Blocking citizens from venting their concerns, because of political correctness, is as dangerous as can be.

I just came back from a week in Sweden

If political correctness blocks the discussion of citizen’s ordinary and very human concerns, whether these are right or wrong, like those many have on what they feel is an excessive immigration, and the risk of diluting the meaning of being a Swede... that is a great growth-hormone for extremism.

In other words, if you use a “That’s like Hitler” in response to all of their concerns, then too many might end up thinking “That Hitler guy sounds having been quite right to me”.

Never forget that the emotions involved in the not liking something for the wrong reason, can be just as strong as that of the not liking something for "the right reasons".

Political correctness could, in the best of cases, be a type of Neo-Victorianism... but, unfortunately, it seems more to have become the Neo-Inquisition of our days.

Stock markets and the real economy, c’est pas la meme chose.

Do not confuse the strength of the stock market with the strength of the economy.

The strength of the stock market can have to do only with the strength of owning what little there is to own. 

If central banks fueled share buybacks continue, we might end up with the strongest of stock markets, and the weakest of the real economies.

We should dilute the influence of the influencers by increasing the number of those to influence.

Many, Lawrence Lessig included, feel that our political systems have fallen under the reign of “an engine of influence that seeks simply to make those most connected rich.”… And so they are doing their outmost to curtail the influence of the few.

Though I agree with the problem, I do not think that is the sustainable way to solve it.

The modern way, instead of augmenting to number of influential, should be to dramatically increase the number of those who need to be influenced. In other words we need to dilute the power of the few.

For instance, in the US, instead of having 535 senators and congressmen representing each 600,000 persons, there should be 600.000 senators and congressmen representing each one 535 persons.

Current technology allows that!

The more people you represent, the further away you are from representing each one of them.

How many can a congressman represent before he represents no one at all... except himself?

When the US Constitution was enacted the world had about 1.5 billion people... now soon 7.5 billion. Does not the population increase indicate it is time to tweak quite substantially the representation in democracies?  

Why is the social demand for hate increasing so much?

Why is the social demand for hate increasing so much, in a world where so much good advancements have supposedly been achieved? 

Might it be some are wetting the appetite for hate? Is that their business model?

If so, who?

You tell me.

My early calls for the sort of antifragility expressed by Nassim Nicholas Taleb in his “Antifragile” of 2012.

In a statement delivered as an Executive Director at the World Bank on April 3, 2003 I wrote:

"A mixture of thousand solutions, many of them inadequate, may lead to a flexible world that can bend with the storms. A world obsessed with Best Practices may calcify its structure and break with any small wind." 

And in my book "Voice and Noise" of 2006 I said the following:

"Too well tuned?:  Martial arts legend Bruce Lee, whom many people regarded as immortal, died at the age of only 32 of a cerebral edema, or brain swelling, after taking some sort of aspirin. I have not the faintest idea whether that pill actually had anything to do with his death but I have frequently used (or misused) this sad death as an example of how an organism could be in such a highly tuned and perfect condition that it could not resist a small external shock. 

And I used this metaphor to explain why companies nowadays, pressured by the stock market’s expectations for the next quarterly results; the latest theories in corporate finance as to how squeeze out the last drop in results; and, perhaps, even some bit of creative accounting, might be so well-tuned (no little reserve fat left) that they would not be able to withstand any minor recession.

And here other two of my early warnings on fragility

In 1999 in a Op-Ed in I wrote: “The possible Big Bang that scares me the most is the one that could happen the day those genius bank regulators in Basel, playing Gods, manage to introduce a systemic error in the financial system, which will cause the collapse of our banks”

January 2003 in FT I wrote: “Everyone knows that, sooner or later, the ratings issued by the credit agencies are just a new breed of systemic error to be propagated at modern speeds”

November 2004 in FT I wrote: “Our bank supervisors in Basel are unwittingly controlling the capital flows in the world. How many Basel propositions will it take before they start realizing the damage they are doing, by favoring so much bank lending to the public sector?”

PS. Professor Nassim Nicholas Taleb, author of "Antifragile" 2012, please stop referring to the last financial crisis as a “Black Swan”… it was a perfectly predictable manmade event.

My proposal for this Earth Day 2015.

