Daily Archives: 15 Oct 08

The God That Failed

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Elaborate marble facade of NYSE as seen from t...NYSE facade from Broad and Wall StreetsThe 30-Year Lie of the Market Cult:

“Perhaps the most striking fact revealed by the global financial crash — or rather, by the reaction to it — is the staggering, astonishing, gargantuan amount of money that the governments of the world have at their command.

In just a matter of days, we have seen literally trillions of dollars offered to the financial services sector by national treasuries and central banks across the globe. Britain alone has put $1 trillion at the disposal of the bankers, traders, lenders and speculators; and this has been surpassed by the total package of public money that Washington is shoveling into the financial furnaces of Wall Street and the banks. These radical efforts are being replicated on a slightly smaller scale in France, Germany, Italy, Russia and many other countries.

The effectiveness of this unprecedented transfer of wealth from ordinary citizens to the top tiers of the business world remains to be seen. It will certainly insulate the very rich from the consequences of their own greed and folly and fraud; but it is not at all clear how much these measures will shield the vast majority of people from the catastrophe that has been visited upon them by the elite.” (Empire Burlesque)

Will globalization be reversed?

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Anti-globalisation protesters in Edinburgh
at the start of the G8 summitIt had occurred to me that the anti-globalization movement might be strengthened by the current finance crisis. Good to see that someone who might know a little more about macroeconomics has been thinking along the same lines: “Global integration, in large part, has been about the triumph of markets over governments. That process is now being reversed in three important ways.” (Dani Rodrik’s weblog: )

Evolution, why it still happens

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MiscarriageMiscarriageA response to Steve Jones’ contention that human evolution is stopping:

“[M]ost people “know” that evolution is about “survival of the fittest” and that nature is red in tooth and claw. Therefore, it naturally stands to reason that when mortality declines evolution will be a weaker force. I think the problem here is that our conception of evolution is focused too greatly on proximate modes and large scale dynamics. That is, selective high mortality rates are a “common sense” way in which the “weak” can be weeded out from the “strong.” But what about the extremely high human spontaneous abortion rates? Evolutionary biologist Mark Ridley has argued that increased miscarriage rates will “balance” out the fact that more individuals with deleterious mutations are reproducing today than in the past. Selection therefore occurs in utero; we don’t observe it so it is not salient to us. But it is selection nonetheless.” (Gene Expression Blog)

How Rich Are You?

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Theodore Gericault's Portrait of a Kleptomania...Gericault’s Portrait of a KleptomaniacGlobal Rich List: “Every year we gaze enviously at the lists of the richest people in world.
Wondering what it would be like to have that sort of cash. But where
would you sit on one of those lists? Here’s your chance to find out.”

(thanks, miguel)