Cyreenik Says
This thought was inspired by the news that Kim Jong Un's uncle has been executed. This 12 Dec 13 WSJ article, North Korea Says Uncle of Kim Jong Un Executed: Jang Song Thaek Was Until Recently the Country's De Facto No. 2 Ruler by Jonathan Cheng, provides some details.
Wow! North Korea still hasn't given up on "old style politicking" ala Russia's Stalin era and George Orwell's 1984. It's impressive that a culture is still doing things this way in the 21st century, and following the pattern so faithfully. They are even now photoshopping Thaek's image out of pictures and videos, a trick Stalinists were pulling fifty years before Photoshop existed.
My thoughts: this is a last gasp. I'm betting that this incident will cause a whole lot of North Korean leadership to give serious thought to how long they want the current system to continue. This kind of purging is scary. It indicates that no one is safe, and no one can protect their family and loved ones... NO ONE! This kind of scariness can be tolerated if there are real and present external threats that are even more scary... but there aren't any for North Korea in this day and age.
It may not look like it, but I see this as a significant milestone to North Korea changing leadership and cultural styles and getting back in touch with the real world that exists outside their borders.
In the meantime, this is throwing the North Korean community into a deeply scary situation. But there won't be much panic and blunder because this is familiar territory for the North Koreans. They have been scared this way many times before. The surprises springing from this Reign of Terror are far from over, but there will be little panic or blunder in them.
This thought was inspired by a series of Forbes articles on Elon Musk. (which I can't locate on the Internet) In these articles Musk is praised and compared with Steve Jobs for his entrepreneurial successes. Musk has certainly proved worthy of praise with his 2013 successes in Tesla Motors, Space X and Solar City, and his visionary Hyperloop for making high speed trains work.
But I notice one common theme in these projects that I find a bit disturbing: They are all based on big government subsidies. Musk has become the fair-haired child for all those in Washington who want to see top-down industrial guidance work -- they would love a dozen more like him! Congratulations to Musk for making this good intentioned dream of The Beltway come true. But I worry about what comes next for two reasons:
o Unlike Jobs, he is not being supported by free market resilience, so I see his position as a much more delicate one.
o Because of the subsidies, his developments are not a particularly efficient use of resources. They aren't helping productivity or job creation as much as unsubsidized successes of equal magnitude would.
That said, I once again congratulate him on his successes. He is a person who is well adapted to his times and situation.
This thought is inspired by a 13 Nov 13 Forbes Editorial, The Bankruptcy Of Modern Economics by Steve Forbes, in which he castigates both the Wall Street Journal and The Economist for encouraging higher inflation to boost economies. From the article, "The New York Times and the Wall Street Journal ran front-page articles and The Economist a cover story on a topic that is truly bizarre: The world economy is suffering because we don’t have enough inflation."
I agree with Steve. We truly live in strange times when the writers for such usually cool-headed publications on finance and economics can take this attitude. Also from the article, "John Maynard Keynes rightly labeled inflation as a form of taxation, and a particularly invidious one. It arbitrarily produces winners and losers, with no concern for effort and reward or for meeting the needs and wants of customers. It rewards speculation rather than such traditional ways of getting ahead as hard work, saving and innovating, thereby undermining social trust and demoralizing a society."
Well spoken, Steve, and something that needed to be said.
Is Ben Bernanke outdoing George Washington, Napoleon Bonaparte and Vladimir Lenin, and becoming the father of half a dozen social revolutions? What a man!
This thought is inspired by a 3 Dec 13 WSJ article, Fed Eases Ukraine's Path to Crisis: Loose Money Allowed Ukraine to Avoid Tough Decisions by Richard Barley. From the article, "Mr. Yanukovych should bear the brunt of the blame. But a contributing factor to the crisis has been ultra-loose U.S. monetary policy. The resulting grab for yield allowed Ukraine to avoid hard policy choices in previous years."
What makes this more interesting is that it fits into a pattern. In the January 2011 Cyreenik Says I point out that a WSJ article, Arab Unrest Spreading by Matt Bradley and Bill Spindle, pointed to a similar correlation between Fed loose money policy and the beginning of the Arab Spring unrest. Perhaps up in the Workers Paradise In The Sky Karl Marx is busy applauding Ben Bernanke.
In terms I like to use, this is a surprise use of the loose money tool.
This thought is inspired by a 3 Dec 13 WSJ article, Detroit Bankruptcy Plan Advances: Municipal Union Appeals the Ruling, Which Says Pensions Can Be Cut by Matthew Dolan, which outlines the sides being taken over what should become part of the bankruptcy proceedings.
The big picture must be kept in mind:
o Detroit's city government has been "doing it wrong" for over 50 years now. It is not alone in this fault, the government has been consistently voted in by the people of Detroit. If the government and people of Detroit had been doing it right, they could have at least equaled Cleveland, and stayed out of today's headline news. If they had been doing it real right, there is no reason it could not be the city called "Silicon Valley" today. In the 1950's it had money, talent and location all going for it. Instead it has become the Midwest Disease's biggest victim.
o One of the virtues of the American system is "getting over it" quickly and efficiently. We try things here, and if they don't work, we say "Ah well..." and clean up the mess quickly. The alternative is to let the mess linger and go on and on. This is part the reason Japan's "Lost Decade" went on for decades and decades.
Detroit has been ugly for decades now. Let's get over it.
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