I came across this article by Krugman recently - well worth passing on; while he illustrates his "rules for research" by reference to economics, they clearly apply very widely:

... What I want to talk about in this essay is something more restricted: some thoughts about thinking, and particularly how to go about doing interesting economics. I think that among economists of my generation I can claim to have a fairly distinctive intellectual style -- not necessarily a better style than my colleagues, for there are many ways to be a good economist, but one that has served me well. The essence of that style is a general research strategy that can be summarized in a few rules; I also view my more policy-oriented writing and speaking as ultimately grounded in the same principles.
...
RULES FOR RESEARCH

In the course of describing my formative moment in 1978, I have already implicitly given my four basic rules for research. Let me now state them explicitly, then explain. Here are the rules:

1. Listen to the Gentiles

2. Question the question

3. Dare to be silly

4. Simplify, simplify

As Fran pointed out, 15th October was Nietzsche's birthday. He urged others to "live dangerously" - but he didn't do extreme sports :-) His life was very much one of the mind and the danger was in challenging his culture's most basic assumptions and values. He would not be surprised to learn that he is widely misundertood now, he was widely misunderstood in his own time :

It has been said that Nietzsche is one of the best known and yet least understood of philosophers
...
 Nietzsche never wanted disciples, indeed even Zarathustra hopes to see his followers repudiate him in the end. Nietzsche wants thinkers, able and willing to form their own answers for themselves. In this way, Nietzsche is not so much telling his readers what to think, but rather how to think. His works are meant to convey not a product but a process, and that process is at the heart of what it is to be human.

http://www.philosophers.co.uk/cafe/phil_feb2002.htm

In a comment on Jerome's diary  "nobody could have predicted  ..."
I cited an article which was very critical of Greenspan and those in government who'd failed to question his pernicious ideology and became, effectively, his disciples:

On Monday's TV news McCain told his supporters (as I remember it): "They say those who ignorant of history are doomed to repeat it." Of course he doesn't want to offend Joe Sixpack by coming over as an east-coast, liberal elitist, so he used the folksy "they say", rather than "the Spanish philosopher Santayana said".

'Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.'

Life of Reason, Reason in Common Sense, Scribner's, 1905, page 284"

Collecting and Editing the Works of George Santayana

http://www.iupui.edu/~santedit/

But, oh, the ironies - perhaps he only pretends he can't cope with emails and secretly he's been checking the blogosphere, but not really learning from it:

History Repeats: John McCain Channels the Ghost of Herbert Hoover

On October 25, 1929, the day after Black Thursday, one of the days signaling the start of the Great Depression, where the Dow Jones lost 9 percent of its value in a single day, Republican President Herbert Hoover announced to the American people: "The fundamental business of the country... is on a sound and prosperous basis."

Sound familiar?

Saorge is a very beautiful medieval village perched along a narrow rock spur that juts out into the Vallée de la Roya, high above the river. Saorge is classed as one of the "40 most beautiful villages of France".

http://www.beyond.fr/villages/saorge.html

A visit to this village included a monastery, and a coincidence of dates led to reflections on how the Catholic Church treated Galileo and Giordano Bruno. Another coincidence of timing allowed us to witness a VE Day commemoration ceremony in a nearby village and an article about the WW2 experience of an American's father echoed our feeling that we ought to celebrate life.

Promoted by Migeru. Fold moved here for the FP. -- Jérôme

Opening up the postal market to private sector competition has provided no significant benefit for consumers or smaller businesses but represents a "substantial threat" to the future of the Royal Mail, an independent report commissioned by the government warned today.

A major shake-up is needed in the way the industry is regulated if Britain is to benefit from a strong, competitive and cost-effective postal services, according to the interim review produced for business secretary John Hutton.

Large companies have benefited from the full liberalisation of the postal market since 2006 with more choice, lower prices and better quality products, but "there have been no significant benefits for smaller businesses and domestic consumers," said the report. It found these customers were largely happy with the value for money now provided to them by the state-owned Royal Mail but said the current situation endangered the future of the universal service which could guarantee one price and next day delivery throughout the country.

"There is now a substantial threat to Royal Mail's financial stability and, therefore, the universal service. We have come to the conclusion, based on evidence submitted so far, that the status quo is not tenable. It will not deliver our shared vision for the postal sector," it concluded.

The panel which carried out the review, led by former Ofcom deputy chairman Richard Hooper, said in its initial findings that there was now a "strong case" for taking action to make sure the Royal Mail has a sustainable future.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2008/may/06/post.consumeraffairs

Cf .:

The move is part of Government plans to release cash from the country's £337billion worth of assets. Last May it began investigating selling off British Waterways to make up to £1billion. It has also sold off a 25 per cent share in British Energy for £2billion.

But the NHS [National Health Service] was never intended to act as a sinking fund to be plundered when times were lean. Rather, it represents an investment in the health of the nation, both now and for future generations.

And we know that in the past, hasty, ill-conceived attempts to cash in investments have cost us dearly: Gordon Brown, after disregarding advice from the Bank of England, lost £2?billion when he sold half of the country's gold reserves at the bottom of the market.

