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Jim Hightower: Who Do We Want? Elizabeth Warren! When Do We Want Her? Now!
Oh, them wild and naughty bankers! What in the world will those rapacious rapscallions of Wall Street do next?
Just recently, we learned from Kenneth Feinberg, the government's special investigator of banker pay, that top executives of 17 financial giants shoveled $1.6 billion in excess compensation to themselves in 2008 -- at the very moment their failing banks began to draw billions of bailout dollars from us taxpayers. Among the pranksters pocketing eye-popping amounts were the high-rolling bank bosses at American Express, Bank of America, Citigroup, Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan Chase, PNC and Wells Fargo.
So, what's the punishment these self-serving money manipulators can expect from Washington's arbiter of excessive executive pay? None. In a stunning show of soft-on-crime leniency, Feinberg declared that he will not even attempt to recoup any of the $1.6 billion the money-grubbers grubbed from us. Declaring that he thought shaming these bad boys was enough, Feinberg asked plaintively, "At what point are you piling on and going beyond what's warranted?"
Shaming them? They're Wall Street executives -- they were born without the shame gene! Piling on? They imploded their banks, crashed our economy, got Washington politicos of both parties to save their jobs, paid themselves a looter's level of taxpayer booty and now are getting a free pass to continue their flimflammery. Feinberg even refuses to release their names. Some shame!
If you rob a bank, the law hunts you down and throws your scrawny butt in jail to teach you and other robbers a lesson. But the lesson that Feinberg has given to America is that if you run a bank and rob the people, the law kisses your ample butt, giving you and others permission to find ever-more-creative ways to keep stealing from us.
Clearly, it's time that we found someone who won't kiss bankers' butts, but rather kick bankers' butts. We need someone who's not afraid to go up against the big banks and who won't be influenced by the money of Wall Street.
Who do we want? Elizabeth Warren! When do we want her? Now!
What we want is for President Obama to gut it up and appoint a real consumer advocate to serve as director of the new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. Created by the Wall Street reform bill that Obama recently signed into law, the CFPB can be an independent, aggressive force to battle banker scams and rip-offs on behalf of ordinary Americans. However, it will only be that if an extraordinarily knowledgeable, feisty fighter who is unafraid to confront the banksters is put in charge.
That description fits Warren perfectly. The first thing you need to know about her is that Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, the tail-wagging puppy of Wall Street, is trying to block her because America's banking barons both despise and fear Warren. I don't know about you, but I find that wonderfully refreshing! What finer testimonial could a consumer protector have than to be vehemently opposed by the special interests she would regulate?
Warren, a widely respected Harvard law professor and an expert in bankruptcy law, actually wrote the bill to create this consumer protection agency, so her professional credentials for the job are impeccable. And, in a recent speech about the new CFBP, she said that "it must stand for families. We've long had enough where's there's been no one to stand for families." She wrapped up her speech saying, "I will keep pushing for the middle class." That's who we want and need -- someone fighting for us.
Just as importantly, though, Warren comes from a working-class Oklahoma family, has personally faced financial crises and has felt the crushing power of uncaring bankers. "I learned early on what debt means, how vulnerable it makes people," she says. Warren, who has never abandoned her populist roots, is smart, tenacious -- and can't be bought.
That's why the Wall Street establishment opposes her, and it is precisely why America needs her. To join Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont in urging Obama to choose Elizabeth Warren to be our consumer champion, go to www.citizen.org/warren.
To find out more about Jim Hightower, and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate web page at www.creators.com.


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The Best Way to Fool Your Ankle Monitor: Fake Leg
Stuck at home on a drunk-driving conviction waiting for a "private security firm" to attach a court-mandated ankle monitor? Try this foolproof trick: Don't have a leg!
More specifically, have a prosthetic leg and then wrap it in a thick bandage. If the employees are stupid enough, they'll tag the fake one!
Christopher Lowcock, 29, fooled the two employees by wrapping a prosthetic leg in a bandage when they set up the tag at his home in Rochdale, Greater Manchester.
G4S revealed managers became suspicious last month but when they returned to Lowcock's home he had been returned to custody accused of a driving-related offence. The company revealed the second employee who went to check on the monitoring equipment at Lowcock's home was also sacked for failing to realise he had fooled them into tagging his false leg.
Lindsay Lohan must be kicking herself right now... with her real leg! Ha! Anyway, this story is a great example of why governments should be privatizing their services: To provide hilarious laughters-out-loud for the internet.

subset: commoncrawl


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Story highlights
March 11 is the second anniversary of the great quake and tsunami
The cancer risk rose only slightly in very small areas near the reactors, the WHO says
Young men, who battled the plant disaster, may see a rise in thyroid cancer
People exposed as children have a slightly elevated risk of certain cancers in their lifetimes
Two years ago, an 8.9-magnitude earthquake generated a tsunami of historic proportions that waylaid Japan's northeast coastline, including a nuclear power plant.
As Fukushima Daiichi unraveled in global public view with fire, explosions and radioactive emissions for weeks, people living nearby were exposed to radiation and trauma.
The trauma was worse, the World Health Organization said in a report released Thursday on the health effects of the "Great East Japan Earthquake and Tsunami."
The lifetime risk of contracting certain types of cancer rose slightly for a small group of people because they were exposed to radiation from the nuclear disaster, the WHO said Thursday.
The notable exception was young emergency workers at the plant, who inhaled high doses of radioactive iodine, probably raising their risk of developing thyroid cancer. But since the thyroid is relatively resistant to cancer, the overall risk for these people remains low, the report said.
Otherwise, any increase in human disease after the partial meltdown triggered by the March 2011 tsunami is "likely to remain below detectable levels," the WHO said in its report.
People exposed as children in towns close to the Daiichi power plant are slightly more likely to contract leukemia, breast or thyroid cancer in the course of their lives than the general population, the WHO said.
The power plant deteriorated into a level 7 disaster, according to the International Atomic Energy Agency, the most dangerous ranking on its scale. It was the worst disaster since the 1986 nuclear meltdown at Chernobyl in the Ukraine.
But the gradual unfolding of the calamity gave Japanese authorities time to evacuate many potential victims. The destruction from the tsunami also caused people to flee before the plant began to break down.
The woman powering Japan's nuclear hopes post-Fukushima
High psychological damage
The WHO report highlights the psychological effects of disaster – fear, anxiety and depression, possibly to the point of psychosomatic illness and psychiatric disorders.
Radiation emergencies can exacerbate these, the WHO said, because radiation is invisible, and people have a hard time understanding it and the magnitude – whether large or small – of its effects.
Whole nations may stigmatize people hailing from affected areas, making life harder on them if they move, the WHO said.
Opinion: What Japanese leaders can learn from Fukushima
Stories of hardship
A local woman in her late 80s, whom researchers interviewed for the report, was unconcerned about radiation exposure.
"For generations, my family has lived in a close relationship with this land," she told them. "I will feel accursed for losing the lands that my ancestors passed down to me."
The village of Iitate in Japan's Fukushima prefecture was once home to 6,000 people.
Plant operator: We weren't prepared
Today, however, it is essentially a ghost town, evacuated after the nuclear accident just 25 miles (40 kilometers) away.
For elderly couple Yukio and Masayo Nakano, life has not been easy. Yukio had lived in his home in the village for more than 60 years, moving in just after World War II.
"I can't describe it. It's hard living in the temporary housing, and it's very stressful mentally," he said.
The difficult situation has also taken its toll on his wife, Masayo.
"I'm lonely. We're getting old," she said. "I think every day how long I can survive in this situation."
The earthquake, tsunami and nuclear calamity have presented the population with three disasters at once, not to mention Japan's economic doldrums. The WHO warns that the sum of these may give rise to complicated health problems.
U.S. Navy sailors sue Japan over nuclear accident
Direct radiation exposure
Those living in hardest-hit areas of Fukushima prefecture were exposed to radiation levels of 12 to 25 milliseverts (mSv) in the first year since the disaster, the WHO reported.
That's equivalent to one or two CAT scans, according to the American College of Radiology. Even on the upper end of the scale, that barely raises the risk of dying from cancer, the college says.
According to United Nations nuclear experts, exposure to less than 1,000 mSv annually causes no meaningful increase in the risk of getting cancer.
Husband of Fukushima suicide victim demands justice
Smoking is much more likely to.
And coal-fired power plants kill more people than their nuclear counterparts do, according to the Clean Air Task Force. Resulting air pollution was expected to cause nearly 13,200 deaths in 2010, not to mention 20,000 heart attacks per year.
Radiation occurs naturally. We are exposed to it through some minerals and from the sun. "The average person in the U.S. receives an effective dose of about 3 mSv per year," the American College of Radiology says.
The rest of Fukushima prefecture saw 3 to 5 mSv in the first year, the equivalent of an X-ray.
Trying to revive a Fukushima 'ghost town'
Discomforting signs
Although that may be less upsetting to know, after the Daiichi catastrophe, there have been discomforting signs – and wonders.
Scientist found butterflies with a variety of mutations in Fukushima prefecture and beyond.
Radioactive iodine poured into the ocean at the reactor site, spiking at 1,250 times normal levels. Offshore monitoring stations also detected high levels of cesium, a radioactive element.
More than a year after the disaster, fish caught off the coast of Fukushima exhibited levels of cesium up to 250 times the amount the Japanese government approves for consumption.
Isolated tests have revealed higher than normal concentrations of radioactive elements in other agricultural products in surrounding areas in the past.
Though the WHO sees no significant danger of radioactivity in the food chain raising the cancer risk, who wants to be the unlucky person to eat the wrong fish?
And although the cancer risk has risen only slightly in a very small area, this will be little comfort to the few additional people who get cancer after having been exposed to radiation near the Daiichi plant as little girls or young men.
The WHO's report stresses that although its research has been thorough, the final effects of the radiation disaster won't be known until sometime in the future, when scientists will have the benefit of hindsight.
It's 20/20.
Radioactive levels staying high off Fukushima Daiichi
CNN's Alex Zolbert contributed to this report.


