In the year 2011: Politics, money, and other people stuff
Summary: Doom, gloom and Arab Springs.
Last years summary is here.
Most of it still rings true to me, most of it seems likely to come about. I thought we'd already seen the rioting in the streets then, but in August 2011 it started properly.
The future is here, just not evenly distributed. But we didn't expect it to come first to Arab North Africa. The Arab spring had already started a year ago, but wasn't big news yet.
Since last year, Wikileaks is no longer in the spotlight, much to the relief of (and probably due to the efforts of) a few governments. Still, many powerfull people are still wishing that they weren't being held accountable to public opinion. The Leveson inquiry is the end product of Britain's deeply dysfunctional relationship with celebrity and media being held up itself to that black mirror.
I have no idea if there's more corruption about now or if it's just more exposed now. Probably a bit of both.
Change is speeding up, no sign of any slowdown. Booms and busts are ever more common in the 21st century. We consistently overestimate the impact of change in the short term, and underestimate it in the long term. I say this every time, it's still true and always worth being reminded of. Most of last year's things are only slowly coming true, but the long-term impacts will be huge. Looking-back posts like this serve as a reminder of that.
The USA is showing all signs of becoming a 3rd world country: Huge income inequality, very powerful military but limited capacity for healthcare and education, crumbing infrastructure, low quality of political discourse, questionable elections, disgusted and disengaged electorate, political gridlock, crony capitalism. The income inequality graph shows an all time high - it's not corruption but it's closely allied. In the same week they managed to pass an internet censorship bill and allow indefinite detention without trial.
The 2012 US election won't even be worth following in detail - the Obama admistration is very disapointing - in deed it has turned out to be illiberal and hopelessly in hock to Wall Street. Meanwhile the Republican nomination circus is a clown-show, which survives only by rotating a different clown (Newt Gingrich, Ron Paul...) into the lead position to take heat for six weeks or so before sending them to the back of the pack again.
I'll take a guess that the UK's Conservative-Liberal Democrat government will still be in office at the end of 2012, though even more people will be wishing that it wasn't. I wonder if a credible challenger will emerge from the ranks of the pretenders - The Green Party, The Pirate Party and the Occupyistas. Labour? Same old same old: corrupt, warmongering, triangulating, spendthrift, over-promising, manipulative, clan-based backstabbing politics.
Still there's lots of blind loyalty in UK voting. The worst I've heard about Labour was an offhand smear - "nobody there has jobs - that's why they all vote Labour". Generating the symmetric opposite insult about the tories is left as an exercise to the reader. I'd say that "Labour" is still a meaningful political grouping, but I'm not convinced that in the early 21st century, it's a more intrinsic or meaningful one than "Green", "Occupy", or "Pirate".
Prime Minister David Cameron has put a spanner in the EU works of reforming the financial infrastructure. The EU leadership is addicted to brinkmanship and quick fixes, and not very democratic, but Cameron's actions are not at all noble. He is protecting the interests of big business not ordinary UK citizens - if he's not then he's impersonating a conservative prime minister; and Finance in the city of London is just about the only big business left in the UK. Their actions have been detrimental to most of us, and still Cameron is protecting thier interests at everyone else's expense.
It didn't have to be that way. As Ben Goldacre remarked on twitter, 2 decades after the Berlin wall came down, East Germany is now much like West Germany. The UK *chose* to abandon the industrial heartland North of London.
Continual growth, compounded, in our finite world, is a nonsense - it is mathematically nonsensical. It cannot go on forever, or even much longer. Yet return to this anomaly is seen as vital for returning western economies to health. Yet this is still seen as a reasonable assumption for the near future. It is nothing of the sort.
I don't believe that we're in a for a double dip recession - this assumes that there was a recovery in the middle, but that recovery was weak and/or artificial. It's all one crisis. Even a depression. Predictions for the UK are for a mild recession (i.e. a bit worse than now) - but that assumes that the Euro area does not implode. That assumption was made because the Euro implosion scenario is imponderable, not because it is unlikely. Besides the Governor of the Bank of England, who else over the age of 15 is allowed to ignore likely things just because they would really suck?