The sale of NHS property would entail a process known as "sale and leaseback", whereby sites are sold to developers, then leased back by the NHS. The Government likes it because of the large cash-windfall it receives, but ignores the fact that it ties NHS trusts into long, expensive contracts which cause costs to rise in the long term.

The trusts also have limited bargaining power in this situation because it's not as if they can simply decamp and rent a vacant hospital round the corner.

Selling off hospitals and NHS property will have repercussions for generations to come. It's a painfully short-sighted solution which will have lasting detrimental effects on the health of our nation.
Take MRSA, for example. At present there is a vogue among ministers and NHS officials to reduce the total number of beds in hospitals, preferring to focus on higher bed-occupancy rates and speedy discharges to make the hospital more "efficient".

This is even more common in hospitals already run by private companies under the Private Finance Initiative, where there are around 30 per cent fewer beds than in other hospitals. But research - funded by the Government, in fact - now suggests that bed occupancy rate is the single biggest factor in the rise of MRSA and hospital-acquired infections.

When bed occupancy is higher than 90 per cent, infection rates are 40 per cent higher than when 85 per cent of beds are occupied. Many hospitals are already running at near 100 per cent. This is only one example of how important it is that we retain ownership and control of NHS resources so we can respond when evidence like this comes to light, and we can reverse decisions and policy when necessary.

You don't invest in the NHS by selling it off. It may provide a temporary alleviation for a cash-strapped government, but the legacy means that future generations will have no room to manoeuvre or use the resources as needed because the NHS will no longer be ours.

*  'Trust Me, I'm a Junior Doctor' by Max Pemberton (Hodder) is available from Telegraph Books for £11.99 + £1.25 p&p. Call 0870 428 4112.

[Credit where it's due - that was in the Daily Telegraph - a right-wing paper.]

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/health/main.jhtml?xml=/health/2008/05/05/hmax105.xml

Recently, exploring the area NE of Nice, we ended up at La Turbie, high above Monaco. Later exploration of the background to a famous monument there once again led to some surprising links with present-day politics.

As we walked through the village, we had to pass through a group of mourners in a street outside a church - nobody was taking photos and neither did I. It was a lovely day, which somebody couldn't enjoy any longer. La Turbie's main claim to fame is a grander reminder of mortality - La Tropheé des Alpes - its ruins  dominating the village

 http://www.beyond.fr/villphotos2/turbieP01.html

The Trophée des Alpes, or Trophy of Augustus, was a 50 m high monument to the power of Rome and the glory of Augustus. Now only 35 m high and half in ruin, it's still an imposing monument, over 2000 years after it was built.

http://www.beyond.fr/sites/trophee.html

One might have thought we might have learned some lessons in all that time, but exploring the background to this monument reveals remarkable parallels with today, and that some politicians go on making some of the same mistakes, due to similar arrogance and ignorance.

Promoted by Migeru

Another of those intruiging little coincidences; the other night I read this anecdote about Sarte's excitement on hearing about how you could apply phenomenology even to things like apricot cocktails. (It was in "Twentieth-Century French Philosophy", Alan D. Schrift, but this is from a different source to save me typing it):

Sartre and De Beauvoir at university in 1929

Simone de Beauvoir ... recounts Sartre's first encounter with phenomenology. Out with Raymond Aron, a student of Husserl, in Paris in 1932, apricot cocktails were ordered. According to de Beauvoir, Aron said to Sartre, `You see, my little comrade, if you are a phenomenologist, you can talk about this cocktail, and that is philosophy.'
...
Sartre grew pale with excitement, or nearly so. This was precisely what he had wished for years: to talk of the things as he touched them and that was philosophy. Aron convinced him that this was exactly what fitted his preoccupations: to transcend the opposition of idealism and realism, to affirm at the same time the sovereignty of consciousness and the presence of the world as given to us.

cambridge.org [pdf!]

The next day I read this in the NYT, in a report on the recent, growing popularity of philosophy in US universities:

"Max Bialek, 22, was majoring in math until his senior year, when he discovered philosophy. He decided to stay an extra year to complete the major (his parents needed reassurance, he said, but were supportive).

I thought: Why weren't all my other classes like that one?" he said, explaining that philosophy had taught him a way of studying that could be applied to any subject and enriched his life in unexpected ways. "You can talk about almost anything as long as you do it well."

New York Times

Philosophy! Uh, yeah, what is it good for? - Promoted by Migeru

HTML, what is it good for? Lazy linking corrected; all diarists, please don't be lazy! DoDo

March 2008

Having "done" Venice - http://homepage.mac.com/tedwelch/venice  and Florence - http://www.eurotrib.com/story/2008/1/24/20310/9033 , this time we went to Bologna, Ferrara and Rimini.

M in Piazza Maggiore, Bologna.

"La rossa"

I'd been to Bologna a couple of times already and I like it that it's not for us, i.e. tourists. The city is quite prosperous and was run by communists for many years, who focused on the needs of the citizens.  Collective attitudes and values permeated the culture; I remember visiting a photo exhibition there and, instead of the usual displays of individualism, it was a group project on aspects of the city - solidarity comrades.

More great journalism from Greg Palast, no confusing objectivity with impartiality for him; instead he states the damning facts - without the "on the other hand - Exxon denies it all" of so much mainstream journalism. He also connects the dots. I strongly recommend reading the whole article:

Nineteen goddamn years is enough. I'm sorry if you don't like my language, but when I think about what they did to Paul Kompkoff, I'm in no mood to nicey-nice words.

