Club Troppo

How will Paul Samuelson be remembered? This is the positive side of the story, the glowing record of  the Nobel Laureate and author of the most widely read textbook in modern times.

History may be kind to Samuelson. He had the good fortune to surf three waves that carried all before them, for a time. The waves were the General Theory of Keynes, the Big Government welfare state and Mathematics. To capture the mood of the Keynesian revolution he recycled a famous response to the French Revolution “Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive, But to be young was very heaven! …”.

It is likely that critical scholarship will be less kind. He may be remembered as the man who thought that the Soviet economy was robust and rapidly overhauling the US. The man who was relaxed and comfortable with Keynesian stimulation of the economy. The man who thought that the Austrians are rubbish. I think he was wrong on all three counts.

An essay topic ”Compare and contrast the outcomes of the French and Keynesian revolutions”.

Balmain is not  just the city of basket weavers it is also a place to find thinking drinkers and binge thinkers. Put this in your list of favorites.

Shaken and Stirred, the brainchild of Parnell McGuinness and Leonie Phillips, is a space for the free exchange of opinions without fear, favour or rancour. It is a moveable feast of ideas, usually associated with food and drink (well, why not?).

Modelled on the great Parisian salons of the enlightenment, Shaken and Stirred events gypsy throughout metropolitan Sydney presenting unusual speakers on provocative ideas. By deliberately seating ideological opponents adjacent, the events encourage thinkers from all perspectives to challenge their own ideas and those of others.

See the Shaken and Stirred Facebook page for previous events.

Club 1:Azerbaijan, Bangladesh, Cameroon, China, Cuba, Djibouti, Egypt, Indonesia, Jordan, Malaysia, Mali, Nicaragua, Nigeria, Pakistan, Philippines, Qatar, Russian Federation, Saudi Arabia, Senegal, South Africa, Sri Lanka.
Club 2:Bolivia, Brazil, Gabon, Ghana, Guatemala, India, Japan, Madagascar, Mauritius, Mexico, Peru, Republic of Korea, Uruguay, Zambia
Club 3:Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Netherlands, Romania, Slovenia, Switzerland, Ukraine, United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland.

(Continued)

It seems incredible, hard to believe, but we’ve got ten double passes to give away to Highly Suss, which looks like fun.  I’d go myself if I wasn’t going to be overseas. If you’re planning to be in Melbourne for the 4th of April, then let us know and we can send you a ticket to a Troppo table – or perhaps a block of seats in the audience. You’ll laugh, you’ll cry, you’ll be amazed at the incredible elephants that will be on stage. You’ll be abducted by aliens. But you’ll be returned back to the theatre in time for you to catch your tram home.  

How do you let us know – with a comment leaving your email below or by emailing me at nicholas AT gruen DOT com DOT au. Or after Monday 23rd March to rex UNDERSCORE ringschott AT yahoo DOT com DOT au

On this analysis two major factors in the train wreck were the regulations that pushed lenders to water down prudent criteria for lending and the flight of speculators from the housing market when prices ceased to rise. A nuance in this analysis is to point out that it was not JUST the sub-primes that collapsed because the second factor (speculator-flight) applied across the board.

Why did the mortgage market melt down so badly? Why were there so many defaults when the economy was not particularly weak? Why were the securities based upon these mortgages not considered anywhere as risky as they actually turned out to be?

This report concludes that, in an attempt to increase home ownership, particularly by minorities and the less affluent, virtually every branch of the government undertook an attack on underwriting standards starting in the early 1990s. Regulators, academic specialists, GSEs, and housing activists universally praised the decline in mortgage-underwriting standards as an innovation in mortgage lending. This weakening of underwriting standards succeeded in increasing home ownership and also the price of housing, helping to lead to a housing price bubble. The price bubble, along with relaxed lending standards, allowed speculators to purchase homes without putting their own money at risk.
(Continued)

It seemed like a reasonable enough idea. Responding to fears of a terrorist attack by ‘dirty bomb‘ or nuclear weapon, US Customs and Border Protection installed hundreds of radiation portal monitors at seaports, land border ports of entry and crossings across the United States. But unfortunately, the devices have had trouble telling the difference between bomb-making materials and ordinary consumer products like bananas, kitty litter and toilet bowls. Worse still, they may be unable to detect a shipments which do contain bomb-making materials like highly enriched uranium.