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Alanna's new marriage will lead to even more danger to her and her unborn baby.
Alanna's new marriage will lead to even more danger to her and her unborn baby.
Alanna has been plagued by tragedy. So it should come as no surprise that in the beauty that surrounds Charleston, all is not as it seems.
When her husband is killed by a car bomb while their band is on tour in Charleston, Alanna doesn't know where to turn. Her father-in-law is threatening to take custody of the baby she carries, but the one thing she knows for sure is that she can't lose the last piece of Liam she has left.
Their manager offers her a marriage of convenience to gain her U.S. citizenship and allow her to escape her father-in-law's control. It seems like the perfect solution . . . but her doubts begin almost as soon as she arrives at Barry's family home, a decaying mansion surrounded by swamp.
To make matters worse, Liam's best friend survived the car bomb. She's never really liked Jesse and now she can't seem to get away from him. When he takes Liam's place in their band, it's almost more than she can bear.
But then things start happening. Things that could easily cost Alanna her life—or the life of her unborn child. Are they merely coincidences? Or is there something much more sinister at work?


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I have learned not to worry
The cakes are baked. The pickles are prepped. We've got nine cases of wine and 10 cases of beer lining the walls of our bedroom. (We had to store them somewhere, and we figure one room is as good as another, right?) My sister just arrived; my brother David lands tonight; and at least a dozen aunts, uncles, and cousins are already in town. It may still be six days away, but really, our wedding has already begun.
It's a funny feeling. I hardly know what to say. To tell you the truth, I can't believe I'm actually old enough to be doing this. How on earth did that happen? I mean, it was only a few days ago, I could swear, that I was fumbling through my first kiss in the foyer of my parents' house. I can't possibly be old enough to be someone's wife, for crying out loud. Sometimes Brandon and I look at each other, shaking our heads, and ask, "Can this really be happening?" Of course it is, and happily so, but it's a lot to wrap a head around. For me, a wedding means much more than just the starting line for a marriage. It means a lot of hope, and risk, and change, and growth. It means a new family, one that starts from just the two of us. It means walking down the aisle without my father, who has been gone for almost five years now. I never thought I would do it without him.
Lately I've been wondering what he would say about all this. He would be beaming, I'm pretty sure. He would have loved to know Brandon. They would have holed up in his office, thick as thieves, listening to Gene Krupa and talking about beer. It's strange, but sometimes when Brandon laughs, he sounds just like my father. Sometimes I could swear he were still here, sitting right next to me. He would like to know, I think, that my mother gave me his wedding ring, and that we had Brandon's ring made from it, melted down and remolded. I think he would like that, to be a part of us that way.
There's an Alice Walker quote that I love, and that we've had printed on the back of our wedding program. "I have learned not to worry about love," it reads, "but to honor its coming with all my heart." It's hard not to worry, quite honestly, in our time or anytime, about making this sort of commitment to someone. But I want to honor Brandon. I want to honor the part of me that believes. I want to honor what has come before us. I want to honor us.
I can't wait to get started.
So away I go, friends, away to get married. I'll see you in three weeks or so, after our honeymoon. If you should think of us this Sunday, send a little hoot or holler or happy wish our way. We'll raise a glass to you.


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Version 9.0 of EnterpriseDB's Oracle-compatible database is now available, with new support for Hewlett-Packard's HP-UX operating system, the company announced Thursday.
Oracle recently said it would stop developing new versions of its database and other software for Intel's Itanium chips, which HP uses in server systems along with HP-UX. The decision sparked a controversy that ultimately led HP to file a lawsuit against Oracle, saying the move was in violation of agreements between the companies and was meant to force customers onto Oracle's hardware.
[ Discover what's new in business applications with InfoWorld's Technology: Applications newsletter. | Get the latest insight on the tech news that matters from InfoWorld's Tech Watch blog. ]
EnterpriseDB is hoping to capitalize on any unrest in the HP installed base, and says it is already talking to some HP-UX customers.
Both current and new users will look to take advantage of the many other new features in the release, which include a new parallel data loader that provides up to 800 percent faster performance over past versions of the database.
A new code profiler might make life easier for developers. "If they've created stored procedures that used to run for a minute, and now it takes 10, it's no longer guesswork to troubleshoot that kind of thing," said Robin Schumacher, director of product strategy.
EnterpriseDB's commercial products, Postgres Plus Standard Server and Postgres Plus Advanced Server, are based on the open-source PostgreSQL database, bundling in advanced features to the core code. The vendor also sells support subscriptions for PostgreSQL.
The 9.0 release also includes a "long laundry list" of community-developed enhancements, including streaming replication and an "upgrade in place" feature, Schumacher said. It used to be rather painful to upgrade a large database, since the data needed to be dumped out and then reloaded after the upgrade, he said. "As the name implies, you don't have to do that anymore," he said.
EnterpriseDB has long touted its ability to run Oracle workloads. Updates to the compatibility layer include support for applications written in Oracle's Pro*C language.
It doesn't promise flawless compatibility with Oracle. "We basically try to bite off the very large chunks. We don't really aim ourselves at the esoteric PL/SQL functions," Schumacher said. EnterpriseDB offers Oracle "migration assessments" that help database customers determine how difficult it will be to move their workloads.
EnterpriseDB is about to hit the 1,000-customer mark, said Karen Tegan Padir, vice president of products and marketing. Many of them have migrated from Oracle, she said.
The vendor is also taking aim at Microsoft SQL Server shops. Its xDB Replication Server can now pull in data from SQL Server.
Postgres Plus Standard Server subscriptions start at $2,495 per year. Subscriptions for Advanced Server, which offers the Oracle compatibility feature, begin at $3,995 per year.
Despite the release's new features, EnterpriseDB faces some challenges in winning new business, according to one observer.
"There are plenty of reasons to stick with PostgreSQL, but in most use cases it's hard to justify being a new adopter," said analyst Curt Monash of Monash Research. "PostgreSQL's remaining superiorities to MySQL usually don't matter that much."
In addition, "Oracle emulation is a nice feature but it's had negligible impact on the overall Oracle market," he added. "There's no real reason to migrate from Oracle to PostgreSQL except price, and often Oracle will cut you a deal to forestall a migration."
Chris Kanaracus covers enterprise software and general technology breaking news for The IDG News Service. Chris's email address is firstname.lastname@example.com.


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A native of Bremen, Dukes graduated from Muhlenberg North High School and went on to earn a degree in Exceptional Education at Western Kentucky University.
While in college, Dukes worked as a singer/musician in several Bowling Green establishments.
After college, he moved to Nashville and taught full time for three years while playing the guitar and singing in various venues around Nashville.
But then, he says, he decided he had to take the big step into becoming a full time musician.
Dukes, without a doubt, is multi-talented. He is now working as a professional singer, songwriter and producer.
Dukes said he developed his deep love of music as a child while attending church at Neals Chapel General Baptist Church in Bremen with his parents.
"I love playing stuff like Tom Petty, Bill Withers, a lot of 90s rock, Matchbox 20, Nirvana . . . I'm a fan of all types of music. I really just try to open my ears up to any type of music." — Travis Dukes
"I grew up in church, loved singing there, and was the choir director when I was 16," Dukes said.
Dukes played the saxophone in the band at Muhlenberg North High School, and then learned guitar while attending college in Bowling Green.
"In college I really got into music," he said. "After a couple of years of practicing guitar on my own, I started to play out in clubs and other venues. I guess that's how the thought of becoming a full time musician started."
But Dukes admits, giving up his aspirations to teach full time was not an easy decision.
"It really was a hard decision to make," he said. "I loved working with the students, to see their progress, and working with them on real world problems. Helping them to learn job skills. Plus, it was a very secure position."
But he said he knew that if he was going to make it as a professional musician, he would have to make music his top priority.
"My first paid gig was in college at a Chinese restaurant called The Happy Inn," Dukes said. "They paid me, and I filled up the place that day. Everyone who came out enjoyed it."
Dukes learned early on that the secret to keeping a steady schedule of paid performances is to please the venue owner while also pleasing the audience.
"It's been a lot of hard work, pleasing club owners or whomever," Dukes said. "But they are going to be pleased if their sales are up, and if people are complimentary of the environment I create. Of course, there have been times when it didn't work out, but for the most part, I've gotten a very positive response to my music, and my original songs as well . . . persistence is the key to success in the music business. And, I feel I have that drive."
A Travis Dukes show includes everything on the musical map — older R&B, classic country hits, contemporary songs and everything in between.
Dukes is constantly expanding the number of venues eager to have him perform, both as a solo act and with his band, the T-Bones.
"We perform consistently in Nashville, as well as Clarksville, Evansville, few times in Chicago, pretty regularly in Bowling Green, Owensboro, and there is talk of going down to Alabama and Florida during Memorial Day weekend. The key is just to get out there and play, and make more connections," he said.
As far as combining his songwriting talents with his growing popularity as a performer, Dukes says he would love to combine the two.
"It would be perfect to do both," he said. "I love to go out and perform my songs. But if I do have a big name entertainer interested in recording one of my songs, I definitely will not turn it down."
Dukes produced several albums including "Black and White: The Killer", "The Travis Dukes Comedy Hour" and a new EP, "dukesTunes EP".
Upcoming appearances include Bailey's in Nashville this Saturday night and March 15, 17; Tennessee Brew Works in Nashville March 28; Dublins in Bowling Green March 29; and The Backstage Bar & Grill in Evansville April 5.
This page is an archive. To learn more about archive pages click here
The responses below are not provided, commissioned, reviewed, approved, or otherwise endorsed by any financial entity or advertiser. It is not the advertiser's responsibility to ensure all posts and/or questions are answered.