Next month marks 19 years since the Exxon Valdez dumped its load of crude oil across the Prince William Sound, Alaska.
...
While cameras rolled, Exxon executives promised they'd compensate everyone. Today, before the US Supreme Court, the big oil company's lawyers argued that they shouldn't have to pay Paul or other fishermen the damages ordered by the courts.

They can't pay Paul anyway. He's dead.

That was part of Exxon's plan. They told me that. In 1990 and 1991, I worked for the Chenega and Chugach Natives of Alaska on trying to get Exxon to pay up to save the remote villages of the Sound. Exxon's response was, "We can hold out in court until you're all dead."

Nice guys. But, hell, they were right, weren't they?

We were asked for more European diaries - here's one about our trip to Florence, about the beginnings of the financial system which has got us in such a mess today, the brutal politics which we also still see today - oh - and art.

I read Tim Parks' excellent "Medici Money" after our visit and it illuminated much of what we'd seen and showed its links to our world today:

 The attempt throughout will be to suggest how much their story has to tell us about the way we experience the relationship between high culture and credit cards today, how far it informs our continuing suspicions with regard to international finance and its dealings with religion and politics.
...
together with the effects of usury, which dislodged a man from his station in life, something else quite unnatural was happening: A person's wealth was no longer tied to the local community. The actual coinage paid into the bank in Rome by members of Pope Martin V's family might be quickly paid out in the same place against letters of credit, or tributes collected abroad."

p.25

Cf.:

Alain Crouzat, portfolio manager at Montsegur Finance, said: "We get the feeling that the markets have become a big casino which has lost control. It seems incredible that the Société Générale can lose €5bn through one operator."

It's also a reminder about what things are like when people who take religion seriously get into power. Of course many used religion for political purposes, but religion helped them get and hold power and the imposition of religious views as such led to much horrible suffering and death.

Diary rescue by afew

Here are some attacks on religion by comedians, well worth half an hour. Please don't tell me that they won't persuade the religious to change their minds - they KNOW and THEY DON'T CARE. Because they so obviously don't care and are so rude on TV, they encourage the non-religious to be similarly disrespectful about absurdities and to stand up for their own views, as Dawkins and Hitchens do in their own ways. This is particularly worth encouraging in the bizarrely religious US and can help the recent growth in the numbers of the non-religious there (still a long way to go).

But anyway - I hope you find it amusing.

a Lazy quick diary on smoking.

Oh joy, I just did a tour of cafes/bars in Nice - and what do you know - the French ARE respecting the ban. You can go into a bar, sample wines, if that's your thing, and NOT have some smoking cretin beside you ruin the experience.

(to put it politely), or why I lost patience with those so impatient with Dawkins that they can't even be bothered to consider seriously what he actually writes and says.

Here, especially for Twank, is a brief summary:

Dawkins is not the "strident" "asshole" he's sometimes made out to be; actually he is, as "someone" said, reasonable and amusing. He doesn't expect to change the minds of very committed Christians so he doesn't need the "faith (sic)" attributed to him by TBG, rather he has the quite reasonable aims of helping some people to clarify their ideas, and others to be more ready to speak up for the atheist views they actually hold. The feedback to him during book tours and to his site suggests that he's been successful in this with many people. What he's opposing isn't primarily well-meaning, non-dogmatic Christians, but the very powerful, more fundamentalist representatives of Christianity (particularly in the US), Islam and other religions. However, he argues, and it's a reasonable point of view, that moderate Christians lend credibility to even the more extreme forms - it's all a matter of faith. Dawkins, Hitchens, et al continue a noble tradition of outspoken atheism, necessary at a time when religions like Islam and Christianity have dangerous fanatical elements, in the US the latter has gained a lot of political power. We should applaud those who stand up and deplore this dangerous superstition - as Nietzsche did in his time.

Criticism of US journalism does not just come from the Left, of course; many in the US see the mainstream media as too Leftist - bizarre as that probably seems to most Eurotribbers.

Diary rescue by Migeru

Quick enthusiastic diary - films galore!

After the proposal to have a film blog on Eurotrib I went to the local Fnac (which sells TVs, cameras, software, books, DVDs, etc.) - and was amazed at what seemed to be the suddenly much greater the range of DVDs on offer. Of course it's just before xmas, so companies want to get more stuff on the shelves - but what variety there is now !What a period to be a film student, if a reasonably solvent one - but, for the price of an evening's drinks (for a Brit), one can buy a film masterpiece with a making-of documentary and the director's commentary. Companies are realising what saleable goods they have in their archives and now all sorts of collections are on offer, films of certain stars : John Wayne (and let's not sneer, he's been in some John Ford classics, e.g. The Searchers), directors, Hitchcock, Bergman, etc.

An example of this new availability is Ridley Scott's Blade Runner.

On Friday at about lunch-time I wandered into Nice's old town and came across this scene:

It reminded me of the "What is it?" subject sometimes used in the Friday photo-blog - I had no idea what this was all about.

