The SVP lost its race to the “Stöckli” (Upper Chamber of Parliament). As a matter of fact they have now two MPs less than before. Loosing the election, however, didn’t increase the humble factor of the party. Instead they haven been whining about the bad media, the undeserving voters, and other external factors.
More in German
Given the fact that banks value nearly halved in the last six months some not-so-golden-anymore boys start wondering how they are going to buy Christmas presents with no bonus in sight and probably worse things (i.e. job loss) to come.
Given the fact that the Greeks started to cash out, and people in Italy, Spain, Portugal, Ireland and seemingly other countries in Europe follow suit, cash becomes spare.
What to do? Well there is Goldmann Boy Draghi – nowadays ECB president. He deserves a call. That is exactly what Credit Suisse did with a doomsayers report called <The “Last Days” of the Euro>. Threatening heavy consequences they ask for the equivalent of a monetary bazooka.
…to prevent the progressive closure of all the euro zone sovereign bond markets, potentially accompanied by escalating runs on even the strongest banks.
We’ll head for a turbulent Christmas period and a as turbulent new year, which is anyway the last to come by some accounts.
A somber mood hung over the G-20 summit in Cannes. Greece, the problem child dominated the headlines. Beyond the bold print a gloomier picture emerges. The economies around the world are in doldrums. Western economies pile up debt quicker than economic growth, a sure sign for trouble ahead. The combined public and private (households and companies) including the unfunded obligations from entitlement programs reach astronomical heights – over 370% of GDP in the US, similar ratios in other countries.
The emerging world doesn’t fare much butter. The worst culprit is China. Officially it is still strongly growing, albeit at below the rate that is required to keep a growing population at work. It holds enormous amounts of foreign currencies and bonds. The true picture is rather different: The murky and shadowy lending market piled up debt unseen before. And nobody knows whether this ads up to the equivalent of one GDP or several GDPs. Inflation officially at around 7% is out of control. Even by offical figures the food prices rose 13.4% in September alone. The actual situation is much worse. Adding to the woes: The markets for Chinese products in the West are cooling. The best China can hope for is an economic slow down, but there is just a slim chance of this scenario happening.
Bleak prospects.
The world financial system is invariably steering towards the abyss. My bet: We will see a big reset within the next three to five years. Currencies will collapse, the world economy will come to a standstill, assets will be confiscated, and in the worst case heat will be let off through war. Say China and the US over Arab oil.
Afterwards we will restart.
Oh and it is by far not the first time that an economy gets a full reset. John Kenneth Galbraith retraces in his “A Short History of Financial Euphoria” more than six great bubbles starting with the Dutch Tulpomania and the French Banque Royale. Worth reading to prepare.
A little crystal ball gazing for the upcoming elections for the Swiss Government.
More in German.
Christoph Mörgeli of the right wing political party SVP is often polemic, defaming, cynical with his opponents. Yesterday evening Roger Schwaniski trashed him on his own terms and showed him his limits. Worth watching (Swiss German language skills required).
The election results of the Swiss general elections are just in. The right (and left) win parties lost, the centre, albeit splintered, wins. Rhymes in my ears with a new deal for more pragmatic politics with a focus on solutions instead of blockade.
In a previous post I lamented on the information hyperinflation and called for digital noise reduction. Today I would like to point to problem with this approach: By reducing noise you may also narrow your horizon.
Source: GannetLocalDigital techniques supposedly help you shifting through large amounts of information by reducing this avalanche to digestible pieces related to your interests.
Sounds great: A site filters out the non-relevant and shows you only what it thinks matters to you.
But…
By filtering out information that some system deems not relevant you will also filter out information that you personally would have thought to be relevant.
Eli Pariser wrote about this and our ensuing tunnel view of the world. He calls it the “Filter Bubble”. A kind of giant Truman Show. We are all predisposed to select and read only information sources whose views we share – have you recently read a political blog with contrarian views to your own?
He is of the opinion that commercial interests of the big players such as Google, Facebook, etc. are driving this development. If you want lots of people on your site, you want to provide them with relevant content and if you want to make money you also should provide them with relevant ads.
Your ensuing personal online profile becomes a tradable commodity: But x-profiles of a certain type into your sales funnel and you will sell y-amount of goods to this group. (Just to note: At Memonic we don’t sell any personal information and don’t do any profiling beyond user experience optimization).
But…
Live is not a straight line and a person cannot be identified singularly in a profile. Our personality develops, our living arrangements may change, so may our interests – today I like dancing, may be tomorrow cooking.
Serendipity – happenstance, coincidence and a chance encounter may put our live on a different trajectory.
Good knowledge curation takes note: It will not try to solve information overflow and digital noise reduction through computer algorithms alone. Human interposition in sourcing, selecting, and assessing stays relevant.
The Greeks are about to go bust; the international financial system about to go broke, a number of banks, and eventually some additional states, too. Too gloomy? We are about to see a number of very unorthodox arrangements to try to limit total abyss: Central banks taking over entire country debt books, nationalisation on a large scale of banks, legal frameworks that are suddenly completely rephrased (and partially omitted on the spot). May be we get at then end a New Deal.
Read more in German.
The Euro is weak because the Greeks (amongst others such as the Italians, Spanish, Irish and other lazy bastards) spend their days doing nothing, sleaze and waste of public money. The weak Euro is a boon for the German exporters. Ergo, are the Greek the best German economic promotion team, ever.
Read more in German.
