Posts Tagged ‘Conspiracy theories’

12 May

Growing evidence of capitalist conspiracy behind election result

Posted by freethinkingeconomist in Uncategorized. Tagged: , , .

The excellent PaulInLancs anticipated the Liberal Conservative coalition days ago, and also a capitalist-ruling class stitchup.  After first telling us that “politicians and rightwing commentators have fallen over themselves in their eagerness to talk up a ‘crisis’ which does not in fact exist”.

Tomorrow morning, though, that ‘crisis’ will exist.  The bond markets will plummet when trading opens, and city dealers will be wheeled out to say that ‘the market hates uncertainty’ over and over again, and that was is needed is a stable government able to reassure the markets that the deficit will not get out of hand.  This follows on the initial establishment of this narrative at 1am on Friday. The stock market will follow, and the FTSE will plummet by around 15% by 10am. By mid-morning, Tories and LibDems will be out before the cameras saying that the crisis that they had foreseen is coming and it’s coming fast, and that they are now working against the clock to reassure the markets that they will bring stable government, and deal with the deficit.  The deficit will be blamed on a failed Labour administration.

Paul later saw evidence of connivance from the ratings agencies as well.  Ed Conway gives the question some proportion (we’ll miss his output from the Telegraph when he goes off to Harvard):

The point, ultimately, is that if investors were to stop buying government bonds tomorrow (not that they would), it would mean the state would effectively have to shut down … Doesn’t this mean Britain is being held to ransom? Well, in a sense, yes. But this is nothing new. Back in the 1930s the Government only started cutting spending after it was refused a loan by JP Morgan. Moreover, the bulk of investors who might refuse to buy UK bonds are actually domestic buyers – pension fund and asset managers looking after our own (mainly retirement) money. In the 1970s it was an exodus of British money, not foreign cash, which really triggered the need for an IMF bail-out.

Of course, readers of Dillow will know that the reaction was hardly record-breaking, and Will Hutton amongst others conceded the City has behaved surprisingly well. Will’s piece ends up on this sunny note:

The people spoke; they wanted fresh faces and a fresh approach. The result, curiously, may be what they willed. The people even gave the rainbow coalition, for which I had hopes, a chance of forming had its protagonists had any energy. As the Lib Dems found to their consternation, they did not: there were too many obstacles. It is democracy in action, and it is great to witness. The financial markets, this time round at least, have a clean pair of hands. The people have spoken. Not the bond market.

Ah, if only it were that simple.  Conspiracies are stubborn things to uproot from the mind of the determined conspiracy theorist, and we have the internet.  I have done some googling (just as I did with Nick Clegg)  and have found some disturbing evidence that something sinister is happening.  Tracking the popularity of search terms:


I am not suffiently quick or subtle to work out what this adds up to.  But it scares me

13 Dec

Conservative anti-AGW-ism

Posted by freethinkingeconomist in Uncategorized. Tagged: , , , , .

First, a thank you to “scmjerram” for nominating my post about Liberal Vision complaining about a lack of debate of Global Warming for the Golden Dozen.  Much appreciated.

I had always wondered whether the suggestion that Tories were natural global warming sceptics was just political slander, of the sort you’d expect in our culture.  Up there with “you don’t care about the poor, do you?”

But the evidence from Iain Dale’s blog is fairly convincing. Read the comments.  Right Wingers seem to think that they have a unique ability to see through a giant conspiracy.  From the comfort of their living rooms they can tell, apparently, which piece of historical-environmental research proves or disproves an enormously investigated scientific theory.   It’s like they say on the Now show: scientists from the greenest hippy to the Association of Petroleum Geologists accept it, but the equivalent of TalkSport DJs think their take on a tree-ring graph might be able to blow the whole thing apart.

John Redwood’s analysis of Ed Miliband is slightly better (go through my blog: I try to be fair to Redwood, he may be wrong but he’s bright. ) His post attacking Ed Miliband is not of the science, but whether politicians have been honest about the costs involved.  Here I think I agree with the basic gist (though Redwood masks it in his usual wasteful Government theme):

Mr Miliband, doutbless thinking all the time of the downside in seeking to tell people how to lead their lives and in taxing and regulating to make them follow certain precepts, spent most of his time explaining that the government could and should not do too much to try to change individual behaviour.

