Who’s to save me from an auto-incestuous intellectual degeneration, when being fed info based on my own preferences?

I have some preferences and Google, Facebook, Twitter and other social media feed me based on these. And so the more Goggle, Facebook, Twitter and other social media gets to know my preferences the more I will be entering into an incestuous relation with myself… in other words the more I run the risk that my intellect might incestuously degenerate.

Who is to supply me the diversity I need in order to find out any new preferences in life?

So, for a starter, it looks that, as a minimum minimorum, I need a copyright of my own preferences.

Who wants to be my agent, marketing my attention span of 64 30-second ad spots daily, so as to maximize my returns?

For 8 hours I am willing to look at adds 1 minute an hour, and for other 8 hours 3 minutes per hour.

That adds up to attention span availability for ads per day, equal to 64 30-second spots.

Who is willing to be my agent marketing my attention span of 64 30-second spots per day so as to maximize my returns?

The agent would have to guarantee I am not bothered over this attention span allotment of 64 30-second spots per day.

I would accept payment in cash or products, like being able to see a movie that interests me. 

I would accept paying my agent, either in cash or by ceding to him, some of my 64 30-second spots per day.

Ad-blockers might be especially interested in representing my attention span.

UN’s Sustainable Development Goals, SDGs, against the backdrop of the Credit Risk Weighted Capital Requirements for Banks

The fact is that current bank regulations, by allowing for lower capital requirements, allow banks to earn higher risk adjusted returns on equity when lending to what is perceived as safe than when lending to what is perceived as risky. 

That’s it! Just avoid taking credit risks and you earn more. Not a word about a purpose for banks; like helping to generate jobs for the young or making the planet more sustainable. So we have a banking system that no longer finances the future, it now only refinances the past.

And to top it up, the regulators assigned a risk weight of zero percent to the sovereigns (governments) and of 100 percent to the citizens and private sectors on which that sovereign depends. Which means they believe government bureaucrats can use bank credit more efficiently than SMEs and entrepreneurs.

And of course those regulations completely distort the allocation of bank credit to the real economy and, by diminishing the opportunities of the risky to gain access to bank credit, increases existing inequalities. 

And of course those purposeless bank regulations are also dangerously useless. We know that major bank crisis never occur because of excessive financing of what is perceived as risky; they always result from excessive financing of something erroneously believed to be very safe 

And not one iota about this is being discussed in the UN, IMF or elsewhere

Can you imagine if by allowing banks to hold less somewhat less equity when lending to what finances SDGs, we made banks earn higher returns on equity when financing SDGs?  

And so I am sorry, against this backdrop, the announcement of the Sustainable Development Goals, the SDGs, might suggest the term Pollyannaish should henceforth be spelled as PollyUNnaish.

PS. Volkswagen should have rudely reminded UN bureaucrats that there is a real world waiting out there to game their SDGs.

Taxes should be collected, paid and used, only as a result of a harmonious relation between citizens and governments.

If we are to develop for systems that “Protect and increase tax revenues by implementing multilateral automatic information exchange”, these should go hand in hand with equally automatic systems that make certain that the way government spends such tax revenues, is in agreement with what was promised to the tax-payers. Otherwise we might run into deadly efficient Sheriffs of Nottingham collecting taxes for obnoxious King Johns, without even having a Sherwood Forest where to hide.

I repeat nothing works better against tax havens than tax heavens. And if we do not get those heavens we better keep some havens.

Tax evasion is often described in terms of countries losing money. That is not entirely correct. It is the government of a country that loses the right to administer the evaded tax funds… and sometimes that is not all bad.

There are cases in which it would seem it should be a civic duty to escape the payment of taxes, so that those resources are not dilapidated and can be better used defending the country.

In Venezuela its government gives away in free gas more than all its health, education and social spending put together. Has not a government that does that forfeited its right to tax the citizens?

Irresponsible governments should not have guaranteed access to any type of information about their subjects.

Let us be careful with any Tax Collector's Unite call... they might all belong to a small mutual admiration club, with mutual interests and an overpowering group solidarity.

Greece: Cash revenue maximizing privatization of public services, creates very onerous mortgages

The saddest part with the oncoming privatizations of public services in Greece, is that these will most certainly be awarded on the basis of who pays the most, usually a function of governments agreeing on very high tariffs; and not on the basis of who can best help Greece build up its competitiveness… like for instance based on who offer the lowest tariffs.

As one from South-America (Venezuela) I have seen this tragic mistake being done over and over again, only in order to please the short-term interests of governments and creditors.

I guarantee you that all cash-revenue-maximizing-privatizations of public services, create very onerous mortgages, which when these are impossible to serve by the citizens, create all kind of dangers and problems.

