Tim Worstall

Yes, in The Guardian:

It also interlocks very conveniently with US economic interests in the region and in Haiti in particular. Food and water may be scarce, but some of the factories in the so-called export processing zones, where Haitians labour in sweatshop conditions, have managed to get their machines working again. Yet there is still no electricity in the areas where people are surviving in makeshift camps or under plastic sheeting in the streets.

Eeeevil bastard yanks, eh?

Hmm.

The largely government owned electricity sector in Haiti is facing a deep, permanent crisis characterized by dramatic shortages and the lowest coverage of electricity in the Western Hemisphere^[1] with only about 12.5% of the population (25% if illegal connections are accounted for)having regular access to electricity.

So, umm, where there was electricity supply before the quake there is now electricity supply after the quake. Where there was not electricity supply before the quake there is not electricity supply after the quake.

Well, I just guiess that the failure of the Yanks to entirely wire the country in three weeks, to build an entire electricity generation and distribution system for an entire country, shows that they really are truly and irremediably evil then.

What bastards, eh?

It is hardly surprising, then, that out of every pound spent in a supermarket, only 8p makes it back to the farmer.

Perhaps it is a shocking figure.

I wasn’t aware that farming is so easy that it adds very little value while the logistics of supply and retailing were so difficult that they add a lot of value. At least, not quite as easy/difficult as that number implies.

Bishop Hill is mentioned here.

Or take a book published last month called The Hockey Stick Illusion by Andrew Montford, a rattling good detective story and a detailed and brilliant piece of science writing. Montford has never worked in the media. He is an accountant and science publisher who works from his home in Milnathort in Kinrossshire. He runs a blog called ‘Bishop Hill’.

Montford came to the subject in 2005 when he read a blog post by another amateur non-journalist named Tim Worstall, a scandium dealer who lives in Portugal (I am not making this up),

I had no idea I had anything at all to do with that.

And in 2005 I certainly was an amateur non-journalist. I’m not all that sure I would say quite that now: after all, in the interim I’ve been both hired and fired by the Speccie themselves….

Moore wants a more democratic economy.

Great.

Here’s how to do it.

Gas and electricity could be sold to consumers via a state-controlled body under radical reforms, proposed by the regulator Ofgem, which acknowledge that the decade-old free market approach to energy is no longer working.

Ofgem has also proposed setting minimum supply obligations on energy companies to make sure the lights don’t go out, in moves reminiscent of the new capital requirements that have been placed on banks to stop them going bust following the financial crisis.

Energy experts said that the regulator’s proposals represented an “extraordinary volte-face”. Ofgem has been one of the biggest advocates of a liberalised energy market, arguing that companies could be left to build enough new power stations and low-carbon forms of generation to guarantee energy supplies and reduce carbon emissions.

But only a fraction of the estimated £200bn investment needed by 2020 has been made, because volatile energy prices, and the short-term supply contracts that have characterised liberalisation, have made spending such huge sums too risky.

What’s the next one after “facepalm”?

Lordy almighty this is the most incredible stupidity.

The reason that investment hasn’t been happening in new plants is regulatory uncertainty. Will anyone be allowed to build new nuclear? What will be the insurance arrangements for those who do? Where might such plants be built? What about waste?

With coal, what will be the carbon capture requirements?

The current government has been pissing about not taking these decisions for a decade. Thus people haven’t known what they can build, where, or how much it will cost.

So, given that the cock up is entirely government made, the solution is to add government to the process?

Seriously?

What on earth are these idiots at Ofgem thinking?

Will you look at this?

Royal Dutch Shell today said it would cut another 1,000 jobs this year after reporting a 69% slide in annual profits to $9.8bn (£6.1bn).

The Anglo-Dutch firm also reported a steep drop in fourth quarter earnings – down 75% to $1.18bn – after pressure on margins in refining offset a year-on-year increase in oil prices.

What horrors and of course we must subsidise the company.

Hmm, what’s that?

Oh, well, it’s just basic logic. When profits rose there were huge cries that there should be a windfall tax on the oil companies. They were profiting at our expense or something. Now that they’re hurting exactly the same logic leads to the necessity for us to subsidise them.

So come along now Compass and all points lefty. Time to step up and prove you really do believe in the logic of what you say.

Much as I hate to agree with Con Coughlin, he’s right here.