The west is going wrenching structural economic change. A deregulated era that began in the 1980s with President Reagan, Prime Minister Thatcher and the UK's financial "big bang". This way of doing things was wounded in 2008 and is now on life-suport, along with the Euro.
In 2008 banks were saved by governments. The question that dominated 2011 was how to save governments
Things will get worse for most people of we let them. And social and political change is sure to follow. This makes the stakes high - direction set in the next few years could, by previous experience, last for decades. Hopefully the new system will be fairer, but you may have to fight for it. Unwashed occupationstas huddling in tents in Finsbury square in the winter understand that.
Or maybe higher rates of churn that we have now are the new normal. I mentioned more frequent booms and busts earlier. This is not unwanted by everyone - for those who make money from short term trading, everything staying absolutely stable is the last thing that they want, fluctuation is needed. You can't buy low and sell high unless the price changes. It's not given that arranging the system to the benefit of short term and high-frequency trading is a good idea, but it may be happening anyway.
There's a crisis due to banking recklessness, with governments picking up the tab. There's a crisis due to governments spending more than their income. These may or may not be the same crisis. Governments borowing to spend on infrastructure and social services may be a good way to mitigate a recession, but the problem now is that the many goverments maxed out on doing that during the good times, and is now in recession and at the end of the debt limit. More of the same doesn't look like the way forward. The tory plan to cut back until the economy grows is equally false (unemployed people pay less tax and require more of the remaining services, while those still in work don't splash out and banks don't loan much money.) It doesn't look like there is a easy way back to the good times in the next few years.
The worst may yet be still to come from several directions.
Who out of major banks and governements is actually solvent even if faith evaporates? Maybe none of them, not even China.
Meanwhile, people are being conditioned to have opinions all the time as never before, even if it's just a swift click on facebook or twitter, but this clashes fundamentally political paradigm - the vote once every 4-5 years for your choice of 2 or 3 political parties. They want more democracy.
Last years summary is here.
Most of it still rings true to me, most of it seems likely to come about. I thought we'd already seen the rioting in the streets then, but in August 2011 it started properly.
The future is here, just not evenly distributed. But we didn't expect it to come first to Arab North Africa. The Arab spring had already started a year ago, but wasn't big news yet.
Since last year, Wikileaks is no longer in the spotlight, much to the relief of (and probably due to the efforts of) a few governments. Still, many powerfull people are still wishing that they weren't being held accountable to public opinion. The Leveson inquiry is the end product of Britain's deeply dysfunctional relationship with celebrity and media being held up itself to that black mirror.
I have no idea if there's more corruption about now or if it's just more exposed now. Probably a bit of both.
Change is speeding up, no sign of any slowdown. Booms and busts are ever more common in the 21st century. We consistently overestimate the impact of change in the short term, and underestimate it in the long term. I say this every time, it's still true and always worth being reminded of. Most of last year's things are only slowly coming true, but the long-term impacts will be huge. Looking-back posts like this serve as a reminder of that.
The USA is showing all signs of becoming a 3rd world country: Huge income inequality, very powerful military but limited capacity for healthcare and education, crumbing infrastructure, low quality of political discourse, questionable elections, disgusted and disengaged electorate, political gridlock, crony capitalism. The income inequality graph shows an all time high - it's not corruption but it's closely allied. In the same week they managed to pass an internet censorship bill and allow indefinite detention without trial.
The 2012 US election won't even be worth following in detail - the Obama admistration is very disapointing - in deed it has turned out to be illiberal and hopelessly in hock to Wall Street. Meanwhile the Republican nomination circus is a clown-show, which survives only by rotating a different clown (Newt Gingrich, Ron Paul...) into the lead position to take heat for six weeks or so before sending them to the back of the pack again.