Here is an extract from an Op-Ed I wrote in 1997, titled “Hidden taxation through privatization” and that can help explain my point.

“In 1991, when Israel awarded concessions to cellular telephone companies, the criteria for these tender awards was the selection of the operator that offered the best and most inexpensive service to the consumer. In Venezuela, however, the sale of public service companies or the letting of concessions for public service operations are based on the maximization of income for the State by means of a kind of tax, payable in advance, and which will be repaid by the consumer year after year through increased tariffs. The results are there for all to see. In Venezuela, the cost per minute of the cellular telephone service is over ten times that in Israel.

Nobody can or should oppose the theory that the State, through privatization, must transfer to the private sector the relative responsibility for its public services. However, when this transfer is made by maximizing the sales price with the principal intention of filling the State’s coffers, we are effectively confronted by a new and strange version of tropical neoliberalism, invented not to serve the needs of the population, but merely to satisfy the insatiable appetite of the state public sector for income” … (or in this case, the case of Greece, the short-sighted appetite of creditors)

The creditors should know that what the buyers of those privatized services expect, are financial returns way higher than what they as creditors will obtain on their refinanced loans.

You are a bank creditor of someone delinquent on a mortgage against a house that earns you very low interests... and you allow that mortgage to be increased, for instance by a credit-card company charging much higher interest rates? It does not sound very smart!

If we are going to squeeze the rich, let us do it at the lowest cost... government bureaucrats are too expensive

I refer to The Economist's "If the world introduces a 'Piketty tax': Squeezing the rich"

Let us be careful since too many rich-squeezers are just out to maximize their commissions from the squeezing.

As Sheriff of Nottingham said, “Squeezing the rich is always good business for some… especially for us"

We need to privatize the squeezing of the rich, to those who will charge the lowest commissions for the service.

Can you imagine a privatization bid to see who offers to redistribute 1% of the wealth of the richest 1% to the poorest 10% every year at the lowest cost… delivering an insurance of adequate compliance for a couple of billions of US$?

Or better yet that offers to redistribute 1% of the wealth of all to all, so that there is no political benefits derived from the distribution, since those are what probably costs us all the most.

That said we must also be careful that redistributing wealth does not concentrate wealth even more... as that could happen if we do not remove some of the distortions.

But of course, in an oil cursed country like my Venezuela, where government coffers receive 97 percent of all exports, the wealth that needs to be redistributed is 100% of the net oil revenues, since governments should work only with resources provided to them by the citizens... so that they have to care a lot about how it goes for the citizens

Nothing wrong with Congress being a cheerleader, but it real mission is only fulfilled when it is not!

When a Congress approves of what is proposed by the Executive Branch that is perfectly okey but let us not forget that it is only when a Congress disapproves of what is proposed by the Executive, that it is fulfilling its real mission.

Hunger and votes

August 2012 I wrote in El Universal: "Assuming 600,000 Venezuelans were hungry for ten years, that is 2.190 million nights of hungry Venezuelans... If only the gasoline that is given away for nothing in Venezuela had been sold to international prices, that would have sufficed for much more than 2.190 million succulent and hearty dinners "

And recently I came across an excellent English translation of a fascinating novel published in Norway in 1890, "Hunger", written by Knut Hamsun, Nobel Prize for Literature 1920.

The book is about an unsuccessful writer who suffers from prolonged periods of intense hunger and during which, between consciousness and unconsciousness, he navigates between extreme feelings and emotions.

At one point he is capable of doing anything to eat, and the other would rather die of hunger before doing something unworthy. At one point he fails to see anything that happens around them, and on the other the smallest details overwhelm him with absolute clarity. One moment he is full of the deepest despair and depression, only to soon after be filled with an overflowing and senseless euphoric optimism.

I quote: " The poor individual looks around him at every step, listens suspiciously to every word he hears from the people he meets; thus, every step he takes presents a problem, a task, for his thoughts and feelings. He is alert and sensitive, he is experienced, his soul has been burned…"

Finishing the book my head was full of questions in reference to what happens in my country (Venezuela)…foremost… What does hunger mean for democracy?

One who suffers real hunger, is he capable of exerting any significant political activity? Who that to feed his children might have no choice but to spend all day exploring garbage cans (or in Venezuela spend the whole day in a queues for an opportunity to do some bachaqueo), can be interested in a unpaid political act?

In democracy, how can unscrupulous politicians use the hunger of voters? Looking for votes, will they offer a hearty meal hungry before the voting takes place – running the risk that the so strengthened will not vote for those they can hold responsible for their recent hunger... or not vote for those who injure their pride trying to buy their votes? Or would they offer abundant food once the hungry voters have voted “correctly” – risking that weak and confused, or furious, voters vote for someone else? 

