What countries DO I like?

Awhile back I wrote a post about the best country to live in. I danced around the question, came up with subjective and objective measurements and in the end decided to go on vacation. Then the other day I was asked by someone who had enough of my US (and Canada) bashing and asked me what country I admire and why. Pause. Hmmm. Well, it's hard to give an answer...you see, um, there's lots of countries, uh, good and bad...so, well, er... So, without further ado, here's tonight's top ten list of countries I admire.

#10. Spain - Easy choice. They've done a little of everything in the past. From repressors to repressed, conquerors to conquered and all points in between. You gotta love the country responsible for financing Columbus' voyages to America, even if he didn't discover anything. Dominated by the muslims for 700 years, the reconquista, empire, Spanish Armada, Napoleon took his shots too. Don't forget the Spanish Civil War and the ensuing nearly 50 years of fascism under Franco. Now, we see the past and present being blended in a way unimaginable in the past, with South Americans flooding back in reverse colonialism.

#9. Denmark - Can't say too much about the place, only visited for a couple of weeks, and it was COLD, around Christmas time. It did come out as number one on the world map of happiness and Copenhagen is a beautful city, plus, good or bad, everyone speaks English. They've given us Hans Christian Anderson and Kierkegaard along with Kronborg Castle, dramatized as Elsinore in Shakespeare's Hamlet, "Something is rotten in the state of Denmark": Not anymore, with universal health care, low poverty and crime rates. They're also the world's largest producer of power-generating windmills.

#8. Poland - Gotta have them on my list, I do live here you know. Lovely cities such as Krakow, Wroclaw and Gdansk. Home of Solidarity and the prettiest girls on Earth. For centuries they've been the buffer between powers and at one time we're the largest country in Europe. They were wiped off the map for 123 years only to come back for the interwar period only to be dominated once again, this time by communism. They've shrugged off the bleak, grey image of those years and are working hard to get onto the world stage.

#7. Chile - First, take a look at the world map, Chile looks pretty cool down the Pacific coast all the way at the bottom, even has claim on some of Antartica. It'll be home to the world's early warning meteor device if Bill Gates has anything to say about it. They make some tasty wine. They've managed to move forward despite Pinochet, the CIA and Milton Friedman's 'economic miracle', building a fine democracy and even managed to sneak into the top 20 on the global peace index. This 'pais de poetas' has also produced Pablo Neruda and Gabriala Mistral.
Chile ranks high regionally in freedom of the press, human development and democratic development. It holds the status as the region's richest country in terms of gross domestic product per capita.

#6. Canada - The Great White North has only been around for 141 years but they've given us more than maple syrop and me. Somehow managed to carve out a seperate identity from their southern neighbour (by keeping some Britishness like the 'our' ending to words like neighbour and we've still got the Queen). Could also be the sense of humour, you need it when its so cold. Good standard of living, universal'ish' health care (the slow move towards privatization) and Pamela Anderson.

#5. Norway - Probably should rank higher, they seem to have it all. Natural resources, which they use responsibly, saving for the future have created one of the world's largest sovereign wealth funds. In 2007 they were at the top of the global peace index, 3rd for 2008. High taxes, but look at the quality of life.

#4. USA - Rock and roll, Hollywood, Coca-Cola, McDonald's, Levi's, Microsoft and Google. You might think I'm trying to say something about evil corporations but I'm not! Really, where would we be without all these things? Hypocritical, maybe, but I eat Big Macs and drink Coke while railing against American hegemony because I can, which is partially due to the freedom I enjoy thanks to the USA.

#3. Czech Republic - It appears on many of the lists here as a country with high literacy rates and as one of the most secular countries, coincidence, hmmm. Great beers, great writers and great film directors. Again, coincidence? Kundera, Hrabel, are just so Czech, there must be something great about the culture.

#2. Iceland - One word, Bjork! Really, that girl is wacky. The entire nation in powered by geothermal energy, now that's thinking out of the box. They are the happiest people in the world too according to some surveys. Why? Again, the Scandinavian socialist system just seems to work despite those evil high taxes taking away everyones motivation to work (wink, wink, nudge). They replaced Norway at #1 in the global peace index for 2008.