I'll take a guess that the UK's Conservative-Liberal Democrat government will still be in office at the end of 2012, though even more people will be wishing that it wasn't. I wonder if a credible challenger will emerge from the ranks of the pretenders - The Green Party, The Pirate Party and the Occupyistas. Labour? Same old same old: corrupt, warmongering, triangulating, spendthrift, over-promising, manipulative, clan-based backstabbing politics.
Still there's lots of blind loyalty in UK voting. The worst I've heard about Labour was an offhand smear - "nobody there has jobs - that's why they all vote Labour". Generating the symmetric opposite insult about the tories is left as an exercise to the reader. I'd say that "Labour" is still a meaningful political grouping, but I'm not convinced that in the early 21st century, it's a more intrinsic or meaningful one than "Green", "Occupy", or "Pirate".
Prime Minister David Cameron has put a spanner in the EU works of reforming the financial infrastructure. The EU leadership is addicted to brinkmanship and quick fixes, and not very democratic, but Cameron's actions are not at all noble. He is protecting the interests of big business not ordinary UK citizens - if he's not then he's impersonating a conservative prime minister; and Finance in the city of London is just about the only big business left in the UK. Their actions have been detrimental to most of us, and still Cameron is protecting thier interests at everyone else's expense.
It didn't have to be that way. As Ben Goldacre remarked on twitter, 2 decades after the Berlin wall came down, East Germany is now much like West Germany. The UK *chose* to abandon the industrial heartland North of London.
Continual growth, compounded, in our finite world, is a nonsense - it is mathematically nonsensical. It cannot go on forever, or even much longer. Yet return to this anomaly is seen as vital for returning western economies to health. Yet this is still seen as a reasonable assumption for the near future. It is nothing of the sort.
I don't believe that we're in a for a double dip recession - this assumes that there was a recovery in the middle, but that recovery was weak and/or artificial. It's all one crisis. Even a depression. Predictions for the UK are for a mild recession (i.e. a bit worse than now) - but that assumes that the Euro area does not implode. That assumption was made because the Euro implosion scenario is imponderable, not because it is unlikely. Besides the Governor of the Bank of England, who else over the age of 15 is allowed to ignore likely things just because they would really suck?
The west is going wrenching structural economic change. A deregulated era that began in the 1980s with President Reagan, Prime Minister Thatcher and the UK's financial "big bang". This way of doing things was wounded in 2008 and is now on life-suport, along with the Euro.
In 2008 banks were saved by governments. The question that dominated 2011 was how to save governments
Things will get worse for most people of we let them. And social and political change is sure to follow. This makes the stakes high - direction set in the next few years could, by previous experience, last for decades. Hopefully the new system will be fairer, but you may have to fight for it. Unwashed occupationstas huddling in tents in Finsbury square in the winter understand that.
Or maybe higher rates of churn that we have now are the new normal. I mentioned more frequent booms and busts earlier. This is not unwanted by everyone - for those who make money from short term trading, everything staying absolutely stable is the last thing that they want, fluctuation is needed. You can't buy low and sell high unless the price changes. It's not given that arranging the system to the benefit of short term and high-frequency trading is a good idea, but it may be happening anyway.
There's a crisis due to banking recklessness, with governments picking up the tab. There's a crisis due to governments spending more than their income. These may or may not be the same crisis. Governments borowing to spend on infrastructure and social services may be a good way to mitigate a recession, but the problem now is that the many goverments maxed out on doing that during the good times, and is now in recession and at the end of the debt limit. More of the same doesn't look like the way forward. The tory plan to cut back until the economy grows is equally false (unemployed people pay less tax and require more of the remaining services, while those still in work don't splash out and banks don't loan much money.) It doesn't look like there is a easy way back to the good times in the next few years.
The worst may yet be still to come from several directions.
Who out of major banks and governements is actually solvent even if faith evaporates? Maybe none of them, not even China.
Meanwhile, people are being conditioned to have opinions all the time as never before, even if it's just a swift click on facebook or twitter, but this clashes fundamentally political paradigm - the vote once every 4-5 years for your choice of 2 or 3 political parties. They want more democracy.