Yes, once again it’s the Oscars! In honour of Banksy, whose film Exit Through The Gift Shop is up for some award like best film in the world, take a look at his website…
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A Bad Guide 
I love the “elephant” and the kite signal.
Yes! I loved the elephant. He must have just done that, it looks like it’s somewhere around L.A. (I can’t remember the kite signal).
Oh, I want to see the film, now! I hope they bring it here soon.
Street art is so … magical (i don’t know why this is the truest adjective that comes to my mind, even though I know it’s a lot of work and even danger)
Apparently it’s on dvd. My wife’s students told her it’s really good. Maybe it’s magical in the sense that you don’t expect it.
If Banksy’s film doesn’t win, it can only be because the film industry is in crisis.
But had Banksy thought of these cunning plans?
http://www.futilitycloset.com/2011/02/27/feathered-fighters/
Well it doesn’t explain how the seagulls were supposed to distinguish enemy periscopes from friendly periscopes. I think that was their mistake. But there might be something to the parrot idea now that stealth bombers can evade radar.
Maybe the enemy periscopes had a wee Prussian spike on them?
Possibly, but that wouldn’t help seagulls today. Anyway, crows are much brighter than seagulls. They ought to have used crows. The crows would have been looking for a place to sit down.
At the risk of boring everybody except Julia, who I know agrees with me: YEAH, Colin! I’ve finally managed to see The King’s Speech, and I thought it was great (oh, and commiserations to Banksy, apparently the Academy voters were more interested in the financial crisis).
Oh, bruessel, thanks! Today school begins and I couldn’t stay up to watch the Oscars last night, so you’re my first informant on this essential subject =)
(Yes, I’m sick: I read my mail-box -which is always open- before I even have a look to newspapers).
I read that the financial crisis film is very good as financial crisis films go.
I always read my mail first, Julia.
Well, thank you. That works for me: I’m just as crazy as AJP :-)
The financial crisis film is recognizable within seconds as being the kind of good that is going to make you feel very, very bad.
Artur, taking to heart your proposal (well, not quite to cure the financial crisis, yet then again…) that we “take pictures of gas stations”:
The Ghost of the Zeitgeist Stops for a Fill-Up.
The music hall horse is what the British military will become if the government insists on the present cuts.
Tell the bankers & hedge-fund managers and the rest of the people in the finance sector who don’t produce anything. They are to blame for it, not that they give a damn about anything except their own greed. Everything has to be cut, there’s no money left. I don’t think anyone’s happy about it.
Everything has to be cut, there’s no money left.
That’s the misunderstanding at heart of the mismanagement of the current crisis. The root problem was excessive private debt. In some economies median wages had been falling for decades, but people hadn’t noticed because they’d been able to increase borrowing. For the rebound to happen — and in a sustainable fashion, not a new bubble — one needs ways to reduce the private debt, and reducing public spending will make that harder.
(Other crises have other solutions, but I’m talking about this one.)
(In the long run, of course, one has to keep balanced sheets, but that’s about being modest in wealthy times, not starving in these. The seven good years and all that.)
I bow to your superior knowledge, Trond.
I think Canehan is referring to the severe cuts in public spending that are being made in Britain at the moment. It was predicted before last summer’s election that unpopular cuts in public spending would have to be made whichever party won and it was said therefore by some people in the Labour Party that this was an election it might be best to lose (which it did, of course).
Not that much knowledge. And what’s worse, the comment bored even myself. I should have said “That’s what they want you to believe, Crown.” and let it be with that. And I seem to have failed to close the italics too.
I realize that all the major parties in Britain were promising cuts. Seen from here the election campaign was a competition in austerity. It was still wrong.
Oh, it didn’t bore me at all!
Surely some cuts in public spending will do less damage to the economy than others, though? If they cut the military, for example, I’d guess that the economic damage would be that a fairly small number of well-trained and motivated people will be unemployed for a short time. I don’t think any British manufacture of weapons has been axed, but I don’t know.
No, not boring at all.
And you should have called yourself “Trond Engen, Economics Guru” ;-)
Am I posing as expert now? Then I’ll say that of course there are cuts that are less harmful than others. That’s about multiplicators, i.e. how many pounds worth of activity do one pound spent create, and that is mostly a function of how fast the menoy is spent by those who get it. Generally, giving money to those who need it most gives a better effect than giving to those who don’t need it at all. There’s also a lot to be said about different ways to hand out the the money. Paying people and companies to do useful things is usually better than just handing out the money and so on, but that’s details.
In our own business, I’d wish that more public money were spent at business cycle lows (when tax incomes are plummeting and there seems to be no money left) and less at highs (when tax incomes are rocketing and money is abundant). Instead of blowing the bubble by adding all their own projects at the very top, they should wait until there’s some slack in the market. There’s also another side to this: Since buying at lows is cheap, the public would get more value for money. Norwegian local authorities are notoriously bad at this — tucking their projects in the drawer until the market has risen and it’s expensive.
But you haven’t explained why all the parties would want me to believe that cuts need to be made…
Bacause it’s intuitive and simple. Promising cuts shows that you take the problems seriously, while promising expenditure makes you look like you don’t even acknowledge that there’s a problem. After all, the whole business cycle thing is much about psychology. When everybody believes that there’s money to be made, then there is money to be made, when everybody believes that everybody’s house is overvalued, then everybody’s house is overvalued. When everybody concludes at the same that they have to use less money, then everybody has to use less money. It’s simple intuition that the same logic applies to governments and big companies. But it doesn’t, because they can afford to look beyond short-time cash-flow.
Then, of course, it may be necessary to cut (or increase income) in the long run, if the government surplus in the fat years wasn’t sufficient, but that’s another matter.