The Neuro Issue Is Also Something To Think About

There is a great deal of concern and worry over the level of security operations and intrusion into our communications and social interaction.

Variously described as “Stasi” as in the former State of East Germany , “Orwellian” as in the book “1984” by George Orwell, “Gestapo” as in Hitler’s Germany or “KGB” as in the Soviet Union, according to taste, it is said that we have much to fear.

An article in “Science Daily” today titled “Tense Film Scenes Trigger Brain Activity” this isn’t the half of it.  The title may seem to be a statement of the blinding obvious and the project one of those expensive ways for scientist to clock up their publication ratings, but it is other matters that are of interest.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/06/120614131204.htm

The part that really caught my eye was the final part:

Quote:

The team sees several potential applications for the ability to quantify levels of engagement, including neuro-marketing, quantitative assessment of entertainment, measuring the impact of narrative discourse and the study of attention deficit disorders. "Advertisers would love to know where and when an ad is engaging," he noted.

"The potential to measure engagement is huge since this provides an objective way to collect data," added Dr. Dmochowski, who currently is investigating whether there is a correlation between social media usage and brain activity in young people while watching "The Walking Dead," a drama series on the American Movie Classics cable network.

"We are mining Twitter to measure the depth of watching," he continued. "We think there will be many correlations between scenes that elicit social media responses and neural signatures, and we can look at both positive and negative responses.

"

The study was funded by a Defense Advanced Research Program Agency grant. Joao Dias of City College and Paul Sajda of Columbia University collaborated with Professor Parra and Dr. Dmochowski on the research.

Unquote.

When forced to go into town it is now usual to see large numbers of apparently brain dead young people deep in Twitter or social media activity.  Their responses to any ordinary verbal contact are normally garbled and indistinct.

When I were a lad what the corner newsagent, the grocer, the postman, the window cleaner and her a few doors up did not know about us wasn’t worth knowing.

And the butcher knew all about neuro-marketing.

Investment And Expenditure

This is one of my first blogs, early in 2009.  It seems that little has changed.

Quote:

My favourite uncle had a coal round, which depended on his horse and cart.

Unluckily, his surplus of revenue over costs went on racehorses that were much less reliable than the carthorse.

When the carthorse died; in the absence of people to give him credit to buy another, his business ended.

He became a manual labourer, still needing to work into his 80’s because he was short of national insurance entitlements.

I think a lot of my uncle these days.

Unquote

He always said that coal was a dirty business in any case.

The End Of The Affair

It was thirty five years ago, not long after the Franco regime had ended that I drove through the centre of Spain heading for the Lines of Torres Vedras in Portugal, also then going through political upheaval.

One feature seen on some buildings was stick pictures of a gallows with someone handing from them with a names or names.  There was always a degree of tension in the air.  There were monetary problems and it was useful to be carrying pounds and dollars.

We have not been back for a number of years and in that time it has all changed and for a while when the money was flushing in there was a surge of apparent prosperity.  Many British moved there confident that the good times would continue to roll.

The question now is how bad might it get and what tensions might erupt or re-erupt in a country that has known too much bitterness in the past and had too many governments inclined to forms of repression that have induced revolts’

But this is Spain which has existed as a nation since the 15^th Century and Portugal for longer.  Italy and India, however, have both had shorter periods of nation hood.  Italy’s is from only the mid 19^th Century and India since 1947, born from the British Raj.

The British Raj in turn had brought together the disassociated elements of the former Moghul Empires with other territories into a vast Imperial possession.  It is arguable at what date could the Raj be said to have been almost complete, but the 1860’s is one period. 

In 1947 and since there have been separations, both Pakistan from India and then Bangla Desh.  Essentially, what has remained is large powerful nations which have apparently their own identities.

These have been based on economic growth, some degree of peace, internal controls and a willingness to accept the many differences between elements of peoples in various territorities.