Stop using purposeless, dangerous and silly credit-risk weighted equity requirements for banks, those which allow banks to earn higher risk adjusted returns on equity when lending to those perceived as safe than when lending to "the risky".

Purposeless: because major bank crises never ever result from excessive exposures to what is perceived as “risky” but always from excessive exposures to what was erroneously perceived as “absolutely safe”. 

Dangerous: because that completely distorts the allocation of bank credit to the real economy.

Silly: because why on earth should we taxpayers lend our support to banks if their only goal is to act as safe mattresses to stash away money in. Better to build a super-safe storage facility then.

Begin using more purposeful potential of planet-earth sustainability, job generation and poverty reduction weighted equity requirements for banks.

That way our banks will earn their highest risk adjusted returns on their equity when financing what is deemed useful for the society.

That way it makes sense for us taxpayers to lend our banks the support they need, in order for these to take the astute risks we need for the world to move forward in a sustainable way generating jobs and poverty reduction.

Who shall you tell about this proposal? All bank regulators starting by the Basel Committee for Banking Supervision and the Financial Stability Board; and to multinational entities such as the UN, IMF, and World Bank.

If they do not listen to you, at least force them to try to justify why they are supporting current credit-risk weighted equity requirements. These only impede the access to bank credit of "the risky", thereby killing opportunities and increasing inequalities.

For each drone kill, the “home of the brave” might become more vulnerable.

I refer to Karen J. Greenberg’s review of Grégoire Chamayou’s “A theory of the drone”, Washington Post’s Outlook of March 22.

In it Greenberg writes: “Drones are the opposite of warfare… a warrior culture in which readiness to kill has been inseparable from the willingness to die. With drones the ethics of warrior cultures have been superseded, and the warriors have turned into invulnerable, cold-hearted executioners.”

As to “invulnerable”, I am not sure. For each drone kill, as opposed to a combat kill, the executioner distances himself more and more from the real world, and so becomes perhaps more and more vulnerable to it. What we already so often hear about “not wishing boots on the ground” might be just an appetizer of things to come.

Currently many kids, by the web, walk the whole world, but rarely set their feet out in the real world. Others have no access to the web, but keep on learning how to fight it out on the streets. When push comes to shove, who are going to prevail… those handy with drones, or those handy with pliers able to cut the power lines off?

@PerKurowski

PS. My father would never have been liberated without corageous boots on the ground

A letter not published L

The myth of the unused wealth

Every day we read of some excessive wealth that has quite shamefully accumulated in some very few hands, and which should be redistributed for some good purpose that most often sounds very meritorious.

Unfortunately that wealth is not some magic unused wealth stored under a mattress, but something that represents value somewhere. 

If for instance part of that wealth is invested in public bonds that helped finance education in the wealthiest’ home lands, should these bonds be sold in order to finance education in the land of the poor?

Or should it finance education in poor lands before financing some green investments that could make planet earth more sustainable?

And for one wealthy to sell the Picasso he owns or a bar of gold to another wealthy does not really seem to be the source of a solution for getting rid of the inequalities either.

To phrase good intentions, without fully spelling out the full range of possible opportunity costs, and upfront suggesting squarely what should be cut, is irresponsible and does little to help to solve the great challenges the world faces.

On that we need to call out all those who make a career of creating false illusions among the needed… offering one big redistribution party but not saying a word about the morning after.

By the way, how can we redistribute wealth without redistributing powers and paying commissions to profiteering wealth-redistributors?

If a Hitler imprisoned my grandchild, could he hope to be liberated by the Americans, like my father was?

I ask this because:

Seeing the number of safety instruction posted on the pool where I live in Maryland.

Hearing rumors about sport-teams being sued for allowing players to take risks

Seeing, in the Home of the Brave, how they are using sissy bank regulations, which require banks to hold more equity when lending to “the risky” than when lending to “the safe”.

And seeing the development of the taste for drones... and distaste for boots on the ground.

I have enough reasons to get nervous about America, slowly but surely, getting to be too risk-adverse for its, and for ours, the rest of the world's, own good.

June 1940, my father was on that train which carried polish prisoners and which was the first train to arrive to Auschwitz. He had the number 245 stamped on his arm for the rest of his life. In April 1945, 70 years ago, he was liberated from Buchenwald, by American boots on the ground.