Should the Election Supervision Authority install some equipment to monitor that voters have been sufficiently fed? And what if these computers can be programmed to exclude those who have other symptoms? Should the votes of hungry be worth more, given that for them is should be even more important that governments function well?

Talking with one of my daughters about this, she suggested that all candidates for public office should have experienced some prolonged period of intense hunger, so as to really understand the real extent of their compromise. And who can say she is wrong about that?

Anyhow… cursed be those who purposely, or because of vulgar sheer incompetence, cultivate and harvest their people's hunger, in order to satisfy their own appetites.

El Radical del Medio

Basel risk-weights: Sovereign (Monarch) 0%, AAArisktocracy 20% and citizens 100%: And the world said nothing!

With the Basel Accord of 1988 (signed one year before the Berlin wall fall) regulators, for the purpose of setting the capital requirements for banks, assigned a 0% risk weight for loans to the sovereign and 100% to the private sector. Some years later, 2004, with Basel II, they reduced the risk-weight for loans to those in the private sector rated AAA to AA to 20%, and left the unrated citizens with their 100%.

That has introduced a considerable regulatory subsidy for the bank borrowings of the infallible sovereign (government bureaucrats) and of those of the private sector deemed almost infallible. And that has severely taxed the access to bank credit, of those deemed as risky, like SMEs and entrepreneurs.

That de facto means that bank regulators believe that government bureaucrats know better what to do with bank credit than citizens.

And the world said nothing! What's wrong? Have all gone statist?

Can Cubans get back what was stolen from them by suing Cuba in the USA using the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act?

I went to see "Woman in Gold". It is an excellent film about how a Jewish woman, Maria Altmann manages to get back the "Portrait of Adele Bloch-Baauer” that depicts her aunt and that was painted by Gustaf Klimt. Sixty years ago that portrait and other painting in her family’s possession were seized by the Nazis.

Altmann is able to sue Austria after achieving that the Supreme Court in the USA 2004 decides that the "Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act" enacted in 1976, could be applied retroactively.

Leaving the film, I asked myself... could Cubans (and other brethren) recover what was expropriated / stolen from them by accessing this law?

Might Cubans want to contact E. Randol Schoenberg

For 1US$, I will look for 30 seconds, with reasonable interest, at any unsolicited ad, directed to me on the web.

I need legal advice of how to register a copyright of my own preferences as a consumer and as a human being. Why should that not be possible? Does that not include even more intimate and I would hold creative content than what most copyrighted books have? 

Now if I get that copyright then I would make the following public offer: 

For 1US$ (revisable), I will look for 30 seconds, with reasonable interest, at any unsolicited ad directed to me through any social media or any other site I visit while travelling the web. 

I hereby declare that I am a great consumer and I have a good history of easily falling for offers on the web. That said, nothing here should be interpreted as a commitment to purchase anything or to otherwise follow or do what is suggested in any ad for which I have been paid a royalty.

I will then contract an ad-blocker so as only those advertising sufficiently interested in me so as to be willing to pay me to see their ad have access to me. Depending on the efficiency by which I am served, and the little I would get bothered by unauthorized access to me, I will offer the ad-blocker up to 30% of any income derived by me in royalties on my copyright on my own preferences.

Is Political Correctness a Neo-Victorianism, Neo-Inquisition, or just some good old gossiping by windbags with nothing better to do?

The Nobel laureate Tim Hunt said:

“Let me tell you about my trouble with girls. Three things happen when they are in the lab: You fall in love with them, they fall in love with you, and when you criticize them they cry.” 

That could be taken as a joke extracted from many films and TV series that cross our daily path… and worse is often said in award winning rap or hip-hop music. 

But no, the forces of political correctness decided to came down hard on him. So hard he even resigned from his position as Honorary Professor University College London, UCL, Faculty of Life Sciences.

Is it obnoxious moralistic Neo-Victorianism?

Is it Neo-Inquisition which punishment of choice, for the time being, is destroying the heretics through media?

Or is it just some good old gossiping by good old male and female windbags with nothing better to do?

It behooves us to try to find out?

Our feeble democracies need to be re-launched on the web

The real effective distance between congressmen and senators to their constituency is way too long. If each one of these has to answer to more than a couple of hundred of citizens they are really not answering to anyone.

Every couple of hundred citizens should have the right to appoint a citizen delegate, and these delegates should be the one to vote on what congressmen and senators propose.

Every single citizen should receive real time information on how his delegate has voted. That would help to hold them accountable.

That would inject a lot of dynamism and real separation of powers into our feeble democracies.

If we want a promised a “representative democracy” “dependent on the people alone,” this has to be the modern way to get it.

