Wednesday, April 1, 2009
Saturday, December 20, 2008
Hostelity
Oh where my adventures have led me.
Charter 08 and Chinese Censorship
Unsurprisingly enough, China's internet censorship has bounced back up in the last week, including the New York Times. Kristoff's asked if anyone is still reading, with some interesting responses. Curious times indeed.
23.
Now, rest, reading, probably further posting later today.
Friday, December 19, 2008
Things I'm reading that you should read too
Regardless of the weather, the internet is full of interesting and useful things, two of which I'll pass on:
1. There's a great article about Samuel "Dictionary" Johnson in the New Yorker this month. What a deeply interesting and strange and lonely person. Sample:
2.) The Atlantic scores an interview with Gao Xiqing, head of China's dollar investments. Very interesting. Also, brilliantly titled. And scary.The dictionary’s ostensible purpose of settling and “fixing” the language was a chimera. Its real, implicit purpose was to reassure a growing new world of middle-class readers that there were rules, and someone who could give them. Young men on the street, people in boats on the Thames, bluestockings at dinner parties would stop him, gather up their courage, and ask him how to pronounce “irreparable.” Johnson was sometimes annoyed by the constant demands on him to be the No. 1 Word Man, full of wise definings. As he said once, “we all know what light is; but it is not easy to tell what it is.”
I was predicting this many years ago. In 1999 or 2000, I gave a talk to the State Council [China’s main ruling body], with Premier Zhu Rongji. They wanted me to explain about capital markets and how they worked. These were all ministers and mostly not from a financial background. So I wondered, How do I explain derivatives?, and I used the model of mirrors.
First of all, you have this book to sell. [He picks up a leather-bound book.] This is worth something, because of all the labor and so on you put in it. But then someone says, “I don’t have to sell the book itself! I have a mirror, and I can sell the mirror image of the book!” Okay. That’s a stock certificate. And then someone else says, “I have another mirror—I can sell a mirror image of that mirror.” Derivatives. That’s fine too, for a while. Then you have 10,000 mirrors, and the image is almost perfect. People start to believe that these mirrors are almost the real thing. But at some point, the image is interrupted. And all the rest will go.
When I told the State Council about the mirrors, they all started laughing. “How can you sell a mirror image! Won’t there be distortion?” But this is what happened with the American economy, and it will be a long and painful process to come down.
I think we should do an overhaul and say, “Let’s get rid of 90 percent of the derivatives.” Of course, that’s going to be very unpopular, because many people will lose jobs.
Thursday, December 18, 2008
Election Night Pt. 3
Protests!
So as many readers may be aware, there's been a rather large shake-up in the Canadian government in the last few months. Stephen Harper, the Conservative prime minister, has inspired very little confidence with his economic policies and as a result the opposition announced he would be removed from office and they would form a coalition government in his place, likely with Michael Ignatieff as its head. This is an unsurprisingly controversial move, since Canada has no real history of coalition government and the only way to make it a real majority coalition is to involve the Bloc Quebecois, who the conservatives suggest would tear the country apart with their seperatist leanings. But where there is controversy, there are rallies, and as it so happens one of them happened literally in my backyard.
Of course I went, and I borrowed my roommate's camera. (Thanks Bojan!) Here is the afternoon in images:
A first take. The building in the background is city hall.
Mathematics, once again obscuring as much as it reveals. Thanks math.
Party Bigwigs also made appearances: