Bags are packed. Cab is called for the morning. The folder with the last round of reservations and itineraries is sorted and placed in the carry-on. The final small gift bought, the final meal before cleaning out the apartment's fridge.
Time for the vacation to end. Time to go home. Already, since yesterday, OS feels himself get into gear for life back home. Tomorrow includes a business meeting in London, even. The time off was so sweet while it lasted.
England is quite a place. The alarming headlines, even if true, don't tell the story of the people who live here. They are resilient, mainly cheerful and good-humored. I visited small houses, with small kitchens, lived in by people who drive small cars. The walls are lined with books, the small gardens are often small masterpieces of design. They don't understand places like Brentwood, Tennessee, with its square miles of big brick boxes with pick-ups in the driveway driven by people who haven't read a book in years.
The old WWII sign 'Keep Calm and Carry On' (and variations) has popped up again, on shirts, mugs, fridge magnets, etc. It summarizes what OS has seen here--a determination to muddle through and be happy anyway. They have seen worse, and their parents and grandparents much much worse. It's not hard to spot where the Luftwaffe did its dirty work seventy years ago, and one hears old East London accents well away from the old neighborhoods, as the inhabitants had to be relocated in the war's wake. Each little church and school seems to have a plaque recording the names of the boys lost to the two world wars--and the lists stretch on and on.
As far as the recession goes, if the streets full of shoppers are any indication, there's not that much of a downturn still in place. Groceries brim with fresh everything, and prices there are pretty reasonable. People aren't driving old cars, the trains are full but not overrun, and run on schedule. And with rare exception, people here seem uninterested in staying aboard the EU ship while it scuttles itself. A cabbie refused a Euro coin proffered, half in jest, saying, 'No mate, not interested. It won't be worth anything soon enough.'
Again, this is the south of England, in a university town, so the impression may be skewed. But morale seems pretty high, which OS did not expect.
So, home again, to the wild wooly United States, and OS's beloved small-town life.
He will miss this place as he departs.
Wednesday, January 4, 2012
Wednesday, December 28, 2011
The Day After The Day After Boxing Day, Thoughts From England
OS has enjoyed his quiet days here in a university town in England. There is nothing like looking at different real estate and faces to help calm the mind and give some perspective. OS, being on vacation, has no dramatic insights to offer, but he has been impressed by scenes, anecdotes, vignettes, and shares them here.
1. If there's a recession on, it's hard to tell by the Christmas shopping. The stores have been packed here, and the reports from London about the shoppers on the 27th tell of eye-watering sales figures. Now, granted, a university town is more prosperous than many other places, but the majority of the people I encountered on the streets are only indirectly attached to the university--faculty, staff and students have all bugged out on holiday.
2. It's uncanny to observe how American popular culture and mores have penetrated the UK over the years. OS and his sainted bride were serenaded while standing in queue for a concert by a choir singing 'Rudolf', 'Chestnuts Roasting On An Open Fire', and 'Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas', all three songs amongst the most-played songs in American history. OS also walked the streets and heard buskers playing dixieland music, and one gent singing Hank Williams songs.
3. Inspirational moment of the year was an episode of 'The Choir', following Gareth Malone as he forms a choir made up of the wives of British servicemen on deployment in Afghanistan. They learn to sing, begin to bond, and Gareth gains their trust enough for them to share the letters they write and receive to/from their husbands. From this, he consults with a composer to create an anthem for them to sing to the Queen in Royal Albert Hall. Anyone not in utter tears from viewing this has no soul.
It is the number-one single on the UK pop charts. Wonder if the purveyors of that aural pornography known as rap will take notice? This is where the culture is, people returning to the marketplace to buy records that move them.
Moh, latuh, ya'll. Traveling to other parts of the island today for lunch with friends.
This is a great place, a great people. The headlines, per usual, don't begin to tell the story.
1. If there's a recession on, it's hard to tell by the Christmas shopping. The stores have been packed here, and the reports from London about the shoppers on the 27th tell of eye-watering sales figures. Now, granted, a university town is more prosperous than many other places, but the majority of the people I encountered on the streets are only indirectly attached to the university--faculty, staff and students have all bugged out on holiday.
2. It's uncanny to observe how American popular culture and mores have penetrated the UK over the years. OS and his sainted bride were serenaded while standing in queue for a concert by a choir singing 'Rudolf', 'Chestnuts Roasting On An Open Fire', and 'Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas', all three songs amongst the most-played songs in American history. OS also walked the streets and heard buskers playing dixieland music, and one gent singing Hank Williams songs.
