and the blogs. Going to bed with a grief-stricken heart. Waking up with same.
For us who grew up in the 80s, this is like a Kennedy moment. The most recent parallel is perhaps the death of Diana. Like Di and Madonna, MJ was a global megastar. Recognized everywhere, his music everywhere, his name and image known from Timbuktu to Tasmania and all places in between. There's not half a dozen people on this earth who could claim to be as famous.
And what a talent. All I could think of last night was the excitement, the 100%-proof bliss of listening to Thriller in my Texas flat, over and over again, jumping and singing along to P.Y.T. and I Want You Back.
And a memory from the depths of time. 1984. Fakhruddin uncle's flat in Indira Road. His 4 kids, some years older than me, putting on Beat It in their room, starting to dance and sing along. It was a revelation. The music, the mood, the moves.
Jazeb's place, 1991. Dangerous, Eddie Murphy and Iman and MJ - Do you remember the time? Swirling into a pile of sand. Black or White. Macaulay Culkin. Heal the World.
So much ink will be spilt and so many words written. What's the use of it all? He'll still be gone. Not all of our grieving will bring that happy child or the unhappy genius back.
Goodbye Mike. Rest in peace.
P.S. For me, the last time I felt such shock was when Don Bradman died in 2001. He was no less of a god to me, possibly even greater.
P.P.S. Just this moment, about 18 hrs after he died, the top 15 albums being sold on Amazon are ALL Michael Jackson. |
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May. 26th, 2009 @ 01:57 pm
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- China stuck in a dollar trap.
- Crook says Obama owes Bush an apology! Ouch.
- Dambisa Moyo - the first time I heard her name. I reckon I'll be hearing it a lot more in years to come. The FT had lunch with her recently.
- Neo-colonialism? The land grab in Africa for food is making headlines again. Here's Javier Blas' analysis piece from last year. Here is the exec summ of the headline-grabbing report that's just come out.
- Twitter - still stupid, still pointless.
- In praise of the baobab.
- The American dream, turning into dust.
- Engel on Labour's fall.
- This lady wrote this article. An emerging star in the field of colonial history.
- Brilliant article by Ross McKibbin in the LRB. Moneyshot:
It has been all too easy to blame the bankers; their behaviour makes it almost compulsory. It is also easy to blame the clever Oxbridge types who invented risk models and forms of securitisation neither they nor anyone else understood. But their role was always secondary. If you tell bankers to go ahead and make money that is what bankers will do. If the Labour Party says it is intensely relaxed about people getting filthy rich, people will get filthy rich, and if you announce that you will regulate their activities with a light touch they won’t care how they get rich. Adair Turner, in his defence of the Financial Services Authority, was perfectly right to say that had the FSA told any bank to give up its riskier practices the government would have been down on it like a ton of bricks. This says little for the FSA’s independence or its courage but, alas, it’s true. |
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May. 22nd, 2009 @ 11:20 am
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- Finance continues to have the balls of this pig-witted government in a vise. Wolf howls.
- Stephens on the MPs' expense scandal.
- Taming the beast that is Nadal - is it even possible?
- Pre-election India analysis.
- What the fuck?! Here's the T-shirt in question. |
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May. 21st, 2009 @ 01:14 pm
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- In praise of Huy Fong Sriracha!
- Bizarro world - the mathematics of cities.
- The ECB - strip-teasers, not revolutionaries!
- Stomach-churning editorial in the Irish Times. Cover blown on decades of violent child abuse and rampant paedophilia by hundreds and hundreds of Catholic priests. Disgusting and shameful. Evil, in the correct sense of the word.
Ruth Gledhill has more. The Internet is literally awash with news of this sickness. The worst of the worst of it is that there will be no prosecutions, no sentences, and ultimately no justice. I find that to be incredible and utterly criminal. The barbarity of what is described would make grown men weep. Only one consolation - the swine are dying out. |
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May. 19th, 2009 @ 05:32 pm
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May. 15th, 2009 @ 11:43 am
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crazy
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May. 12th, 2009 @ 02:23 pm
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Coolest thing you ever saw.
- The story of stuff.
- Skapinker says it's not so bad.
- Sleep and exercise and you too can live to be 107.
- Kamila Shamsie celebrates the Daily Show and its Paki knock-offs. We met at Tahmima's party on election night last year. Clever girl, clearly loves her Obama and Stewart.
- Simon Callow posits the generational question in acting styles - is Olivier better than Slinger as Richard III? I wasn't around for Olivier, but I did see Slinger last year and he was electricity itself. |
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May. 7th, 2009 @ 02:02 pm
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- Gapper excoriates Basel.
- China rising.
- Guthrie in very funny form - divorce and the recession.
- Roubini thunders, but is anyone in power listening?
- Shift to thrift - is it permanent?
- Taiwan & China - dujoney dujonar.
- Our Polly! |
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May. 5th, 2009 @ 09:41 am
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Apr. 27th, 2009 @ 11:48 am
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- Obama, tortured. Fiendlishly complex issue, as this Analysis piece explains.
- Pakistan in deep and desperate trouble.
- End the University as We Know It.
- Gypsy murders escalate in Hungary. Shalar nothing changes.
- King James of Cleveland. Detroit's just been hammered 4-0. What I need now more than anything else is cable.
- My hometown, once upon a time - and maybe soon again, who knows. If the heat don't get you, the water will. What's the friggin point, eh?
- Incredible! An ATM machine for books.
The Espresso machine prints and binds books on demand in five minutes... The brainchild of American publisher Jason Epstein, the Espresso was a star attraction at the London Book Fair this week, where it was on display to interested publishers. Hordes were present to watch it click and whirr into action, printing over 100 pages a minute, clamping them into place, then binding, guillotining and spitting out the (warm as toast) finished article. The quality of the paperback was beyond dispute: the text clear, unsmudged and justified, the paper thick, the jacket smart, if initially a little tacky to the touch.
- Krugman's warning. I very much doubt it will be heeded. Plus ça change, plus c'est la fucking même chose! :-P |
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Biskind's book is proving to be a mesmerizing, revelatory read. The sheer volume of scurrilous detail is jaw-dropping; the one that I was reading this morning in the train was about Victoria Principal grabbing the young Steven Spielberg's dick and pushing her tits into his face, sometime around 1971-72. I'd have to read the book all over again, just so I could keep tabs on who behaved how badly and who fucked who!
But mostly, the book is about the movies and how they got made: Bonnie and Clyde, Easy Rider, M*A*S*H, The French Connection, The Last Picture Show, Nashville, The Exorcist, Mean Streets, Chinatown, Taxi Driver, American Graffiti and The Godfather. And many many more. I spent a great deal of time in Texas watching those 60s and 70s movies, borrowed from the local $1 Payless store. In that one year of 2002, my roomies and I got to see more great movies than I've probably seen in the rest of my life put together.
These days, I don't even bother with the multiplex. Haven't been to the movies properly since I moved here, which is all of five and a half years ago. Very few recent pics seem worth taking the trouble over. You have someone with Tarantino's talent who's gone off on his own peculiar wankfest. Maybe someone like PT Anderson will one day rise to the stature of a Coppola or a Scorsese.
What the book does confirm is that my loathing of Spielberg/Lucas was not misplaced. I never could stand that sickening brand of audience manipulation of which Spielberg is an acknowledged master, long before I managed to figure out consciously what was wrong with them. As for the Star Wars 'franchise' (what a loathsome word), there's nothing good to say about it so I'll leave it to the ultimate insider to say it:
Marcia Lucas, a prominent film editor and former wife of George Lucas, told Mr. Biskind: ''Right now I'm disgusted by the American film industry. There are so few good films, and part of me thinks 'Star Wars' is partly responsible for the direction the industry has gone in. And I feel badly about that.''
Here's Rich, Maslin and Joe McBride on the book. |
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Apr. 24th, 2009 @ 09:17 pm
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- Wikipedia's Picture of the Year competition gallery. Stunning stuff.
- Here's the 2007 competition and the 2006 competition.
- More bizarro stuff - Robert McGee, the only man known to have survived a scalping.
- Tim Geithner blabbers in the FT. A fucking pawn.
- Wolf calls the UK the sick man of Europe.
- Two big guys died recently. Eddie George, first governor of an independent BoE, and JG Ballard.
- John Kay disembowels New Labour and its policy of sucking the City's dick for the last 12 years. Sadly they are still doing it.