Interesting collage - diary rescue by Migeru

Warning: Another long piece :-) - but the issue merits it - and, like Gore, I have adopted a "kaizen" approach (see below), and given the bits on design, I've tried to include lots of relevant images - so it's taken a long time. I hope you get to the end - and that, in the end, we all survive!

We went to see "An Inconvenient Truth" at the Mercury Cinema (echoes of Orson Welles?) in Nice, which was followed by a discussion organised by a Cafe Cine group.

In the title of my diary on Stone's film "Wall Street" I said that greed was glamourous and deadly. In this case we come to the truly deadly consequences of greed.

Diary rescue by Migeru

 
A while ago I thought the streets I lived in were telling me something ( my "Haunted by Philosophers" diary), now it seems as if I'm getting messages from the media. Don't worry - I think I'm OK. :-)  Recently I bought the DVD of Oliver Stone's "Wall Street" and showed it to Montserrat, who was mildly interested. I still found it quite powerful. I thought I might write about it, linking it to the current crisis brought on by the "greed is good" credo. A few days later "Wall Street" was shown on French TV - surely it's a sign! :-) Then the media were full of stories about Merrill Lynch's problems, a current film review spoke about the dangers of glamourising villains -  finally I'm writing it, before the gods punish me for ignoring their encouragement.

The script by Stone and Stanley Wieser is excellent and Gekko is given a lot of good lines. As one critic put it:

If it's possible to have dialogue that's too stunning for the film's own good, that's the case with "Wall Street."

Whenever Oliver Stone's drama about powermongering in the stock market starts to sink into a theme, out pounces Michael Douglas with another audacious line to sock you sideways.

As Gordon Gekko, a reptilian fiend with an Empire State Building-sized chip on his Versace shoulder pads, Douglas leads a hostile takeover of your attention in a role that won him a best-actor Oscar. So alive is his character, you half expect him to jump out of the film and bite you.

Part of what makes Douglas so great in the film is ...

"You're walking around blind without a cane, pal. A fool and his money are lucky enough to get together in the first place."

Dang, I lost my train of thought. That's how it works in the film. Whenever you think you know the score, Gekko spits out another dose of venom. He's more than a match for his co-lead, fledgling stockbroker Bud Fox (Charlie Sheen), who seeks out Gekko's tutelage in order to make a better . . .

"Lunch is for wimps."

There he goes again.

http://www.azstarnet.com/accent/171697

Wall Street trailer:

The "greed is good" slogan was an improvement on Ivan Boesky's "Greed is all right, by the way."

Ivan Frederick Boesky (born March 6, 1937, in Detroit) was notable for his prominent role in a Wall Street insider trading scandal that occurred in the United States in the mid-1980s.
...
By 1986, Ivan Boesky had become an arbitrageur who had amassed a fortune of about US$200 million by betting on corporate takeovers. He was investigated by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission for making investments based on tips received from corporate insiders. These stock acquisitions were sometimes brazen, with massive purchases occurring only a few days before a corporation announced a takeover.
...
The character of Gordon Gekko in the 1987 movie Wall Street is based at least in part on Boesky, especially regarding a famous speech he delivered on the positive aspects of greed at the University of California, Berkeley in 1986, where he said in part "I think greed is healthy. You can be greedy and still feel good about yourself".

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ivan_Boesky

One of the things I especially like about DVDs is the fact that you can get so many extras with them; documentaries on the making of the film, and the commentaries, especially by the director - often a little film school in itself. In the "Wall Street" commentary, Stone is at pains to explain that all they took from Boesky, in the "greed is good" speech  was his "greed is all right". All the rest was original.

Despite this some critics, who make it clear that they have listened to Stones's subsequent DVD commentary (or so they say) repeat the allegation which irritates him, e.g.:

(Parts of Gekko's famous "Greed is good" speech are freely paraphrased from comments Boesky made in 1985.)

http://www.slate.com/id/2174672

 Stone also points out that the speech is more complex than it's often taken to be, and that he agrees with much of it.

He was objecting to criticism like this, by Rita Kempley:

Stone has an agenda that's all too easily read. And yet, it was his political ambiguity that proved the strength of "Platoon," a universality that let us all live through the Vietnam war.

But Stone puts us above it all in "Wall Street." Though we are meant to descend with the camera as it dives from the skyscrapers, we sit with Stone in judgment, castigating the one-dimensional money-grubbers ...

Washington Post

In fact there is ambivalence throughout the film; while Stone is clearly rather appalled by people like Gekko, he is also clearly fascinated by him, and it's no surprise that this glamourous villain earned Michael Douglas a best actor Oscar. Stone is on the side of Martin Sheen, who plays the union leader and father to Bud,  played by Martin Sheen's real-life son, Charlie. But Gekko gets most of the best lines.

However Stone wasn't too happy with the way Douglas was delivering them at the beginning of shooting and had a few hard words with him. He also made him do many retakes until he got angry, which clearly had the desired effect - Douglas got his Oscar. But, in becoming more dynamic and charismatic, Douglas/Gekko adds complexity and ambivalence to the general moral thrust of the film.