3. Inspirational moment of the year was an episode of 'The Choir', following Gareth Malone as he forms a choir made up of the wives of British servicemen on deployment in Afghanistan. They learn to sing, begin to bond, and Gareth gains their trust enough for them to share the letters they write and receive to/from their husbands. From this, he consults with a composer to create an anthem for them to sing to the Queen in Royal Albert Hall. Anyone not in utter tears from viewing this has no soul.
It is the number-one single on the UK pop charts. Wonder if the purveyors of that aural pornography known as rap will take notice? This is where the culture is, people returning to the marketplace to buy records that move them.
Moh, latuh, ya'll. Traveling to other parts of the island today for lunch with friends.
This is a great place, a great people. The headlines, per usual, don't begin to tell the story.
Saturday, December 24, 2011
Christmas 2011, An Interlude
OldSouth is on extended holiday, as it is referred to here in the UK. He is here to visit family and friends, to walk the streets of a university town, to eat, drink, read, spend time with the sainted Mrs. OldSouth, to slow down and reflect on a momentous year.
He is about to head out the door to walk the streets of that university town, and looks forward to services today and tomorrow in churches that sing the Christmas carols in full voice. He arrived two days ago, to end the day at one of those services with over 2,000 others, singing in full voice. It's quite a sound, full of hope and cheer, and it struck OS once again that the carols were written for us to sing, not for pop artists to mutilate and sell to us.
So, OS wishes all who are kind enough to visit and read his scribble a most Merry Christmas. He may or may not write over this holiday, because, well, he's on holiday.
It is a dark world, run by idiots and crazies, always has been, and now more so than ever. Our hope is not here, but he did break in upon us in that birth, and in his life and death, The idiots and crazies killed him stone dead, and he defeated death in the process.
Merry Christmas.
He is about to head out the door to walk the streets of that university town, and looks forward to services today and tomorrow in churches that sing the Christmas carols in full voice. He arrived two days ago, to end the day at one of those services with over 2,000 others, singing in full voice. It's quite a sound, full of hope and cheer, and it struck OS once again that the carols were written for us to sing, not for pop artists to mutilate and sell to us.
So, OS wishes all who are kind enough to visit and read his scribble a most Merry Christmas. He may or may not write over this holiday, because, well, he's on holiday.
It is a dark world, run by idiots and crazies, always has been, and now more so than ever. Our hope is not here, but he did break in upon us in that birth, and in his life and death, The idiots and crazies killed him stone dead, and he defeated death in the process.
Merry Christmas.
Monday, December 19, 2011
Vaclav Havel, The Playwright Who Led 1989's 'Velvet Revolution,' dies at 75
For those of us alive in 1989 and paying attention, witnessing the unraveling of the Soviet Empire was heady stuff. After all, we born into a world where the long barrier that cut Europe in twain, in order to keep the East enslaved and the West on constant alert, was just a fact of life.
Then, suddenly, it disintegrated, that barrier. And along with it, the regimes that held that part of the world under their collectivist thumb. And Havel was one of the people who brought it about.
Those of us who remember 1969 remember the terrible fate that befell Alexander Dubcek, who had attempted much the same, only to see the Soviet tanks roll in to Prague to crush all hope. We feared for Havel, and cheered when the citizenry flooded the streets, and freedom won the day.
A few months later, he stood before a joint session of Congress, attempting to explain what had occurred, admitting he was at a loss for words himself.
But the words he chose were pithy, and eloquent for our day:
Then, suddenly, it disintegrated, that barrier. And along with it, the regimes that held that part of the world under their collectivist thumb. And Havel was one of the people who brought it about.
Those of us who remember 1969 remember the terrible fate that befell Alexander Dubcek, who had attempted much the same, only to see the Soviet tanks roll in to Prague to crush all hope. We feared for Havel, and cheered when the citizenry flooded the streets, and freedom won the day.
A few months later, he stood before a joint session of Congress, attempting to explain what had occurred, admitting he was at a loss for words himself.
But the words he chose were pithy, and eloquent for our day:
The communist type of totalitarian system has left both our nations, Czechs and Slovaks, as it has all the nations of the Soviet Union and the other countries the Soviet Union subjugated in its time, a legacy of countless dead, an infinite spectrum of human suffering, profound economic decline and, above all, enormous human humiliation. It has brought us horrors that fortunately you have not known.
It has given us something positive, a special capacity to look from time to time somewhat further than someone who has not undergone this bitter experience. A person who cannot move and lead a somewhat normal life because he is pinned under a boulder has more time to think about his hopes than someone who is not trapped that way.