Tracing the origins of the selfie, at the Louvre

Yes! to the Call for a Global Constitutional Convention Focused on Future Generations

Stephen M Gardiner makes “A Call for a global Constitutional Convention Focused on Future Generations” to avoid the “tyranny of the contemporary”. In general terms Gardiner bases his argument on that “current decision-makers, and indeed the current generation more generally, face a serious temptation: they can take benefits now (for themselves), but defer many of the costs of their behavior far into the future (to others), even when this seems ethically indefensible”. And as a specific example he puts forward the challenges of climate change. 

I agree very much with his arguments and would propose the following two items are put on the agenda of that convention.

First to analyze the possibility of awarding all citizens, including children, the right to vote. The fact that for instance mothers or fathers could exercise the voting rights of their children under a certain age, like 15, would presumably put some pressure on parents to consider more their children’s future... for instance with respect to climate change.

Second, to exhaustible present as clear evidence of the tyranny of the contemporary the case of current bank regulations. With these, baby-boomers concerned exclusively with the immediate safety of the banks, imposed credit risk weighted capital requirements, which de facto stop banks from financing the “risky” future and have these only refinancing the “safer” past. We do not need climate change to evidence the costs of shortsightedness, when millions of young unemployed Europeans are currently threatened to become a lost generation. It would be a good opportunity to make a call for bank capital requirements based on job creation and sustainability ratings.

It would also be a good opportunity to make clear that, were we to put the climate change challenge into the hands of something as little accountable as the Basel Committee for Banking Regulations, then most likely planet earth would be toast.

PS. And if it was for me to decide, given that so much would have to do with ethics, I would try to squeeze in a session on the need for ethic ratings, since I am fed up with banks and regulatory authorities only using credit ratings, as if financing the construction of concentrations camps would be morally permissive, as long as its credit risk has been adequately priced.

On an odious bond issue to finance an odious government

Ricardo Hausmann and Miguel Angel Santos, in their “Should Venezuela default?” refer to a “$5 billion private placement of ten-year bonds with a 6% coupon, it effectively had to give a 40% discount, leaving it with barely $3 billion” 

That in cost represents approximately the same as a $3 billion ten-year bond issue with a 13.5% coupon. 

That type of financing of a sovereign should be prohibited for two reasons: 

First, that is, as you can understand, especially when the exact placement price of the issue is rarely reported, a completely non-transparent way of financing. 

Second, in the 2nd alternative, any new government who could obtain access to better credit terms, could much easier offer to repay the $3 billion issue, and thereby free the nation from those usury rates. As is, unless it enters into a default, it has to repay the full usury interests that are hidden away in the repayment of the $ 2bn in principal not received. 

And I would also like to know… who arranged that private placement and who bought it… so that I could express my contempt for it. Do they not know that Human Right’s Watch has clearly established that in Venezuela human rights are being violated? I mean where does the limit go? Would it be right to buy bonds to finance the building of concentration camps... if the price, the risk premium, is right? 

If financiers need credit ratings to base their decisions on, we citizens need governance ratings and ethic ratings to base the permission for our sovereigns to take on debt. 

Also… speculative investors should not have the right in any restructuring to have the cake and eat it too, meaning collecting their high-risk premiums and the full principal.

If you define clearly and effectively what needs to be considered as odious credits you solve about 90 percent of the problems with odious debts.

Here the famous Venezuelan/Nicolás Maduro method to eliminate income inequality among citizens.

For all of you who like Thomas Piketty are very concerned with income inequality, you can sleep like babies now. 

Venezuela´s president Nicolás Maduro has designed an easy 3 step method that will forever condemn to bad memories all inequality among citizens.

1. With expropriations, price and foreign exchange controls, and similar creative methods, you create a scarcity of many vital consumer products.

2. Then you introduce a rationing system which allows for limited purchases of some of the really scarce consumer products, and which requires you to present your right hand thumb at a machine, for fingerprint recognition.

3. Finally, you allow the poor to negotiate freely in the market the lease of their right hand thumb.

It is a beautiful method. The more severe the scarcity, the more are the rich prepared to pay in order to lease the right hand thumbs of the poor, and so the less the inequalities. It can´t go wrong… that is for as long as you are still alive!

PS. I guess they will try to make the thumb of the left hand work too! That way you can lease out two thumbs at the same time… and make the inequalities disappear much faster. Hurrah!