The glamour of bad guys is a constant problem for film-makers who are supposed to be condemning them, cf. this review of current release "American Gangster":

Like many moviemakers (and watchers), Mr. Scott loves his bad guy too much. And by turning Lucas into a figure who seduces instead of repels, an object of directorial fetishism and a token of black resistance, however hollow, he encourages us to submit as well. Part of this is structural and economic: blood and nihilism are always better sells than misery and hopelessness.

http://movies.nytimes.com/2007/11/02/movies/02gang.html

 Stone did not want it to be a simple condemnation of Wall Street, after all his father had worked on Wall Street for decades. But that was another era and Stone says that while there was some corruption, there were still some principles involved and it was more of a gentlemen's club. The mentor to Bud, Lou Mannheim, played by Hal Holbrook, was based on Stone's father. Stone recorded the commentary years after making the film (in 1987), and, understandably, he used the opportunity to answer some of his critics. Thus some had complained that the Holbrook character spoke in an unrealistically aphoristic way, e.g.:

"Stick to the fundamentals, that's how IBM and Hilton were built...good things sometimes take time."

"The main thing about money, Bud, is that it makes you do things you don't want to do."

http://www.imsdb.com/scripts/Wall-Street.html

 However, (apart from the fact that this is fiction not journalism) Stone maintains that this was the way his father used to speak. In fact his father used to write a newsletter about Wall Street which was translated into many languages. Sadly Stone's father died while the film was being made and Stone dedicated it to his memory. Bud, like the character played by Charlie Sheen in Stone's earlier film "Platoon", is torn between two father figures, in this case his own (in the film and real life) and Gekko.

Ironically Gekko has become a hero for young Wall Street traders as depicted in the more recent film "The Boiler Room":

"Greed is good... greed works," Gekko intones famously in Wall Street, and it was meant to be a shocking pronouncement at the time. That's the attitude that feels old-fashioned now. That greed is good is a given today, when suburban ladies' investment clubs are pulling down 20 percent returns and dotcom IPOs make twenty-somethings millionaires overnight, and heroes for it. Even Boiler Room's hero starts with that assumption, and isn't punished for it. Gekko himself feels like a charming antique compared to Boiler Room's snakes. Though J.T. Marlin's brokers idolize Gekko - in one scene, they watch Wall Street and recite Gekko's dialogue like a prayer - they haven't a clue how to emulate his sense of style.

... Boiler Room may show us the fruits of what the likes of Gekko wrought, but Bud, back there in the 80s, still has a chance to escape.

... Greed, Wall Street wants us to know in the end, isn't good. Boiler Room, on the other hand, accepts the reality of greed with resignation and assigns it a neutral value - it's what we do with our sense of greed that makes it good or bad.

http://www.flickfilosopher.com/blog/2000/02/boiler_room_and_wall_street_re.html

"Boiler Room" trailer:

 

Again this over-simplifies "Wall Street" somewhat, as Stone wouldn't really disagree with that conclusion.

Even more recently British City traders have been the subject of a study by a young artist and again there are very conscious echoes of "Wall Street":

The Hogarth of hedge funds offers a glimpse into a hidden world

Artist spends six months documenting the mysterious lives of the wizards of finance

Charlotte Higgins, arts correspondent, Saturday November 3, 2007, The Guardian

... Adam Dant was commissioned, appropriately enough, by Spear's Wealth Management Survey (a quarterly magazine aimed at that special breed of humans known as high-net-worths) to document the professional lives of the mysterious creatures who, behind closed doors in Mayfair and St James's, engage in abstruse activities such as short-selling and leverage.

... He saw the hedgies disport themselves at Annabel's nightclub and private gambling establishments such as Crockford's in Curzon Street and the nearby Aspinall's, founded by John Aspinall, perhaps most famous as a chum of Lord Lucan. He saw them quaff cocktails at Harry's Bar on Mount Street, and buy up art at Sotheby's, Christie's and the best contemporary art galleries.

... The walls are adorned with samurai swords and a shark's head. "It's always very aggressive, male stuff," said Dant. "And they really do regard the Art of War as their bible." He is referring to the 2,500-year-old Chinese manual on military strategy by Sun Tzu. [Quoted in "Wall Street"]
...
Over the fire is a bust of Michael Douglas as Gordon Gekko, from the 1987 film Wall Street.

http://arts.guardian.co.uk/art/visualart/story/0,,2204641,00.html

Cf.:

... one of the unexpected side effects of Wall Street: the cult of personality attached to Gordon Gekko. Douglas says he's still stunned by the number of people who tell him that his Oscar-winning role was the reason they went to work on Wall Street. "It's so depressing and sad," Douglas says.

... "I recall looking at that film and saying, 'That's what I want to be,' " recounts the late hedge-fund manager Seth Tobias in one of the Wall Street DVD featurettes. Somehow, an oleaginous villain meant to embody the worst excesses of his era became a folk hero and highly persuasive career counselor.

http://www.slate.com/id/2174672/pagenum/2/

But now we are seeing once again the results of the "greed is good" ideology, with no redeeming principles to channel it and when there is inadequate regulation, and they are quite frightening:

On the way home, I sat with a very engaging and smart retired Austrian arts dealer who told me he believes that the economic system is on the edge of collapse but says he wonders why Americans are in denial about these problems. He thinks there is a lag between the news reports we are reading now and when most Americans will be inpacted by the crisis. He says the most Americans will face the reality in 2008 - which, of course, just happens to be an election year.