To deal with carbon, we will have to shift from those technologies we would choose if economic growth and (short term) quality of life were the only considerations, to a variety of second-bests (and third-, fourth-, fifth-bests at that).  Shifting from electricity at 3p/kwH to 18p/kwH (coal to solar) surely has economic consequences.  Ultimately people will have to be coerced or taxed into lower-carbon lifestyles, and that will mean lower outcomes in a variety of ways.  Less meat, less travel, less convenience.

So if there are three broad opinions:

  • carbon dioxide emissions are a real problem, but we can deal with them and enjoy fine high growth lives, because building wind farms is ‘growth’
  • carbon dioxide emissions are a real problem, and dealing with them will hurt, including trampling on some cherished political beliefs about freedom to do what I want
  • Dealing with carbon emissions will really hurt and involve trampling on cherished libertarian beliefs.  So I will try to emphasise all the evidence I can find that it is not a problem, and also impugn the motives of its adherents

then I am of the middle.  I would mostly attack the last for its transparent bad faith.  But the first is also a folly – and one Liberals are perhaps too prone to, with their Green Roads out of Recession.  But this division helps me understand how a subject of scientific nature can have such a clear political dividing line.

By the way Redwood is clearly inconsistent.  He – rightly – warns that cutting carbon involves political and lifestyle costs.  But he also thinks that cutting public spending is technically easy, and seems to think that no pain will come from a public spending round the tightness of which we have not seen in 40 years.  If it is so easy, why was there a Winter of Discontent after just 1 year of this treatment 30 years ago?  We are due for 5 of those.

7 Dec

In which I admit being wrong to Paul Cotterill, who was right

Posted by freethinkingeconomist in Economics, Politics. Tagged: , , , , .

I worship at the Altar of Truth, and swing around metaphorical incense lamps in the Church of Integrity.  Obviously. Which is why I hasten to correct myself when I turn out to be Wrong about something.

And I have been wrong.  Wrong about whether or not the credit ratings agencies were involved in Conspiracy or Cockup when they rated the subordinated debt of the half-finished trailer parks of athousand Cleetus the Slack-jawed Yokels as AAAA, or safer than a Bill Gates IOU.

It turned out they should have been as safe as Bill Gates promise Never to Crash your Computer.

But Mr innocent-as-a-choirboy Freethinking Economist sided a few weeks ago with the Cock-up theory. That is: ooh, ain’t it difficult to rate all these things.  Mistakes will happen.  Hard day at work.  Won’t happen again. I was taking explicit issue with the views of Paul at the Bickerstaffe Record, who attacked the myth that

S&P are anything other than a corrupt part of a corrupt system, and reinforces my view that they are a legitimate and strategically useful target for anti-capitalist political action, direct and indirect

Reading the in-parts-excellent Financial Fiasco by Johan Norberg, I realise that my phlegmatic views are not right. Norberg points us to another source, the New York Times last year, which rather charitably calls the ratings agencies “debt watchdogs”  <<INSERT MORE APPROPRIATE ANIMAL HERE>> and describes the way the ratings would be changed.  Here’s a sampler:

The housing mania was in full swing in 2005 when analysts at Moody’s Investors Service, the nation’s oldest and most prestigious credit-rating agency, were pressured to go back to the drawing board.

Moody’s, which judges the quality of debt that corporations and banks issue to raise money, had just graded a pool of securities underwritten by Countrywide Financial, the nation’s largest mortgage lender. But Countrywide complained that the assessment was too tough.

The next day, Moody’s changed its rating, even though no new and significant information had come to light, according to two people briefed on the change who requested anonymity to preserve their professional relationships.

Moody’s had assigned high grades to many securities containing Countrywide mortgages. Those securities and mortgages, issued during the lending spree of recent years, later soured — leaving investors with large losses and homeowners and communities struggling with foreclosures.

The wealth of sources Norberg uses can give us little doubt.  They put on ratings they knew were wrong.