Before you look down at number one, I'd like you to take a second a go back over the previous nine. Some pretty good arguments, but I'm sure you can think of a couple countries that are missing and why. So, after reading number one, be sure to click on the comment tab below and tell me what country or countries are missing and why, heck, give me your own top ten if you'd like. Now, without further ado...

#1. Mauritius - It has no standing army and was the only natural habitat of the dodo bird. Period.

Now, post your comments, tell me what countries you respect, admire or love and why, go on.

Prediction, The Black Swan and 9/11

Minorities set to be US majority -White people of European descent will no longer make up a majority of the US population by the year 2042 - eight years sooner than previous estimates.
Bush resolute in face of Iraq death toll -President vows to make sure American lives not 'lost in vain'
All US adults could be overweight in 40 years
Fanny Mae unveils loss of $2.3 billion - Problems in the US housing market have pushed mortgage finance company Fannie Mae into the red.

All of these headlines reveal the fraud of prediction. Why do people predict? Why do people think they can predict? To feel better about the future and because they are arrogant about what they think they know. Today being the anniversary of one of the most unpredictable events in history and with a tip of the hat to Nassim Nicholas Taleb, author of The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable (the first chapter can be found here), I'm gonna take a look today at the fallacy of prediction, one of the all-time greatest frauds perpetrated on humanity. If you're a stockbroker, political analyst, or in any profession that relies on predicting the future, you might want to stop reading now.

The first thing we need to understand is that what we don't know is far more relevant than what we do know. We live in a world that is less understandable, explainable and therefore predictable than we think it is, the illusion of understanding. This problem is amplified by the retrospective distortion of past events; history appears more organized in history books than reality. We tend to concoct explanations for events after the fact, making them appear more predictable than they really are. Kirkegaard told us, history runs forward but is seen backward. Finally, according to NNT, (Nassim Nicholas Talim, the author of the Black Swan from here on) we tend to "Platonify", deifying the scholars, while the experts usually don't know any more than a taxi driver on most subjects. These defects lead to people having blindspots when it comes to seeing the black swan events that could happen. A black swan, or fat tail, is a large-impact, hard-to-predict and rare event beyond the realm of normal expectations. The 9/11 commission demonstrates all three of these problems. It's mandate was to provide a full and complete accounting of the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001 and give recommendations as to how to prevent such attacks in the future. Unfortunately a black swan's very unexpectedness creates the conditions for it to occur.

While much of the world can be analyzed and predicted statistically with reasonable accuracy, this type of analysis is useless outside of this realm. NNT insists on separating the world of uncertainties into two "worlds": Mediocristan and Extremistan. Basically a distinction needs to be made between scalable and non-scalable types of randomness. Mediocristan is where classic measures of statistics are relevant, particularly the Gaussian bell-curve. This includes measurements that are in a way pulled down by "gravity", where extreme outliers are impossible, things such as people's height and weight. However, in Extremistan measurement tools such as bell-curves are dangerous, where extreme outliers are not only possible, but defining, such as in the stock market, people's wealth and body counts in wars.

A little math, Gaussian style, the vaunted bell-curve you may remember from a boring stats class you once took, it looks something like this:Now this little tool can help you measure the probability of certain events occurring, the one above shows the distribution of IQ scores. With a large enough sample one can predict with different confidence levels the probability of different occurrences. Normal distribution, ie. the bell-curve or Gaussian distribution, uses the central limit theorem to give us averages or means and standard deviation to measure variability. A beautiful thing when applied to astronomical data as Gauss first did or maybe the birth weight of chimpanzees. Most observations hover around the middle while the odds of a deviation decline exponentially faster as you move away from the average. The problem begins with the application to Extremistan, and what NNT terms the Ludic fallacy, "the misuse of games to model real-life situations". Some assume that the unexpected can be predicted by extrapolating from variations in statistics based on past observations, ie. causal determinism. To the detriment of the world Gaussian thinking has been applied to many areas of Extremistan.