... The Financial Times published in London, went further in editorial titled "CREDIT SQUEEZE-THE DISASTER MOVIE."
...
NEW YORK (MarketWatch)  Merrill Lynch, the nation's largest broker, on Tuesday reported its first loss in about six years, saying bad judgment and weak risk management strategies forced it to write down almost $8 billion of mortgage and related assets, well above its own previous estimate.

Merrill shares fell almost 8% to a near two-year low of $62" . Note: Merrill did another write down a week later of $4.5 billion. The Financial Times commented: "The sense that valuation is still matter of 'pick a number and divide by the chief trader's golf handicap' seems to be pervasive." Can you believe this? Even Hollywood couldn't make up something as flip as that.

News Dissector

But even when they screw up, the greedy make obscene amounts:

Mr. O'Neal [CEO of Merrill Lynch] would be entitled to a payout worth more than $274 million if he left after a deal, according to a pay analysis by James F. Reda & Associates, a compensation consulting firm, using yesterday's closing price.
... Just last year, the board paid Mr. O'Neal $48 million, making him one of Wall Street's highest paid chief executives.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/27/business/27merrill.html

But then it's not hard to achieve that if you choose the people who decide how much you get:

Like the Morgan Stanley board, Mr. O'Neal's board is largely handpicked. He has recruited people like John D. Finnegan, the chief executive of Chubb and a friend for more than 20 years. The two men worked together in the General Motors treasury department. Mr. O'Neal is also close to another director, Alberto Cribiore, a private equity executive who runs his own firm, Brera Capital.

Ibid.

As Stone emphasised, there was much he agreed with in Gekko's "Greed is good" speech, e.g. Gekko condemned this kind of rapacious cronyism:

You own Teldar Paper, the stockholders, and you are being royally screwed over by these bureaucrats with their steak lunches, golf and hunting trips, corporate jets, and golden parachutes! Teldar Paper has 33 different vice presidents each earning over $200,000 a year. I spent two months analyzing what these guys did and I still can't figure it out.

http://www.imsdb.com/scripts/Wall-Street.html

Gekko also pointed out the general economic problems facing the US - which have got worse since the 80s and after Bush's disastrous regime:

...well ladies and gentlemen, we're not here to indulge in fantasies, but in political and economic reality. America has become a second rate power. Our trade deficit and fiscal deficit are at nightmare proportions.

Ibid

There are plans to do an update, but without Stone as director:

... Douglas's Gekko is the brand in his own right - and one that is likely to sell more these days with business enjoying a wider audience than 20 years ago. Schiff says: "The first film was a moderate hit at the time [it took about $60m at the box office and cost $16m], but Gekko became a household name."

Pressman [producer of "Wall Street"] denies that Money Never Sleeps [another of Gekko's lines] is an attempt to cash in, but the marketing potential is impossible to ignore. "It will be fun to do a film about this and it is an area certainly worth exploring," he says.

Pressman and Schiff talk convincingly about their determination to maintain the standards of the original and not just churn out an imitation to clean up at the box office, probably in 2009.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/money/main.jhtml?xml=/money/2007/08/28/cngekko128.xml

But with the current dire warnings about the global economy, perhaps this will not be the time to bring out another film glorifying greed.

Seven years ago, the bursting of the dot-com bubble triggered a collapse in business capital spending that took the US and global economy into a mild recession. This time, post-bubble adjustments seem likely to hit US consumption, which at 72% of GDP, is more than five times the share the capital spending sector was seven years ago. This is a much bigger problem - one that could have grave consequences for the US and the rest of the world.

http://www.fxstreet.com/futures/market-review/outside-the-box/2007-10-23.html

As the hero of another recent film would say: "Good night, and good luck."

Why write a diary when you can use striking writers to do it ? :-) I have added some bits from the links supplied on their site.

Heard on the Picket Line

Let's lead with this lovely report from Peter Leftcourt:

"This morning, I picketed with an 86 year writer, who wrote for 'Mr. Ed.' He said, 'It pisses me off that that fucking horse wound up speaking Italian, Polish and Rumanian, and I never made more than a nickel.'"

PARAMOUNT 2: This Guy Gets It, Why Can't the AMPTP?

On Wednesday this man [with "Jesus saves" banner] was holding his own, rather loud, protest. Then, he stopped shouting and asked what we picketers were protesting about. After hearing about the strike, he started a new chant: "Moses was a writer! Moses was a writer!"

from Mike Colton

CHELSEA PIERS, NYC: All Jacked Up

"One guy from our group got hassled by some stockbroker-looking dude who was screaming 'Get back to work! I don't want 24 to be cancelled!' He was serious."

-Dyna Moe

...

UNIVERSAL: Well, in a Nutshell...

"Every day after picketing, I come home and work on my long, elegant essay articulating why we're on strike. It's meant for the general public and attempts to summarize the issues. But today, I overheard something that took care of my essay in one fell swoop.

Guy (into cell phone): The writers are on strike out here.

[PAUSE]

Guy (into cell phone): Because the corporations are dicks.

I don't need to finish my essay. Instead, I can rest up for picketing tomorrow.

