The Wrong State

George Monbiot has an article you should read.

It is a wonder (OK, maybe I'm using the word rhetorically) that, over the past three decades and a bit, the same political movements that have demanded that governments should get their hands out of the economy (where their involvement is crucial and can be beneficial) have been so sanguine at seeing them obtain increasing powers over their constituents, including their private lives' (where they really have no business interfering) with a total lack of accountability.

That is another way in which this is, in Monbiot's appropriate title, the wrong state. Wrong in what it does, but also in the way that, while abdicating its responsibilities where it should be the main actor, it is grabbing power where it should be absent.

Greg Mankiw at it again...

Greg Mankiw came up with a defense of the top 1% (note: I provide the link because that's the done thing. I don't actually recommend that you follow it...). Many people, such as Dean Baker, Harold Pollack, Paul Krugman and even The Economist take this apart (and this time I do recommend you follow the links), take this apart.

And yet, they are being much too kind.

Greg Mankiw has written an Economics textbook that is very well regarded, and is still the leader in the undergraduate universities market in the US (although Paul Krugman's seemed to be catching up fast). Because of that, a lot of people will like him or, at any rate, not want to appear to have too bad a word for him. Yet there is a point where this becomes enforced blindness.

A telling chart

I tend to recommend that people read what Paul Krugman posts in any case, and indeed I link to his blog, but I thought I'd highlight a graph he published recently there.



And with this incredible record (I do mean incredible. It defies belief), the powers that be keep insisting that we must do more of what they have been demanding for the past, well, 5 years.

The euro will bury us all.

Asymmetric outrage

We live in London, and since yesterday (that would be the 23d of May2013 as I type), there has been little talk but of the recent murder of a soldier in Woolwhich, by two people (OK, they are technically merely suspects at this time but stayed on the scene explaining why they had done it, don’t deny it at all, and have been videotaped. Let’s assume that they did do it).

There has been a lot of comments, too, as is always the case in those internet days. Much of it, alas, on the lines of the scandal that “such people” (clearly meaning Muslims, brown or black, or any combination of those) were in Britain, that they should all be instantly deported.

Maybe mainstream media is no longer able to moderate its own forums (but then what about disabling comments?), though that is an abdication of responsibility. What was in the reports themselves was a deluge of claims that the deceased was an absolute hero (indeed he was sporting a jumper calling for “support for heroes”), and about the savagery of the attacks.

When you thought you'd hit bottom...

(As a side note, this is the problem with not having enough time. I caught up on that story very early, and wrote most of that –but was offline. By now, it’s done the rounds and more. Still, here’s another take)

Oh my! 

Regular readers (yes, you two, I’m talking to you) will remember that I wrote an article (What happened to the scientific process?) expressing some dismay regarding what can apparently be published these days, even when failing the simplest rules of data analysis, the kind that you learn in a two day course if you work in a lowish operational job.

OK, maybe I should have rephrased that as “what can apparently be published when it happens to suit what the powerful want to read”, but that would have been a stronger statement, and all I was concerned was the (very) poor quality of the analysis.

Still, it seems that this was small fry. Those who follow macroeconomics at all –or who follow politics beyond poll-tracking- will probably have heard, either of Carmen Reinhart and Kenneth Rogoff, or at any rate will have heard of one of their results, even if they were not named (despite being highly controversial in Academic circles, it has been treated as consensual by the mainstream media, aka Very Serious People, who say things like “90% of GDP, the level of debt that economist recognise as strongly hampering econoc prospects”).

Actually, since I’ve also been posting about chess, some people have heard of them even without following economics or politics at all: Kenneth Rogoff is a chess grandmaster, and articles about him, and his research, have been published in chess media.

Some thoughts about actuarial training

Having decided that the best way to use time between project (yes, it's a smoother way to say that you are without one for the moment -well, I reckon it's rather likely that there will be one down the line, so it's probably accurate too) was to get new qualifications, I have decided that I would take the actuarial exams. They seem to be quite in demand, and I have the impression that they are close enough from my skillset that I should be able to graduate comparatively fast (it typically takes a lot of time and effort).

But even if you feel that you understand most of a subject, it's wise to do quite a bit more if you are going to take an exam, especially if you have learnt about it in a different language -I'd look rather silly if I failed to understand a question.
So, I've started reading course material -there is a lot to read. I even read the bit about how to use this material. They say you should read it with a critical mind and question what you are reading.

Good. Not that I would normally need much encouragement for that kind of thing, but good to see it encouraged.

The lie-enforcing brigade

One of those times of year has just past –by which I mean one of those times when, if you don’t openly lie to children, you get told off.

You see, no-one will see any problem in telling my sons, indeed insisting that it is so if they say something implying otherwise, that Christmas presents are brought by a fat man wearing Coca-Cola red clothes, and that Easter chocolate has been dropped by flying bells (for you English readers: my understanding is that you get told it’s done by a rabbit, which is marginally more plausible actually. In France, it’s the bells that flew all the way to Rome on good Friday, not a place particularly known for its chocolate production but never mind, where they filled up and, on their way back to the local church where they will ring again on Easter day, dropped their goodies. That the bells are, though silent, clearly visible in many a church tower during the interval is apparently not something that one is encouraged to enquire about).