Lydon hits it out of the park

The first 3 podcasts of Chris Lydon's trip to India are up at radoopensource.

All I can say is: wow!

When I heard he was starting in Bangalore I was a little puzzled, since I knew he wanted the India beyond the current cliches....

But this is quite a brew of ferment, intellectual richness, and remarkable human beings representing another Bangalore that has always been there but not really availabe from the mainstream US press.

The first one, with a family of social entrepreneurs, points to the likely trajectory of business leadership throughout the world, if you believe, as I do, that the Anglo-American model of financialized capitalism is involuting, and the ecologic crisis will be with us for a century or more. Defining new economic circuits of the flow for value will be at the heart of the challenges and opportunities ahead of us.

The second, with a woman ecologist living in the forest doing ecological restoration and biodiversity work who says many interesting things, such as: " — the human species has come out of this million-year evolution, [having] eye-to-eye contact with snakes, and elephants, and plants." makes me think that the residuum of our preagrarian past which was absorbed and is still being absorbed into the culture of India may have prepared the people of that country best of all to lead us on the central global question of out time: survival of our species without extinction of all others.

The third with a remarkable independent intellectual of forceful, sharply articulated views on the contours of Indian history of the last 60 years. His views are unusually centrist for the Indian political milieu, but highly persuasive. He gets key aspects of the Indian diaspora in the West wrong however. And his dissing of Amartya Sen as a romantic rings true only up to a point -- Sen I think better captures the importance of habits of culture across the millennia --For instance, I think it is no accident that Turkey today is more secular and modern than other Islamic countries once you see how the Ottoman Turks' cosmopolitan policy seeped into the region over centuries. (As I get older I'm more and more impressed with the profoundly conservative, persistent nature of culture across institutions).

Of course I have differences with, criticisms of, and concerns about some of the views of each of the people interviewed. But this stuff really made we want more of all of this. And also offered a hope of a kind I have been lacking lately -- hope in people's ability to envision and realize solutions.

So download 'em for you next trip to the gym or for your commute.

I hope the next batch of interviews are on deck!

This series on Al-Jazeera English looks more interesting than what we see on US TV

It starts with some cheesy voiceover, and Michael Moore-like editing, then goes into a talking heads discussion of globalization of the ruling class. The matter of fact mention of Marx strikes me as a real sign that the cold war is over.

The section on philanthrocapitalism at about minute 20 is nice.

Markets Rule

From NC.

Update 3:30 AM: Philip Stevens’ comment is germane:

Political resolve has given way to fear. No one waxed more eloquently than Mr Sarkozy about the iniquities of liberal markets. This was the moment, the French president told us, when capitalism would be remade in the image of the European social market. All this, though, was before the Greek sovereign debt crisis saw the eurozone under siege. Now Mr Sarkozy lies awake each night worrying that France might lose its triple A credit rating.

He is not alone. As they struggle to reduce huge budget deficits, western politicians almost everywhere are in thrall to global capital markets. David Cameron has made no bones about it – Britain’s prime minister says he is slashing spending on the welfare state and paring back the nation’s global role because the Bank of England has told him that the rating agencies would be satisfied with nothing less.

The rating agencies – remember them? Some may recall that these very same organisations were deeply complicit in the chicanery that saw worthless debt instruments repackaged as top-notch financial securities. I am sure I heard the politicians say they would be cut down to size. It never happened. The rating agencies never repented; and now they are masters again….

Financial institutions are still extracting large profits from trading activities described by Lord Turner, the head of Britain’s Financial Services Authority, as inherently useless. Lord Turner, however, has been almost a lone voice in suggesting a fundamental rethink.

The crisis in the eurozone shows how the herd instincts of capital markets can destabilise an entire continent. The consequence has been to push European governments into a premature, and risky, race to slash fiscal deficits before economic recovery is assured.

With a little help from the regulators, the big banks can now declare themselves duly stress-tested, but the systemic instabilities remain. International markets have moved far ahead of the capacity of political leaders to understand, let alone properly oversee them. This failure of political governance to keep pace with global economic integration is as apparent now as it was in 2007.

Even if politicians better recognise the risks of interdependence and the vulnerabilities of particular institutions and financial instruments, they are far from any consensus on how to share responsibility for global oversight. So, three years on, things are much as they were – except that most of us are poorer. The markets rule. OK?

Yves again. It’s worse than that. Not only are the non-banksters poorer, but the perps now have mechanisms in place to assure that the next round of looting will go more smoothly.

What comes after quadrillion?

(Hat tip The Burning Platform)

Mr Market seems to be handing out free money

Headline in Yahoo: " Home sales surge in June with inventory at 42-year low" and the Dow obliges with a hundred point pop.

Meanwhile Calculated Risk gives his usual reliable take: New Home Sales: Worst June on Record and the Consumer Metrics Daily Growth Index drops to minus 3% as the duration of the current contraction in consumer spending hits 6 months This, plus the ECRI leading indicators crash of the last month screams double dip even as the market tries to retake the highs of this bear market rally. The disconnect between the economic tea leaves and the markets is glaring, and despite Mr Keynes' famous dictum ("The markets can stay irrational longer than you can stay solvent") I think the break is coming soon.

My prediction: the markets are going to roll over in not more than 3 weeks as the July data starts coming in. By the time September data arrives in October, there will be panic selling as the double dip gets priced in. At that point we will see the lows of March 09 re-tested.

Whether I am right or wrong, being long equities right now seems hugely risky.

A small island off the coast of a subcontinent.

Those of you who know me well will know what a pleasure are the ironies of history.

So I will simply refer you to this story, seemingly mundane, about the upcoming trip to India by David Cameron.

Fast forward to 2030 or thereabouts, and the full dimensions begin to appear.

Is Neo-Localism Coming?

From the blog "Automatic Earth" a theme that will grow in importance. But of course, skype and the internet are not going to be un-invented..... so most likely there will be some kind of hybrid world emerging. I don't think, despite the best efforts of Benny and the Feds, Trichet & Co, et al. that we can return to the globalization of the kind we have just experienced... What comes next?


Thanks to globalization, we are much more dependent on trade than people were in the 1930s. The combination of credit drying up on the one hand and global trade wars on the other is an extreme threat to our vulnerable supply lines. Add to that the general upheaval created by severe economic disruption, which can easily lead to increased physical risks to transporting goods, and the longer term potential for much higher energy prices, and we could see an outright collapse of global trade in the approaching years.

The benefits of self-sufficiency will be seen in places where it still exists. So long as the whole supply chain is local, localized production means being able to maintain access to essential goods at a time when obtaining them from overseas may be difficult or impossible. It is currently more expensive, but the relative security it can provide can be priceless in a dangerous world. The ability to produce locally does not arise overnight however, especially where there are no stockpiles of components. In places where it has been lost, it will take time to regain. There is no time to lose.

We will be returning to a world of much greater diversity as we lose the homogenizing effect of trade. That means the existing disparities between areas will matter far more in the future than they have in the recent past. We will need to think again about the pros and cons of our local regions - what they can provide and what they cannot, and for how many people. Some areas will be in a great deal of trouble when they lose the ability to compensate for deficiencies through trade. As the global village ceases to exist, the world will once again be a very large and variable place.