Archive for July, 2010
The Value of Truth
Posted by diarmid in Philosophy, Religion on July 30th, 2010
A post of genuine interest (rather than just stimulating of the desire to bash my head against my computer screen) on the Adam Smith Institute blog today. Sara Williams, who normally specialises in extraordinarily one-eyed monetary/macro commentaries, has drawn our attention to a paper by Peter Leeson of George Mason University in Virginia in which he explains the value to the Gypsy community of some very strange superstitions.
Assuming that these superstitions are in fact not true – this raises the general question of the potential value of held beliefs that may or may not be true. In other words their value to the community and/or individual may have nothing to do with their truth value.
I wrote an essay on this particular topic a few years ago. The essay was in response to a competition run by a philosophy magazine – with the stimulus being the choice offered to the character Neo in the film ‘The Matrix’. This choice consisted of two pills, red and blue; one of which would return him to the illusory world with which he was familiar, and the other which would lead him to enter a strange and frightening but real world. I reproduce the essay below. (It didn’t win…too analytic, going by the one that did win!)
The Matrix — Which Pill?
Diarmid J G Weir
Shorn of its cinematic context, the decision facing Neo in ‘The Matrix’ is a choice of futures; return to a familiar illusion with the blue pill or entry to what Morpheus describes as a ‘desert of the real’ irrevocably revealed by the red pill. The relative comfort of the illusion might seem the obvious choice but Neo chooses to know the truth, and takes the red. Is this just foolish bravado or is his decision the right one? Two conditions might make him right. Either Morpheus’ claims for the blue pill are not sustainable, or truth has some intrinsic merit for human beings. Read the rest of this entry »
My PhD Thesis on-line!
Posted by diarmid in Economics, Money and Banking on July 10th, 2010
Should anyone really be interested – my doctoral thesis ‘Money and Production – A Pluralist Analysis’ is now available from the University of Stirling document repository at https://dspace.stir.ac.uk/dspace/handle/1893/1141
It examines various theories of money’s origin and sustainability, both ‘orthodox’ and ‘heterodox’, and analyses the link between money and real economic outcomes. Most of it is understandable without advanced mathematical skills!
On the ‘Impossibility’ of Paying Interest
Posted by diarmid in Economics, Money and Banking on July 5th, 2010
I note a considerable amount of interest in some ideas by Chris Martenson – who has a website and offers tutorials entitled ‘The Crash Course’. He suggests that the current way we are living is unsustainable and we’d better start preparing for when it all goes pear-shaped (which will be pretty soon according to him). There are three pointers to this alarming turn of events – two fairly genuine, I think, and one based on a misunderstanding.
The two issues I would share his concern about are Climate Change and so-called ‘Peak Oil’ – the impact of the likely future decline in oil production as reserves are exhausted. Their exact impact is, of course, open to ongoing debate.
His misunderstanding involves the impact of interest payments on the monetary system. Now Dr Martenson is a neuro-toxicologist by training, rather than an economist. Otherwise he would probably be aware that the problem of how interest can be paid when all money is created through lending is one that has troubled many economists, particularly those of the monetary circuit school, to which I would describe myself as loosely attached. But in fact it has a very simple solution, once one learns to distinguish between money stocks and money flows. Read the rest of this entry »
Downgrading Moody’s
Posted by diarmid in Business and Society, Money and Banking, News on July 2nd, 2010
Moody’s threatened to downgrade Spain’s debt yesterday. Why do we pay any attention to anything they, or the other ratings agencies, say?
In conclusion, I have tried to show that Moody’s managers deliberately engineered a change to its culture intended to ensure that rating analysis never jeopardized market share and revenue. They accomplished this both by rewarding those who collaborated and punishing those who resisted…The adjusted European CLO Rating Factor Table appears to have been adopted for the sole purpose of preserving Moody’s European CLO market share despite the fact that it might have resulted in Moody’s assigning ratings that were wrong by as much as one and a half to two notches….every single investor in a Moody’s rated European CLO may have a claim against Moody’s for damages associated with the fact that their CLO investments were not priced correctly.
Testimony from Mark Froeba, former Moody’s Senior Vice President, to the US Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission, June 2nd 2010.
‘Europe is Dying’
If the financial sector can be rescued only by cutting back social spending on Social Security, health care and education, bolstered by more privatization sell-offs, is it worth the price? To sacrifice the economy in this way would violate most peoples’ social values of equity and fairness rooted deep in Enlightenment philosophy.
Superb, if lengthy analysis from Michael Hudson, Distinguished Research Professor at the University of Missouri at Kansas City: Europe’s Fiscal Dystopia: The “New Austerity” Road to Neoserfdom.
His argument is along similar lines to my Cameron’s Deceitful Cuts Rhetoric