The failure of the bell-curve is best demonstrated by an example in a review from all places, the Wall Street Journal:
If 100 random people gather in a room and the world's tallest man walks in, the average height doesn't change much. But if Bill Gates walks in, the average net worth rises dramatically. Height follows the bell curve in its distribution. Wealth does not: It follows an asymmetric, L-shaped pattern known as a "power law," where most values are below average and a few far above. In the realm of the power law, rare and extreme events dominate the action. Wealth is an Extremistan measure. The last century has seen the rise of economics as a science, where statistical models are used to manage risk. Thus the birth of modern portfolio theory (Merton and Scholes) and monsters such as LTCM (Long-Term Capital Management). In case you missed it, this was a hedge fund that was founded in part by two Nobel laureates, the aforementioned Merton and Scholes, which failed spectacularly in the late 90's. The fund earned outstanding returns for a few years but the methods didn't take the black swan into account and were thus exposed to events like the Russian financial crisis which almost took down the entire financial system. Instead of learning from our mistake, business schools keep pumping out MBAs with the same theory and the same risk, thus the sub-prime meltdown, Bear Sterns, Fannie Mae and Freddy Mac, but the government is there to prop them back up, so they'll probably never learn.

The point is you need the right tool for the job. Just as you wouldn't use a hammer to install a window, statistical models are dangerous tools when people blindly follow them. When people start to apply statistics to social sciences greater dangers arise. Adolphe Quetelet tried to use the Gaussian curve to construct the physically and morally average man. His contemporary Karl Marx borrowed on his ideas in Das Kapital to minimize societal deviations in terms of the distribution of wealth. War used to belong to Mediocristan, but with the advent of weapons of mass destruction you now have the possibility of wiping out huge numbers of people with the press of a button, the black swan. There's no use in predicting the next 9/11, worse yet are the methods that have been used in the 'war on terror', as instead of lowering the chances of another such event, everything done so far has acted to increase the odds.


By assuming that rare events won’t happen, banks and others almost always win; but if you lose, you can lose everything. If you've read this post all the way to this point and still don't know what I'm trying to say, go and read the book, it's a good read, and relevant to your life if you've got a bank account, insurance policy or a pension fund. Try as we might, we can't control randomness, the black swan will always exist. It could be caused by a hurricane in New Orleans, a credit crunch or the beating of a butterfly's wings on the other side of the planet, they will happen.

Blogformity or the New Goebbels (It's the end of the world as we know it Part III)

Just a thought today. The power of the internet is thought to lie in the fact that the sum of man's knowledge is accessible to the people at the touch of a button. Blogs have given the everyday man the ability to project his ideas into this world, widening the range of information and opinions. We, as blog readers, have access to a myriad of different viewpoints on an almost infinite number of topics. Seen from this point of view, blogs are a good influence. However, take a second to analyze your own internet behaviour. Do you tend to read information from many different sources, sampling a bit from the entire spectrum of thinking? I don't, which got me thinking about the internet and blogs as a destructive forum for reinforcement of our beliefs, then I remembered that it's the 10th tomorrow, and it won't matter anymore.

Google turned 10 on Friday, CERN, the "inventor's" of the net fire up the LHC (Large Hadron Collider) tomorrow (Sept.10th); while the latter have planned this day for decades, do you think Google ever thought they'd be where they are now? Scientific American has a pretty good run down on the LHC start up beneath France and Switzerland. As the proton beam circles the 27 km underground ring for the first time, CERN is also rolling out the grid which will be useful if the search for the mysteries surrounding the beginning of time and the thus far elusive Higgs particle don't bring about a micro black hole and the end of the world. As the internet is due to fill up soon, it is hoped that the grid will be its super speedy swanky swift replacement (10,000 times the speed of broadband). The numbers are terrifying again, literally, as they'll be playing in the long awaited tera scale power region, a trillion electron volts, or 1 TeV where they hope new physics will occur, bearing the Higgs particle which imbues all particles with mass and constitutes dark matter which is responsible for most of the material in the universe. Having to record such measurements and share the information around the world (here we're talking about petabytes of information, a million gigabytes) is enough to threaten the crashing of their earlier data sharing little internet thing. Those wild and crazy CERN kids!