(Continued)

Hopefully Troppodillians will forgive me for tackling another Pearson piece only two weeks after my last effort. I’ll try not to make a habit of it, I promise.

With your indulgence, then, let’s proceed.

Is it relativism to hold our liberal democratic traditions to a higher standard than those of Islamic extremists? Do our actions over the years in the Middle East really have little to do with the growing emnity many of its inhabitants feel for us? Is it either useful or accurate to constantly label the narrative of grievance shared by a significant part of the Muslim world (and, it should be noted, many others) as irrational?

Noel Pearson seems to think so.

In a lengthy opinion piece this weekend, he ventures more deeply into the territory he introduced two weeks ago in United, Well Fight Terrorism. Pearsons views can be summed up as follows:

1. Despite many errors in its prosecution of the war on terror, some of them grievous, the liberal democratic West is in one camp, within the pale in Pearsons terms, while the Islamic extremists are in another. To obscure this distinction is not only wrong, but dangerous.

2. Those who oppose, in principle, the current policies for dealing with the Islamic threat hail from the Left and are generally immature and highly confused. (Continued)

A sense of gloom settled in as I ploughed through The Weekend Australian yesterday. It felt like February 2003 again, only worse. Then, an optimist could at least excuse the thumping of the drums of war as the triumph of hope over experience. In the light of the last four years, that excuse is no longer available.

In The World section on page thirteen, Gerard Baker (US preparing to beat Irans bomb) produced a paean to the wonders of high explosive and muscular diplomacy. All directed at Iran, of course. Were it not for Mr Bakers previous efforts, one might have been tempted to view the entire article as a mildly amusing parody. Consider, for example, how he finished the piece (emphasis added):

But it is starting to look as though, with not much more than a year left in his term, Bush has decided, as he surveys the unedifying global territory of ideological and state-backed terror, that he needs to clean house.

And a 13, 600kg MOP [massive ordinace penetrator] might be just the job.

Immediately above this anti-exemplar of quality journalism, Martin Chulov and Abraham Rabinovich (Syria quick to clean up bombed facility) have a little go at Syria and its purported nuclear ambitions. Whatever the truth about these ambitions, and on balance international views (including those of the IAEA) appear very sceptical, this article was of the nudge, nudge, wink, wink school of journalism. You know . . . . implication, innuendo and (Continued)

This brief article by Zbigniew Brzezinski in the Washington Post provides a useful contrast to Albrechtsen’s opinion piece. Here are the opening few lines to give you the flavour:

The “war on terror” has created a culture of fear in America. The Bush administration’s elevation of these three words into a national mantra since the horrific events of 9/11 has had a pernicious impact on American democracy, on America’s psyche and on U.S. standing in the world. Using this phrase has actually undermined our ability to effectively confront the real challenges we face from fanatics who may use terrorism against us.

The damage these three words have done — a classic self-inflicted wound — is infinitely greater than any wild dreams entertained by the fanatical perpetrators of the 9/11 attacks when they were plotting against us in distant Afghan caves.

Sadly, we too have inflicted this wound upon ourselves, albeit with somewhat less fervour.

Another article worth a read is from the excellent Tom Engelhardt. Again, a few tidbits to hopefully whet your appetite: (Continued)

Much as I hesitate to introduce yet another post with a plug for LNL, the interview with Chas Freeman last night obliges me to take the risk. Now retired, he was, as well as holding many other distinguished positions, US Ambassador to Saudi Arabia during the first Gulf War. Terrific speaker . . . . . low key, intelligent, well informed with a humour so dry as to almost be invisible.

I was curious about this fellow and so had a look on Google. Found a few interesting things, amongst which was this transcript of a speech given late last year to the United States Information Agency Alumni Association. In it, he sums up the radical deterioration in the US position in the last five years particularly well, I thought, and does so as an insider. The title of this post is the one he used for that talk. Indeed, his opening words were:

“We are gathered together to reflect upon our country’s adoption of Caligula’s motto for effective foreign policy — ODERINT DUM METUANT — ‘let them hate us (Continued)