EclectEcon

Richard Posner deserves the next Nobel Prize in Economics

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Why SouthWestern Ontario Should Receive Aid from the Rest of the World

I live in the Southwestern portion of the Province of Ontario, Canada. This geographic region has never been a recognized distinct political entity. But it should be, and it should receive aid from everyone else in the world as we continue our struggle for independence and recognition.

Early in the history of this region there were warring tribes, including the Neutrals, the Huron, the Chippewa (Ojibwa?), et al. Later, as other tribes fled the invasions of white settlers, they, too settled in the area, and these newcomers fought murderous wars with the earlier tribes. Then as the British settled the area, there were new various local settlements, all under the rubric of "Upper Canada".

But we never had our own, distinct government in Southwestern Ontario. 

Then, as Quebec passed its onerous language and signage laws, many Anglophones moved to Ontario, especially southwestern Ontario. The influx of people to southwestern Ontario means that we are now a people.

We are not just Ontarians; we have a special identity and we have needs that differ from those in other parts of Ontario specifically and North America in general. We have never been fully assimilated into the rest of Ontario. We are a unique people, and we deserve support and recognition as such.

To that end, I propose the creation of an organization: The Ontario Liberation Authority. The OLA must continue the struggle for our own nationhood and freedom from the rest of Ontario and Canada. 

These People Want to Teach the Youth of Today and Tomorrow

Good grief.

There is a professor in the College of Education at The University of Western Ontario named John Palmer. Last fall, I began receiving email from his students, given that my email address has my/our name in it and his doesn't quite.

At first I informed the students they had made a mistake and asked them to tell their prof about the confusion. After this went on for a month or two and became increasingly serious, I wrote to the professor, asking him to be sure to let his students know his correct address.

He responded that he had done so several times already and that he would be sure to do so again.

Since then I have continued to receive email messages from his students. I have two reactions:

1. I no longer respond and I no longer set these students straight.
2. These are people who think they are qualified to be educators.

 

Is Apple Really Listening to Me?

Recently I posted that even though I have both an iPhone and an iPad2, I would really like a slightly bigger iPhone and/or a tablet small enough to fit in my coat or cargo pants pockets.

There is a chance my wishes (and undoubtedly those of others) are being answered by Apple. Sneak peaks indicate the iPhone5 will be larger than the iPhone4, and there are rumours that Apple is considering a smaller version of its iPad.

iPhone5

Jack sent me this article about the possible features of the iPhone5. I was struck by the potential for increased speed and other features, but what really caught my eye was this photo:

If this picture can be posted (hope so!), notice how much bigger the screen will be on the 5 vs. the 4! It looks as if the planned size of the iPhone5 is exactly what I was asking for. Given some of the promotions of the Galaxy Android, I'll be surprised if the iPhone5 is not this big, e.g. about the size I mentioned in my previous post on this topic. 

iPad

I was delighted with the prospects of a larger iPhone. But then I read that there is also a chance that Apple might choose to bring out a smaller iPad to compete with all the 7" tablets that are quite understandably eating into the iPad market share. From Slate,

Apple is testing a version of the iPad with a smaller screen, say officials at some of the company's Asian suppliers. 

According to the Wall Street Journal, Apple has shown screen designs for an 8-inch iPad (compared with the 9.7-inch iPad 2) to suppliers, and is working with companies that include Taiwan's AU Optronics and LG Display of South Korea on producing test versions of the new product, which may or may not actually go into production. ...

Samsung and Amazon are doing well in sales of smaller-size tablet offerings, including Amazon's 7-inch Kindle Fire and Samsung's Galaxy Tab, which comes in three sizes, including a 7-inch.

Clearly I am not the only consumer who likes the possibility of using a slightly larger iPhone and/or a slightly smaller iPad. Long live consumer sovereignty!

Money and the Monetary Base: the changing relationship

In the fall of 2008, the US monetary base exploded. The Fed bought up tonnes of assets, thereby pumping all sorts of reserves into the monetary system. See this graph:

That action should have set off a gigantic monetary expansion and thwarted the deflationary/recessionary pressures the economy was suffering then, but it didn't. 

There are two reasons the sky-rocketing monetary base did not head off or at least dampen the depth and length of the recession:

1. There was a truckload of liquidity that dried up when the shadow banking system collapsed. That by itself probably caused broadly-based measures of the money supply to shrink somewhat, but the increase in the monetary base should have more-than-offset that effect.
2. More importantly, the Fed began paying interest on the required reserves that commercial banks held with the Fed. Rather than lend and create more money and stimulate the economy with all the new reserves created by the Fed, instead the commercial banks just sat tight, reduced their risks, and made buckets of profits, paying next to nothing on deposits while earning a bit more than that with their deposits at the Fed. 

Here is a graph to show what happened:

I see there was a much smaller effect in the Euro area, and I have no idea what caused such a huge drop in the UK. 

But this graph (h/t Kais) likely highlights an important reason for the depth of the recession and the slow recovery. I wrote about this bizarre policy change back in 2008 here. So did Scott Sumner. The rationale for the policy still puzzles me. 

I gather the Fed (along with Paulson and Geitner, et al.) were trying to shore up the solvency, not to mention liquidity, of the major banks in the US by having the Fed give them some money that otherwise would have reverted to the US treasury (net profits of the Fed, to the extent that the Fed is unable to spend or hide them, go to the Treasury). At the same time, it looks like a monumental transfer of wealth to their friends on Wall Street. Ugh.

Here's a Surprise

Norman Finklestein comes out AGAINST the BDS and Occupy crowd (h/t Elder of Ziyon)

Things Students at The University of Regina Should Consider and so should everyone else

The student union at The University of Regina has voted to support a campaign of boycotts, divestiture, and sanctions against Israel. While I will not defend absolutely everything Israel does or has done, here are some things the students there and everyone elsewhere should consider [from Melanie Phillips, "The Algorithm of Malice"]. I have added a number of additional points below this lengthy quote:

There are two big and connected points made by this little video. The first is that the widely-held belief that the Arabs were the only refugees from the Arab war against the newly reconstituted country of Israel (a war which started in 1948 and continues to this day) -- is totally untrue. There were many more Jewish refugees from Arab countries. As a result of the 1948 war, some 500,000 Arabs left Palestine – most of them as a result of having been told to do so by Arab regimes certain of destroying the new Jewish state. [emphasis added] But some 850,000 Jews were then attacked, stripped of their citizenship and ethnically cleansed from their homes in Arab states -- causing the destruction of ancient Jewish communities in those countries which had well predated the arrival of Islam in the Middle East. And what happened to those refugees? They were absorbed without fuss into Israel ..., where they form around half of the population, and into other countries.

The second point which is crucial to an understanding of this conflict is that the Palestinian refugee issue is entirely artificial and bogus.  Not only were the Arabs from Palestine deliberately refused access to other Arab countries [EE: again emphasis added. Note that there was no country called Palestine then. Just Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, and Egypt in addition to Israel.] in order to turn them – as a UN refugee official admitted – into an open sore as a weapon to be used against Israel. Even more astonishingly, the UN itself was a party to this malevolent strategy.

For it chose to treat the Palestinian Arabs differently from any other refugee group. All other refugees are dealt with by the UN Refugee Agency, whose goal is to re-settle them. But for the Palestinian Arabs, the UN set up the UN Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) – whose [apparent] goal was to maintain the Palestinian Arabs as permanent refugees.

To that end, while in every other conflict refugees are defined merely as people who flee their homes, the UN decided that amongst the Palestinian Arabs refugee status would be transmitted from generation to generation. As a result, the number of Palestinian Arab ‘refugees’ has not diminished but risen over the years from 550,000 to 4.7 million. These are the people who are now said to deserve the ‘right of return’ to Israel.

Of course, the idea that 4.2 million of these people are actually refugees is totally absurd. If that standard was applied generally, the entire Jewish diaspora -- not to mention untold millions around the world who have been settled for generations -  could suddenly claim refugee status. ...

Now at long last Israel has begun to realise that yes, incredible as it seems, sentient people do actually believe such lies -- – and that if the free world is to be restored to the axis of reason, they must be countered head-on by the true facts of history. 

So long as there are rockets landing in Israel, so long as there are neighbouring governments pledged to annihilate Israel, and so long as there are terrorists bombing and killing civilians in Israel and threatening the very existence of its citizens, it makes all the sense in the world to me that the Israelis would create checkpoints and barriers. 

Keep in mind, too, that after Israel ceded the Gaza strip to the Palestinian Arabs living in Gaza (forcing the Israelis living there to leave!), much of the infrastructure they left in place was immediately pillaged. And of course the rain of rockets from Gaza continues with Hamas in control in Gaza now. Furthermore, people blamed Israel for the later blockade of Gaza when in fact Egypt participated in it as well. 

Finally, if you want to defend some downtrodden people, consider defending the residents of North Korea, Tibet, southern Sudan and Darfur, Cuba, and even many Venezuelans. But the plight of many Palestinian Arabs is at least as much the result of policies of neighbouring Arab countries who:

1. encouraged them (and mostly their ancestors) to leave Israel in 1948, promising to drive the Jews into the sea. Granted, some Arabs were indeed driven out of Israel, but most left voluntarily expecting to return only a few weeks later.
2. When Jordan, Syria, and Egypt failed in this war, they blamed the Jews for taking the property of those who fled. Furthermore despite their mistaken policies, these governments refused to accept the fleeing Palestinian Arabs as full-fledged citizens, instead forcing them to live in refugee camps.
3. There are tonnes more Arab students in Israeli universities than there are Jews in Arab universities.

Finally, remember that for centuries before World War I, the entire region was ruled by the Ottoman Empire. After WWI, the British had a mandate to govern the middle east and probably botched it (though it is not at all clear that at the time anyone could realistically have done much better, given the mutually exclusive competing claims and factions).

After WWII, the British slowly re-carved the region, creating Israel, among other countries. If the Palestinian and other Arabs of the region had accepted the initial partition of 1947-48, there would be no problem (well, okay, there would be much less of a problem). 

I'm Tempted to Volunteer to Be a Human Test Subject for Potential Preventive Measures

Two of my four grandparents experienced varying degrees of dementia or Alzheimer's disease late in their lives. As I age, of course everytime I lose a word or forget a name or can't find something I have misplaced, I worry that dementia will afflict me, too. 

So I read this item (BBC News) with considerable interest.

Destructive plaques found in the brains of Alzheimer's patients have been rapidly cleared by researchers testing a cancer drug on mice.

The US study, published in the journal Science, reported the plaques were broken down at "unprecedented" speed.

Tests also showed an improvement in some brain function.

Specialists said the results were promising, but warned that successful drugs in mice often failed to work in people.

... 

After one dose in young mice, the levels of beta-amyloid in the brain were "rapidly lowered" within six hours and a 25% reduction was sustained for 70 hours.

In older mice with established amyloid plaques, seven days of treatment halved the number of plaques in the brain.

The study said there were improvements in brain function after treatment, in nest building, maze performance and remembering electrical shocks.

Researchers Paige Cramer said: "This is an unprecedented finding. Previously, the best existing treatment for Alzheimer's disease in mice required several months to reduce plaque in the brain."

... 

"We need to be clear, the drug works quite well in mouse models of the disease. Our next objective is to ascertain if it acts similarly in humans," he said.

His group is preparing to start trials in a small group of people to see if there is a similar effect in humans.

At this point, the limited human trials will be with victims of Alzheimer's disease. My guess is that it will be a long, long time before researchers are able to test using this or a related drug as a preventive measure.

However, it should be possible, using retrospective studies, to examine patients who used the drug as cancer patients to see whether the incidence of Alzheimer's disease has been lower for them than for a comparable group. I hope this study is done soon and done carefully.

My First Concert with this Group (Encore.... The Concert Band)

is on Sunday afternoon (2pm).

A fantastic singer, Denise Pelley, will be performing with the band.... sort of a 1950s really big band sound for most of her numbers.

 I'm way back in the horn section and find I must practice frequently just to hold my own there.

I love that so many groups use photos of French horns in their logos! This one even has a detachable screw-bell (like mine).

The John "P" Palmer Memorial Urinal"Because He's #1"

Over six years ago I posted that if anything, I'd like to have a urinal dedicated in my name:

When I retire, I want my employer to dedicate a urinal in the Socionomology Department to my memory (but, like BenS, I'd rather hold a dedication ceremony now, while I am alive, so I can enjoy it, too). It turns out that the concept of "The John Palmer Memorial Urinal" is neither unique nor original.

This morning, former colleague Brian Ferguson wrote in email about a related effort at Dixie State College in Utah. 

In a brazen effort to raise funds, Dixie State offered naming rights to individual bathroom stalls in a musical theater company's planned building. ...

Laugh if you want, but Dixie State isn't the first cash-hungry college to seek money for bathrooms.

As first reported by Above the Law, Harvard Law School recently opened the Falik Men's Room. Like tuition, bathrooms seem to cost more in Cambridge. William Falik told Above the Law he received the honor - if you want to call it that - after donating $100,000 to his alma mater to create a public interest fellowship in his father's honor....

Not all would-be bathroom benefactors have such open-minded alma maters. The venture capitalist Brad Feld approached the Massachusetts Institute of Technologyabout 10 years ago offering to endow a bathroom. After a few months of back and forth, he said, MIT officials told him that would be inappropriate. Feld was shocked, having thought the college would use his proposal as a chance to upsell him on his annual giving.

But Feld was vindicated when he paid to name a bathroom after himself in a University of Colorado at Boulder science building. John Bennett, director of the university's Alliance for Technology, Learning & Society, offered Feld a campus restroom for $25,000 after hearing about his rejection at MIT. Feld, who lives in Boulder, agreed immediately. He visits his masterpiece of plumbing every couple of months and occasionally checks in there on foursquare. ...

A University of Pennsylvania donor funded a bathroom renovation in the campus library. His philanthropy had one catch -- that the walls be lined with plaques reading, "The relief you are now experiencing is made possible by a gift from Michael Zinman."

Note that all I was suggesting was a urinal be named after me, not an entire washroom and not even a stall. So I mentioned that in email to some colleagues at The University of Regina when I forwarded Brian's email message to them. 

Sure as shootin', a colleague from there obliged and sent this photo:

 

One of the Best Health-Type Videos I've Seen

The message: being more active tends to reduce risks of health problems. 

http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/story/2012/01/11/toronto-viral-video-doctor-health.html

More Fun from Google

An in-joke among string players, I think: type the word "violists" into the Google search bar. The next line then asks, "Did you mean violinists" [h/t Ellen]

For My Friends in Europe (and Elsewhere); Snowpeople Suggestions

It is cold and snowy in Europe but not here in London, Ontario. In fact, the forecast is calling for our temperatures to be up near +8C (45F) over the next day or two.

If you have snow and would like to make some snowpeople, here is a site with some great ideas (from Calvin and Hobbes Snowman House of Horror).

Inspired by these cartoons, a number of years ago my younger son, Adam Smith Palmer, and a friend made a snowman lying on the ground with a sign post coming out of its head and ketchup that point. 

I hope all of you enjoy the snow.

 

Asymmetric Interest Rate Risk: If Interest Rates Were Rising, Would Obama Be Pushing Mortgage Refinancing Legislation?

The NYTimes has reported that once again President Obama is urging the US Congress to pass legislation that would make it possible for homeowners to refinance their mortgages at the currently very low mortgage interest rates. 

“I am sending Congress a plan that will give every responsible homeowner in America a chance to save about $3,000 a year on their mortgage by refinancing at historically low rates,” he told an audience in Falls Church, Va. “No more red tape. No more runaround from the banks.”

These types of plans bother me for several reasons:

• When banks grant mortgages, they do so in a highly competitive market. People can, and do, shop around to get good deals. Not all homebuyers shop around or negotiate hard, but many do.... enough so that the rates strongly tend to be driven by the forces of supply and demand in the market for lendable funds.
• Given that mortgage interest rates are competitively determined when someone takes out a loan, I see no reason why those who choose to sign up for a long-term mortgage should expect to be able to refinance at lower rates if mortgage rates drop. They could have opted for shorter-term loans.
• If homebuyers get to refinance their mortgages if interest rates decline, should financial institutions be allowed to require refinancing of the loans at higher mortgage rates if interest rates rise?
• One aspect of mortgage financing is that both the homebuyer and the mortgage company are speculating about future interest rates, whether they like it or not. If a homebuyer thinks interest rates are going to fall, s/he can take out a short-term mortgage and refinance the loan a few years later. People who have done that over the past two or three years have done very well as a result. At the same time, if a homebuyer thinks interest rates are going to rise, s/he will have an incentive to lock in lower long-term mortgage interest rates (an option not available for most (any?) homebuyers in Canada). 
• Lending institutions are also speculating about future interest rates. They lend long-term and borrow short-term. If they lend money long-term at low interest rates and then interest rates rise, these institutions have to pay higher rates to attract deposits (i.e. to borrow short-term). This divergence between long rates and short rates contributed mightily to the savings and loan crisis of the 1980s. To cover this risk, the institutions charge higher rates for longer-term loans. If interest rates rise, they are partially covered. If interest rates fall, they make big profits.
• Many lending institutions in Canada offer variable-rate mortgages. When interest rates fall, borrowers end up with lower monthly payments. But if/when interest rates rise, borrowers who took out mortgages under these terms will end up with higher monthly payments. 

Suppose the US Congress actually passes a law requiring lenders to allow people to refinance their loans if/when interest rates fall (but, given the bias against big financial institutions, does not allow the banks to require refinancing if interest rates rise!). The effect will be to reduce the number of mortgage loans made (i.e. reduce the supply of lendable funds) and drive up interest rates, especially for the long-term loans that involve the greatest interest rate risk. 

The result will be that US and other financial institutions will gravitate away from issuing long-term loans, granting only mortgages that are renewable with short-term maturities, e.g. two-year or five-year terms. Homebuyers will no longer have the opportunity to lock in low rates for long terms.

Quite frankly, given the unsettled political environment in the US and given the potential threats of further interventions in the mortgage markets by the President and some members of Congress, I don't understand why any financial institutions issue long-term mortgages. A plausible explanation for their doing so must be that they can foist off the interest-rate risk onto other gubmnt agencies. And apparently that is what is being proposed:

For those with privately held loans, the president will ask Congress to allow the Federal Housing Administration to refinance their mortgages in a program to be financed by a fee charged to large banks based on their size and the riskiness of their portfolios. The estimated cost of the program would be $5 billion to $10 billion, depending on the number of participants. Only houses whose values fall within F.H.A. guidelines, from about $270,000 to $730,000 depending on location, would qualify.

So the gubmnt will allow smaller financial institutions to have issued long-term mortgages to borrowers, and then allow borrowers to refinance these loans at their advantage. This is a money-losing proposition for the lenders. And so the gubmnt will tax the large banks to subsidize the lending institutions who in turn now have an incentive to subsidize asymmetric interest rate speculation by borrowers: if interest rates go up, the borrowers win by having their mortgages locked in at low rates; and if mortgage rates decline, the borrowers win by being able to renegotiate at the expense of big banks. 

Sheesh. What a way to increase distortions in the economy.

Now That I Am Unemployed...

As most EclectEcon readers know, I am unemployed at the moment. At least according to the Statistics Canada definition, I am unemployed: I do not have a job, and I am (somewhat) actively seeking work. 

When someone asked me my occupation for the programme that is distributed by the concert band I have recently joined (I don't know why they list occupations of their members, but they do), I wanted to tell them "squeegee kid", but I've never actually done that job. 

Ms. Eclectic suggested "Undecided". I like that category since I am not quite sure what I want to do with the rest of my life. For example, here is one possibility I have been considering:

There is a building downtown in London, Ontario (where I am now living) that plays classical music through the speakers near the entrances, very loudly, in an effort to keep the riff-raff from hanging out there. In the spring, I'm thinking of wearing my tux, top hat,  and white gloves and conducting the music.

And then I saw this cartoon (h/t "classical music humor" on FaceBook) which seems relevant:

Tablets. Still Not Right for Me.

After I had my iPhone for a few months, I wondered if I might prefer something just a bit bigger..... not so big that it wouldn't still fit in my shirt pocket, but maybe even a half inch bigger in width and length would be nice. 

I read a lot of novels on my iPhone. A slightly bigger screen would be nice. I also check email and Facebook on my iPhone (especially when I wake up in the middle of the night). Typing on the small screen is pretty hard, which helps explain why some of my email correspondence is so brief or non-existent. 

And so I wondered about whether I might like a tablet. In the end, though, I'm not at all enthused with tablets, even though I have two of them. Details:

About 7 months ago (early summer, 2011) Ms. Eclectic bought us both iPad2s. She absolutely loves hers. I'm okay with mine. I love the "Wow!" factor. And it is sometimes easier to read novels on it than on my iPhone -- but not always. Unfortunately, the iPad2 is just too big and bulky for me to carry around all the time, whereas my iPhone is in a pocket whereever I go. If I'm waiting somewhere, I can whip out my iPhone and read. That's not so easy with my iPad. So size and convenient portability are issues for me.

But so is extendability/expandability. I would love to have a tablet that has easy access to my files via an SD or micro SD card, something not available on an iPad or iPhone.

Also, initially we tried to use the iPad2s as substitutes for our laptops by trying various cases that had keyboards. None of them was satisfactory -- several had keys in the wrong place, and others had poor typing response. After trying quite a few, we just gave up on this idea. An iPad is not a substitute for a full-featured laptop. Typing on an iPad is easier than typing on an iPhone, but nowhere near as easy as typing on a laptop. So I try to avoid doing much email work or Facebook typing on even the iPad; and I never try to write a blog post on my iPad (much less my iPhone!).

Other than these three drawbacks, I quite like both my iPhone4 and my iPad2. But these drawbacks are enough to keep me looking.

At times I have thought I might really like a 7" tablet. It would fit in my jacket pockets, and it would fit in the extra pockets of most cargo pants/shorts. I'd be especially tempted if it had a slot to take an SD card.

Over the holidays, I gave some consideration to getting a Kindle Fire, but I am not at all keen on storing my files in Amazon's cloud: I don't always have wifi access, and I have some files that I consider private.

A few weeks later, when RIM's Playbook went on sale, I nearly bought one. Then I learned that there was no Kindle app for the Playbook. Huh? Since reading is one of the things I like to do with my toys, the Playbook is out for now.

Shortly after Christmas, my son and I each got 7" tablets by PanDigital. These tablets are at best quasi-Android, difficult to load apps on (I never figured it out), and extremely slow. I loaded quite a few books in epub format onto an SD card and used that card in the tablet (a nice potential feature), but quickly discovered the reader was bogged down with so many books there. The PanDigital is a convenient, almost okay tablet that has slow access to the internet and FaceBook, but it's just too slow and incompatible (or at best inconveniently quasi-compatible) with other programmes to suit me. Also, it might be possible to load a Kindle app on the PanDigital, but I never figured out how. Thank goodness they were quite inexpensive.

Next, I might look at the Samsung Galaxy 7. It looks to be a full-fledged, fast Android tablet with the Kindle app pre-loaded, and it accepts a micro SD card (only up to 32gb, however). Judging from the specs and the reviews, it should be pretty much what I'm looking for. But given that I already have two tablets (one and a half, really), I think I'll hold off for now. Also, I'm not terribly eagre to try to work out synchronizing my iPhone with an Android tablet, and I'm not ready to move completely to Android with everything either.

I understand that Apple is bringing out an iPad3 soon. I'm sure it will be very nice. But I also fully expect it will not have a 7-inch version, nor will it have a card slot for loading extra music, videos, and books.

So I'll wait and keep looking. I think what I might like is something like a Macbook Air or a Toshiba Portege with a touch screen (maybe in a swivel lid?) for a laptop. However, I'm still not sure I want that AND a tablet to carry around. If you have any suggestions, I would appreciate them.

More Toothless Treaties from the EU

Once again European leaders have announced a treaty to deal with the sovereign debt crisis in Europe, most notably resulting from fiscal profligacy in Greece, Portugal, and Italy. These agreements are toothless. They have no enforcement mechanism, and they do nothing different from what the initial EU and Euro treaties did: they extract promises from all parties that they will act to reduce their annual deficits and, if they do, then other countries might help them through the difficult periods. From WaPo:

European leaders adopted a groundbreaking new treaty Monday that binds them to imposing caps on deficits and government debts to combat the painful financial crisis that has sabotaged prosperity across the continent and left it slipping toward recession.

The treaty, endorsed by 25 of the 27 European Union governments, was intended as a gesture to show skeptical financial markets that European governments are at last committed to gaining control over lax borrowing habits that over the last four decades have helped create dangerously high debts.

I nearly lost my coffee onto the computer screen when I read that. As the article further notes,

... [A] chorus of European officials and economists have questioned the wisdom of the treaty in the first place. The pact was unnecessary, they contend, because European rules — merrily ignored over the years — already forbid excessive government deficits ...

These promises might sound nice politically. But unless they can be enforced (how?), they merely prolong the agony and open the door for protracted gamesmanship. 

What will Germany (and France? others?) do if Greece (along with Italy and Portugal?) does not get its fiscal house in order? 

• Invasion and conquest are not likely options.
• Tell them they must try harder.
• And we really mean it this time.
• Kick them out of the EU and the Euro pact? 

The last option is the only realistic one. The only question is, how long before it happens, before Greece de facto defaults even more on its debt by abandoning the Euro, and consequently many financial institutions, counting on bailouts from the IMF and their own gubmnts, lose buckets of money? Or will the taxpayers of these countries hosting these banks once again be required to bail out the stockholders and creditors of those financial institutions? 

This is moral hazard, writ large on an international scale.

- - - -

Addendum: Stratfor points out that a variant of the first option listed above is not beyond the realm of possibility:

The German government proposed last week that a European commissioner be appointed to supplant the Greek government. While phrasing the German proposal this way might seem extreme, it is not unreasonable. Under the German proposal, this commissioner would hold power over the Greek national budget and taxation. Since the European Central Bank already controls the Greek currency, the euro, this would effectively transfer control of the Greek government to the European Union, since whoever controls a country's government expenditures, tax rates and monetary policy effectively controls that country. The German proposal therefore would suspend Greek sovereignty and the democratic process as the price of financial aid to Greece.

Though the European Commission rejected the proposal, the concept is far from dead, as it flows directly from the logic of the situation.

 The EU rejected this proposal. Understandably. How might the EU enforce it if Greece, at the last minute, refuses to hand over the controls to their gubmnt?

 

A New Promotion from Delta Airlines??

The juxtaposition of these two items in the seat-back pocket made me laugh:

I don't recall ever having to pay for those bags in the past.

[reminds of the 1950s Shelley Berman skit about flying]

Google Auto-Completion: Here's some info I never expected to see

I use Google Search a LOT. 

This morning, I was trying to remember which tennis match at the Australian Open had involved a rally in which the combatants had a 42-shot rally.

So I opened Google and started typing "42 shots Australian Open".

After having typed the first part "42 shots", I was rewarded with this fact:

42 shots = 1.86313236 liters

I did some further calculations. It turns out that Google assumes a shot is 1.5 fluid ounces. 

I'm sure I shall make great use of these facts many times.

Supply Management, Risk, and Exploiting Consumers

A few weeks ago, I posted a link on Facebook to an article criticizing supply management schemes in the agriculture industry in Canada. Supply management raises prices to consumers by restricting the supply of farm products such as milk, eggs, and chickens. It does this by limiting the amount of quota (licenses to produce given amounts). And when supply is restricted, prices are driven up by the forces of supply and demand. The article focused on the role of marketing boards (who enforce supply management) in restricting the choices of consumers, limiting our ability to buy farm-fresh, less-"manufactured" produce. But it also nicely summarized the criticisms from most economists concerning supply management:

The Canadian food cartel goes by its own special name: “supply management.” Critics have charged that supply management makes food disproportionately expensive (especially for the poor), cripples our agricultural sector and is holding us back from entering lucrative trade deals with Asia.

In response to this article, a former student wrote,

Yes, quota is expensive - but what it does do is allow organizations (like farm credit canada) to lend out money to farmers because of a 'guaranteed' price. 

and in a later comment he wrote,

[B]esides farm credit canada - I am not sure that any financial institution uses quota as collateral. In fact - sure about that.

These two comments about supply management require some careful consideration. 

His first comment suggests that there is some over-riding social justification for providing a non-market mechanism to reduce price variability and risk for farmers. I don't see it. Farmers (especially now, but perhaps less so 50 years ago) are in touch with markets all over the world and can readily deal in commodity futures to hedge their risks. Providing high, stable prices is not the only way to reduce the risks that farmers face.