-Irving Belateche

Posted by John Aboud

Links

This is only a small sampling of what you've been emailing to us. Keep it coming. We'll figure out a way to read it all.

- Greg Daniels, showrunner of "The Office," makes our case on E! Online.

Anyway, The Office is in a very interesting and poignant position in this Writers Guild fight. We chatted up executive producer Greg Daniels to get the reason why, plus scoop on storylines and why he shut the show down earlier than most others...

Where does The Office stand in regard to the strike?

The Office is a perfect example of a show that has a vested interest in the issues on the table. We're one of the highest downloads on iTunes. We made a lot of money there, and the creative people didn't see any of it. And this is the future of the television business. People are going to sit in front of a box that has computer guts inside and watch their shows, and just because it's not called a TV, it doesn't apply to our contract. All we're saying is that it's the same thing. We're watching the same show from our couch or from our chair on a screen, and just 'cause it's delivered through the Internet, we're not [being compensated for it].

Today, we're surrounded by the people that run the shows and the majority of them are doing very fine, and it's not about money for us. It's about middle-class writers and actors--our staffs are made up of those people, and they should get [what they're due].

So, if the strike lasts for 22 weeks or however long, you're not going to be worrying about paying your mortgage and your livelihood?

Well, I think what I'm most worried about is the next 20 years, when all the stuff that I've done goes on the Internet, whether or not my writers and I will get any money from that. That is what I'm more worried about. I think the writers have been kicking themselves for 20 years that we only get four cents for every $20 DVD that's sold.

eonline

- An op-ed by The Daily Show's Steve Bodow in the NY Daily News.

'Daily Show' writer: Why I went from punch lines to the picket line

By STEVE BODOW

Thursday, November 8th 2007, 4:48 PM

As you may have heard, Hollywood writers (including about 2,400 of us in New York) are on strike. Yep, all of us: the serious ones, the funny ones, the soap opera ones with whose help Todd Manning discovered that not only had his biological son survived, but he was living as Marcie and Michael McBain's adopted boy Tommy.

We've stopped working because our contract with the big studios ended last week, and though we've been negotiating in good faith with them, we're having a pretty fundamental disagreement about how we should make our livings in the years ahead.

It's all about the Internet. Maybe you've heard of it. We think we should get paid for when our work appears or is sold online - just like we do when it's on the tube or in theaters. We're up against conglomerates such as CBS, Disney and Fox, which have, after much searching in their souls (sic), determined they'd prefer not to pay us.

... Is it absurd to see writers picketing? Perhaps. We realize things could be worse. We could be lawyers, and this could be Pakistan, and then we'd have to get dressed up in those black suits and throw rocks. But picketing writers are less absurd than writers not getting a cent for their work.

We create something people value. It is our livelihood. We take it seriously. It's being threatened. And we're going to fight until we get what we need.
Normally I'd end with a joke, but sorry - I'm on strike.

Bodow is head writer for "The Daily Show with Jon Stewart.

Bodrow

- GREAT coverage of the action up at the Disney picket by Stephen Falk on his blog, Plaintive Wail.

 http://www.plaintivewail.com/

- MySpace.com/support_the_writers

  http://www.myspace.com/support_the_writers

• Fans4Writers.com  http://fans4writers.com/

• Someone's covering the strike via Twitter. Perfect for all you nerds, hipsters and hideous nerd-hipster hybrids.  http://twitter.com/writersstrike

http://unitedhollywood.blogspot.com/

An almost perfect day

It helps if you start your day in Nice - blue skies yet again and the September sun is getting less fierce and more friendly.

L'art de bien vivre

Healthy !

But not even a coffee to start the day - I was to have another medical check-up. The specialist was a big, jovial guy and we got talking about beer and wine and putting on weight when you stay in Normandy with rain for most of two weeks. Everything OK, he said - a good start. I went with Montserrat to do some shopping and then for a coffee on a terrasse, very pleasant - the weather in Nice now down to comfortable warmth for me. After 45 mins we went back to get the images and report. All very efficient, easy to arrange and reasonable - but I don't have to pay anyway (well a very reasonable top-up insurance).  

Sicko

By coincidence M had noticed that Michael Moore's Sicko had just opened at the Rialto in VO, i.e. English for me and French sub-titles for her - and it was on this afternoon at about 2pm. So we had time to stroll back in the sun, have a lunch in the apartment, and then walk over to the Rialto for the film. It was almost a private showing - there was ONE guy when we arrived !  (I'm sure they get better audiences in the evenings). It's not that I'm a misanthrope (really ) but I usually seem to get loud munchers or seat pushers near me.

What a film ! I'll write a review of it - but it WILL have you laughing and crying - outraged, informed.and amused. It should be shown on major TV channels in the US every week; the making of profits from keeping people ill and killing them through denial of treatment is an outrageous scandal - some very rich people should be locked up for a very long time.

We laughed at the Guantanomo bit, and were tearful over the treatment of those who worked at the 9/11 site in a Cuban hospital. As the lights came up we both wiped our eyes - and smiled. What an experience - if only more people made films like this. Of course one can nit-pick and the US right have done their best to discredit it.- but there is no denying the main and shocking facts. Even the credits are laced with humourous touches and at the end there's "Do something". He's certainly shown what a difference one determined individual can make, now aided by quite a team. It demonstrates powerfully what's wrong with the US version of capitalism and its terrible effects on so many Americans. Moore's Canadian cousins wouldn't even risk one day in the US without medical insurance.