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In Perfect Circle I mention the relationship between towns an villages on the banks of the Zaire River. In the novel I write about Shawaiti, a village and the Colonel Ebeya. Shawaiti is fictional, but the Colonel Ebeya isn't.
The DRC. Is a difficult country to visit. Besides shufta (bandits) there are lots of soldiers and policemen out on the prowl. They get paid very little and infrequently, therefore, tourists provide a second income.
Unless you speak good French, Lingala, Kikongo, Tshiluba, Mongo, Lunda or any other of the DRC languages, be ready to dole out backsheesh (bribes) regularly.


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Does not sound like a people's Qe to me.ReplyDelete
It is in fact a corporate Qe.
A real people's Qe is when you give people directly the money without condution to use the existing capacity.
Under the above classic socialist example people will be forced to work for corporates to access the money.
This will add costs perhaps expressed through inflation, higher tax etc etc.
The basic problem is of course a lack of distribution of the commons as it was seized many hundreds of years ago now
You can print money to increase the rate of deflation (not Inflation).... It's called the compensated price.ReplyDelete
Start with railway tickets as it the only transport mechanism that has seen a real decrease in energy consumption despite or indeed because of increased passenger numbers.
Investment will then follow,
At the moment the idea is to front run investment without a demand signal which seems crazy but from a bankers perspective it preserves relative wealth differences so is a good sin.
The investment money will merely lead to another spending Gap down the road preserving the pointless nature of current commerce which the money monopoly just love to bits.
Politicians in the UK cannot under any circumstances cannot interfere with the workings of the Cb tabernacle.
Corbyn is yet another predictable auld political soul.
For the purposes of PQE as proposed by Corbyn/Murphy Seigniorage is irrelevant as the money created will not form part of base money, that is to say that no money will be printed (or minted).ReplyDelete
97% of money creation pre-2008 was via commercial banks issuing loans (private,commercial and sovereign) and this expansion of broad money is indeed monitored by central banks and interest rates are used to exert some control over it. However there is another mechanism that controls the broad money supply and that is taxation which is in the control of governments.
The only other source of money is QE. Traditional QE is the central bank buying assets by creating money and expanding their balance sheets, but in effect these transactions are neutral as they can be unwound by selling the assets and destroying the money. The world has seen the creation of $10 trillion in QE and in UK and US the inflation rate is lower than target. So creating money in this way has not lead to inflation problems. PQE is the same as ordinary QE except that the bonds being bought by the central bank will be "corporate" bonds issued by the National Investment Bank. The NIB will indemnify the central bank for the amount of PQE in the same way that the government has done for the £375 billion QE. So no printing, no inflation, calm down and carry on.Replies
"PQE is the same as ordinary QE except that the bonds being bought by the central bank will be "corporate" bonds issued by the National Investment Bank".
Sorry, but this isn't right.
QE purchases gilts already in circulation. It is therefore simply an exchange of an existing asset for new base money. When these gilts are purchased from non-banks, bank money (deposits) also increase by the same amount. There is however no change in the net financial assets of the private sector. All that has changed is their composition.
The PQE proposal is for NEW bonds to be issued by the NIB for the BoE to purchase. This in itself is an increase in the net financial assets of the private sector. When the BoE purchased them, therefore, there would actually be new base and bank money in circulation. PQE is thus fundamentally different from QE.
This is well explained by Bill Mitchell here: http://bilbo.economicoutlook.net/blog/?p=31626
- Anonymous28 August 2015 at 21:58
Fine, but surely with PQE you just issue a few less gilts and so the net effect is similar!?Delete
I was going to cover this in a separate post, but since you've commented, I will explain.Delete
In the absence of other actions, the Bank of England neutralisating PQE's monetary expansion necessarily also neutralises its fiscal expansion. The Bank would sell the same value of gilts as the NIB bonds purchased, leaving both the monetary AND fiscal positions flat. Such a neutralised ("sterilised") PQE operation would thus simply exchange regular gilts for NIB bonds. It is not clear to me that this is in any way beneficial to the economy. Indeed it is not clear to me why it would have any net effect at all.
Issuing fewer gilts, as you suggest, would neutralise the monetary effects of PQE. However, it would actually tighten liquidity conditions in the economy, since not only would the new NIB bonds be removed from circulation by PQE but there would also be fewer gilts in circulation. This would be fiscal tightening and actually counterproductive. I would remind you that since as an EU member the UK government is unable to finance its deficit with central bank funding, issuing fewer gilts would mean cuts to government spending and/or higher taxes.
Two further flaws in PQE not mentioned above.ReplyDelete
1. PQE concentrates all or nearly all spending on infrastructure. Unfortunately there's a shortage of relevant skills (bricklayers, engineers, etc).
2. While more infrastructure may be needed, any democratically elected government also has other priorities: health, education, fighting ISIS, or whatever. The idea that 100% of a given increase in public spending should all go on one item is bizarre.Replies
In Corybn's pdf on his economic plan he writes:Delete
"One option would be for the Bank of England to be given a new mandate to upgrade
our economy to invest in new large scale housing, energy, transport and digital projects:
Quantitative easing for people instead of banks. Richard Murphy has been one of many
economists making that case."
Ireland has a huge surplus of cars and roads and yet has a major housing crisis as its people cannot afford to buy existing capacity.Delete
The UK also had a purchasing power crisis.
Any look at Uk domestic energy consumption will tell you this as despite atomic like living we see major declines in household energy consumption,
there is many reasons for this but the primary one is lack of distribution.
So in short if people cannot afford to live inside the existing stock of houses how can increasing the stock of houses help?
A Ireland independent from the bankers could have engaged in a major policy of distribution given its lower population density, returning to a fergonson tractor /2cv economy / push bike economy but distribution is far more problemic for such a densly populated country.
In many ways the UK is to far gone down the rat hole.
I will need to read Bill Mitchell's analysis but I wonder if he and Murphy agree. Murphy said a People's QE is like a Banker's QE - which they tried - but instead of giving the new money to the banks, they give it to the government to invest and spend. Mitchell mischaracterizes Wren-Lewis's take I believe.ReplyDelete
Originally Wren-Lewis characterizes a helicopter drop as a "People's QE" which confuses things. Instead of a bankers' QE - which they tried and it didn't work very well, he suggested a helicopter drop which would put newly printed money in people's bank accounts directly instead of mediating it through the banks and via lower mortgage rates.
Wren-Lewis is worried that after the next down turn, we'll be near or at the Zero Lower Bound and fiscal policy - which Coppola, Wren-Lewis, everyone prefers - will be blocked with a focus on austerity so the job will be left to a bankers' QE. But that was unpopular and didn't work well. Note that QE is done at the ZLB when regularly monetary policy can't be used. A People's QE - like a Bankers' QE - would end once they are ready to raise rates, i.e. when were' nearing full employment and inflation is rising. So the following is wrong: "So long as the BoE is still targeting inflation, it will still be pushing and pulling money in and out of the system, as required to meet demand for money at the interest rate it has set." The BoE would be doing a Bankers' QE if a People's QE wasnt' happening. It wouldn't push and pull.
Pace Bill Mitchell, Wren-Lewis would like a Government QE or People's QE per Corbyn/Murphy but worries about central bank independence, etc. Wren-Lewis in the blog post Mitchell links to:
"Suppose that a NIB is created, not on the back of QE but using more conventional forms of finance. (If the government wants to encourage it, just directly subsidise that finance with conventional borrowing. Don't be put off doing so by deficit fetishism.) Suppose we also like the concept of helicopter money - not for now, but for the next time interest rates hit their lower bound and the central bank wants more stimulus. In those circumstances, it might well make sense for helicopter money to be used not only to send cheques to individuals, but also to bring forward investment financed by the NIB, or public sector investment financed directly by the state. If those investment projects could get off the ground quickly, and crucially would not have happened for some time otherwise, then what I have elsewhere described as 'democratic helicopter money' would make sense. [2] This is because investment that also boosts the supply side is likely to be a far more effective form of stimulus than cheques posted to individuals."
NIB is a national investment bank. Tony Yates is worried it would work to well. He is worried politicians would go bananas spending and inflation would get out of control (but note about how I said a People's QE would end when the central bank is ready to raise rates. Bernanke tapered and didn't do Bankers' QE forever.) Looking at the past 40 years, the problem is the other way about. Wage stagnation and increasing inequality are the norm because of insufficient inflation and insufficient demand. Politicians would rather be "fiscally responsible" and force austerity on the economy. Yates has proposed raising the inflation target to 4 percent. That would work too. If the next economic recovery is as bad as this current one it's because of the politics, not the economics. There are plenty of ideas and Corbyn's People's QE is a good one.Replies
"Judging by campaign rhetoric, I think we can expect a Corbyn administration would err on the side of too much spending. "Delete
That might be a good thing as long as it doesn't get out of hand. They could raise the inflation target to 4 percent and allow labor markets to get tight so workers share in productivity gains.
Inflation fetishism is just as bad as deficit fetishism. The Blairites couldn't attack Corbynomics as busting the budget so they said it would cause inflation to get out of control. Murphy says it wouldn't and I believe him.
As a sidenote I see that Bill Mitchell is a prominent MMTer and I don't really understand how MMT differs from mainstream Keynesian economics. I mean Robert Murphy isn't and MMTer is he? Wren-Lewis isnt and he likes "democratic helicopter money" even if he balks at the implications for central bank independence.Delete
Richard Murhpy, not Robert.Delete
Richard Murphy didn't understand the fundamental difference between PQE and QE. Seriously, read Bill Mitchell. I disagree with Bill about lots of things but he does understand PQE and QE.
But you're not getting it either, sadly.
The Bank of England uses changes in the size of the monetary base to influence interest rates and hence control inflation. This is normally done through what are known as Open Market Operations, where the Bank buys and sells gilts on the open market. The "push and pull" of open market operations on the monetary base is what Paddy is referring to, not QE. Assuming that the Bank remained responsible for controlling inflation, open market operations would continue even if the government were compelling the Bank to purchase NIB bonds. Indeed the Bank might have to step them up (i.e. raise interest rates) to prevent inflation rising. I'm sure you can see that this would negate the monetary expansion effect of PQE. (It would also negate the fiscal expansion, but I will explain that myself in another post.)
At present, because we have excess reserves in the system due to QE (which as I explained previously simply changes the composition of net financial assets rather than increasing their quantity), the Bank of England influences the size of the available monetary base by changing the interest rate it pays banks for depositing reserves with it. Raising the interest rate encourages banks to place more money on deposit with it - thereby taking it out of circulation - and therefore reduces the size of the available monetary base. The effect is similar to the open market operations discussed above.
Whichever mechanism is used, Paddy's point stands. If the Bank of England remains responsible for controlling inflation, it will act to neutralise the monetary expansion caused by PQE.
The consensus among economists like Paddy and Tony is that the fiscal stance is too tight. They want to see an end to austerity just as much as you do. So do I. We just don't think PQE is the right way to go about it.
Frances, you're not getting it either. About half way through the article Paddy admits that he doesn't know how PQE is going to actually work in practice.Delete
"It is not clear exactly how PQE would be implemented."
So he doesn't know. He;'s trying to say 'I don't know, but', as are you. The BoE has very little effect, and they admit it. Commercial banks, when undertaking a loan, create their own reserves as part of the process. They do not need the reserves to already be there. The banking crisis was one of credit not money.
"Whichever mechanism is used, Paddy's point stands. If the Bank of England remains responsible for controlling inflation, it will act to neutralise the monetary expansion caused by PQE."
But the stimulus caused by PQE will completely bypass the BoE as the people seek to take out more loans from commercial banks. It is not how the money is raised, it is how it is spent.
Dan H,Delete
This is technically wrong, I'm afraid. Commercial banks create deposits when they lend. They do not "create their own reserves". Reserves are created only by the central bank. As reserves are needed for the deposits created by lending to be withdrawn (paid out), it is completely impossible for people borrowing from commercial banks to bypass the BoE.
Richard Murphy has not seen fit to explain the mechanics of PQE. So we are all working in the dark to some extent, I agree. But we do have to pay attention to how a debt monetisation scheme would work in the context of the current monetary framework. That is what Paddy has tried to do, and I have tried to develop further in my replies to comments here. Paddy's post is by no means the last word on the subject: indeed my purpose in posting it was to spark debate about how this might actually work in practice. I welcome constructive comments.
Dan H,Delete
This explains why banks don't lend reserves
Inflation cannot be increased as people cannot afford to consume higher prices.ReplyDelete
It's therefore not a question of increasing capacity through increased investment as it will get stranded.
World trade in coal especially has tripled since 1990.
We are currently seeing a implosion of this vast system of energy trade which will have grave consequences for industrial production in coal deficit countries.
Given the heavy albeit wasteful production of electricity by these plants the only investment worth the Uks money is a cable connecting it Hydro rich Norway which is perhaps the only viable renewable technology.
- Anonymous29 August 2015 at 08:18