For the thing is, we’ve got different military interests.

The French are still deeply involved in the remnants of their African Empire. We are still deeply involved in the defence matters of some of our own Empire remnants. The two interests are rather incompatible.

Sorry, but thinking that the only thing our military should be doing is defending either Britain of France is grossly simplistic. Think of the Sierra Leone and Liberia interventions…..now imagine that we’re actually looking at one of the Francophone West African states. It’s entirely possible to believe that we would be on opposite sides in such an intervention…..the French, for example, were hardly on the side of the angels in Rwanda now, were they?

The FTSE company, which owns Smirnoff vodka and Guinness, has rejected the offer which is understood to be just one of a series of proposals that it has received in recent months. However, the terms of the offer from the Swiss canton of Zug highlight how aggressive foreign authorities have become in their attempts to lure UK companies offshore.

Zug offered a deal that would see up to 200 of Diageo’s top executives exempted from paying income tax and the company itself offered corporate tax rates on more attractive terms that those in Britain. The offer comes in the wake of the UK Government’s decision to raise income tax rates for those earning £150,000 or more to 50pc from the beginning of April.

Or at least attempted theft. They are “our” tax revenues, they belong to the UK in some manner.

However, three things.

1) Diageo is an international company. Sure, it grew from one based in the UK but most of its money is now made outside. There’s no particular reason why the UK should get a slice of that money.

2) Such tax competition keeps pressure downwards on the tax rates that can be charged to people here in the UK who cannot move. The ability to bugger off is one of the things that creates the Laffer Curve (not the only thing of course), that simple truth that there can be tax rates high enough that revenue collected falls.

3) There’s nothing you can do about this tax competition. For any corporation has an absolute right to move the brass plate anywhere within the EEA. That’s the EU plus Iceland, Switzerland, Norway and Liechtenstein. Their right to do so is just as much one of the pillars of the Single Market as the right of you or I to enter France without a visa.

In short, tough titty for those who would raise tax rates to extortionate levels.

Owners of Toyotas around the world were thrown into panic as the US Government appeared to warn them not to drive their cars amid safety fears.

Now I know that there is a real problem here.

However, the US Govt owns in part if not in full, two of Toyota’s main competitors, GM and Chrysler.

Interesting possible conflict of interest really….

Here.

MPs call for jobs blow to be reversed.

*

One of the things that definitely comes out of studies on what produces economic growth is that the rule of law is a necessary but not sufficient condition for there to be sustained economic growth.

If contracts can be torn up at bureaucratic or political whim then investments tend not to be made because of those bureacratic or political risks. The way that BP was shafted over TNK, Shell at Sakhalin, they’re poster boys for not investing in Russia (as someone who has either worked in Russia or had interests there for near two decades now I still wouldn’t invest in physical plant there for this very reason, legal uncertainty).

So, what about London then?

In an extraordinary ultimatum that has shocked some of the City’s biggest companies, the Financial Services Authority (FSA) told bank bosses that 60pc of all pay must be deferred, with no exceptions, even for those whose contracts conflicting with the edict.

Many of the global players have in recent weeks made representations to the City watchdog, in particular about pre-existing employment contracts that guarantee bonuses over a year or more. But their appeals have been met with the FSA’s toughest yet response.

The FSA is saying that unless the banks breach their own contracts they’re at risk of having their banking licences pulled.

This is putting bureaucratic action above the rule of law.

Whether the actual proposal itself is a good idea or not isn’t the point here at all. The breach of that rule of law, the way in which a political appointee can take it upon himself to over rule entirely legal contracts is going to casue much more damage in the long run than any effect of the details of the regulation itself.

Bad, bad idea.

The number of Army generals, Royal Navy admirals and Royal Air Force air marshals will be cut under new plans unveiled today.

Not, on the face of it, a bad idea. But people have been struggling with this for generations.

Government insiders say cuts are justified because the number of senior officers has risen over the last decade, even as Britain’s front line military forces have diminished.

According to the Ministry of Defence, there are 47 officers of three star rank – lieutenants general, vice admirals and air marshal. Their combined salary bill is £6.8 million a year.

According to a study published in 2008, the Royal Navy has more admirals than active warships.

The classic account of this is of course Parkinson’s Law, first published in 1955. One of the case studies was the number of Admirals relative to the number of ships in the Royal Navy. As the number of ships declined, the number of Admirals rose.