My current list of prominent inequality drivers

I do not care about some having much more wealth than others, for instance having Picasso's on their walls that if taken down only had to go up on somebody else’s wall… and I fret where all those jobs which are based on obnoxiously expensive manual procedures would be were it not for the insanely wealthy… and, if there were no accumulation of wealth where would all those savings that can be invested come from?... 

But I do care profoundly when wealth is acquired by ways of opportunities not accorded to everyone... like mothers (and fathers), not getting any direct monetary societal reward, for their extraordinary efforts when staying home to lovingly take care of their children.

And here are some new non traditional inequality drivers of which I am currently most suspicious.

Intellectual property rights which give way to incredible fortunes… there should be some more explicit limits on these… like a maximum amount of profits covered … a fixed number of units produced protected… or at least that profits derived from intellectually protected activities should be taxed at a higher rate than profits derived from competing naked in the market.

Monopolies… profit derived from monopolies should perhaps be taxed at a higher rate than ordinary profits.

Market shares/globalization… profit derived from activities that have achieved especially large local or global market shares should perhaps be taxed at a higher rate than ordinary profits.

Financial returns produced by the fact that banks because of implicit government guarantees are able to hold less capital than other normal commercial entities should be taxed at a higher rate than ordinary on their profits… something which they could naturally avoid by simply keeping more capital. 

And then there are those regulatory inequity drivers like pushing quantitative easing flows through a banking system with risk-weighted capital requirements, which so much favoring what is perceived as absolutely safe so much discriminates against what is perceived as risky, and something which of course impedes that liquidity and credit gets to where it is needed the most.

And had it not been for bail-outs and QEs Piketty’s book Capital in the 21st Century would not stand a chance to have seen the light as so much wealth would have been wiped out. 

And then there is the wealth tax, which if applied in a system where inequalities like those explained above persist, will only end up concentrating wealth more and more among fewer and fewer Plutocrats.

And, of course, perhaps foremost, all those other sources of discrimination that exist and hinders some from having the same opportunities as others... and all those resulting from the many existing inequalities at the start point.

And the list goes on, and the list goes on.. most likely including the low interests too.

And I also utterly dislike those who are only out to make a buck on the redistribution of wealth. If there is going to be redistribution do it through a system that guarantees that at least 99% goes where it was supposed to go… and that it all does not end in the hands of for equality fighting opportunists

But before ending let me pose the BIG Q.: Professor Thomas Piketty. What’s better, to live in your own inequality, or in somebody else’s equality?

Today I was censored in my homeland Venezuela

Since January 2000 I had been a pro-bono columnist at El Universal. It was recently sold to a group supposedly very friendly and cozy with the Nicolás Maduro government.

Today, July 29, 2014, two days before the centennial of the discovery of oil in Venezuela, something which has enriched governments so much so as to make a true democracy impossible, I was informed there was no room for me in the paper anymore.

Am I sad? Of course! It is truly hard to be censored in one´s own country, especially when one has so much one wants to say, especially when so much needs to be said.

Thank God there are now such things a blogs otherwise I might have had to start putting up a print-shop in the basement or practicing graffiti.

The title of the article I was to publish July 31? “100 years of submission”... in it I was as always wanting for the oil revenues to be shared out directly to the citizens... so that we do not have to live any longer in somebody else's business.

Think of how you would feel if your government was receiving and disposing of over 97% of all the exports of your country. That is my Venezuela. That is the country where the price of milk, if you can find it, is 278 times the price of gas (petrol) and that is not viewed as something immoral.

That is an oil curse as big as oil curses can come!

PS. But, on the other hand can you think of "Daddy why are you not censored?" Indeed it is not easy to live in a low profile dictatorship! 

What does it matter whether the Picasso, hanging on my wall, is worth 5 or 50 million? I did not pump up its value.

Yes, I accept that you might have a point thinking it is not fair that the Picasso that had I been rich could be hanging on my wall, should now be worth 50 million, instead of the 5 million it was valued when I would have had to pay inheritance taxes to keep it in my family? But I did not pump up its value...that was done by those who with their QEs and fiscal deficits injected so much liquidity. 

I swear, it is the same Picasso as always, I did absolutely nothing to it… in fact it has perhaps even lost some of its shine.