Peoples QE and a national investment bank is about much more than the intricacies of monetary operations. It's about telling the privately run banks that they no longer have a free reign. They have failed in their job of capital allocation, preferring to blow bubbles than invest. This is almost entirely political. We don't need privately owned banks. We don't need to pay interest on government bonds. It's a rent-extraction machine, and it's actions are creating inequality and reducing living standards. Sure, all this could be funded with regular government borrowing, but this is about private power versus democracy.ReplyDelete
The anti-Corbyn Neoliberal or Libertarian stance of this article gives the game away let alone it is fallaciously argued. Abnormal inflation is caused by feckless banks in cahoots with government as equally if not more than monetary system illiterate governments. Average house price inflation, for example, in the UK between 1997 and 2007 was 123%. The fallaciousness of Carter's monetary system arguments are revealed in the following article by Stephanie Kelton:-ReplyDelete
Her argument should be augumented by Lau and Smihin's belief that for investment and stability reasons an economy should aim in normal circumstances to maintain a positive interest rate of return relative to inflation:-
Finally the fallaciousness of Neoliberalism's or Libertarianism's anti-government bias is best argued by this David Sloan article:-
I don't think it is remotely helpful to describe people as "anti-Corbyn" or use epithets like "neoliberal" and "libertarian". Please confine your remarks to the subject rather than indulging in speculation about the political beliefs of the author. This blog is politically neutral and I welcome commentary from both the left and the right.
We do not really know the causes of inflation. Blaming it on "feckless banks" is no more accurate than blaming it on irresponsible government, incompetent central banks, over-powerful trades unions, unfair competition, monopolies and cartels - all of which have been blamed in the past.
Asset price inflation and consumer price inflation are very different things and subject to different control mechanisms. Currently, the Bank of England targets one but not the other. You may believe this is foolish (so do I) but please don't conflate the two. Consumer price inflation is what we are discussing in this post, not asset price inflation.
Stephanie's post is interesting but does not really undermine Paddy's argument. Why does the Fed (or the combined Fed & Treasury, in her framework) have a "target rate"? Why, to meet its mandate. And the Fed's mandate is 1) price stability - ie. inflation at or near 2% 2) full employment. The BoE only has one of these, namely the inflation target.
Paddy's argument is that if PQE caused inflation to rise above target, the Bank of England would tighten monetary policy to return it to target, thus undermining the monetary expansion effects of PQE. If the government didn't want it to do this, it would either have to raise the target (which Tony Yates has advocated) or end the BoE's responsibility for inflation control. Neither of these is going to go down well with the grey vote - and it is the grey vote that is driving fiscal austerity. If it is too difficult to persuade the grey vote that austerity is harmful and deficits necessary, it is surely also too difficult to persuade them that it is ok to erode the value of their savings with higher inflation. The politics of this just don't add up.
The Lau & Smithin again does not address the point. Investment in the economy is required. It does not need to be dependent on the Bank of England buying NIB bonds. Deficit spending alone is sufficient. We can argue about what amount of deficit spending is enough, and whether the government should or shouldn't temporarily neutralise the monetary effects of deficit spending by issuing bonds in advance of taxation, but the underlying issue here is the refusal by all three political parties to countenance significant deficit spending, either for current spending or investment.
Evolutionary economics is fascinating stuff. I've dabbled in it a bit myself - and experienced the wrath of genuine libertarians as a consequence. If you think Paddy is a libertarian, you haven't met the real thing, believe me.
But again, although David Sloan's article is lovely, I don't see what on earth it has to do with this discussion. The central bank is an arm of government and its mandate is set by politicians. The whole debate is thus about the objectives of government and its democratic mandate. Currently, the democratic mandate is for fiscal austerity to "balance the books" and reduce government debt. We know that this is based on an economically illiterate argument. But our job is to change the prevailing political paradigm, not invent clever schemes to give the impression of buying into it while actually circumventing it.
PQE seriously muddies the waters. No-one is discussing the need for deficit spending. Everyone is talking about whether or not the central bank should be independent. It's a massive distraction from the real issue.
You and Paddy are making the assumption that the BoE is not part of the problem in containing inflation when it is blatantly obvious that house price bubbles are caused in part by a failure of central banks including the BoE to run "tight" underwriting standards. Part of their reason for doing that is clinging onto the dogma of Neoliberalism that markets self-equilibrise. That belief in my view is to cover the fact that those who wish to dominate others for heir own selfish advantage want to bury the issue of political equality under the spurious myth of markets achieving the common good through the workings of an Invisible Hand.Delete
Whilst from an MMT perspective Corbyn's PQE can be regarded as a work-around one of the uses Corbyn wants to put it too is to launch a large programme of affordable homes construction which would clearly also be part of the solution to contain house price inflation. The BoE's failure to fully contain house price inflation and therefore ripple-through general inflation works against Corbyn's affordable homes objective because the BoE is targetting a reduction in demand through interest rate rises. On the face of it this would appear an argument to remove central bank quasi independence although I find myself supporting Ann Pettifor's arguments this would not be a good idea.
The people you should be blaming for house price inflation are politicians. Show me the politician who thinks falling house prices are a good thing. When underwriting standards are tight, then politicians complain about "market failure" and demand that banks loosen up.
One of the big problems with an independent central bank in my view is it lets politicians off the hook. You've clearly bought the "everything's the fault of the central bank" myth.
House price inflation doesn't "ripple through" general inflation. Ten years ago the Western world had the largest housing bubble in history. But inflation was low and stable. The central banks were not asked to prevent house price inflation. They were responsible for controlling consumer price inflation, and they did their job.
What was neglected was financial stability. Central banks now have been clearly tasked with maintaining that. But they still are not responsible for preventing house price inflation.
Building more homes can't be assumed to bring down house prices. Look at Ireland in the mid-2000s.
In a nutshell Alan Greenspan, the chairman of the United States central bank, failed to recognize that he had the wrong "Invisible Hand" model. He should have been operating on the Darwinian one that aims to reconcile Individualism with Mutualism through Multi-Selection Theory. He should not have relied upon the Adam Smith "Invisible Hand" model that attempts to pretend that reliance upon Individualism alone ensures that an economy will self-balance for the common good. In consequence Greenspan failed to use the Federal Reserve's powers to stop an inflationary house bubble being blow by the private banks. He also failed to realise that house price inflation would pass-through into abnormal inflation because this was masked by the fact that the United States had become the de facto "deficit" spender of last resort for the global economy(applicable to the UK also as a continuing reserve currency and "deficit" spender):-Delete
Moving to the BoE it too under its adherence to the Neoliberal "addiction" to the wrong "Invisible Hand" of Adam Smith failed to tackle the general pass-through inflation implications of allowing a house price bubble although it has partially redeemed itself under Mark Carney. As an arm of government the BoE should have been telling both Red and Blue Neoliberal politicians that if they were not prepared to engage in fiscal spending to meet the large pent up demand for affordable homes they must move to rationing/ price controls via tight mortgage loan underwriting standards to avoid house price inflation (so yes in one sense we are agreeing about the ineptitude of politicians but I'm saying they swallowed the wrong Kool-Aid model Adam Smith's "Invisible Hand").
PQE should, therefore, be regarded as a form of political work-around mechanism to get around the national addiction to the wrong "Invisible Hand" model. The success in using it lies I believe in coupling it with appropriate restraints to avoid triggering abnormal inflation (as I've suggested in the case of meeting pent up demand for affordable homes) and setting a positive rate of interest on any state "savings" scheme.
Just to add a little more flesh to my arguments:-Delete
See Appendix 2 of Murphy's and Hine's paper then the following:-
I've already told you that asset price inflation does not flow through into general inflation, but you still keep saying it. And bizarrely you cite an article by me in The Week in support of your argument: I presume you didn't notice that I was the author. I know what I wrote in that piece. It says absolutely nothing about asset price inflation feeding through into general inflation.Delete
No-one is disputing that QE boosted asset prices. Indeed that was its purpose. Where you go wrong is in assuming that a) asset price inflation causes consumer price inflation b) central banks should control asset price inflation. Neither is true, and none of the pieces you cite support this argument.
Murphy & Hine's paper is very seriously flawed. Here is my analysis of it from 2011:
http://www.coppolacomment.com/2011/09/doomed-assessment.html and http://www.coppolacomment.com/2011/09/new-name-for-old-game_30.html
- Anonymous29 August 2015 at 15:19
Hello everyone, thanks for the comments.ReplyDelete
I shall have another crack at it.This comment will be in two parts.
I am trying to establish that PQE cannot deliver sustained extra spending without extra borrowing (or inflation) - that's the snake oil that I think has been sold.
the key point is that "spending without borrowing" *means* permanent base money expansion - it is about the size of the CB balance sheet, the rate of seigniorage. If the CB prints money and buys bonds which are used to finance spending, but later turns round and sells the bonds into private hands, that's debt financed spending, it's just that the CB held on to the debt for a while.
what determines the size of the CB balance sheet? under inflation targeting, it's some function of how the BoE's chosen interest rate interacts with the economy, demand for base money and all that. That implies seigniorage is a function of the inflation target.
One response to what I have argued could be: well yes, PQE might be inflationary, and that's no bad thing. That would miss the point. If we changed the inflation target to 4 per cent, that alone would imply a change in the rate of seigniorage. Then, under a 4 per cent target, PQE would not deliver "more spending without borrowing" over and above that.
In the post, I used an example in which the real economy, base money and broad money all grow at 2 per cent. It is perhaps worth bearing in mind that if you want money-financed spending of $Xbn, you need that CB balance sheet to expand by $Xbn *relative to what it would have been otherwise*. So if you think there are secular trends in things like the relationship between AD and inflation, the velocity of money, and whatever else you think explains the ratio of base to broad money, then fine, these variables do not all have to grow at the same rate, they can find new levels. The point is that whatever you think would have been happening to the base money supply, if you want "borrowing without spending" you need the base money supply to be growing relative to that counterfactual.
- Anonymous29 August 2015 at 15:20
second part:ReplyDelete
A lot of responses to this post have mentioned private money creation (private banks expanding their balance sheets), or interpreted me as meaning base money drives inflation (not true).
I personally think that nobody has an entirely satisfactory account of inflation and mechanical stories about demand or money also need a theory of expectations formation. But let's say for sake of argument that the difference between nominal aggregate demand and real output causes (or defines?) inflation, and that we have a 4% inflation target so the CB is trying to get AD to grow 4% faster than real output, and let's further say (bearing in mind what I wrote above about there being room for secular trends if you want them) that this means broad money created by private banks would be expected to growth at same rate too, if CB hitting target. All this would imply under current MP regime a certain rate of seigniorage, to fix ideas let's say 4% too. It doesn't matter if you want to alter these assumptions, I am just trying to set up a counterfactual, you may prefer a different one.
Now you want PQE to deliver spending without borrowing. Let's say the amount you want to spend implies that base money would have to be growing 2 per cent faster than the counter-factual. I should maybe make allowance for some use of spare capacity and productivity gain, and assume that the chosen rate 2 percent exceeds the non-inflationary rate implied by these because politicians and economists aren't good at judging things so they are just right.
If you want to say all that happens is that we get to spend without borrowing, but we don't get inflation running away, what does that imply about long term trends of ratios like base to broad, or broad to AD? You now have base money growing at 6% (in this example) - if you don't, you aren't spending without borrowing - but other things growing at 4%, with implications for ratios like base to broad and broad to AD and AD to inflation. If you have one thing growing faster than other, these ratios tend to either zero or infinity.
What I am trying to do here is show the logic of my argument without relying on any particular theory, MMT or otherwise. Whichever way you have it, sustained spending without borrowing means sustained base money supply growth over and above the counter factual, and I am trying to make clear that under inflation targeting that ain't going to happen, not because I think base money expansion causes inflation, but because expansionary spending policy does, and the BoE's inevitable monetary policy response would put the brakes on its balance sheet expansion, which would mean your spending turns out to be debt financed after all.
QE v PQEReplyDelete
QE = chancellor directs BoE to swap treasuries for reserves (flatten the liquidity schedule)
PQE = chancellor directs BoE to swap investment bonds for reserves (initially to put floor in that market, later to potentially flatten out the curve)
QE Intention = make corporate bond issues cheaper by draining away 'competing' gov't debt and so encourage endogenously financed investment, leading to growth.
PQE Intention = pay for investment, leading to growth. Creates private income directly via coupons. Help BoE get off the lower bound through covert fiscal activism.
QE Effect = Procyclical /Deflationary. BoE fails to hit mandated target. Corporates had no appetite to borrow and invest at any price. Savings desire of Non bank holders of treasuries unaffected (saved in equities and property instead). Private Income falls as coupon payments sent as remittance back to treasury.
PQE effect = stabilising at lower bound/ potential monetary inflation (if BoE allows high yields or takes loses) investment happens, productivity and growth rises, BoE gets off zero.