Now I can still dispute whether this is a large capitalist conspiracy to fool and then fleece the Workers, in the way that Operation Barbarrossa was a conscious conspiracy to do the same to the USSR, say.   But the effect of an unthinking system remorsely following its own logic – must make profit, must please client, must please Boss – can be the same in many details.  No-one needs to be stroking a white cat, swivelling round in a chair, pressing a button that sets off a timer. But they can still operate in a way that ought to bring shame upon any organisation.   I mean, check out this conversation between two S&P analysts.

So. The agencies certainly acted as conduits for more madness and, yes, injustice.  There is a case for saying that much of the financial insanity was known to be insane, and yet kept on happening.  This should give pause to those worthy types who think fixing the system is down to us improving our ideas somehow.  We knew plenty.  Its the way incentives hang together that is a problem.

7 Dec

Liberal Vision bemoan a lack of a debate

Posted by freethinkingeconomist in Economics. Tagged: , , .

Angela over at Liberal Vision produces some, um, less than damning arguments against the Copenhagen summit.  Like the cost of flying 15,000 people there. Or the fact that the agreements will outlast a UK parliament.

And she seems to be learning off the London Citizen’s Forum that asking People what they Think is the right way of solving a massive systemic crisis.  50% of people doubt it is happening.  Oh, that’s ok then – it can’t be happening.  Man on Street is Dubious.  Man on Street is in favour of all sorts of things that Lib Vision Libertarians would regard as odious majoritarian bullying, but never mind that.

Paul’s excellent post on the downsides of a free media is an excellent antidote to this. He compares to the “is smoking bad for you?” ‘debate’.

By creating the illusion of a lack of scientific consensus, tobacco companies delayed measures being taken against them (an illusion strengthened by the fact they also repressed findings and lied).

Angela complains about the lack of ‘an open honest debate on this issue’?  How?  Was she personally relying on the East Anglian Scientists and their tree-ring data?  Do the hordes of bodies that believe in this problem as real growing and serious provide her with no information?  Has she read it all and still thinks “umm, need more.  Something missing”. What a very demanding scientist Angela is, clearly.

No.  She seems to have a model in her mind of “Do you like Marmite” as the ideal debate – something which goes on endlessly and cannot be solved by any amount of evidence or argument.  The reason the pro-AGW theorists are impatient is because they feel strongly that they have brought the matter to 99% closed.  Most of the tired arguments about it not happening are very tired, and are not taken up in the same way as Tobacco brings you Health! is not taken up.  Like “oooh, 1998 was warm!” which is a statement about the El Nino of 1998.

Asking the full time climate scientists continuously to take bad arguments seriously, and then accusing them of being closed and conspiratorial for losing their rags, is rather silly.   In the same way, we don’t have an open debate about the earth being flat, about Santa Claus, or indeed whether communism is a good system.  It is not a conspiracy of obfuscation – just a refusal, after a while, of highly qualified professionals to continuously humour politically motivated scepticism.

I remind people again to watch the video Paul posted if they are to really hold up the sniggering and misquotation of the East Anglian Cabal for World Confusion as an example of how the debate has gone skew whiff.  And read again the economist article about what exactly the “Trick” referred to is.  It is not “trick everyone into thinking something I don’t believe is actually true”.

What I remain to be convinced of is that any sceptic comes to their position because of some independently founded scientific information, taking all information into the mix, rather than a pre-existing political disposition.   People don’t want it to be true, find the people who do care about it “holier-than-thou, great-and-the-good”, and therefore scrabble around for reasons not to believe it.   Like all politics – just as a Spectator reader will believe, passionately, that 50% tax rates on the people earning £150k signals death to the country, whilst the Guardian just loves it.  Neither are going at it from the point of view of the IFS.

But in this case, we are not dealing with a debate like the 50p tax band.  And the equivalent of the IFS, the body of professionals qualified to work it out, has come down heavily on one side of the equation.

20 Nov

Question to you, um, curious people

Posted by freethinkingeconomist in Theoretical musings. Tagged: , , , , .

I am a bit mystified, and to be honest, depressed, by quite how much the traffic to this site can be boosted by containing a few frankly sordid search terms.  I am talking about this:

This is not the most popular blog by any means.  But writing a really bogstandard post, that contained the words “Catherine Ashton” and “Jewish Conspiracy”, led to it busting its recent records by a long way.  In a funny postmodern way, the post was written observing a similar phenomenon at another Liberal blog, Schneider Home.

