The Euro Crisis Explained

Via BoingBoing, Australian comedians Clarke and Dawe explain the Euro mess:

Inflation is Not a Threat

Despite all the ideological finger-wagging, inflation, which never was much of a threat, is now not one at all. Further evidence of the rush to government debt (non-European government debt) from today;s Bloomberg:

The 18-month slump in Treasury zero- coupon bonds is giving way to rising demand as the rate of inflation falls to a 40-year low, turning so-called Strips into the best performers in the U.S. government debt market.

Investment banks increased the securities -- created by separating the interest and principal payments of a bond and selling them at a discount -- by 4.4 percent to $179.4 billion from December through April, according to Treasury Department data. It’s the first time that the market expanded for five straight months since 2006.

The call for Strips, which started in 1985 after former Federal Reserve ChairmanPaul Volcker broke the back of inflation, suggests growing bullishness toward the bond market after the Bank of America Merrill Lynch U.S. Treasury Master Index fell 3.7 percent in 2009. Yields on Treasury Inflation- Protected Securities show money managers expect the consumer price index to increase an average 1.96 percent annually over the next decade, down from 2.43 percent as recently as April 29.

It is worth remembering that 2% inflation is a target for most central banks -- it is not a threat.

There is No Substitute for Fear

The Onion-like Department of Fear has a wonderful story today on the Taliban invasion of Thailand. I should let them tell it

Supposedly on account of civil unrest, many buildings in Bangkok burned to the ground on May 19. It was a scary situation for everyone in Thailand. But for Americans, it was very nearly just another day.

Fortunately, MSNBC made the most of the images. Raw Story, a blog, reports:

People watching MSNBC Wednesday morning could be forgiven for believing that the Taliban had invaded Bangkok. As NBC's Ian Williams reported on violent protests in the capital city of Thailand, a graphic on the lower third of MSNBC's screen read: "New Taliban Attacks, Bangkok Burns."DoF has nothing but praise for the way MSNBC handled this story.

MSNBC drew upon the depth of the news organization's ignorance about Thailand and conceived a terrifying hypothesis: Bangkok is falling to our enemies. The Taliban are on the move. At home, terrified MSNBC viewers would have been asking themselves: Will Honolulu be next? Or will the Taliban head straight for LA?    

There is a lesson here. Whenever there is serious violence overseas, the US media should not hesitate to project whatever scenario evokes Americans' worst fears. Discussion about what actually happened can be left to the following day's newspapers.

This is analysis the Harper crowd can truly believe in.

Do The Math

From today's Greater Fool

The average American home sells for $170,000. The average family income is $65,300. So the average USA home costs 2.6 times what the average household makes. US homeowners can get a mortgage rate of 4.2%, guaranteed for 30 years. And the interest is tax-deductible.
The average Canadian home costs $341,000. The average family income is $71,000. So the average home costs 4.8 times what a household makes in a year. Fixed-rate mortgages here are available for an average of 4.2%, which must be renewed at market rates every five years. Sorry, no writing interest off your taxable income.
Clearly the burden of home ownership is staggering in Canada compared to our neighbour. We pay almost exactly double for a roof, even though our incomes are similar. We’re thrown into interest rate roulette every few years, while they get a lifetime mortgage rates. We pay inflated loans in after-tax dollars while they write them off.

This means that the average homeowner as a single, highly leveraged, completely undiversified asset. No savings, no hedges, no nothing. And a 10% swing in price could put tens of thousands of these "investors" under water.

Could It Happen Here?

From Calculated Risk, underwater homes in the U.S. by state:

From Tom Swift to Cory Doctorow

As I shy, nerdy and insular adolescent, I absorbed science fiction: Heinlein, Bradbury, Anderson, etc.. But Tom Swift was always my favorite. It is surely unfair to compare such pulp fiction with Cory Doctorow's infinitely more thoughtful work, but the emotional anticipation is the same. Little Brother spoke to me and I am anticipating For the Win will do the same.

So I am taking a sick day (I had minor dental surgery yesterday), have downloaded a mobipocket edition to install to an old Tungsten (my current ereader) and will take the day to immerse myself in some good science fiction, as a no-longer adolescent 58 year old.