If the government now takes my Picasso in a Thomas Piketty wealth-tax, to help repay its debt… would it not then have to sell it, causing it only to hang on somebody else’s wall? 

Of course the government could export the Picasso to pay for oil… but what about when we run out of Picasso’s on our walls… and these all hang on their walls? Is that fair?

PS. Down here, on earth, with no Picasso, I am still envious of that 50 million Picasso hanging on somebody’s wall and wondering whether a little wealth tax would not be such a bad idea.

Shamelessness is taking over the web!

The big web players are becoming more and more shameless… and there seems to be nothing that can stop them…

Initially they were quite respectful of your information… lately I have seen messages reading like “we will import your address book”… and, as a token, we will not store your email and password. Holy moly!

Why does Bill Maher, so funny when exploiting what’s exploitable, remind me so much of Monsieur Thénardier in Les Miserable?

Madame Thénardier: Master of the house isn't worth my spit. Comforter, philosopher, and life-long shit. Cunning little brain; regular Voltaire. Thinks he's quite a lover, but there's not much there.

One question, and one opinion, on the Scottish independence referendum of September 18, 2014

Question: How many Scots under 16 years of age will not have a chance to vote on what will affect them the most? Why not give all thirteen and more that right and allow those over 50 to vote only if they do so in representation of a child or a grandchild under thirteen? That could really make this vote on the declaration of independence a real game changer.

Opinion: The draft of June 2014 of the Scottish Independence Bill states that “In Scotland, the people have the sovereign right to self-determination”. Great, but unfortunately, it would not seem that “self-determination” will include each Scottish citizen managing his share of natural resources his country has been endowed with, like oil.

And friends, speaking as an oil-cursed Venezuelan, who has had to live in somebody else’s business, until he could not endure that anymore and had to leave his country, you might think more about this issue.

If not, I assure you that this independence of yours could turn out to be a real Pyrrhic one, when all of you Scots will become dependent on the clan that manages those natural resource revenues for you.

Please don’t let that happen!

Should there be a limit to what ex presidents, ex first ladies, ex congressmen and other ex public officers could earn for giving a speech?

Like for instance the weekly median salary in the nation?

Otherwise, even though they are out of office, it seems so much ex-post rent extracting clientelism.

I mean does it make any sense to compensate one speech given to a few, with sometimes something that could sound like the salary paid to him by all for a full year of services to the nation?

Every time a candidate, no matter how good, looses because he took our votes for granted, that is great news.

I am not an American, and I lack sufficient knowledge of the candidates in order to opine on whether I would prefer Eric Cantor or the other one… of whom I do not even know his name.

But, as a citizen, any time a candidate, no matter how good, loses anywhere, because he seemingly has taken the votes of us citizens for granted… that is great news.

What has become of you Europe [and of you the whole Western world]? Don't be such a defeatist!

I just saw a photo of your Britain’s David Cameron, Germany’s Angela Merkel, Holland’s Mark Rutte and Sweden’s Fredrik Reinfeldt, in a row boat, in a little lake, probably surrounded by thousands of life guards… wearing life vests.

The same boat used years ago by Tage Erlander (Sweden) and Nikita Khrushchev… without life vests.

And all I could think of was “Would Winston Churchill (or Putin) ever want to be photographed in a little row boat, on a small lake, wearing a life vest?

What has become of you Europe? In Swedish churches we used to sing psalms praying “God make us daring!”

PS. A “decline in courage, at times attaining what could be termed a lack of manhood…Must one point out that from ancient times a decline in courage has been considered the first symptom of the end?" Alexander Solzhenitsyn at Harvard University 1978

PS. I went to bed in a world that knew risk taking was the oxygen of development… and I woke up to one where regulators, for bank capital (equity) requirements, had decreed much higher risk weights for loans to small businesses and entrepreneurs than for loans managed by bureaucrats... and its Academia says nothing.

PS. Born 1950, during my first 30 years, we were mostly instructed to look out for risks… caveat emptor. Thereafter we were told: 

“Don’t worry, we, your government (and assorted unelected nannies), we will do that for you.”

Should not Google and other public private eyes search our permission before searching us for other to us unknown parties?

I have been giving lots of thought on the whole Google-search-engine issue for quite some years and below you will find some links to that:

But now the following has hit me.