Not because I write insightful or witty posts about, um, fiscal or monetary policy, heaven forfend.  No, because a good quarter of the people arrived searching for some combination of:

Baronnes Ashton or Catherine Ashton

and

Jewish, Jew and Conspiracy.

Half of today’s readers are reading that bogstandard post (some just googled Catherine or Baronness Ashton. But most included the conspiracy stuff).

And I want to ask a simple question: why?  Who are you people?  What are you searching for?  Do you have some sort of crazed theory?  Does it link the Baronness to some sort of plot to take over Blighty from Brussels?  Does it involve the Elders of Zion? Are you amongst that tribe of people who think that there is some connection between 9/11, the Moon Landings, the assassination of JFK, the Rapture, and the way Elvis is definitely not dead?

Or is there some sort of innocent explanation?

Will one of you do me a favour?  Please, if you have arrived here after Googling* as above (I don’t want to keep writing it), then could you enter a comment below explaining it?  Don’t be ashamed – you’re not alone . . .

*and I don’t want to investigate this by googling the same things.  This adds momentum to Internet theories.

11 Oct

Giving conspiracy theories a bad name

Posted by freethinkingeconomist in Economics, Theoretical musings. Tagged: , , , .

The International is one of the worst movies I have ever seen.  It  tries to invent some sort of multi-headed Hydra Bank controlling developing world conflicts but fails miserably. The Bank – which we know is a bank because it’s a vast Ministry of Truth-style building with about  5 nasty people in grey suits having murderous conversations – makes money by setting up tiny arms deals.  Apparently every politician in the world has a hand in it, because Our Hero keeps being thwarted or told to stop his investigation.  There is nothing remotely bank-like about The International Bank- it is really just an arm’s dealer – although it has an almost unlimited ability to organise teams of murderous gunmen into picturesque locations.  The director, despite spending about £100m on gunbattle special effects, invested about a fiver on how banking works.  No, less than that, because you can read about Banking on Wikipedia.

So, really, it is about arm’s dealing, with one truly dire attempt to wrench this round onto money: when one of the plotters explains to the cartoon African thug: “Control the guns, and you control the debt”.  Woo – ha ha ha! he could have added, without answering the obvious question “What the f___ does that mean??” Debt is a contract, not some monster from the depths or giant space weapon, Hollywood-moron.

A far more interesting account of how finance can control and disadvantage one group of people in a subtle way is given here on Megan’s blog.

The person most willing to take on risk is the one unaware he is doing so. He charges no risk premium… The resulting market equilibrium is that the guy who is unaware of the risk ends up loaded with it. Then the music stops.

So it’s about asymmetric information, about the winner’s curse.

This was evident in the dotcom boom.  When did you know it was over? I knew when the man in the street got onto the magic of the latest wonder-company.  You knew it was over when you could see the tip sheets lying around on your elderly relatives’ sofas. At that time I expressed my views on Motley Fool message boards, and the pattern was so clear you could trace it in parody: first the insiders, then the wider market, and then, finally, the wide-eyed born again naif, chucking all his money at the thing and refusing to believe it was over till it really was over.

Just to take a single example: trace the history of Emblaze, known as Geo Interactive Media for a while.  The message board (I’m very proud of this post, understandably) was fully of techy but naive zeolots.  The insider Chief, I just now learned, who was idolized by said techies all through 1998-2001, is now in some farce of criminal investigation, plea-bargaining and low level crime. Since the stock has gone to £billions and back, masses of money has been lost – and therefore, masses has been won.  The early insiders won, the late outsiders lost.  And this was repeated over many many stocks.  See Baltimore, for example.  Arm Holdings. (Yes I’m very proud of those two posts as well.  But I actually bought one or two of these companies).  And in every case, run by decent people, technical experts, market visionaries.  That is what is interesting about how finance f***s people – it takes hardly any devious assasinations, disappointingly.

It doesn’t need cat-stroking murderous villainy.  This is why I was sceptical about the idea of S&P conspiring to muck around with ratings – it is too conscious and thought-out and, well, villainous. All you need is human nature, exploited almost without knowledge that  it’s going on.  But I doubt they’ll ever make a movie about it, or that even Art will work (hat tip, Tim Worstall)

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