Welcome Home Dad

Hi Dad, it's great to have you back! I hope you had a wonderful time!

I'll look forward to seeing some of those (many - I'm sure) photos from Burma up here on the Bettany Blog!

Two items of interest on a sunny March morning:

1. From the BBC: Community penalties 'laughed at'.

The credibility of community sentences is at stake because offenders who breach the orders are not dealt with firmly enough, a study says.

Experts from King's College London examined Community Orders and Suspended Sentence Orders, which were introduced in England and Wales four years ago.

They require offenders to do unpaid work or undergo rehabilitation.

But a probation officer interviewed for the study said those under the orders left court "laughing their heads off".

2. And from the World Famous inflight magazine of VLM Airlines, Velocity Magazine. A rare piece of original writing from yours truly.

WHEN, IN 2003, THE NOBEL PRIZE winning economist Myron Scholes told academic journal Quantitative Finance that “the world is our laboratory”, he was comparing the work of scientists with that of financial academics and practitioners. Like the physical world, the financial world consists of a bewilderingly complex system of interrelated parts and processes that lends itself to the tools and analysis of mathematics and science. It should come as no surprise, then, that the quantitative professionals who now dominate the financial markets with their models and products, and who have lately come under so much criticism, should associate themselves with the scientific method.

On 29 March 1900, a French student, Louis Bachelier, successfully defended his doctoral thesis, Théorie de la Spéculation, at the Sorbonne. Bachelier’s achievement was to offer a mathematical description of randomness and to introduce many of the concepts in the field that has come to be known as stochastic analysis. Crucially he applied his insights to the problem of pricing financial options and, in doing so, is considered by many as a pioneer in the early study of mathematical – or quantitative – finance...

Squatting in Ashley Road

Last Tuesday, 28th October, there was an attempt to evict some squatters from an address in Ashley Road, St Pauls, here in Bristol. The attempt failed but one of the occupants of the house has written an interesting article over at Bristol Indymedia on the hows, whys and wherefores of squatting in the city.

We are a diverse bunch. Most people in the house are in paid work, some are not, probably in similar proportion to an average group of people in St. Paul's. We range in age from 16 to 40. We don't have kids or families with us at the moment, simply because of the pressure from the authorities. How we may be different from others is that we try and solve our problems ourselves, collectively. All of us living at Unity House had previously being living in houses that were socially owned (housing association or council) that had been abandoned then sold off to private developers. This is a trend we see increasingly.

People who trash houses, be they developers, squatters, arsonists, thieves or whatever, are not good people. Me and the people that I live with always attempt to make the space we live in as pleasant as possible, as would any decent person. To see any building derelict or destroyed is sickening to me. We are people who are struggling for collective space. We have had gigs and parties, meetings and film screenings for a range of groups. We were part of the International Days of Action for Autonomous Spaces in April and we will continue to look for and help create vibrant spaces in our communities.

WHAT IS 87 Ashley Rd?

We have been sold a lie; that private ownership and placing poor people on the housing ladder is the solution to the so called housing problem.

Places for People Group are the biggest UK housing association. They also have the highest paid chief executives in the housing sector, (Director salary: £258k in 2007). Housing associations were set up to fill the gap left by Thatcher’s destruction of social housing provision. Legally, they can not make profits, so they make up for this through fat bonus checks for the fat cats. That is taxpayer’s money going to fund extravagant lifestyles (see first link above).

The registered owner of 87 Ashley Road is a separate legal charity based in Preston, called Places for People Individual Support. This charity has never contacted the occupiers of 87 Ashley Rd... More

View Larger Map

Dollars and dominance

BBC Radio 4's Analysis: Dollars and dominance is broadcast on Thursday 23rd October at 20:30 BST and repeated on Sunday 26th October at 21.30 BST

Listened to this as a podcast last week and thought in very interesting. Even got the transcript as its very relevent to an assignment I'm doing in Globalization. You can listen as a podcast or listen on BBC iplayer: http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio/aod/radio4_aod.shtml?radio4/analysis

I think that today's financial crisis is going to hasten the end of the dollar as the world's reserve currency.

Avinash Persaud

But as this programme discovers, the dollar may no longer remain such a pillar of US power.

Before the crisis its value had been steadily declining. That suited many Americans and their political leaders - a weaker dollar boosted US exports and manufacturing jobs.

But no longer can the powers that be in Washington tell the rest of the world, as a 1970s Treasury Secretary once did, that the dollar is "our currency, but your problem". And the crisis has raised new questions about how far the US can afford its foreign policy commitments and its need to keep the domestic economy afloat.

Rising powers such as China and the Gulf states now have huge reserves in dollars. That makes them, very keen on a strong dollar now.

But if they decided to switch allegiance they could suddenly destabilise the US currency. It's been called a "balance of financial terror" that the US must now live with.

If the dollar is in decline as a global currency, what of the alternatives? The euro has a global role, but no political leadership to match that of the US. Many expect the Chinese currency to rival or overtake the dollar as the global balance of economic power changes, but that will take time.

It's like the idea of mutually assured deterrence. We hope that everybody becomes respectful of the financial power of the other side, but that such destructive power won't be deployed.

Barry Eichengreen

So in the meantime, we are left with a world in which the dollar plays a more and more controversial and uncertain role - still a key pillar of American power, but a currency over which the rest of the world has more and more control.

Contributors:

Avinash Persaud, Chairman of Intelligence Capital Limited

Barry Eichengreen, Professor of political economy, University of California, Berkeley

Harold James, Professor of History, Princeton University

David Marsh, author "The Euro: The Emerging Global Currency"

Dr Albert Park, Reader in Economics, Oxford University

Jim O'Neill, Head of Global Economic Research at Goldman Sachs

Presenter: Ngaire Woods
Producer: Chris Bowlby
Editor: Hugh Levinson

Atheism and the Stock Market

Not many people combine these 2 subjects.

Nassim Taleb is a controversial but influential and entertaining intellectual whose views on probability and 'decision-making under uncertainty' are outlined in his best-selling book 'The Black Swan: the Impact of the Highly Improbable'.

In this short clip he derides those skeptics who criticise religion on rational grounds while putting their faith in the stockmarket.

A full version of the lecture which was presented as part of a Long Now Foundation series is available here - but you might want to hunker down for it, it's an hour and half long.