Way back, when about 16 years of age, clearly before I knew what was good for me, (as I might still not know) when in a Swedish high school, a very good one I must say, (SHL Hum SSHL) I got some really lousy grades in German (from Sven Lindestad a.k.a. "Bull")

And now, looking at how good Germany seems to be doing, at least in Europe, I suddenly realized that it might not be in my best interest to have anyone look into my proficiency in German grades.

I know I am talking about events around 47 years ago, so the chances of someone finding those records are very slim indeed… but as some can say "traditions!" other can say "precautions!"

Since Google has now been told by the European Commission to eliminate some embarrassing registers… and it could be somewhat embarrassing for me to ask them to eliminate my high-school grade records… sort of to play it safe, should I not request the European Commission to impose on those public eyes that Google and other search engines have become, the obligation of asking all us individuals for our approval of being searched, before searching us to satisfy the curiosity needs of some usually unidentified third party who is searching us for reasons unknown to us?

I do not think so... but the question should be asked... I think :-) And the European Commission should dare to respond! :-(

http://teawithft.blogspot.com/2007/06/in-search-of-answers-on-search-engines.html

http://teawithft.blogspot.com/2014/05/if-erasing-google-must-be-sure-it-is.html

http://teawithft.blogspot.com/2013/12/we-need-personal-drones-more-than.html

http://teawithft.blogspot.com/2007/09/some-of-gods-greatest-gifts-are.html

http://perkurowski.blogspot.com/2012/06/we-might-need-global-web-constitution.html

PS. By the way at what point could Facebook be labeled a stalker?

PS. When is any social media going to share advertising revenues with those being searched or receiving the ads?

When writing about “Capital”, like Piketty, can you just use data about it, without ever having seen it at work?

The real importance of capital is when it marries risk… meaning when it is willing to burn itself up in order to multiply enormously or reach something much higher.

And that angle is entirely absent in Piketty´s “Capital”.

The closest he gets is when on page 115 he writes “Capital is never quiet: it is always risk-oriented and entrepreneurial, at least at its inception”. 

Indeed… but then? What happens after its inception? Truth is that from being muscle creating capital, most of it turns into obesity creating capital… and dies out over time.

Look for instance at those many trillions invested in the debt of the “infallible sovereigns”. Is that capital? No way! In fact all that has already been condemned to disappear through financial repression.

Frankly… the more I read the book (I am almost through it) the more upset I get... at least with its too capitalistic publisher's campaign.

From reading Thomas Piketty’s Wikepedia biography it becomes absolutely clear that he has never ever seen capital put to work… and yet he dares to write about capital.

Is this an expert to follow? No way Jose! He is just another Bill Easterly tyrant!

PS. Avoid the merchants of poverty!

Risk premiums and ethic ratings

And again, for the convenience of those who do not have sufficient political leadership, the government of Venezuela, and PDVSA, announced new bond issues, in order to pay for social "investments" today ... leaving the bill to the Venezuelan youth of tomorrow.

And all this while the Financial Times of London described that soaring interest rates paid, for example by Venezuela, "tempts investors to ignore the fears of civil war, crippling inflation and legal battles."

And indeed Venezuela ( PDVSA and ) pay for ten year credit interest rates that are about 10% higher rate about 10 % than the U.S.. 8% more than Mexico ! That means in essence that already after the first year we have paid the creditor an additional 10 % ... and still owe him 100% of the loan. And that means in essence that at end of the tenth year, when we have already paid the creditor additional 100% ... our children still owe 100% of the principal. This is simply something abominable.

In fact, when a sovereign country is required to pay an interest rate that exceeds by more than 4% the rate of those who pay less, the risk premium, I consider we are in the presence of an economic crime against humanity being committed, fragrantly, against future generations.

And we citizens of the world should do something about it ... for example:

All stock exchanges of the world should suspend trading of all sovereign debt that show a risk premium higher than 4%... (as that would indicate a basic incapacity of the government)

Besides credit ratings, we should develop and use a system of ethic ratings.

All those who purchase sovereign bonds carrying a risk premium of more than 4% risk, and which do not meet minimum ethic ratings, should be exposed publicly as financiers of Sovereign Evils.

We the people should refuse to pay taxes while our sovereign bonds pay a risk premium higher than 4% and do not possess some minimum ethic ratings... and that should be a clause explicitly included in all bond issues.