Serendipity on the beach

We emerged into the sunshine and strolled the few meters to the Promenade des Anglais, SO glad to live in France - which gets very favourable treatment in the film. Then down to the nearest beach cafe - the Neptune - sun for M and some shade for me - with a view of the very blue sea.

While M was away with her makeup bag, a couple passed by and sat at the other end of the cafe, almost facing me. Could it be ...  surely not; it must be just some other guy who looks like him. M. returned and I asked her - yes, she confirmed,  it WAS - my latest hero, the philosopher Michel Onfray !

The son of a manual agricultural laborer and a cleaning woman, Onfray was a professor of philosophy for two decades, until he resigned from the national education system in 2002 to establish a tuition-free Université Populaire (People's University) at Caen, at which Onfray and a handful of dedicated colleagues teach philosophy and other weighty subjects to working-class and ghetto youth who are not supposed to be interested in such intellectual refinements.

http://www.wpunj.edu/newpol/issue40/Ireland40.htm

 In an earlier coincidence, it turned out that M's sister lives near Caen, not far away from Agentan where Onfray lives and we had stayed in her house for a couple of weeks recently. I had spoken to M about trying to arrange to see him while we were there, but never got around to doing anything about it. Now here he was, not just in Nice, but (to paraphrase Bogart in Casablanca) of all the beach cafes in the world, he walks into this one.

It was too good an opportunity to miss, his female companion had also left for a while, and M. urged me to do it. So I went over, and, in my stumbling French, confirmed that he really was Onfray, explained that I too had studied philosophy, had been a lecturer and was left-wing. I said I had read his his encounter with Sarkozy and his commentary on it in his blog. I apologised when the woman returned for disturbing them, but she waved it away. I asked if it would be possible to talk some more another time, but they were leaving that day. I explained that M's sister had a place not far from him and that maybe if we visited her we could meet. He said yes and gave me his mobile phone number.

 I returned to M. who was very pleased for me, to hear that it had gone well, that I had been able to say what I wanted to and that I felt more motivated to improve my French. A while later they left, but he stepped over to say goodbye and hello to M. She told him I was a great fan and I added that so was she - though she's now a bit to the right of us. He patted me on the shoulder, smiled and left. I was in a happy daze and ordered another glass of champagne for M and another beer for me - despite our intention to cut down - this was already a very special day.

Champagne socialist - L'Effervescence

M. thought we might start walking back home, but I said we spent many evenings at home and who knows what the rest of the evening had in store for us - perhaps  Chomsky was taking a vacation for once :-) We walked east, the warm, late afternoon sun on our backs and headed for the old town. I had heard about a new champagne bar - just the thing for M - I remembered the location and found it easily.

We looked at the prices and thought it a bit expensive, 3 euros a glass more for the cheapest than the price in a beach cafe. But the young proprietor  came out and started talking to us, so we decided to give it a try. The bar wasn't very inviting, small and rather bare, but he led us donstairs - another world, with a curved ceiling and rough walls and very low, red lights.

M immediately gained his respect by clearly knowing about champagne (luckily, since a visit to England last year, she prefers beer most days) and has a relative who produces it. He explained that he had only started up a few months ago and did just about everything, serving, cooking, and said that with the drinks (I had a glass of red wine) we'd get some tapas-type amuse-bouche. I expected to be ejected when M let it be known that I tend to prefer Australian reds - but he told us that his brother lived in Australia and that he appreciated Australian wines, though he thought they were less complex in structure than French wines - ah yes, my thoughts exactly :-)  

He had worked in restaurants in New York for two years. I told him that we had just seen Sicko and urged him to see it if he had an afternoon free (well, Moore said, "Do something" - and I'm recommending you Eurotribbbers to see it too, and if you have already, go again and take some friends who haven't seen it). The little appetizers were delicious, even M was impressed and he was gratified by our praise and offered some more - so I ordered another round of drinks. We  now have a new friend, Julien, the patron.

 For any single young guys visiting Nice, this would seem to be the place to go, there were two groups of young women and no guys. Perhaps, even for French guys, champagne bars aren't their thing. Also, a delight for me, as it's a basement there's no smoking, so the first group of three young French women, who were, of course, all smokers, left their bags and went upstairs for some cancer sticks.

We thanked Julien and said we'd be back, then ambled down to Cours Saleya, the long open area packed with restaurants and sat outside in a temperature that was just OK for M with a cardigan on. Again I remarked on what a great day it had been. Sadly the day then rapidly fell from perfection into an argument - but I'm not Barbara, so I'll skip that and stay positive :-) We got over it.  

But it was very close to perfect: good news about my health, a great film with no irritations in the cinema, an amazingly coincidental  and cordial encounter with someone I admire and had really wanted to meet, drinks by the Med under the usual intense blue sky with the lovely M, a new bar discovery, a meal in the open at night in the old town - what more could you ask of one day ?

So, have YOU had a perfect/almost perfect day recently - what made it so for you ? If not, what would be your perfect day ?