The Big Linux Breakthrough: Brought to You by Google

While Ubuntu continues to improve an already impressive product, it appears that the real breakthrough for linux may come from Android. There is news today that Android phones have passed iPhones in total sales and are quickly closing in on RIM's Blackberry, which is increasingly yesterday's news.

This, combined with the anticipated arrival of ultra-cheap Android netbooks could mean that the two sectors where there is real potential for growth, smartphones and netbooks, may be dominated by the open source, linux based OS. Can tablets be far behind?

Monty Python's take on Existentialism

Of Banks and Tooth Fairies

This morning's Sunday NYT has a column by Thomas Friedman that represents the kind of lie that if told often enough becomes truth. Friedman argues that the riots in Athens and the British election are examples of the profligacy of the baby-boom generation coming home to roost. Thus

After 65 years in which politics in the West was, mostly, about giving things away to voters, it’s now going to be, mostly, about taking things away. Goodbye Tooth Fairy politics, hello Root Canal politics.

What he fails to mention is that it was left of center governments, particularly in Britain and the U.S., that had left public sectors in pretty good shape. It was giveaways to the rich, particularly in the U.S., followed by historic generosity to a criminally negligent financial sector over the past couple of years, that put, and will continue to put, governments in impossible positions. In short, we gave away trillions to the already wealthy while children starved, and now we would like the poor, who derived no benefit from this, to pay for it.

The Least of These

While we break our arms patting ourselves on the back for being the decent and tolerant people we think ourselves to be, this is how we treat those we deem to be lesser or inferior:

The head of the Yukon RCMP says five members of his force will be investigated for their role in an in-custody death. Raymond Silverfox died at the Whitehorse RCMP detachment in December 2008, where officers laughed at him as he vomited 26 times during his 13 hours in custody. When staff finally called an ambulance for Mr. Silverfox, he no longer had a pulse.

He was, after all, only a drunk, only a native, only a poor, middle-aged man. Obviously a loser. We reduce our fellows -- our brothers and sisters in Christ -- to objects or things or categories, and then we are shocked when this leads to oppression, abuse and even death. Thus:

A coroner's inquest last month revealed gruesome details of Mr. Silverfox's final hours.

The inquest heard that Mr. Silverfox couldn't find a hotel room after arriving in Whitehorse from his hometown of Carmacks, Yukon, and opted to stay at a Salvation Army shelter. It's there that he first began throwing up.

Mr. Silverfox refused to go to the hospital when Salvation Army staff called an ambulance, and decided to instead spend the night inside the drunk tank. That's where he would die, lying in his own feces.

The inquest heard that Mr. Silverfox was left in a cell while an infection, likely caused by the repeated vomiting, raged through his body.

Mr. Silverfox was described as a hard-working and respected member of his community, but the inquest heard that for some reason the 43-year-old began binge drinking in the months before his death.

While it is gratifying to know of Mr. Silverfox's qualities, they are irrelevant in this case. He was entitled to our care simply by the fact of his humanity. 

What Our Money is For

The Shrewd Manager from The Work Of The People on Vimeo.

Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove on God's Economy

Tactical Imagination from The Work Of The People on Vimeo.

Gabor Mate on Compassion

I had a chance yesterday to sit in on one of the Globe and Mails Open House sessions at the Toronto Reference Library. The topic was Citizenship and Compassion and the participants were Pico Iyer, Barbara Colorosa, Mark Kingwell and Gabor Mate. It was moderated (with real grace) by Paula Todd.

I will comment on some of the other material later, but for now would like to focus on Dr. Mate's remarks. He first took Kingwell to task for an all too sunny view of the possibilities and benefits of Canadian citizenship, noting the tragedy of the lives of native Canadians. And he spoke passionately and compellingly on his early childhood experience as a holocaust survivor and the sad reality of oppressed become oppressor in Palestine.

But for me his most telling remarks concerned love. When one of the usual suspects stood up to make a case for tough love, especially in the case of addiction, the response was visceral. There is no such thing, Dr. Mate insisted, as tough love. One can be tough and one can love. But tough love is a misnomer. What he did not say, but what was clearly implied, was that tough love is all too often an excuse for emotional and spiritual thuggery, particularly when applied to our most vulnerable fellows.