The perils of skunk
Agonising article by Patrick Cockburn on his son’s schizophrenia.
I blame cannabis for what happened to Henry. He says he smoked a lot between the ages of 14 and 19, but I didn’t notice at the time.
I would have been concerned, of course, if I’d known back then, but until recently I had no idea about the explosive impact cannabis can have on some people.
I don’t think people realise 19 out of 20 people might take a small quantity of cannabis without ill effects, but for the 20th person who has a genetic predisposition to schizophrenia, the result is catastrophic.
I don’t believe those who advocate less stringent laws on the sale and consumption of cannabis realise the devastating effect it can have…
Bush’s legacy
Timothy Egan, writing in today’s New York Times…
Among the many dispiriting things to come out of Bob Woodward’s quartet of books on George W. Bush is his observation that the president has not changed since he first started talking to Woodward in 2001.
No growth. No evolution. No regrets.
“History,” Bush replied, when asked by Woodward how he would be judged over time. “We don’t know. We’ll all be dead.” Broke, as well.
It would have been nice to let Bush’s two terms marinate a while before invoking Herbert Hoover and James Buchanan from the cellar of worst presidents. But then — over the last two weeks — he completed the trilogy of national disasters that will be with us for a generation or more…
Rory Bremner at the FrontLine Club
He’s introducing a very good discussion of the US presidential campaign. Panellists include the inimitable Stryker McGuire, Newsweek‘s London Bureau Chief, and the Time photographer who was assigned to the McCain campaign.
That Esquire profile of Steve Jobs
Hmmm… Just finished reading Tom Junod’s profile. A bit contrived and over-written. And it concludes lamely by asking what peaks remain to be scaled by Jobs now that he has transformed the mobile phone business? “Well”, Junod writes.
there is the “cloud,” as it’s known in geekspeak — the treasure trove of our disembodied data, the digitized version of ourselves that exists beyond ourselves, the next step in the virtualization of the human experience. It’s being posited as the basis of a mobile Internet, or what some people call “a new Internet,” but its lure is the lure of finding a way out of our bodies and into the invisible, and that’s the oldest of human dreams. And so, while everybody else wonders how to get there, how to gain purchase on the ether, Jobs, with his iPhone, offers the same possibility he always has, the possibility of getting there one glittering box at a time. But his soul is in those boxes; it’s never been unlocked, and the service he introduced at the June keynote — a service called MobileMe, which staked his claim on the invisible, or at least announced his readiness to compete for control of it — was deemed, upon its launch a month later, a “disaster” . . . “a failure” . . . “Apple’s worst product launch in the ten years since Jobs returned from exile.” The digital ether would seem as uncongenial to Steve Jobs as heaven itself. But still it beckons, and still he has to answer its call. What other choice does he have? He is already halfway there.
Apple lifts NDAs on iPhone software details
From Charles Arthur…
Apple has announced that it’s lifting the non-disclosure agreement on released iPhone software.
Well, it suggests that the fuss was worthwhile. I bet the imminence of the Android phone may have had something to do with it too.
Great Depression 2.0
Willem Buiter’s been thinking about what happens next if the US Congress balks again. Here’s his scenario:
# The US stock market tanks. Bank shares collapse, as do the valuations of all highly leveraged financial institutions. Weaker versions of this occur in Europe, in Japan and in the emerging markets.
# CDS spreads for banks explode, as will those of all highly leveraged financial institutions. Credits spreads generally take on loan-shark proportions, even for reputable borrowers. Again the rest of the world will experience a slightly milder version of this.
# No US bank will lend to any other US bank or any other highly leveraged institution. The same will happen elsewhere. Remaining sources of external finance for banks, other than the facilities created by the central banks and the Treasuries, will dry up.
# Banks and other highly leveraged institutions will try to unload assets at fire-sale prices in illiquid markets. Even assets not viewed as toxic before will become unsaleable at any price.
# The interaction of a growing lack of funding liquidity and increasing market illiquidity will destroy the banks’ business models.
# Banks will stop providing credit to households and to non-financial enterprises.
# Banks will collapse, both through balance sheet insolvency and through liquidity insolvency. No bank will be safe, not even the household names for whom the crisis has thus far brought more opportunities than disasters.
# Other highly leveraged financial institutions collapse on a large scale.
# Households and non-financial businesses revert to financial autarky, among wide-spread defaults and insolvencies.
# Consumer demand and investment demand collapse. Unemployment shoots up.
# The government suspends all trading in financial stocks until further notice.
# The government nationalises all US banks and other highly leveraged financial institutions. The shareholders get nothing up front and have to wait for an eventual re-privatisation or liquididation to find out whether they are left with anything at all. Holders of bank debt get a sizeable haircut ‘up front’ on the face value of the debt and have part of the remainder converted into equity that shares the fate of the old equity.
None of this is unavoidable, he thinks, “provided the US Congress grows up and adopts forthwith something close to the Emergency Economic Stabilization Act as a first, modest but necessary step towards re-establishing functioning securitisation markets and restoring financial health to the banking sector. Cutting off your nose to spite your face is not a sensible alternative.”
And, he adds:
PS. My remaining financial wealth is now kept in a (small) old sock in an undisclosed location.
Now, where did I put those socks?
Vanishing points
Quentin’s been to Auschwitz and brought back some striking pictures.
US car sales: the canary in the economic mine?
From NYTimes.com
DETROIT — September was another difficult month for carmakers.
Toyota and the Ford Motor Company each said Wednesday that their sales in the United States fell more than 30 percent in September, as volatility in the financial markets compounded misery going forward for the auto industry.
But sales were better than expected at General Motors, which reported a 16 percent decline and estimated that its market share rose to the highest level in more than three years.
“We are looking at a very fragile economy,” Emily Kolinski-Morris, Ford’s chief economist, said on a conference call with analysts and reporters. “I don’t think anyone can say where the bottom might be.”
Revolt of the Nihilists
David Brooks on the authority vacuum now paralysing Washington.
I’ve spoken with several House Republicans over the past few days and most admirably believe in free-market principles. What’s sad is that they still think it’s 1984. They still think the biggest threat comes from socialism and Walter Mondale liberalism. They seem not to have noticed how global capital flows have transformed our political economy.
We’re living in an age when a vast excess of capital sloshes around the world fueling cycles of bubble and bust. When the capital floods into a sector or economy, it washes away sober business practices, and habits of discipline and self-denial. Then the money managers panic and it sloshes out, punishing the just and unjust alike.
What we need in this situation is authority. Not heavy-handed government regulation, but the steady and powerful hand of some public institutions that can guard against the corrupting influences of sloppy money and then prevent destructive contagions when the credit dries up.
The Congressional plan was nobody’s darling, but it was an effort to assert some authority. It was an effort to alter the psychology of the markets. People don’t trust the banks; the bankers don’t trust each other. It was an effort to address the crisis of authority in Washington…