The Equality Bill has been published today, (I suspect) coincidentally on Mary Wollstonecraft's birthday.

The Bill is unsurprisingly already under attack for the positive discrimination element of it - regardless of the fact that there are way more important improvements to people's rights in the rest of it.

Ad astra per aspera

Classic Krugman

Japan's recovery, again - Paul Krugman Blog - NYTimes.com

For what it's worth, a key conclusion from the IMF's new World Economic Outlook is that recessions caused by financial crisis typically end with export booms, with the trade balance improving, on average, by more than 3 percent of GDP. I find this a disturbing result: we're now suffering from a global financial crisis, which means that the usual driver of recovery will only be available if we can find another planet to export to.

Most economists teach a theoretical framework that has been shown to be fundamentally useless. -- James K. Galbraith

Off to a district council meeting in a few minutes.

They won't decide anything but it's good to show my face.

There's no such thing as original sin - Elvis Costello

Klinsmann Is Out at Bayern Munich - Goal Blog - NYTimes.com

Perhaps now Jürgen Klinsmann can return to a more sedate life in Southern California, where he has lived the past few years with his family.

The former German international star who took the host nation to a surprising third-place finish place in the 2006 World Cup, was fired Monday as the coach of struggling Bayern Munich after less than a full season in the job.

In a statement on its Web site, the club said, "In the light of recent results, the board is concerned that the club may not achieve its minimum targets for the season, and has accordingly resolved to take appropriate action."

Even though Bayern is only three points behind league-leading VfL Wolfsburg in the Bundesliga standings with five games left in the season, Saturday's lackluster 1-0 loss at the Allianz Arena to visiting Schalke 04 apparently was too much to take for Bayern officials.

There's no such thing as original sin - Elvis Costello

We're in lock down here because of an emergency of some kind.

Can't be a drill, so I'm thinking either one of the idiot construction workers hit a gas pipe or there's been a drive-by.

I'm inclined to blame pig flu, though.

Exciting!

WHEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!

A couple weeks ago was Spring Break at Sac State.  One of my students, Teresa, went away to God knows where but when she came back, she had to cancel our tutoring session; she sounded absolutely awful on the phone, very flu like.  Now I just heard on the news that a lot of kids on Spring Break to Mexico might have brought the swine flu back.  Hope Teresa is OK.  Haven't heard from her for a couple weeks; I just assumed she dropped the Chem. course.  Wonder if I should call her or keep my nose out of it.

I love the smell of roast chicken in the morning!

We have had blessed rain for the last hour, possibly 1 cm.  We haven't had much for a couple of weeks and I watered the lawn at the rear of the house last evening to coax some actual rain out of the "scattered showers"  predicted for the next seven days.  Well, it is easier than the more reliable "wash the car."  The previous stretch of seven days with predictions of "scattered showers" yielded trace amounts on one day. Rain is a better reason than most to fritter the morning away on ET.  

If sanity be culturally normative, then by the norms of this culture I claim insanity.

Back from a damp weekend in SW France to a damp UK. I've had a bit too much fun over the weekend and will probably have an early night.

Have I missed anything ?

keep to the Fen Causeway

Loafer to CJC

As we have discussed before, the weak link is the gap between commercial and community type returns, and if that gap can be bridged, it will be far more likely, but the optimum point is in the middle of a massive recession, so the timing is right ;-)

By example, Radio 4's programme this week on the new wave of British artists in the 80's & 90's discussed how they probably could not have got off the ground without the huge cheap studios they occupied in vacant warehouses.

You might want to consider structures whereby local authorities gift their ageing buildings, and thereby avoid the long term maintenance liability, and who also put in place a very low, but long term guaranteed index linked rental to provide the underlying high quality income stream investors would view in a different way, and thereby light the blue touchpaper.

The contigent liability might be remote enough to create the value, without mucking up the LA balance sheet...

CJC to Loafer

What you are suggesting is exactly what I am doing. The only difference is that there is no guaranteed rental, in that buildings may not be tenanted/ occupied.

But our experience is that with an affordable rental there is a queue of would be occupiers, and in 15 years the charity with whom we were working has never had a vacancy, which is why they want more office space. (but if they borrowed to achieve it, then the rents became unaffordable....)

ie Affordability = Certainty.

Moreover, if rentals are at least in part backed by local government (eg affordable housing rentals backed by housing benefit) then there is even more certainty.

Of course, it would be open to a service provider to sell a guarantee if one is required....

The outcome is essentially of new forms of Municipal Equity, but in a partnership framework, not a Company or Trust law framework.

if you think through the consequences of this, it gets interesting

Modern conservatives engage in one of man's oldest exercises in moral philosophy: the search for a superior moral justification for selfishness.Galbraith

Steve Keen's Debtwatch

My disenchantment with economic theory grew as I learnt more, so that I dropped out of the Honours stream in second year, and ultimately played a leading role in the dispute that erupted in 1973. At the year's end, I was one of two students who were invited to address the Faculty of Economics when it met to consider whether there should be an Inquiry into the Department of Economics (the other was Richard Osborne).

Despite our victory at Sydney University, neoclassical economics grew even more dominant as the years wore on, something that both perplexed and worried me (and many others who developed a career in academic economics while refusing to worship at the neoclassical altar). How could something so wrong be so successful? We knew that the grounds on which its many interventions in public policy-from competition policy to industrial relations to macroeconomic management and monetary policy-were shonky. How come the economy nonetheless seemed to be booming?

The answer, as is now becoming obvious to everyone except diehard neoclassical economists, was that underlying this apparent economic prosperity was a growing pile of debt. Economic prosperity now was being borrowed from the future, as a mountain of debt was accumulated, and the money generated by it spent on an orgy of speculation on share and property markets.

Fortunately, as well as rejecting neoclassical economics, I had also become a fan of Hyman Minsky's "financial instability hypothesis". In my PhD I constructed biology and engineering-inspired mathematical models of Minsky's hypothesis that, unfortunately, proved to be very accurate predictors of what the ultimate outcome of this speculative bubble would be.

Modern conservatives engage in one of man's oldest exercises in moral philosophy: the search for a superior moral justification for selfishness.Galbraith

Real Existing Socialism in Our Time, Comrades!

Kommissar Frodo is seizing the means of production!

Dyslexics of the World, UNTIE!!

[Drew's WHEEEEE™ Technology]

WHEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!

I was under the impression that ET recently appointed some people to look after the "community".  It needs looking after.

"Talking nonsense is the sole privilege mankind possesses over the other organisms." -Dostoevsky

I don't know what to make of this video. It is a call for action to US Christians in the face of the rapid growth in the number of muslim americans.

I don't know if the demographic figures quoted are correct or if the conclusions based on those figures presented are correct. But an interesting scenario...

You can't be me, I'm taken