From this observation C. Northcote (as we groupies call him for short) went on to generalise: over time a bureaucracy of any kind will grow more top heavy (as well as grow in size) the less it actually had to do.

The Civil Service itself is one example, the entire Empire used to be run off some 4,000 people. Government is another example: There are many more Ministers now than there were when we were running said Empire. The BIS now has 10 Ministers on its team for example, despite the point that most business regulation is now the province of the EU and they have very little to do.

As I say, the Forces being top heavy is something that might usefully be solved: but there’s more than a little bit of mote and beam to be observed here.

At the ASI.

That report on wealth inequality. It’s wrong. For everyone has a large asset: it’s called the welfare state.

Even those figures are high since the U.S. government is paying the $9 million/year interest on Haiti’s loans from the Inter-American Development Bank.

The hideously depressing thing is that Cuba under Battista–Cuba in 1957–was a developed country. Cuba in 1957 had lower infant mortality than France, Belgium, West Germany, Israel, Japan, Austria, Italy, Spain, and Portugal. Cuba in 1957 had doctors and nurses: as many doctors and nurses per capita as the Netherlands, and more than Britain or Finland. Cuba in 1957 had as many vehicles per capita as Uruguay, Italy, or Portugal. Cuba in 1957 had 45 TVs per 1000 people–fifth highest in the world. Cuba today has fewer telephones per capita than it had TVs in 1957.

….

Thus I don’t understand lefties who talk about the achievements of the Cuban Revolution: “…to have better health care, housing, education, and general social relations than virtually all other comparably developed countries.” Yes, Cuba today has a GDP per capita level roughly that of–is “comparably developed”–Bolivia or Honduras or Zimbabwe, but given where Cuba was in 1957 we ought to be talking about how it is as developed as Italy or Spain.

The great revolution might indeed provide things that certain lefties like. But it can only be viewed as a success even in those terms by refusing to look at where it was before said great revolution.

Laurence Kotlikoff lays out his ideas for reform of the banking system.

There is a simple, quick way to restore integrity to the system — Limited Purpose Banking (LPB). It makes banks, insurance companies and all other financial corporations operate as mutual fund companies (unit trusts) called LPB banks. Mutual funds don’t borrow short and lend long. They don’t borrow at all. They take in funds on a 100 per cent equity basis (they sell shares) and use these proceeds either to make loans by purchasing mortgages, commercial paper (short-term IOUs from companies) and corporate and government bonds or to buy stocks.

Just because you’ve changed it to equity you’ve not stopped the possibility of runs.

For the secondary market in equity is still liquid and immediate. But the assets owned by the LPB are still long term and illiquid. People start to panic and you’ve still got the possibility of mass selling of the shares.

If it’s like a mutual find or unit trust, where you don’t in fact sell them on the secondary market, you present them to the LPB for redemption, you’ve in fact just recreated the very bank run problem you’re trying to avoid.

Once the mutual fund has run through the limited amount of cash it has available to cover redemptions it has to dump longer dated assets at fire sale prices to cover further redemptions.

For, you see, the problem is inherent in any system which allows short term redemption of savings which are invested in long term assets. Calling them deposits or calling them equity shares doesn’t change this very basic problem.

Just not going to work, d’ye see?

One benefit of devolution is the real-life social experiments it offers as each nation adopts different social ­policies.

Experimentation! Yes, wondrous!

Nothing about social care is simple – not least because each local authority offers different levels of care at different rates and interprets the official criteria arbitrarily: that’s why we need a National Care Service.

But everything must be the same!

Various lefties were all over the Pope when he said that capitalism needed taming, that ruthless self-interest just weren’t right. Appeals to authority even: look, distinguished churchman telling the neo-liberals the truth!

Benedict XVI claimed that legislation introduced by Labour to end discrimination “actually violates natural law” because it stopped worshippers remaining true to their beliefs.

Rather than making society more equal, the Government’s new rules limited religious freedom, he said.

Wonder how many of such will support Il Papa’s latest thought.

That one agrees with some thing someone says and not with others is fine. It’s rather that you’re not supposed to make appeals to authority and then be selective…..

As The Guardian headline has it:

Freedom comes before equality

Wel,, yes, it should, certainly…..