There’s nothing like family support and trust

I have for more than a decade now been questioning, for a couple of hours most days, the bank regulators… telling them they are 180 degree wrong and should go home… in shame… 

http://subprimeregulations.blogspot.com

And none of the regulators has even given me one answer and yet… not for one second, have I doubted that my wife and my daughters do not think I am absolutely right in what I am saying and doing… and that my friends, is the bliss of family support and trust.

I really doubt current bank regulators in the Basel Committee have even a fraction of what I have of it... and that is why I know I am going to prevail.

Thanks my dear girls! I do love you all so much.

My father was freed 70 years ago by courageous American (and British, and Canadian) boots on the ground… not by drones.

Yesterday… on Memorial Day 2015, as I try to do every year as often I can, I went down to the World War II Memorial to express my gratitude to those courageous American soldiers who, 70 years ago, April 1945, when freeing Birkenau, Sachsennhaussen, Buchenwald, freed my Polish father.

This year I was only able to speak to one single veteran of those days in Europe. Sadly most of them are gone by now… and I never got a chance to thank them all.

And while walking around the World War II Memorial, a question that has been haunting me lately came back over and over again... My father was freed by boots on the ground… not by drones… will America still have it in it to free other future fathers, if need be?

And next year, I will go there again, and God willing, I will find another one to thank!

Note: "My father Tadeusz Brodka a Pole, later Tadeusz Kurowski (his mothers surname), arrived to Auschwitz in June 1940, as one of 728, on the first train. He was registered with number 245 (tattooed on his arm). He survived taking photos. In October 1944, he was transferred to Birkenau, Heinkel Werken, Sachsennhaussen, Wausleben am see – Buchenwald. And from there he was liberated by the Americans, on April 14, 1945. They recently commemorated the 75th anniversary of that first train.

I went there again, on Memorial Day 2016. There might be millions of reason why oneself, as oneself, would not have come into being, but those reasons are usually always unknown and ignored. That is why it so special to walk the II World War Memorial when one knows why oneself, as oneself, in this case me, as the Per I am, would absolutely not have come into being, were it not for the American soldiers there honored.

PS. In Alexander Solzhenitsyn's Commencement Address given at Harvard University June 8, 1978 titled “A World Split Apart” we find: “Well-Being: Choice of pleasures: Who should renounce all, risk one’s precious life in defense of the common good… especially when the security of one’s nation must be defended in a distant land?"

PS. If someone has special information of soldiers who were present in Buchenwald that April 1945, and could be living, I appreciate the information at perkurowski@gmail.com

Memorial Day 2024: 

"E Pluribus Unum" "Out of many, one."

Red and blue, or, red or blue?

Google, Facebook, Twitter take notice: I already bought the tuxedo shirt I was looking for! Take me off that ad list!

How long is my already fulfilled intention to buy a tuxedo shirt, now going to pursue me on the web… on social media? I mean sort of every hour and ad on tuxedo shirts pops up.

There should be a way to notify the googles, the twitters and the facebooks of this world, that I already bought a shirt and have no intentions to buying another one soon… but then they might not be interested in doing such a thing… since they might prefer to keep alive the advertising tuxedo-shirt vendors’ illusion that I will buy a shirt from him.

PS. Can I get a copyright on my preferences and my life?

Fostering small mutual admiration club groupthink, the World Economic Forum's Davos meetings could be doing more bad than good.

While being one of the 24 Executive Directors of the World Bank, 2002-2004, I told the other 23 ED’s “If by lottery we substitute with a plumber or a certified nurse anyone of you, I guarantee we will have a much wiser board”. And of course, they did not like that too much. And of course I did not include myself among the substitutable... my ego does not allow such nonsense J

And now, when there is to be a change of the CEO, of the World Economic Forum’s Davos meetings… a gathering of experts… I wonder if it is not high time to guarantee in Davos the presence of a more diversified gathering.

Indeed what a wonderful PhD thesis it could be, to have somebody study what really game-changing or game-savings have come out of all those yearly meetings in Davos… As I see it, by fostering groupthink and small mutual admiration club mentality, Davos could have done more bad than good.

For instance having invited a couple of aspiring entrepreneurs to Davos would have allowed these to cry out:

“What the hell are bank regulators thinking of by making it even more difficult for us considered risky to access bank credit than what we already have to face? For God’s sake, the risky have never ever caused a major bank crisis, that dishonor belongs entirely to those erroneously considered very safe”.

“Why do regulators for the risk weighted bank capital requirements, assign risk weights of 0% to the sovereign and 100% to us unrated citizens? Don’t they understand that implies government bureaucrats know better what to do with credit for which repayment they’re not personally responsible for, than us private entrepreneurs?

Diversity

My letters to FT on Davos