You? Remember your first internet connection, what did you want to find that day? It's time to seek out a wider view on the world today before it's obsolete. Seek out a few blogs whose hobbies, opinions and political beliefs differ from your own. Make sure they have an active comment board and post a few comments on some posts stating your view on the subject presented. Perhaps if your viewpoint is different than those using the blog, you will be gang-attacked, with teeth showing and froth dripping from the jaws. Kinda funny, maybe; kinda scary, definitely. What is happening is that instead of using this tool as a way of exposing ourselves to new ideas, most people tend to seek out those who share the same way of thinking as we do, thus reinforcing pre-existing ideas. It's a pull medium, use it that way to get what you need, new perspectives instead of having your old ones re-enforced. Guess I'll take my own advice and start reading some right-wing conservative blogs, any suggestions anyone?

So, let me get this straight

You have a deal signed that gives your country access to another nuclear nation's state-of-the-art nuclear technologies, while helping said nation establish an international nuclear fuel storage facility for spent fuel. Now, there is a third nuclear country who also wants to do business with you, but this third country has never signed onto the Non Proliferation Treaty (NPT) or agreed to ban nuclear testing. Getting a deal signed with this country takes the agreement of everyone in the Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG), many of whom don't want you to do the deal based on those two facts above. So, what do you do? Well if you're the USA, you act like a child who gets angry with his playmate at recess and you take your toys away because they hit back after being slapped in the face one too many times while you play with the quiet bully who might help you in the fight at lunch time.

In retaliation for the Russian intervention in South Ossetia, the US government looks to be on the verge of putting a nuclear access deal with the Russians on ice. Meanwhile, they did everything in their power to convince the 45-member Nuclear Suppliers Group meeting this past weekend in Vienna that a similar deal with India is a good idea. With the decision, India becomes the only country to have access to nuclear fuel and technology despite not signing the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty or the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty. The Hyde Act is the U.S. domestic law that modifies the requirements of Section 123 of the U.S. Atomic Energy Act (the 123 Agreement of which 20 nations and organizations are a part) that permits nuclear cooperation with India. The passing of the law was complicated in the States, including a presidential signing statement, in which Dubya referred to a couple of sections as 'advisory'. In India however, the passage almost brought down the government as it narrowly avoided defeat in a confidence vote on July 22nd, passing 275 votes to 256.

The withdrawal of the Russian deal, which was one of Putin's final executive orders, could be a blow to their plans to create a market for storing and reprocessing spent nuclear fuel. It would have played an important role in the Global Nuclear Energy Partnership (GNEP) creating the legal framework for the United States to authorize the transfer to Russia of spent nuclear power plant fuel that originated in the United States and was then used in third countries for the generation of electricity. An important goal of that initiative is to discourage states that do not currently possess enrichment or reprocessing facilities from acquiring such capabilities, namely Iran. Instead, under this component of the GNEP initiative, these states would receive enriched uranium fuel produced in countries already possessing enrichment plants and would transfer the spent fuel to another state already possessing reprocessing facilities, such as France, Japan, or Russia. Russia would be an important element of this program as the storage of foreign spent nucleur fuel wouldn't go over well in the States.

The deal with India establishes a 'good guys' and 'bad guys' set of rules making it far harder to curb the South Asian nuclear and missile arms race, undermining efforts to contain Iranian and North Korean ambitions. Initially, more than a dozen countries including China and Japan sought to block approval by the nuclear group, which operates by consensus. But in negotiations that began Thursday, that bloc dwindled to three holdouts — Austria, Ireland and New Zealand — who expressed grave misgivings about bending the rules to accommodate U.S. sales to India. Austria said it lifted its objections after India pledged Friday to support the global non-proliferation effort and not share sensitive nuclear technology with other countries. Referring to the agreement in August 2007, Indian Prime Minister Singh told Parliament, "The agreement does not in any way affect India's right to undertake future nuclear tests, if it is necessary." The International Atomic Energy Agency accepted the deal on the 1st of August as well, so all that is needed is congressional approval in the US, which could come this year.

There are 189 signatories to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, only five of whom have nuclear weapons. These same nations make up the permanent security council of the United Nations. The four nations who aren't part of the treaty are India, Pakistan, Israel and North Korea. This nuclear have and have-not club only uses the fact of whether or not you tested weapons before 1967 as the rule for legal possession, not a real ethical guideline, which of course some countries take exception with. These latest moves by the nuclear club do nothing to uphold the three pillars of the treaty of non-proliferation, disarmament and the right to peacefully use nuclear technology, in fact they do the opposite. It encourages nations to test nuclear weapons; it makes getting nuclear fuel for nations other than India more difficult; and it will do nothing the convince the Russians to disarm; and of course I have to mention China...do you think they're happy with the India deal?