Both Italy and India, the latter a key state in the BRIC group of economies that are supposed to be propping up the world economy, are heading for trouble.  Automatic Earth has an item.

http://theautomaticearth.org/Finance/keep-an-eye-on-italy-and-india.html

If there is to be a major contraction in world trade and all economies are to be affected one way or another then what political entities will last in their present form and which ones could begin to disintegrate?

We are fixated on Europe, supposing that the EU and Euro can somehow remain intact although damaged.  What is not considered is that not only could the Europe project fall apart but states within it could face separatist movements and others outside could experience severe stresses leading to some form of disintegration.

In the UK we are cutting our Army to a level when it can only sustain a small force in active service and moreover one that will provide an insufficient base for training and commanding any rapid expansion if necessary.

The Great Game is about to begin again.

Love And Marriage Go Together Like A Horse And Carriage

There have been reports that a scientist on the Scott expedition to the Antarctic of a century ago who observed the relationships between penguins was deeply shocked by what he saw.  So much that he censored his findings to give the impression that their habits were as regular as people liked to think they should be.

He could not imagine the reason for this, but my non-scientific explanation is that as penguins spend a good deal of time going into low dives this might the cause.  That is lifestyle choices as you might call it.

Looking at the current debate on marriage and relationships in humans possibly the above makes more sense than much of the present debate about who should marry who and on what basis.

We really need to look back at the past to understand the extent of the muddle we are in.  “Romeo And Juliet”, for example is an illustration of what could go wrong.  A young couple become attached and take themselves off to a priest to join them in marriage in God’s name, all very romantic.

The trouble is that her father and mother have already contracted for her to marry somebody else, a nobleman with good prospects and very well connected.  It all ends in blood and tears, very much a three handkerchief job whether you are watching the play, the ballet or the opera versions.

Around the drama, comedy, opera and ballet plots dealing with the past when a marriage was in view the person that matters is the Notary or attorney or lawyer waving a contract and the detail of that is sometimes critical.  The contracts are about property, settlements, money arrangements and provision for future events.

The State is rarely ever involved or mentioned, save when the intervention of a person in authority is needed as a plot device to either resolve issues to create more of them.  But there is usually a clergyman around to add to the confusion and keep the plot going.

In the Atlantic Isles at present we could fairly be said to have an unholy mess.  Part of this is due to our recent beliefs in individuality, media concentration on the romance (as in the past) or relief of physical needs (as in the present) and the idea that the whole thing is very personal.

Marriage and its consequences in the past gave rise to a good deal of trouble and legal strife which led to increasing intervention by the State for registration and then legal prescriptions.  To that must be added all the paraphernalia of the Welfare State and attempts to redistribute incomes.

In the current debate whether other forms of partnership other than one male and one female constitutes a marriage in legal terms there are now other issues that are put aside in the fuss.  One is where people live together in support perhaps of one for another or by reasons of descent or need for economy where marriage is excluded.

The other is that the religions of the past in the Atlantic Isles were once essentially Christian with some others which also had forms of marriage similar in basis.  This is no longer the case.  There are now many of other faiths who have different arrangements involving multiple partnerships.

Why should they all be excluded from what amounts to contractual requirements determined by the State which relate not just to matters of partnership, but probate, taxation, benefits, property and a raft of other contingent effects?  What is the answer?

Perhaps it is quite simply that for tax, benefits probate and the rest the State should treat everyone, no matter in what form of partnerships or relationship as individuals and leave the rest to the lawyers and the religious leaders.

Buddy Can You Spare A Euro?

Nicholas Shaxson, author of the best selling business book “Treasure Islands” had an item in his blog on Wednesday 6^th June entitled “Steve Keen’s Savage Predictions For Britain” which gives an Australian’s take on the British Economy today.  It is not cheerful and its recommendations probably unwelcome in many quarters.

Quote:

The controversial (and widely admired) Australian economist Steve Keen gave a fiery talk at the London School of Economics recently, which was broadcast by the BBC. You can listen to it here.  Below are some key extracts noted by hand.

His most central theme was that the financial bubbles that have built up constitute nothing less than a giant Ponzi scheme, and that the citizens of the UK in particular will cry buckets of tears before this mess is over.