PS . Whoever believes that China treats us Venezuela as accommodating as we treat Petrocaribe, is a dreamer.

Translated from El Universal

You, who are about to finance Pdvsa, are you sure crimes against human rights are not committed in Venezuela? Ask your children!

Creditors of Venezuela, read our Constitution!

Odious credit

Odious debt

My view on minimum wages

In a booming environment a minimum wage might do some good, as it is not that kind of big hinder to employment, and helps to distribute the boom more equitably to those less benefiting from it.

In a recession, sometimes even with deflation threats, a minimum wage is utterly bad, as it hinders many from at least being able to get a foot in the door of an employment... in fact in these dire cases, the lowering of a minimum wage could be the right signal...

The economy is the economy is the economy... and there is sadly very little little me can do about that. 

This is what Sean Penn, Oliver Stone, Danny Glover and Mark Weisbrot, with their deafening silence, support in Venezuela!

Imagine that this was your daughter in a country where some macho robocops, obeying instructions from Cuba, are emboldened and busy themselves confronting students, but cower when they see any real criminals ... God bless and take care of our young!

What can we say?

Thanks Amnesty International!

How much would you pay per year for a guaranteed net neutral search engine?

How much? Per year? Per search? 

I do not know, but I would certainly pay something for a search engine that guaranteed giving me the results, instead of making me the searched for result of others.

Did you know the banks are regulated by means of an ideology?

In 2004 I wrote in the Financial Times: "Bank supervisors in Basel are unwittingly controlling the capital flows in the world. How many Basel propositions will it take before they start realizing the damage they are doing by favoring so much bank lending to the public sector (sovereigns)?

In May 2014, in the Brookings Institute in Washington, while discussing the book by Jean Pisani-Ferry "The euro crisis and its consequences", Jörg Decressin, the deputy director of the European Department of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), dared to put forward an explanation...finally! ... God bless him.

My question: “In Sweden there is a psalm that prays ‘God make us daring’. And risk-taking risks has been critical to get Europe to where it is. However, in June 2004, the Basel Committee introduced bank capital requirements based on perceived risks, which subsidizes risk-aversion and taxes risk-taking.

For example, a German bank, when lending to a German businessman should keep 8 percent of shareholders’ capital (equity) but, if lending to its government, or to Greece, it could do so without having to hold any capital. That distorts allocation of bank credit in Europe. The book does not mention that problem. Do you have any comments?"

His response: "You raise a very good question and an answer to this revolves around: 

Do you believe that governments have a stabilizing function in the economy?

Do you believe that government is fundamentally something good to have around?

If that is what you believe then it does not make sense necessarily to ask for capital requirements on purchases of government debt, because you believe that the government in the end has to have the ability to act as a stabilizer, when the private sector is taking flight from risk, that is when the government has to be able to step in and the last thing we want is then for people also to dump government debt and basically I do not know what they would do, basically like buy gold. 

If on the other hand your view is that the government is the problem then you would want a capital requirement, so it depends on where you stand [ideologically]. 

I think the issue of the governments being the problem was very much a story of the 1970s, and to some extent of the 1980s. The problems we are dealing with now are more problems in the private sector, we are dealing with excesses in private lending and borrowing and it proves very hard for us to get a handle on this. We have hopes for macro prudential instruments but they are untested, and only the future will show how we deal with them when new credit booms evolve.” End of quote

Jean Pisanny-Ferry… said he agreed and left it at that. 

No Decressin! It is not about the government or the private, it is about the balance between the two, that which is broken.

And I had no chance to ask: Are you arguing that we should support the government’s borrowing ex ante, so that the government can help us better ex post? Would that not result in that when the government is truly needed it might not be able to help because it would already be too indebted… like Greece?

Who authorize regulators to regulate the banks with THEIR ideology?

And what about those who argue that the IMF is a bastion of neoliberalism?... Is it just a Potemkin facade?

Europeans, the structural reform most necessary for Europe to grow, is to get rid of its current bank regulators with their foolish risk aversion and their pro-government and anti-citizen ideology.

Translated from El Universal

FCC any impairing of network neutrality will de facto increase the man-made inequality.

And this not by increasing the wealth of the 1% but of the 0.01%

If I am to be solicited at home on my flat screen or my on computers, the least I can ask is that all solicitors stand on equal ground.

That is all!