Little has changed. The government continues to see financial services through the eyes of the financial services industry, for which the priority is to restore business as usual. For a time in 2008, it seemed possible to argue that a package of temporary support for the banking industry, combined with substantial recapitalisation of the weaker players, might stabilise the financial sector and prevent serious knock-on effects. But the problems of banks are much deeper than were then acknowledged and the destabilisation of the real economy has happened anyway. Government now provides taxpayers’ money to financial services businesses in previously unimaginable quantities. But there is no control over the use of the money, no insistence on structural reform or management reorganisation, no safeguarding of the essential economic functions of the financial services industry and no accountability for the damage that has been done. |
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Apr. 23rd, 2009 @ 10:24 am
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- Love this quote on the Repubs: "The party’s political tactics are as hare-brained as its economics." Obama definitely has them on the run.
- Global brands rising in the east.
- Recent bank profits a result of more trickery and legerdemain. William Cohan empties both barrels.
A true return of profitability on Wall Street will come with the return of public confidence in the way it does business. Concepts such as honesty and transparency are key, not a bunch of accounting gimmicks designed to manufacture profits and send markets soaring. The public will remain sceptical of the recovery – and the return of the investment banks – until then.
- The Economist has a total piece of rock and roll: The evils of home ownership! (from an economic point of view of course).
- Vince Cable, the crotchety old Lib Dem politico, has been hailed in various circles for his prescience about the housing bubble/credit crisis. His short history of the crunch has already gotten a good review from the Economist. Here's the FT's take. The Daily Mail did an excellent profile of Dr Doom - his first wife was a stunner from Goa...
- Lionel Barber, FT editor, says: These are the best of times and the worst of times to be a financial journalist. He should have added 'analyst' as well. We are witnessing epochal events at close quarters. It's a privilege really.
- This is so good I could eat it. John Kay strips down the pretensions of the economics profession. I have to say that for the house paper of the financial classes, the FT is doing a hell of a job exposing all the greed, hypocrisy and ignorance that is rife amongst them. Take it away, John Kay!
There is not, and never will be, an economic theory of everything. Physics may, or may not, be different. But the knowledge we can hope to have in economics is piecemeal and provisional, and different theories will illuminate different but particular situations. We should observe empirical regularities and – as in other applied subjects such as medicine and engineering – we will often find pragmatic solutions that work even though our understanding of why they work is incomplete.
- In the same vein, Anatole Kaletsky waves goodbye to homo economicus. |
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- GM's new boss Fritz Henderson.
- The Great Game, rebooted. Fascinating stuff.
- The demographic crisis, coming soon to a country near you.
- An army marching to escape medieval China. The numbers sound a bit massaged though...
- Martin Wolf, quoting Simon Johnson, makes some interesting points.
Prof Johnson argues that the refusal of powerful institutions to admit losses – aided and abetted by a government in thrall to the “money-changers” – may make it impossible to escape from the crisis. Moreover, since the US enjoys the privilege of being able to borrow in its own currency it is far easier for it than for mere emerging economies to paper over cracks, turning crisis into long-term economic malaise. So we have witnessed a series of improvisations or “deals” whose underlying aim is to rescue as much of the financial system as possible in as generous a way as policymakers think they can get away with.
The bankers. Always the assholes in this game. Johnson calls it the Quiet Coup. He's dead right. Here is the original piece from the Atlantic.
- The likely shape of future bank regulation.
These include forcing banks to set aside more capital during good times, increasing scrutiny of ratings agencies, broadening the regulatory umbrella to capture all institutions that pose a potential risk to financial stability, setting up central clearing and settlement for over-the-counter derivatives and overhauling banks’ bonus policies. The authors also agree that regulators and central banks must in future be explicitly charged with spotting problems as they build up in the system and be given the power to prick future bubbles before they grow too large.
- Wolf is in excellent form in this piece too. He pours a big bucket of cold water over all the recent happy talk. How good is the stuff below?!
( Read more... ) |
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Apr. 19th, 2009 @ 06:57 am
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- Mexico's crisis comes to America.
- Rizwana Hasan, lawyer and environmentalist. Seriously impressive, yo. Check the vid.
- Hostels in Europe are the smart way to travel.
- "There are nearly enough Chinese named Zhang Wei to populate the city of Pittsburgh." Here's a great piece on Chinese names.