One Night in Bangkok

Bangkok, Oriental setting, and the city don't know that the city is getting... remember that tune?
(If not, look at the bottom of everything on the right hand side and click)
Anyways, what's up in Thailand? In case you missed it, protesters have taken to the streets en masse to demand the resignation of current Prime Minister Samak Sundaravej. Nearly two years after an unexpected military coup deposed then-Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra, a time that included 15 months of benign military rule, the drafting of a new constitution, and a general election which returned the pro-Thaksin People's Power Party (PPP) to office, Thailand has seen a week straight of demonstrations led by the PAD (People's Alliance for Democracy) under the leadership of Sondhi Limtongkul (his website here) and Chamlong Srimuang.

The main bone of contention is the perception that the current government is no more than a proxy of former leader Thaksin Shinawatra. The PAD also led demonstrations that preceded the 2006 military coup which forced Mr Thaksin into exile. The difficulty I'm having with the present situation is there doesn't seem to be a clear answer as to who are the good guys and who are the badies. The demonstrators have seemed desperate, the government self-controlled and the military awkwardly shy about the new powers just given to them on September 2nd when the PM reluctantly declared a state of emergency following clashes between pro and anti government forces. What is clear is that the division between city folk and those from the country is reaching a boiling point.

This crisis began more than a week ago when thousands of PAD supporters took to the streets of Bangkok and forced their way into government buildings. Protesters also went on to shut down airports and rail services. A call for a general strike Wednesday demanding the prime minister step down failed to garner enought support, but the protest leaders were given a face-saving hand by the army chief Anupong Paojinda, who promised not to use force against anti-government demonstrators.

While fighting against the perceived corruption of the present administration with it's links to Thaskin, what the demonstrators really want is a return to the status quo, that which existed before the Thaskin government. The PAD leadership is composed of businessmen, generals and aristocrats who are not demanding new elections, which they would lose, but “new politics”—in fact a return to old-fashioned authoritarian rule, with a mostly appointed parliament and powers for the army to step in when it chooses. They argue that the rural masses who favour Mr Thaksin and Mr Samak are too “ill-educated” to use their votes sensibly. This overlooks an inconvenient electoral truth: the two prime ministers had genuinely popular policies, such as cheap health care and farm credit.

This is a nation that can't seem to make up its mind, forward or backward. They love their king, who has near god-like status. His 60-year reign has seen 26 prime ministers and 17 military coups. While per capita income has increase 40 fold, the gap between rich and poor, between the urban and rural population, has widened. The king is seen as the great defender of peace and democracy who comes to the aid of the people when needed, and as they did in 2006, the PAD are playing on fears that the current government has republican leanings. King Bhumibol's health has been poor of late which has added to the tension due to the uncertainty of succession. Although there is a prince in waiting, there is also a 19-member Privy Council of senior advisors to the king who wield power in designating a successor according to the constitution.

The constitution is another sticking point. A new one, the 18th since 1932, received a yes vote from 58% of the population at the end of last year. Among other things it limits executive powers and pardoned the 2006 coup leaders. The newest constitution moved more power back to the military and judiciary and opened up the possibility of the prosecution of Thaksin supporters. In addition, any party linked to corruption by top executives could be dissolved by the courts. Therefore when Mr. Samak moved to change the constitution it was seen as an effort to protect his party and the former ruling party of Thaksin from court decisions such as the one against Samak's foreign minister. The constitutional court ruled that FM Noppadon Pattama violated the Constitution by signing a joint communique with Cambodia concerning the latter's bid to list Preah Vihear temple as a World Heritage Site without parliamentary endorsement. The temple sits astride the two nations and the move was seen as one that would help the businesses of Mr. Thaksin who has many holdings in Cambodia.