We are only about 30 percent of the way through the crisis, he reckons, and forecasts another UK-based Lehman-style event before too long. Here are some direct quotes:

I would say we are about 30 percent through the crisis, because levels of debt are only slowly being reduced: US private debt from 300 percent of GDP.

“The level of debt the UK has taken on is breathtaking. I thought the USA was bad when it had a total private debt ratio of 300% of GDP. Even the treasury has your debt at 450 percent of GDP.

Whereas the US financial sector debt peaked at 120 percent of GDP, yours is 250 percent. And at various times in the last 3-4 years, something like 60 percent of (inaudible) demand in the economy has come from rising debt.

Turning that around is going to be painful. I can’t see you avoiding a credit crunch at some stage, that probably will be of the scale of Lehman brothers. The only reason you have avoided going down as fast as the Americans is that you have bounced up and down in debt levels . . . . but it is one and half times as high, and twice or three times as volatile.

When it starts to go negative, all the hot money that gave you what looked like prosperity for the last 20 or 30 years will be out the exits to Kuwait or wherever else the Mafia lives.”

As I said, fiery stuff. He was then asked whether stagnation, 0.1 percent Japan-like growth, would really be so bad. His response:

Japan continued developing industry till the 1990s, and it still has it. There has been far more industrial development in Japan than in Britain. You guys in Britain are specialised in the biggest Ponzi scheme on the planet.

You have a much more difficult transition till you get to the productive malaise that Japan is still in. It won’t be as bad as the Great Depression, but it will be a continuous state of depression, where you fall into it and out of it and back into it, but without the social cohesion of Japan, and without the industrial base, and I think by the looks of it, a far higher level of private debt and financial speculation. So it’s a difficult road for Britain to get to be Japan.

Capitalism was far more dynamic when engineers dominated in the 1950s. we need to get back to the time when the financiers were the servants of the engineers, not the other way around.

Steve Keen clearly loves bankers. He has a recipe for the sector, which sounds outlandish to those who haven’t come across it before, but is in fact being quite widely discussed here.

“We need a modern debt jubilee. You have to reduce the level of debt and the wealth of the financial sector without penalising people who purchased the goods that the financial sector spun off to them, that they call assets, or the loans they securitised. I would argue for “quantitative easing for the public.”

Instead of Bernanke giving money to the banks and saying ‘please lend’, you give the money to the public, saying to those who are in debt that they must pay the debt down; and if you are not in debt, here is cash.

The banks would then find a lot of their loans paid off. Their cash reserves would rise, their income earning components would fall, so they might be illiquid rather than insolvent; so there would be challenges there.

People would have less debt, people with no debt would have a stack of cash to spend. The income earning capacity of the bonds would fall drastically, they would have less income to spend, but much more cash, and that would reduce the damage of the transition, and it would minimise the power of the finance sector overnight.

That would cause a lot of financial people to be unemployed. Tough.

Unquote.

Elsewhere around the web there are others talking of “Debt Jubilees” some referring to the practice of the Ancient Babylonian Kings from time to time cancelling all debts to prevent too much land and power falling into too few hands.

Is is possible that almost anything could be better than the courses of action being pursued in Europe, Westminster or Washington DC.  Who knows?  But sooner or later we are all going to find out.  The picture above is Hogarth relating to “The Beggars Opera”.

Why does the date 6^th June give me a twitch on matters referring to Europe?

The Long March Begins

The cartoon above is taken from “The Economist” and will raise laughs amongst its many readers.  It is a beguiling idea that if Merkel decides for Germany and the right actions are taken then Europe will be saved.  If Europe is saved then so is the USA, or rather President Obama’s chances of re-election and then China and then the world.

Haven’t we been here before with this notion; a British Prime Minister rushing off the help save the world invoking German power?  Quantitative Easing in our time as you might say.  Put the clip from the film “Cabaret-Tomorrow Belongs To Me” from Youtube up to get the flavour of this.

Elsewhere, Simon Jenkins in the “Guardian” roundly states that the Euro is the problem they are all reluctant to admit to and that is what should be dealt with by bringing it to an end.  Richard North in the web site “EU Referendum tries to explain the layers of political involvement.

Douglas Carswell has become possibly the only person in the Westminster Bubble to realise that the explosion in fiat money since the collapse of the Bretton Woods agreements forty years ago is another key issue.

The Mises Institute and others would predate it to the era when hard money was being replaced by fiat currencies in a way that allowed the fractional reserve banking creation of credit to being its long development.  For much of this time it was held back, breaking out occasionally.

In the last decade or two the easing and in some cases absence of regulation that created some limits, awareness of what was happening, proper accounting and controls over irrational exuberance has led to financial corporations too big to fail to create debt and obligations beyond the power of any state to cope with.

All we are given in the main media is posturing and simple denunciations that tell us little about what the real situation is and what might develop.  The sheer complexity, the extent of the unknowns and the absence of knowledge or reliable data is not understood by anyone.

Perhaps the UK government is hoping for another Gebhard Leberecht von Blucher, Furst von Wahlstatt, Generalfeldmarschall of the Prussian Army, who on 18 June 1815 arrived in the nick of time on the field of Waterloo to help Wellington’s coalition of troops to turn the tide of battle against the French.

Nothing like this is going to happen.  Just how much Germany can do and what its electorate will accept are other matters.  It may not be able to do much at all given the extent of the debts and in any case its voters may want to keep Germany as it is and not as the arbiter of other nation’s economies.

It might just be that if Germany does decide the Euro is too dangerous a prospect to be saved then in allowing a natural winding down of the mess in the long term they may be doing us all a favour.

And if Cameron’s coalition and Obama’s re-election are part of the price, then so be it.

In The Dance Who Calls The Tune?

During the lifetimes of my parents, their parents and grand-parents Europe went through four major transformations that radically reshaped its political and economic structures and world wide involvements.

The Europe I was born into was not the continent it is now any more than Great Britain is and during this time there have been a series of changes.  At one time the talk was of Empire, then World Citizenship, then Europe but now what?

We are said to have “Globalisation”, but this is not a concord of peoples come together for better government and sounder economies.  It seems to be quite the reverse, being a number of effectively state less organisations exercising power for their own narrow financial interests.

Today, there have been contrasting matters in the “news”.  One is the need for Europe to hold together to face the present Euro crisis and avoid a collapse.  The other is whether Scotland should opt out of the UK to keep its hands on the oil money for the benefit of organisations which would profit from this separation.

This has had the effect of the leading politicians in several of the UK’s political parties to come together to try and keep the existing show on the road.  In the picture above from the recent “La Sylphide” performed by the Royal Ballet there are several tartans on display, if someone could identify them it would be appreciated.

But the tartans relate to Clans and the history of the Clans in Scotland is not one of loving friendship, mutual appreciation or dancing happily together at betrothal feasts.  Until the Union they often shed each others blood in the name of land ownership and local power.

In the Atlantic Isles we forget that much of the shape of Europe today is quite recent and to regard the existing boundaries as an absolute for all time and the future may be a mistake.  In the past the histories tell us that it has been largely shaped by wars. 

What is less clear is how far the wars that did make a difference arose from economic stresses, political confusion and the failures of the then political entities to hold together.  At times of prosperity and expansion there may well be trends towards integration and a decline in mutual hostility or narrower interests.

But what happens if there is a radical decline in both prosperity and the ability to continue expanding in the face of increasing population?  How easily could it all begin to fall apart with local elites emerging to enforce control over smaller polities?

With the press now insisting that as far as the Euro is concerned none of the experts really know what is going on it is fair to assume that none of the politicians do.  But it is not just the Euro, the UK and Europe the stresses are building up again quickly across the world.

When stresses in the tectonic plates occur the result is an earthquake which may change the shape of the land above.  Are Europe and the Atlantic Isles due for yet another major shake up in their economic and political structures?

Will you, won’t you, will you, won’t you, will you join the dance?