Essentially, the student is arguing that consumers should be forced by marketing boards to pay higher prices as a way of buying insurance for farmers to protect the farmers from price variability. This argument never held much sway for me even before farmers could trade futures on the internet. If farmers (or any businesses, for that matter) are concerned about price variability, they can save more during the good years to see them through the lean years. If doing so is costly to the farmers then, to be blunt, perhaps some farmers (likely the least capable ones) would exit the industry, and prices will rise (or stop falling as much) enough to cover all the costs and risks of all those remaining in the industry. 

Both the market solution and the marketing board solution for dealing with risk lead to higher prices. However, the market solution lets the market determine what risks should be compensated and by how much. Furthermore, it is abundantly clear that marketing boards set supply restrictions that are too tight and force prices higher than they would otherwise be. The evidence: farmers are willing to pay millions of dollars for quota. The only reason they do so is that they expect returns that are sufficiently high to cover the opportunity costs of buying the quota. And they only reason they can expect such high returns is that they receive higher revenues from higher prices.

The student raises an interesting question in his second comment. If quota reduce risk, why won't financial institutions allow farmers to declare that quota are assets that can be pledged as collateral for loans? One possibility is that there is high political risk attached to the quota --- at any time a more libertarian gubmnt could be elected that would abolish supply management schemes. I doubt this argument should carry much weight. More likely, the quota cannot be pledged as collateral because of some legal fiction that they still belong to the gubmnt (as is the case with taxi licenses in some jurisdictions) even though they can effectively be bought and sold.

As a result, we have double gubmnt intervention in the markets for commodities: (1) marketing boards restrict supply and force up prices. But then farmers are unable to use the quota as collateral, and hence (2) we have the farm credit intervention as well. 

What a mess! And because the quota have value, untangling the mess to move toward more nearly market-oriented solutions will be politically difficult, if even possible.

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Before readers get the wrong idea, I am quite sure there are many marketing boards like the various vegetable marketing boards in Ontario that do far less harm because they do not have the authority/ability to practice supply management. These boards do pretty much the same things that are done by trade association-type groups in many jurisdictions in the US. My only question about these groups in Ontario is why the gubmnt provides them if private trade co-operatives can accomplish the same things.

does ROC mean "return ON capital" or "return OF capital"? or is this just a hidden Madoff-type Ponzi scheme?

Can you imagine buying into an income fund that pays over 9 percent? In today's market? That's what the BMO (formerly Bank of Montreal) paid last fall. From the Globe and Mail (h/t BenS):

 The BMO Monthly Income Fund pays a fixed monthly distribution of 6 cents a unit, or 72 cents annually. Based on the fund’s Oct. 17 price of $7.57, that implies a yield of about 9.5 per cent.

How on earth did they manage that? And if it's legitimate, how do I buy into that fund?

Well, they didn't do it by beating market indices, and they didn't do it with judicious management. Here is what they did do:

...[C]onsider that the fund posted an average return of just 3.1 per cent for the five years ended Sept. 30. A skeptical investor might well ask how the fund can afford to pay such a hefty distribution. Answer: By giving investors their own money back. [EE: huh??]

Accountants call it return of capital (ROC), and here’s how it works: When the fund’s fixed distribution exceeds the amount of interest, dividends and realized capital gains generated by its investments (after all fees are paid), it makes up the difference with ROC.

Where does the fund get this capital that it is returning to investors? From the money paid into the fund by investors! The numbers seem based on unrealistic expectations:

Taking into account its management expense ratio (MER) of 1.57 per cent, the fund would have to make more than 11 per cent, before the MER, to generate a net return of 9.5 per cent to cover its distribution. But given the fund’s conservative asset mix of roughly half equities and half fixed-income and cash, that seems unlikely.

... [I]f we assume (generously) that the bond component will earn 5 per cent, before fees, the equity component would need to appreciate by more than 16 per cent annually.

Funds like this seem like group annuity funds more than anything else.... You pay a bunch of money up front to receive a monthly payout that will eventually exhaust your principle. That's what happens when you buy an annuity.

But in this case, it is an entire group of investors who are buying something like a group annuity. The longer the fund can attract new suckers  investors, the longer the fund will last, and the longer an initial investor can receive a monthly cheque before the fund folds. 

What am I missing? This sounds more like a Ponzi scheme than an income fund.