A word or two about Thaksin Shinawatra. He became a billionaire by building his telecommuncation empire in the 80's. His political career began with his founding the Thai Rak Thai (Thais Love Thais) party in 1998. He swept to power in 2001, soundly defeated the incumbent Democrat Party (many of whose members now belong to the PAD) and became the first Thai prime minister to lead an elected government for a full term. The poor loved him for his cheap medical care and debt relief, his nationalist platform and his contempt for the "Bangkok elite", while big business also liked him for his CEO style of government and his "Thaksinomics" policies which created a new boom in the country where the Asian financial crisis of the late 1990s began. Trouble came from his governments suppression of the news of an outbreak of bird flu, criticism over the violent deaths of more than 2,500 people during a crackdown on drugs in 2003, Thailand's Corruption Commission found he had failed to declare all of his wealth, and he was also criticised over the government's handling of the upsurge in violence in the largely Muslim south. He came through all this unscathed until his family's decision to sell its shares in one of Thailand's biggest telecom groups, Shin Corp to Singaporean interests in early 2006. It netted his family and friends $1.9bn, but anger stemmed from the fact he and his family had avoided paying taxes and had passed control of an imortant national asset to foreigners. Large scale street protests were followed by a snap election call, which was boycotted by many, then he stepped down, only to return a few weeks later in May. Finally, while he was attending a UN conference in September, the military seized power. Mr. Thaksin moved to the UK, bought the Manchester City football club and then after his allies won election, returned to Thailand in February of this year swearing he had no wish to return to politics. However, opponents didn't believe him and the courts who have more power owing to the new constitution pursued the cases against him and his family vigorously, to the point where it appeared he was headed to jail, therefore he left the country again. Gone, but not forgotten, and definitely not without influence in the present government.

So, while the country faces real problems, rising prices of fuel and food, a falling currency, the two sides in this political crisis are playing a back and forth game. The latest move by the PM called for a referendum asking a range of questions including whether the government should resign, whether it should dissolve parliament and what people thought about the ongoing protests. It will possibly take as much as six months to organize. The PAD dismisses this as a stalling tactic, continuing their occupation of government buildings while the government continues to bus in supporters from rural areas ensuring more conflicts similar to the clashes seen on Tuesday night. Like many revolutionary movements before them, the PAD have their colour, in this case yellow to symbolize their unity with the king. However unlike the other coloured revolutions, this movement is pushing to restrict voters rights. “The PAD gives democracy a bad name,” Sunai Phasuk, of Human Rights Watch, said. “It's not about democracy, it's about narrow nationalism. It could turn back the clock and make the progress Thailand has made in the last two decades meaningless.” In July it announced a “New Politics” that would reduce the number of elected MPs to 30 per cent, with the rest appointed by business and trade organisations. This would be a little like the liberal coasts in the US claiming the poorly-educated folk in the middle of the country aren't smart enough to vote, so their votes should be replaced by corporate heads and union leaders. Many conspiracy theorists argue that those in power in democracies try to keep the people stupid (see FOX 'News') it appears the PAD want to take the next step.

The cat's outta the bag

In what seems to be a "whoops, did he just say that out loud?" moment, the British Chancellor of the Exchequer, Alistair Darling, told the Guardian newspaper last week that the British economy is facing it's worst downturn in 60 years. Of course for those who have been paying attention, this doesn't come as news, but in today's world where every word is carefully measured by the market, his statements came as a bit of as surprise. A politician telling it like it is. The fact is the west, and by that I generally mean North America and Europe (oh, and Australia and New Zealand), is facing an almost definite restructuring on all fronts. Politically, militarily, demographically and economically changes are coming and we don't know where they'll lead us.

Watching the circus that is the US presidential race, I can't help asking myself, "who would want to become president now?" There's a big mess left for him to clean up. Two losing wars, a record deficit, credit crisis, an aging population, worthless dollar, housing collapse and of course the accompanying loss of international respect that goes along with eight years of the Dubya presidency. If you tell the truth, like our Chancellor did, your currency goes in the toilet. So, maybe you should just lie, like Canada's finance minister, Jim Flaherty, and tell everyone that things are OK. It's not so easy though when it's so obvious that everything is going wrong and the world has looked to you for the better part of the last century to guide them through trouble. I mean ten trillion dollars. That's $10,000,000,000,000. The US deficit will be greater than that when the next president is sworn in. No matter how you look at it, Russia has just scored a victory in the Caucusus, at least revealing that the US no longer needs to be heeded. Heck, the Chinese even won the medal count at the Olympics. Does this all spell doom for liberal democracy? Is authoritarianism the way forward?

More importantly, are we headed to disaster as Mr. Darling told us? Well, the cheap easy money of the low interest cycle that just passed caused housing prices to double in the States and triple in Britain, pop. With losses from sub-prime loans in the US expected to rise above $1 trillion, a wave of bank failures is under way in America. Northern Rock in Britain and the full fall out from Fanny Mae and Freddy Mac and their $5.2 trillion have yet to hit the fan. The FDIC says the number of banks said to be in trouble increased to 117 last quarter. In Europe, Spain is the only economy maintaining positive growth (0.2%) while their unemployment hit a ten-year high on Sept. 1st. Meanwhile in the States housing starts dropped to their lowest point since the first Gulf War in 1991 and inflation reports caused the word stagflation to be bandied about again.

Britain has suspended the stamp duty on new home purchases under £175,000 and are looking at a range of other buyer incentives in order to kick-start the industry while their unemployment hits a 16-year high. Instead of letting the market sort itself out, we now live in a world where government are there to bail out the giant corporate failures. What incentive do they have to minimize their risks? Keep flooding the market with cheap money to create the illusion of growth as the US economy did this summer with the stimulus cheques. In predictable fashion, these efforts work for a while but do nothing to fix the long term problem. The US Federal Reserve's mandate is "to promote effectively the goals of maximum employment, stable prices, and moderate long-term interest rates." Today this has somehow come to mean maintaining growth at all costs. The past business cycle in the US from 2000-2007 saw worker productivity rise but middle-class income fall, a pretty good indication that even in good times, things weren't getting better for the majority. Sometimes in life you need to deal with some short-term pain in order to ensure long-term gain, unfortunately we in the west seem to have lost our stomach for it in this world of instant gratification but eventually, the bill will have to be paid.

The Gambler

I've been trying to avoid putting in my 2 cents on the Sarah Palin VP choice by McBush, just reading and trying to digest who she is, after all the VP choice really doesn't mean much. Thing is, you look at liberal news, and you get the typical tripe, even going as far as the DailyKos story of her last pregnancy being a ruse to cover for her teenage daughter's pregnancy. Reading the other press, it's a constant stream of McCain's big gamble and I keep hearing that Kenny Rogers' over and over in my head, you gotta know when to hold 'em, know when to fold'em..., singing the praises of the return of the Maverick McCain.

Being Vice-President actually makes you President of the United States Senate, and next in line in case the president kicks it and remember that McBush turned 72 the other day. Bearing in mind the random crap shoot that is the presidential election, here's my top 10 reasons to be physically sick about the Sarah Palin choice and how she'll help defeat Obama.

1. She's a hockey mom. This means something in possible swing states like Minnesota, Colorado, Ohio and Pennsylvania
   
2. She's pro-life. That whole "carried her child to term despite the knowledge that it would probably have Down Syndrome" thing really stirs up the fanatic Christian vote.
   
3. She will win over disaffected Clinton supporters. Those that wouldn't vote for anyone just because their candidate lost, now will be tempted to vote Republican, what's the difference, at least she's a woman!?
   
4. She was a TV sportscaster and a former beauty queen. How much more apple pie can you get?
   
5. Some people consider her a MILF, making her ideal to deal with terrorist organziations such as MILF (Moro Islamic Liberation Front)
   
6. Cindy McCain likes her because she has foreign diplomatic experience, honest. She's the governor of Alaska, the closest state to Russia, so she'll know how to deal with that threat!
   
   
7. She's a gun loving huntress. This is important because people feel more comfortable knowing that there's continuity, in this case a VP who's liable to shoot someone in the face.
   
8. She doesn't believe that global warming is caused by human activities unlike her running-mate, this calms some conservative fears about putting an environmentalist like McBush in the White House.
   
9. She just got a passport last year. Fewer than 1 in 6 Americans have one, she only got hers to visit the troops in Germany, so never fear, she's still as isolated as the rest of the electorate.
10. Oil, oil, oil. She'll drill and fight big oil at the same time! McBush actually opposes opening Alaska's Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to oil and gas development, which sounds a little whacko-enviro to some conservatives. Enter Palin who supports drilling anywhere, oh yeah, and she hates polar bears.