What I'm trying to say is this: we must all learn many things from you, from how to educate our offspring, how to elect our representatives, all the way to how to organize our economic life so that it will lead to prosperity and not to poverty. But it doesn't have to be merely assistance from the well-educated, powerful and wealthy to someone who has nothing and therefore has nothing to offer in return.
We, too, can offer something to you: our experience and the knowledge that has come from it.OS hopes we take his words to heart.
Saturday, December 17, 2011
Crossing The Rubicon: A Must Read Post From Jesse--Pay Close Attention
The unwitting customers of MF Global, if they held gold and silver in their accounts, will now have their hard assets seized from them, liquidated, and thrown into the pool of settlement cash.
Not the stockholders of MF Global--the customers of MF Global.
Which eventually means, of course, that under the right circumstances of breathtaking fraud, no asset is safe unless it is stowed out of sight, location known only to the owner. Gold coins buried in the back forty, and the farmer armed at all times. Now that's how a nation builds a vital economy--destroy all trust between parties in a transaction!
We've always believed it could never happen here, that we live under the Rule of Law.
Dem daze iz gawn, brethrun. Today, it's MF Global. Next year, it may be the community bank down the street.
The final line of the article Jesse reprints is especially charming, recalling the Red Chinese tradition of summary execution, in which the authorities bill the deceased's family for the ammunition expended to murder their loved one.
Sweeeet....
Not the stockholders of MF Global--the customers of MF Global.
Which eventually means, of course, that under the right circumstances of breathtaking fraud, no asset is safe unless it is stowed out of sight, location known only to the owner. Gold coins buried in the back forty, and the farmer armed at all times. Now that's how a nation builds a vital economy--destroy all trust between parties in a transaction!
We've always believed it could never happen here, that we live under the Rule of Law.
Dem daze iz gawn, brethrun. Today, it's MF Global. Next year, it may be the community bank down the street.
The final line of the article Jesse reprints is especially charming, recalling the Red Chinese tradition of summary execution, in which the authorities bill the deceased's family for the ammunition expended to murder their loved one.
Sweeeet....
Friday, December 16, 2011
The Crooks And The Cops Lock Arms: The SEC Plans To Appeal Judge Krakoff's Ruling In The Citigroup Case
Time was, when the crooks, in this case Citigroup (who ripped off everyone in sight, including every taxpayer in the US for generations), got caught and lost their case in court, they appealed their conviction/loss, proclaiming that they were the real victims, etc. etc., and that theft isn't theft because it was done with computers by white people in suits, not black people holding up liquor stores with guns--you know, real criminals, the kind you put in jail, to keep white folk like us safe on the way to the country club...
Them daze iz over, ya'll. Merry Christmas!
OS's readers may remember a couple of earlier posts, here and here, in which he recounts how one federal Judge Rakoff had decided he had had enough, and that he would not rubber-stamp one more sweetheart deal between the SEC Enforcement Division and the banks they were supposed to be, well, enforcing the rules on. His intent, obviously, was for the SEC to go back, and extract real penalties from Citigroup for having blatantly ripped the world off for some 700 million dollars, and come back to him.
To quote John Belushi: 'But NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOoooooo......'
The SE frigging C plan to lock arms with the crooks, and appeal the judge's ruling!!!
They have no intention of (a) ceasing to make sweetheart deals with crooks, and (b) exposing the inner workings of the machine that makes these sweetheart deals by actually litigating them, because that would open them up to adversarial process, which includes (drumroll please) Discovery!
So, instead of spending their energies enforcing the law, they'll spend their energies arguing that they shouldn't have to enforce the law, even though that's what they were instituted to do, and are paid to do, and (by innocent souls like OS) expected to do.
This is Alice Through The Looking Glass, pure and simple.
It is maddening, but no longer surprising to read of it. We're at the point where the cops don't even need to pretend to uphold the law.
By the way, if anyone thinks those MF Global clients, including all those farmers who didn't even know they were MR Global clients, have a prayer of getting their money back, this should disabuse them.
The cops now protect the crooks--it's the Chicago Way--the world of Al Capone, Eric Holder, Tim Geithner...
Them daze iz over, ya'll. Merry Christmas!
OS's readers may remember a couple of earlier posts, here and here, in which he recounts how one federal Judge Rakoff had decided he had had enough, and that he would not rubber-stamp one more sweetheart deal between the SEC Enforcement Division and the banks they were supposed to be, well, enforcing the rules on. His intent, obviously, was for the SEC to go back, and extract real penalties from Citigroup for having blatantly ripped the world off for some 700 million dollars, and come back to him.
To quote John Belushi: 'But NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOoooooo......'
The SE frigging C plan to lock arms with the crooks, and appeal the judge's ruling!!!