Conclusion: DO PQE NOWReplies
I'm no fan of QE. But I think your endorsement of PQE as an alternative is highly questionable.
You tie together additional bond issuance to finance investment with a Bank of England large asset purchase programme. It is not at all clear to me why these two need to be tied together at all. I agree that the BoE should stand ready to buy these bonds if necessary to set a floor under their price, but it already does that for government bonds anyway - that is how the target interest rate is maintained. If setting a floor is all PQE is supposed to do, that would be fine. But that is not what Jeremy Corbyn and Richard Murphy are selling.
Why do you think that increased government spending for investment is impossible unless the Bank of England buys bonds? Surely there is sufficient demand out there for sterling safe assets for a major investment programme to be financed without the BoE doing anything at all.
Why do you think that bond purchases are necessary to raise rates above ZLB? Surely a very large investment programme funded by new debt issuance would have the same effect? You are essentially saying that fiscal stimulus has no effect. That's a rather extreme monetarist position, if you don't mind my saying so.
PQE cannot provide private income via coupons. Issuing bonds would by itself, but PQE presumes that the Bank of England would purchase them - in which case the private sector would not receive the income, it would be remitted back to the Treasury. For me this would be a lost opportunity. People on fixed incomes need safe savings vehicles delivering stable returns. Bonds issued by a NIB for infrastructure development and other projects could potentially provide this. Keep them out of the BoE's clutches, please.
Why do you want to flatten out the yield curve - especially if you envisage there being some degree of private sector ownership of these bonds, as your comment about coupon income seems to suggest? Surely people should have the right to receive additional return for tying up their money for long periods?
If these bonds are sold only to UK residents, as they should be, then in my view they should deliver above-market returns. After all, the residents will spend this money into the UK economy, either now or in the future, so the returns are actually monetary stimulus. All this stuff about keeping interest rates down assumes that the government has constraints on money issuance. It doesn't.
Thank you for taking the time to answer me. I should say first that I don't presume to know exactly what PQE really would be in practice, and nor does the voting public. That's why it's politically excellent, worthy of Gideon's own play book. It's a communication tool that links the idea fiscal activism, which I think we all broadly agree is needed, with an existing policy whilst circumventing the deficit narrative. We are not going to beat that one soon, so lets not play away from home at the City ground.
So, despite fully recognizing that the BoE does not need to buy bonds to finance investment, I say let the BoE buy the bonds if need be. I agree there is demand for sterling safe assets, so one day maybe Jeremy will write a letter to the BoE telling it to set a floor and let it work out the amount, but if he ever got to write that letter the terms of this debate will have already moved far on.
It's not the purchasing of the bonds that gets you off ZLB. I never meant to imply that. It's the stimulatory effect of the actual investment, creating expectations of growth, wot does that. PQE creates coupon payments, because either 1. The BoE sells treasuries to cover purchases of NIB bonds or 2. It never actually has to buy them because it credibly promised to do it.
I have no view on the yield curve. The bank flattened it to give the gov't spending power under an orthodox fiscal thinking cap. The gov't declined the offer, but found itself spending automatically via the stabilisers. Thank heaven for those, but it wasn't the kind of spending we really wanted to have to do. Of course the gov't has no spending limit. They will never ever admit that. EVER.
I can see you want a NIB, and one free of the BoE's clutches. But a NIB is just another journal in the treasury book, and it's the treasury who won't play ball right now, not the bank.
P.S Why are you so scared of the foreign sector holding gilts?
Your view of this seems to be refreshingly different. I agree with a lot of what you've said. I suppose it's just my anti-political nature but I really don't like playing Gideon at his own game. I want openness, honesty and transparency. This doesn't deliver that.
I don't think the political argument adds up anyway. The same people who want the government to "balance the books" because they believe this will preserve their wealth also object to deficit monetisation because they believe it will erode their wealth. And however you look at it, PQE is deficit monetisation or as these people prefer to call it, "money printing". I've had so many arguments with people about this....
I object to the foreign sector holding gilts because they have no incentive to hold them as a long-term store of value, unlike UK residents. They do not use sterling as a currency either now or in the future, they do not pay taxes in the UK and they do not benefit from government spending. Therefore they are far more likely to dump their holdings if the UK government does something they don't like, such as running a large deficit. We really don't need to be dictated to by foreign investors. However, ending foreign holdings of gilts means closing the trade deficit, which isn't going to happen any time soon. So I am dreaming, really.
But NIB bonds don't have to be sold to foreigners. They can be sold to the people who will benefit from the investments. UK residents should invest in their own future.
On that note of reconciliation may I counter your slight pessimism by requesting you duet 'don't give up' with Richard Murphy on your blog, the one with Gabriel and Bush.Delete
- Anonymous29 August 2015 at 15:40
I think you're wrong about effects of QE (and intentions) but idea of using PQE now to get off ZLB is interesting. But now what Corbyn's selling.
Agree QE effects are not a matter of record. We can all take our view on that. The intention however is. At para. 4
Further PQE effects: higher inflation lowers private debt burden. Productivity and growth gains raise employment. V increases. Money hits tax lines. Sterling weakens leading to improvement in current account position. Deficit falls. Private sector repairs balance sheet. Employment. confidence improves, BoE regains upward traction on yield curve and raises base rate without fear of curve inversion regaining de facto independence from treasury. ACTION THIS DAY.ReplyDelete
It's absolutely absurd to pretend that PQE isn't a viable vehicle for growth because of the BoE's inflation targettting remit when the BoE itself allows inflation leakage on private banks lax underwriting standards, for example, previously mortgages for homes for personal consumption now lax loan to income underwriting on Buy-to-Let house mortgages. The vendors of homes are often in a windfall position from their sales to push up market prices as they spend. The lax underwriting standards are, of course, a consequence of a flawed belief system that markets always self-equilibrise. This was the famous flaw in his thinking that Alan Greenspan admitted to in appearance before a congressional committee in the immediate aftermath of e 2007/2008 Financial Crash.ReplyDeleteReplies
No-one has said that investment spending isn't a viable vehicle for growth.Delete
Actually current investment spending is actually increasing costs over and above the surplus it creates.ReplyDelete
Much of it is because of European energy and climate policy.
I am sorry but it is screaming off the charts.
You can only distribute a industrial surplus when you actually create a net surplus.
This is clearly not happening as energy intensity and most importantly final consumption is following a negative trend.
We can see this in action when observing the pitiful exchanges of electrical energy between Ireland and the UK.
Neither have a surplus to trade with eachother as they have nothing to give.
Only the flow of energy between surplus France and the UK is working as they have more recent legacy nuclear units.
The UK policy is to impose industrial / finance capital laws on top of essentially diffuse rather then concentrated energy production.
This is simply unprecedented.
The loss of energy production last year was possibly bigger then the 1942 Battle of Atlantic Low point.!!'
The policy is to simply impose scarcity so as to maintain concentration.
We are currently witnessing the true face of capitalism as defined by Bolloc and Chesterton.
If the policey is to reintroduce agrarian energy density then fine - but you must you must introduce distribution mechanisms alsoReplyDelete
What we are witnessing is the worst of both systems.
We are observing the concentration of a smaller pie.
This is pure high criminality of the worst kind.
The connected capitalists are desperate to keep abundant products scarce (Think of the Irish water debacle) while wasting vast amounts of energy chasing tokens (UK and Irish transport energy use is on the rise again......ReplyDelete
I am afraid the problem is far deeper then many naive socialists realize - obviously the problem is the London scarcity Dragon itself.
Was it not that Mick fellow who slayed the beast ?
The UK is a vast rentier structure with little to no domestic production.
It has been increasingly that way inclined since the enclosure period.
If anything it seeks to drag the whole world down with it.
What's most depressing is the reaction of ordinary people when you propose to give stuff away free of chargeReplyDelete
(for example giving mortgage serfs the house without condition given the corrupt nature of the transactuon) which would have untold psychological and physical benefits for the person, family and society.
Something very great was lost when the Christian heritage vanished from these Isles.
People cannot grasp the parable of the loaves and the fishes, the water into wine etc.
It's so sad really.
All is lost
Civilizations collapse has happened already I fear but as we are not sentient people we failed to notice.
The Capitalist materialist religion cannot produce the goods now(it's Opiate) and will morph into its true demonic form.
If the policey is to reintroduce agrarian energy density then fine - but you must you must introduce distribution mechanisms alsoReplyDelete
What we are witnessing is the worst of both systems.
We are observing the concentration of a smaller pie.
This is pure high criminality of the worst kind.
Actually current investment spending is actually increasing costs over and above the surplus it creates.ReplyDelete
Much of it is because of European energy and climate policy.
I am sorry but it is screaming off the charts.
You can only distribute a industrial surplus when you actually create a net surplus.
This is clearly not happening as energy intensity and most importantly final consumption is following a negative trend.
We can see this in action when observing the pitiful exchanges of electrical energy between Ireland and the UK.
Neither have a surplus to trade with eachother as they have nothing to give.
Only the flow of energy between surplus France and the UK is working as they have more recent legacy nuclear units.
The UK policy is to impose industrial / finance capital laws on top of essentially diffuse rather then concentrated energy production.
This is simply unprecedented.
The loss of energy production last year was possibly bigger then the 1942 Battle of Atlantic Low point.!!'
The policy is to simply impose scarcity so as to maintain concentration.
We are currently witnessing the true face of capitalism as defined by Bolloc and Chesterton.
Actually current investment spending is actually increasing costs over and above the surplus it creates.ReplyDelete
Much of it is because of European energy and climate policy.
I am sorry but it is screaming off the charts.
You can only distribute a industrial surplus when you actually create a net surplus.
This is clearly not happening as energy intensity and most importantly final consumption is following a negative trend.
We can see this in action when observing the pitiful exchanges of electrical energy between Ireland and the UK.
Neither have a surplus to trade with eachother as they have nothing to give.
Only the flow of energy between surplus France and the UK is working as they have more recent legacy nuclear units.
The UK policy is to impose industrial / finance capital laws on top of essentially diffuse rather then concentrated energy production.
This is simply unprecedented.
The loss of energy production last year was possibly bigger then the 1942 Battle of Atlantic Low point.!!'
The policy is to simply impose scarcity so as to maintain concentration.
We are currently witnessing the true face of capitalism as defined by Bolloc and Chesterton.
This Murphy fellow is just too thin-skinned, Frances.ReplyDelete
His comments about you on his blog are thin-skin paranoia and not worth worrying about.
I happened to read that Bill Mitchell post - an unusual thing for me to do. It's quite good in the sense of pointing out the basic distinction between legitimate QE as monetary policy and "people's QE" as fiscal policy.
And I don't regard "Snake-Oil" as a particularly over the top epithet in this particular case.
In the context of monetary and fiscal matters, I haven't seen a term more pathetic than "helicopter drop" until running into "people's QE".Replies
I'll back off mildly from this comment. I've browsed a number of articles out there, and I don't think anybody is particularly coherent on this subject. There are a number of dimensions to be strung together in a methodical explanation of the various QE versus/cum fiscal permutations. The Mitchell post is OK, but on second reading not great and even mildly confused. That said, I have nothing further to offer myself.Delete
JKH, the proper term for "helicopter drop" is "Basic Income" :)ReplyDelete
Here is my take:
PQE does work by creating money, but then so does all bank lending and govt spending. If it was "borrow and spend" it would be the same.
But it is certainly different from QE, which an asset swap (bonds for reserves) and has little effect on anything. Calling it "People's QE" is misleading.
Although the mainstream refers to QE as "money printing." And Murphy has gotten all political.
Another post by Bill Mitchell that people should probably read:ReplyDelete
- Anonymous1 September 2015 at 11:10
This entirely makes sense (even to a layman), but I had the following responses:ReplyDelete
1. You assume this is primarily a monetary policy. But isn't the policy more about getting stuff built? And even if the monetary effects will be unwound immediately by inflation targeting, surely the buildings, factories, houses, etc. remain standing?
2. Whilst the net effect of PQE might be neutralized, that is not the same as saying there will be no monetary effect on the economy. PQE would replace a blanket approach to monetary policy, which applies to all sectors of the economy, with a nuanced policy which discriminates. This would encourage productive aspects of the economy which need a leg up (e.g. house building) at the expense of less productive/damaging bits, which don't (e.g. buy to let).
I'd be very interested in your thoughts. Sorry if I posted this several times, something was up with the website.Replies
- Anonymous1 September 2015 at 11:19
1. Absolutely. Public spending builds stuff. My argument merely that claim of being able to do so without associated borrowing or inflation is wrong.
2. not sure what you mean by monetary effects, but yes to extent PQE associated with particular capital allocation decisions (build this, not that) it can hope to increase supply of productive public investments. The track record of national development banks is mixed, and I would expect a certain amount of bad projects, but NDB could be a good idea on net. I even think showering some countercyclical PQE financing on the NDB could be a good idea.