- Even the NYT is going ape over Polly Stenham's sophomore play Tusk Tusk. This is very high on my to-see list. She crash-boom-banged this city with That Face two years ago.
- Frank Rich's new piece discusses Stephen Colbert's "homo storm" among other things.
- Obama's letter filter. |
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Apr. 16th, 2009 @ 09:43 am
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- George Will rails against jeans!
- Young people shunning the quick money of finance? Colour me unconvinced so far.
- This article makes me want to puke. Every time the reporter says 'top talent' or 'cream of the crop', I feel like whacking him.
- FT interview of Manmohan Singh on the eve of the elections.
- Philip Augar writes eloquently of the need to put finance back in its box. A disaster that was four decades in the making, beginning from the collapse of Bretton Woods' fixed exchange rates in 1971.
- The science of muddling through...
- Luke Johnson's lament for finance and media.
- The big Obama interview on the eve of the G20 summit. This is what he had to say:
Mr Obama discloses that he reads global newspapers – an option not available to FDR: “I read the Financial Times before other people read the Financial Times [in Chicago in the 1980s],” the president says. “Now it’s trendy and everybody carries around a Financial Times.”
Nuff sed ;-) |
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Apr. 15th, 2009 @ 11:00 am
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- Krugman on the GOP's latest antics. More on GOP's sad senescence: Edsall ponders a long-term majority for progressives, backed up by this cool interactive map from Ruy Teixeira.
- Juliet: Fakn death. C U Latr. Romeo: gud plan.
Technology is wreaking havoc on literature, claims this writer.
- Southern Utah for the next roadtrip? Why the hell not! Sure looks beautiful enough.
- A 108 year-old grande dame expires in old Havana.
- Frank Rich once again in scintillating form. Among others, he nails Larry Summers well and good this time. Week after week, Rich delivers solid gold and I just don't know how he does it! However, the sad truth (as Teixeira's erstwhile partner Judis reports) is that the banks may be slyly winning their deathmatch against the administration in spite of popular outrage. All of Helicopter Ben's braying will have come to nought if that's the final outcome from this clusterfuck.
- Reading Peter Biskind's epic work on the New Hollywood - Easy Riders, Raging Bulls. Insider gossip like nobody's business. Last word on cinema's great decade. Here's the Amazon reviewer:
( Read more... ) |
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Apr. 13th, 2009 @ 11:28 pm
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- The life and times of Merv the Swerve.
- Sarkozy spin-around on Nato.
- Bankers - is shooting in the face too good for them?
Also, the Pakistan files:
- NYT Magazine's massive cover story - Can Pakistan be governed?
- Lieven reports on their terrible attitude problems in the FT.
- From Dalrymple's liquid pen, charting Pakistan's descent into chaos. But in the FT, Dalrymple again, this time on the new wave of Pakistani writers - Hamid, Hanif, Aslam, Shamsie and now someone called Daniyal Mueenuddin. |
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Dubai has fascinated and repelled thinking people in equal measure over the last few years. But now I think this mirage in the sand is finally being exposed for the cruel, greedy con-job that it always has been.
A whole spate of articles, the supreme example of which must be Johann Hari's ginormous, stupendous expose in the Independent. It's only April, but for me this is a leading candidate for Article of the Year.
Six months ago, Carole Cadwalladr of the Guardian wrote a grimy piece about the brittle city. The Toronto Star invoked Ozymandias.
Faisal Devji, an academic from New York by way of south Asia and east Africa, wrote a long and convoluted piece typifying that fascination and repulsion.
BBC did not one but two pieces on Dubai - all in preparation for the Panorama show earlier this week. Haven't seen it yet, but it's at the top of my to-view list alongside the stunning documentary on Yellowstone!
Here's the link to the Panorama docu Slumdogs and Millionaires, only viewable within the UK. Finally a relatively sympathetic view comes from a dude called desert blogger.
P.S. As far as bloggers go, Secret Dubai is one of the best-known. And banned to boot! This is a classic. After Ozymandias comes Kubla Khan!
In Jumeirah did Big Sheikh Mo
A massive great hotel decree
Where streams of sacred sewage ran
Through beaches uninhabitable by man
Down to a polluted sea
P.P.S. How could I possibly have missed Mike Davis?! Fear and Money in Dubai, from the pen of the great urban polemicist.