They have no intention of (a) ceasing to make sweetheart deals with crooks, and (b) exposing the inner workings of the machine that makes these sweetheart deals by actually litigating them, because that would open them up to adversarial process, which includes (drumroll please) Discovery!
So, instead of spending their energies enforcing the law, they'll spend their energies arguing that they shouldn't have to enforce the law, even though that's what they were instituted to do, and are paid to do, and (by innocent souls like OS) expected to do.
This is Alice Through The Looking Glass, pure and simple.
It is maddening, but no longer surprising to read of it. We're at the point where the cops don't even need to pretend to uphold the law.
By the way, if anyone thinks those MF Global clients, including all those farmers who didn't even know they were MR Global clients, have a prayer of getting their money back, this should disabuse them.
The cops now protect the crooks--it's the Chicago Way--the world of Al Capone, Eric Holder, Tim Geithner...
Tuesday, December 13, 2011
Complete Incompetence Department: 'Could We Pretty-Please Have Our Drone Back?'
Horrifying? Yes.
Surprising? Not at all.
From ABC News, who no longer even attempts to pretend TheOne has a shred of credibility:
Perhaps it really doesn't matter to Himself that the worst people on the planet now possess one of our most sophisticated pieces of military technology, delivered to their doorstep.
Maybe he's decided that they're on the winning side in this generation, and has decided to just go with the flow of history.
Maybe he really does sympathize with the Islamists, and although not intending to turn this over to them, saw an opportunity to help his brethren in the situation?
How to explain this inexplicable behavior?
Why does Hilary Clinton remain at State one more day? Her resignation would blow the Obama Administration sky-high. Same for Leon Panetta at Defense. Why does he remain, since this occurred on his watch, and his Commander-in-Chief just sold every person in uniform down the river?
Nothing explains this incident.
Ronnie and Margaret, we miss you.
Surprising? Not at all.
From ABC News, who no longer even attempts to pretend TheOne has a shred of credibility:
The Obama administration has delivered a formal request to Iran for the return of a U.S. surveillance drone captured by Iranian armed forces, but said it is not hopeful that Iran will comply.
President Barack Obama said Monday that the U.S. wants the top-secret aircraft back. "We have asked for it back. We'll see how the Iranians respond," Obama said during a White House news conference with Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki on Monday.
In an interview broadcast live Monday night on Venezuelan state television, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said nothing to suggest his country would grant the U.S. request.
"The Americans have perhaps decided to give us this spy plane," Ahmadinejad said. "We now have control of this plane."
Speaking through an interpreter, Ahmadinejad said: "There are people here who have been able to control this spy plane, who can surely analyze this plane's system also. ... In any case, now we have this spy plane."
He added, "Very soon, they're going to learn more about the abilities and possibilities of our country."At this point, mounting a raid to retrieve it, or attempting to destroy it would be futile, as it has certainly been disassembled, and is now being gone over piece-by-piece by the Chinese.
Perhaps it really doesn't matter to Himself that the worst people on the planet now possess one of our most sophisticated pieces of military technology, delivered to their doorstep.
Maybe he's decided that they're on the winning side in this generation, and has decided to just go with the flow of history.
Maybe he really does sympathize with the Islamists, and although not intending to turn this over to them, saw an opportunity to help his brethren in the situation?
How to explain this inexplicable behavior?
Why does Hilary Clinton remain at State one more day? Her resignation would blow the Obama Administration sky-high. Same for Leon Panetta at Defense. Why does he remain, since this occurred on his watch, and his Commander-in-Chief just sold every person in uniform down the river?
Nothing explains this incident.
Ronnie and Margaret, we miss you.
That Worked Well...NOT! BofE QE Achieves Almost Nothing...No One Surprised, Except The People Operating The Presses
HT Adam Smith Institute...
The BoE claimed that the £200 billion it printed in 2009 onwards, resulted in the yields on five and ten years gilts being 100 basis points lower than they would otherwise have been. It claimed that growth was boosted by between 1.5 and 2%. On the basis of this, it enthusiastically decided to print another £75 billion this October.
Not so, says the highly authoritative (and not personally interested) Bank for International Settlements in its latest quarterly report. The real effect was about a quarter of what the BoE claims. Yields were on average 27 points lower.
The BIS also doesn’t agree with the BoE’s belief that new stimulus will have a similar effect. “It may be harder to achieve the same degree of effectiveness as with the initial programmes once the surprise or novelty element wanes”, it states in its conclusion. This basically means that financial movers realise that the money printing results in inflation, and that they therefore add that future inflation into their behaviour.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)