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On BBC Radio this morning, EU Justice Commissioner Viviane Reding said that the EU had investigated Google's new Privacy Policy—which gives Google access to the activity of all its users across all its services—and found that it was in violation of privacy laws.
According to Reuters, Reding offered the following examples when pressed about how Google was breaking EU laws.
"In numerous respects. One is that nobody had been consulted, it is not in accordance with the law on transparency and it utilizes the data of private persons in order to hand it over to third parties, which is not what the users have agreed to."
Now it will be curious to see if Google universally backtracks on the new policy, only changes it for EU users, or if they try and fight whatever mandates may be handed down to them in the courts. [Reuters]


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Carrie Phelps is a PhD student in the Healthcare Systems specialization in Saybrook's School of Mind-Body Medicine. (Carrie Phelps is seen on the left above with colleagues at the National Wellness Conference). Carrie has been attending and speaking at the National Wellness Conference for the past 16 years. This year's Conference was especially rewarding for her as she presented with her friend, Saybrook colleague, and business partner Char Conlin. Char and Carrie conducted a breakout session called Contrary to Popular Practice: Building Wellness Programs for the 21st Century to a packed house. The presentation was based on the information revealed in Carrie's and Char's pilot study, which focused on the examination of the characteristics and attributes of a traditional health promotion program within an organizational system (in order to gain a deeper understanding of what works and what doesn't work within traditional health promotion programming).
In addition to the breakout session, Carrie co-facilitated the conference 3-day Coaching Academy, which included presentations and coaching demonstrations by representatives from the International Coaching Federation (ICF). The coaching academy was designed to introduce leading-edge information on wellness coaching and to provide coaching demonstrations and networking opportunities for coaches from various backgrounds.
Within the coaching academy, Carrie presented on the topic of Energizing Emotion: Mind-Body Coaching Skills That Help Participants Celebrate and Transform Emotion. This session engaged academy attendees in mind-body skills such as "soft belly" breathing, mindfulness meditation, and "shaking and dancing." Participants learned about the profound connection between emotion, cognition, perception, and performance. Many of the coaching academy participants expressed enthusiasm for the insights they gained on how emotions—energy in motion—can serve as a wonderful personal guidance system for both the coach and the client, and how mind-body skills can be an important and effective way to help coaching clients celebrate and transform emotion.


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Dear Mexican,
Why is it that every Mexican I know refuses to eat chocolate? My in-laws drink things I wouldn't clean my carburetor in. They fill their piñatas with every kind of hard candy—but no chocolate! I bring out a bag of M&Ms and everyone backs away to the far side of the bar. Mole doesn't count. It has chocolate, sure, but chocolate held in check by the chelating effects of a boiled chicken. I mean real chocolate. The kind my wife turns up her chato nose at. I asked her about this on Valentines Day. (I had to give her some strawberry-something-or-other.) I put it to her that chocolate comes from Mexico, and yet no one in her family will go near it. Is there something you people haven't been telling us? And she does that whistling-at-the-ceiling bit. She thinks she is being funny. She is messing with my mind, is what she is doing.
Have you noticed that Mexicans who refuse chocolate remain basically normal? A little slow to pick up the check in restaurants, but they are not drooling, batshit crazy. Meanwhile, white people—who named the Hershey Bar after the site of the world's first nuclear meltdown—are disintegrating into madness? Jan Brewer sightings are rampant in Arizona. Orly Taitz was on the ballot in California. All of this, as civilization hurtles toward the end of the Aztec calendar—the Aztecs, who invented chocolate and then vanished from the earth! Is it paranoia to speak of a coming Chocolate Apocalypse?Concerned in ColoradoDear Gabacho,
Last week while the Mexican spoke to a high-school class, a student asked the following: "What would you rather confront—a horse-sized duck, or a hundred duck-sized horses?" It was a silly question, but it was OK for the student to ask it because he's a high-schooler (the answer I gave, by the way, was the horse-sized duck—you never want numbers to overwhelm you. Just ask the American Southwest, or those who defended the Alamo).
Your query reminds me of that pregunta in its randomness, except without the charm, insight, or any sense whatsoever. Ever think your in-laws might be diabetic? Ever think that they won't eat American chocolate, which is essentially sugar colored in cacao? Do you know that the Mayas were making chocolate when the Aztecs were still living in the swamps? Chocolate is still huge in Mexico, but it's markedly more bitter, better, and largely made in artisanal batches that vary in taste from region to region; even the biggest seller, Nestlé-owned Carlos V, is far better than anything you can get in the Estados Jodidos. Kudos to you, though, for working in "chelating" into your question, although the only part most Mexicans will get is the chela part.I commute a lot in the Los Angeles area, and see many Mexican gardeners with trucks filled to impossible heights with piled-up shrubbery, tree clippings, and the like—but where are they taking all this refuse? I have several theories: that they are either driving around all day letting a branch drop one at a time until the truck bed is empty; that they are scouting dumpsters all over town that they can illegally dump their refuse into at night; or that the piles of greenery are actually hiding a newly smuggled batch of illegals. Your feedback most appreciated.Mulch ManDear Gabacho,
No, we hide our illegals in fake trunks and scout dumpsters to toss in concrete. And those gardeners are taking their clippings to a place called the "municipal dump," which I hear has the same address as your email@example.com


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text: Back EBV Antibody Does this test have other names? Specific Epstein-Barr virus antibodies, EBV-specific antibodies What is this test? This is a blood test that checks for antibodies to the Epstein-Barr virus (EBV). Most people are infected by this virus at some point. EBV often doesn't have any symptoms, but it can cause mononucleosis (mono) or other conditions in some people, especially teens and young adults. Why do I need this test? Your health care provider may order this test if you have symptoms that might be caused by mono, such as sore throat, fatigue, fever, rash, swollen glands in the neck, or an enlarged spleen. He or she will use the test to see if EBV is causing your illness. Your doctor may not order the EBV antibodies test unless your results for other mono tests are negative. What other tests might I have along with this test? If your doctor suspects that you may have mono, you will likely have other blood tests such as a mono test, also called a mono spot test. This test looks for different antibodies in the blood. You may also have a blood test to check your blood cell counts. People with mono often have higher than normal levels of white blood cells called lymphocytes. Blood tests to check for other infections may also be done. If you have a sore throat, you may also get a throat swab to check for strep throat. What do my test results mean? Many things may affect your lab test results. These include the method each lab uses to do the test. Even if your test results are different from the normal value, you may not have a problem. To learn what the results mean for you, talk with your health care provider. If the results for your EBV antibodies test is negative, it likely means you have never been infected with EBV. If your test is positive, it could mean a few different things. Some types of EBV antibodies are present in higher numbers during an active infection. Other EBV antibodies mean that you had an infection in the past. Depending on the type of antibodies your test shows, your health care provider can find out more about what is causing your illness. How is this test done? The test requires a blood sample, which is drawn through a needle from a vein in your arm. Does this test pose any risks? Taking a blood sample with a needle carries risks that include bleeding, infection, bruising, or feeling dizzy. When the needle pricks your arm, you may feel a slight stinging sensation or pain. Afterward, the site may be slightly sore. What might affect my test results? A positive EBV test means that it's likely you had an EBV infection at some point. It does not always mean that you have recently been infected, nor does it indicate how severe your infection is. Antibody levels can remain high for years, even if you don't show any symptoms right now. People can have EBV without feeling ill. How do I get ready for this test? You don't need to prepare for this test.


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If any company can build a full-sized tablet computer capable of rivaling Apple Inc.'s iPad, it is Samsung Electronics Co. Except it didn't.
It is not because of a lack of effort. The Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1, running Google Inc.'s Android operating system, was the best non-Apple tablet of 2011. Apple thinks it's because Samsung violated their patents, and in June a federal judge halted US sales of the Galaxy Tab, part of a broader legal battle between the two tech giants.
Samsung has already moved on, with a tablet that is even better. The Galaxy Note 10.1 adds a more powerful processor, a stylus for drawing or writing on the screen, a handwriting recognition program that actually works (sometimes), and honest-to-goodness multitasking that lets you do two things at once. All in all, this is one nice tablet — but still not nice enough to topple number one.
The new Samsung is priced about the same as the iPad: $499 for a version with 16 gigabytes of built-in data storage, or $549 with 32 gigabytes. It's sheathed in plastic; the one I tried came in gleaming white. It feels warm and comfortable in the hand, though not as solid as the iPad, with its metal case. A pair of stereo speakers are discreetly mounted up front. Along the upper edge, there's a MicroSD slot for up to 32 gigabytes of additional data storage, an extra that the iPad lacks.
Also, there is an infrared emitter, the kind that can talk to home TV sets. An iPad can also double as a remote control, but it requires the use of a Wi-Fi home network. With the Samsung, it's just point and tap, once you've set up the built-in software to work with your TV or set-top box.
The memory slot and remote control feature are nice technical touches, but have you ever heard an iPad owner complain because it does not have them? Me neither. Yet the owners of the newest iPads would complain if you tried to take away the laser-sharp high-resolution display screen. Apple calls it the Retina display, and users love its exceptional clarity. Samsung has responded with a screen that's decent enough, but nowhere near the Retina's resolution.
Then again, the iPad only allows you to run just one app at a time, with others shut down or running in the background. The Galaxy Note's smartest new feature, Multiscreen, gives you a better option. Multiscreen works with a handful of the tablet's standard apps, such as the Web browser, video player, and e-mail program, and lets you run two apps side-by-side. For instance, you can run a movie download on one side of the screen, while looking up fun facts about the movie on the Wikipedia website. I routinely do such things on my laptop, and it's about time for a tablet with this kind of serious multitasking.
Multiscreen works especially well with S Note, a program to write notes on the screen using a plastic stylus tucked into the body of the tablet. I did not like the cheap feel of the stylus or the badly placed control button that I constantly pressed by accident. But S Note, which I tried last year on an Android phone, seems much more useful here.
Jotting on a tablet screen is a good substitute for tapping a virtual keyboard, and the handwriting recognition software worked much better this time around. It is far from perfect, but it deciphered my cursive handwriting a lot more accurately than it did last year.
You can also cut and paste from one Multiscreen app to another. It is easy to drag an image from the photo gallery and drop it into a document you are editing. And speaking of images, the Note 10.1 comes with a tablet-friendly version of Adobe Systems Inc.'s Photoshop editing software at no extra charge.
With so many strong features, Samsung may hope that it has finally developed a serious threat to Apple's dominance in tablets. But for the same price, you can get an entry-level iPad with the splendid Retina display.
And Samsung's got an even bigger problem: Android. The software just doesn't have the elegant, intuitive look and feel of the iPad. Besides, relatively few of Android's hundreds of thousands of apps have been optimized to run on tablets; Google won't say exactly how many, but it is surely not nearly as many as Apple, which boasts 225,000.
Samsung is already drawing blood from Apple in the vital smartphone market, with superb handsets like the Galaxy S III. Perhaps it can attain equal success in tablets. But not yet.
Hiawatha Bray can be reached at firstname.lastname@example.com.