P.P.P.S. Simon Jenkins piles on too. More Ozymandias metaphors. |
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- Article of the day surely must be this!!! Ineligible Bachelors: Indian Men Living in U.S. Strike Out, in the WSJ. At last, local men get their own back.
- The Fund favours Euro adoption in the CEE. Lex is against.
- Couple of FT graphics - investment bankers on the move, and European house prices.
- An ex-Schroders man describes how the City destroyed itself and the UK economy with it.
- Stephens continues to be one of the FT's most astute writers in what is a very crowded field! Here's his latest on the unlamented death of the Washington Consensus and here's another on the multiple failures of Mervyn King's Bank of England.
- Finally Rachman on Obama's European tour. |
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- Economic research - the greatest hits! Lucas takes the top spot with his classic paper. |
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Apr. 6th, 2009 @ 01:30 pm
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The world continues to be remorselessly fascinating this manic Monday morning.
- Frank Rich in top form.
- In praise of the American short story. AO Scott explains as three giants of the genre (Cheever, O'Connor, Barthelme) have their bios coming out.
- The rich are getting fucked. The harder the better, if you ask me.
- Why advertising on the internet is bound to fail -- Wharton prof causes firestorm. "Pushing a message at a potential customer when it has not been requested and when the consumer is in the midst of something else on the net, will fail as a major revenue source for most internet sites." Too right.
- Free-lance iPhone app developers who made it big. This is what the new world looks like. Should have studied programming? Maybe.
- The late great John Hope Franklin. Good middle name, that.
- China's one-child policy gives rise to ever more crimes, distortions and perversions. |
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Apr. 3rd, 2009 @ 02:36 pm
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In spite of the shitty US employment news - another 660K laid off last month - there is now for the first time in a long time the sense of a perceptible mood shift. All indicators are pointing to the possibility that the real economy has finally hit bottom and may be passing beyond that point into the recovery phase as we speak. Loads of pointers to back this up. Of course this is no help to those who are about to face the chop because, simply put, jobs lag output. But even so, all this plus yesterday's G20 outcome has got to count as good news. No?
- Demographics of the crisis in pictures
- The recession, in pictures
- Stephens in the FT celebrates the multilateralism of the summit.
Four Analysis pieces:
- Gap of 20.
- The Swedish solution.
- US newspaper industry in deep doo-doo.
- Europe and Asia search for alternative economic models. |
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The NYT has to be the one must-read American newspaper.
- Excellent writeup on the revival of the ancient Irish tradition of unremitting misery.
- Homage to Wallace Stegner, one of the men who helped to define the American West. My favorite landscape on earth.
- MoDo on the reptilian American brain adjusting to a downscaled world.
- Further evidence of how far I've dropped out of the movie scene. Haven't seen a single movie by this kid called Paul Dano.
- The agenda of the G20 summit. Yesterday, London was riot city. Today comes further evidence that the blame game is shifting again ever so slightly - this time on the supersaver nations that have failed dismally to do anything about their domestic demand, relying instead on 'predatory exports' and 'leaching' off US-UK consumers! Words to the following effect - 'We've ruined our credit rating to make you guys rich'. Also, Capital Econ's new UK Q2 review is out - and it is a work of marvel. I could live a thousand years reading about economics!
- Americans discover plentiful new uses for their public libraries.
- In praise of the noble goat.
Indeed, goats have long held a lowly reputation. Scavengers, they are falsely accused of eating tin cans. Their unappetizing visage is simultaneously dopey and satanic, like a Disney character with a terrible secret. Their chin hair is sometimes prodigious enough to carpet Montana. Chaucer said they “stinken.”
Brilliantly done. |
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Mar. 31st, 2009 @ 10:51 am
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- All about Hypo. We met these guys a couple of years ago, prospective clients. Europeans are apparently not without sin! Funke is to Germany what Goodwin is to the UK. And our Timo gets a name-check too!
- Labour's going to get buried! And I will personally volunteer to lead the dance on top of its grave.
- The defining global event of my lifetime. Bigger than 9-11, bigger than the crunch was the fall of communism. It's been 20 years.
- What lies ahead for Europe? Lots of vexing questions. Germany will bail out Greece some day, and we'll have a more federal Europe. Wagstyl says that CEE won't be so badly off actually.
- The death of shareholder value? It can't come soon enough! |
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