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West End stabbing victims attacked at random: VPD
Vancouver police say the seven people injured in a horrific stabbing spree in the West End neighbourhood Thursday night appear to have been attacked at random.
Sgt. Randy Fincham said the only thing connecting most of the victims is that they were at an apartment building at Barclay and Bute streets at around 6:45 p.m. when their assailant struck.
"It appears that a lot of these victims were unrelated to each other and they had no dealings with each other tonight. It was something that possibly happened in the hallway," Fincham said.
Officers and paramedics were called to the scene and found the victims, who range in age from their 20s to 60s, suffering from various stab wounds.
Six of them, three men and three women, were rushed to hospital with serious injuries. The seventh did not require hospitalization.
Witnesses told CTV News a chaotic scene unfolded as officers scoured the area for a suspect still on the loose.
"There were about six or eight cop cars on the scene. People were hanging over their balconies directing police, so obviously they could see the [suspect]," onlooker Angela Robinson said.
"I heard the police shout, 'Vancouver Police, stay where you are,' a few times and then I thought it would be best to get out of there."
Police confirmed a 33-year-old man was found at a suite in the building and arrested. The suspect does not appear to be a resident, however.
"We're looking at how he got into the building, or what he was doing in the building at that time," Fincham said.
Detectives from the Vancouver Police Major Crime Section and the Forensic Identification Unit were called to the scene and Fincham said they would be there overnight.
CTV will have updates on this story throughout the day..... stay tuned....


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Nate Silver Disses Gallup Poll That 'Turned Out Badly' in 2008, Missing by 4...But So Did the NYT's Poll
Is there a little tarnish on the New York Times' respected star pollster Nate Silver? He got some guff last week for dismissing Mitt Romney's large leads in the Gallup tracking poll.
In an October 18 post on his FiveThirtyEight blog at nytimes.com, "Gallup vs. the World" (it also appeared, heavily edited, in print) Silver claimed the Gallup poll was overrated and "its results turn out badly" when it's an outlier, noting that in 2008 it "had a four-point miss," predicting an 11-point win by Obama that turned out to be a seven-point margin.
Guess what other big-time poll had Obama pegged as an 11-point winner in 2008? New York Times-CBS. Though to be fair, in 2008 Silver was not with the Times but writing for his own blog after cutting his political teeth at the left-wing blog Daily Kos (Silver calls himself a "rational progressive.")
Silver wrote October 18:
Usually, when a poll is an outlier relative to the consensus, its results turn out badly.
You do not need to look any further than Gallup's track record over the past two election cycles to find a demonstration of this.
In 2008, the Gallup poll put Mr. Obama 11 points ahead of John McCain on the eve of that November's election.
The average of the 15 or so national polls released just before the election put Mr. Obama up by about seven points.
The average did a good job; Mr. Obama won the popular vote by seven points. The Gallup poll had a four-point miss, however.
Follow the link above, scroll past the first 15 polls, and you'll spy another one not included in the RCP headline tally, perhaps since it was completed too early: The CBS/New York Times poll, showing Obama up by 11 points, exactly the same as the Gallup poll that Silver warned "turned out badly."
Silver continued to boost the hopes of Obama boosters in Tuesday's "Cutting to the Chase: What Are The Odds?" (The linked post is much longer than the one that made it into print Tuesday morning.)
Saying that the race "could go either way" is an obviously correct statement -- but also one devoid of insight. We dare to pose a more difficult question, the one that a gambler or an investor might naturally ask: What are the odds?
We calculate Mr. Obama's odds of re-election as being about two chances out of three.
Silver concluded:
While we can stipulate that the race is very close, however, the central reason we see Mr. Obama as the modest favorite is simple: he seems to hold a slight advantage right now in enough states to carry 270 electoral votes.


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Hi, everybody! Tim Carmody here, guest-hosting for Jason this week.
There are fewer third-party Twitter applications in active development than there used to be, since Twitter built its own clients, clamped down on apps that "replicate Twitter's core user experience," limited the number of new user tokens third parties could get, and otherwise kinda spiked the well.
But there are still some gems out there, including some I was surprised I'd never heard of. Joanna Geary, Twitter's head of news in the UK, recently put together a shortlist of 30 third-party webapps useful for journalists. Here are three I've been using and enjoying:
- Followerwonk includes a number of useful searching and sorting tools, some free, some paid. I was especially impressed that it can give an inferred gender breakdown of your follows and followers that includes "undetermined" as a category. (A lot of other tools break everything down into male and female, which isn't a good binary for human bodies, let alone the zoography of Twitter.) Being able to search Twitter bios is useful too.
- TweetBe.at is a list manager. Twitter's been neglecting lists — on the website "Lists" is even hidden behind an otherwise superfluous "More" button, inside your own profile — but they're really useful. It's just that even in the best third-party apps, it's not easy to add or edit them. This fills that gap.
- My favorite Twitter tool right now is BioIsChanged, which (you might guess) tracks bio and avatar changes for the folks you follow on Twitter. You can see when someone changed jobs, took a new headshot, or otherwise tweaked what they're about online. What I like best is its customization: you can get new bio notifications in real-time (too much for me!), in daily or weekly digest emails (perfect!), or just whenever you check into the website. I'm getting better at pretending to be superhumanly attentive already.
Two other Twitter tools worth trying that aren't part of Geary's list but are worth a look:
I just started with Nuzzel, but it comes highly recommended by Christopher Mims and Lauren Goode, two reporters whose judgment I trust. Like Flipboard and Newsle and a handful of others, it pulls web links from your Twitter and Facebook feeds, sorting them by the most-shared. A good way to see what everybody's talking about at a glance.
And Happy Friends is a mailbox/outline reader for Twitter that's hard to explain but fun to use once you get into it. It's not like anything else out there, which might be the best compliment I can give it.
Update: I missed an app that I've been using for so long and so often that I forgot to mention it. ThinkUp, which offers "analytics for humans." The best thing about ThinkUp are its email "insights" digests, which tell me things like which users I'm talking to most often, whether I'm retweeting too many of my own replies (hint: when I asked you what you name your computers yesterday, I retweeted probably a few too many of your answers), and other little mini-analyses.
I also have to put in a plug for YoruFukurou, my favorite client for Mac. (I hope your tokens don't run out, YF.) It's a customizable, high-powered app that handles lists and spam reporting and link and image expansion well, but it doesn't have that oh-my-god, Ozymandias-watching-30-TV-screens-at-once thing that TweetDeck has. An elegant weapon for a more civilized age.


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Les Aquanautes #2
Vincent Mallié studied History in Jussieu for three months, before switching to an artistic career. He joined a Paris art atelier in 1992, where he joined the finer points of the profession. He also studied graphism for two years, before becoming a storyboarder and apprentice background artist. With fellow artist Joël Parnotte, he created a first short comic story called 'Hong Kong Triad' for Golem in 1996. 'Hong Kong Triad' became a series of three albums published by Le Témeraire, starting in 2000.
Mallié and Parnotte also started the SF series 'Les Aquanautes' at Soleil in 2000. In 2003, he began a new series together with writer Jérôme Félix, called 'L'Arche', that ran until 2007. In that year, he started the fantasy series 'Le Grand Mort' with Régis Loisel and Djian at Vents d'Ouest. He illustrated album 7 in the series 'La Quête de l'Oiseau du Temps' from a script by Loisel and Serge le Tendre in 2010.
Le Grand Mort


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AnyEvent::XMPP::Error::MUC − MUC error
Subclass of AnyEvent::XMPP::Error
This method returns either:
If the joining of the room took too long.
If the room we requested the configuration from didn't provide a data form.
If changing the subject of a room is not allowed.
If this is an unidentified message error.
If we got a presence error the method "presence_error" returns a AnyEvent::XMPP::Error::Presence object with further details. However, this class tries to provide a mapping for you (the developer) to ease the load of figuring out which error means what. To make identification of the errors with XEP−0045 more clear I included the error codes and condition names.
Here are the
more descriptive types:
Entering a room Inform user that a password is required.
(Condition: not-authorized, Code: 401)
Entering a room Inform user that he or she is banned from the room
(Condition: forbidden, Code: 403)
Entering a room Inform user that the room does not exist and someone is currently creating it.
(Condition: item-not-found, Code: 404)
Entering a room Inform user that room creation is restricted
(Condition: not-allowed, Code: 405)
Entering a room Inform user that the reserved roomnick must be used
(Condition: not-acceptable, Code: 406)
Entering a room Inform user that he or she is not on the member list
(Condition: registration-required, Code: 407)
Entering a room Inform user that his or her desired room nickname is in use or registered by another user
(Condition: conflict, Code: 409)
Entering a room Inform user that the maximum number of users has been reached
(Condition: service-unavailable, Code: 503)
The condition and code are also available through the AnyEvent::XMPP::Error::Presence object returned by "presence_error", see below.
This method returns a human readable text if one is available.
Returns a AnyEvent::XMPP::Error::Presence object if this error origins to such an error and not some internal error.
Returns a AnyEvent::XMPP::Error::Message object if this error origins to such an error and not some internal error.
Robin Redeker, "<elmex at ta−sa.org>", JID: "<elmex at jabber.org>"
Copyright 2007, 2008 Robin Redeker, all rights reserved.
This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the same terms as Perl itself.


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Friday, 21 January 2011
Fitness Friday - week 4
6 comments:
Big congrats. Good for you. You must feel fab!ReplyDelete
energy levels coming back! just need to shake off ear infection and get back on the exercise programme :-)ReplyDelete
oh wow well done! keep it up!ReplyDelete
well done you!! your doing so well, i have never looked into this diet but if mine does not work out I may switch to thisReplyDelete
Adele xx
Adele the Rosemary Conley is good as its a long term plan you can use to maintain as well as lose. Did 3 months of Lighter Life lost 5.5 stone but didn't retrain to healthy eating...ReplyDelete
Hope your ear infection gets better soon!ReplyDelete
Enjoy those extra calories! Does your diet let focus purely on calories or are you supposed to aim for certain foods? I can think of some great treats in the 100 - 200 calorie range that are filling but taste great :)