number-crunching or currently trending

As the capital city of the state of Hessen, Wiesbaden is host to a number of important offices of governmental affairs internally but also is home to a national institution, which one hears cited continuously on all topics, das Statistisches Bundesamt (the Federal Statistics Office of Germany)—also known by its short-form, Destatis.  It’s funny to be in the neighbourhood with such a voice of authority, not quite like living next door to the Encyclopedia Britannica but instead like knowing where the Harper’s Index is compiled or where the random fact factory is and where the sibilants try to triangulate all this data and bridge disparate trends.

All bureaus in all governments are mandated to report out and analyze micro- and macro-demographics, sometimes with different competency and the spin of omission, but I believe this independent institution that pries open raw figures from all sources, maintaining a one of a kind research library amongst the headquarters and field offices in Berlin and Bonn, and conducts its own surveys (Umfragen) and censuses (Volkszählungen) from inflation, immigration, birth-rate, crime, employment to include delving into people’s attitudes and sentiments and venturing into the qualitative, rather than quantitative, arenas, like happiness and overall satisfaction, by studying the meta-mines of information that factor into civics for public benefit.

f.o.i.l. or quadratic erratic

From beyond the land of Mathmagic, there is a lively debate about the identity—and indeed the complexity of the infamous equation and set of approaches that dealt a coup de grâce to the stock markets and exchanges, which ticker-taped out of Wall Street. Rather than a formula that takes an inscrutable and evil-genius to comprehend, however, one source, which is not alone in its disappointing accusations, offers proof that a much simpler but overlooked preparatory lesson caused that down-fall. Many sources were satisfied with putting the blame on early, emergent and exotic sets of equations that governed derivatives and other seductive pyramid schemes and championed by most all subsequent publications. I felt the dazzle of these novel formulas were to blame as well, but it is generally the case that it is easier to obscure one’s own motives, greed and misapprehension behind a knotty math problem than admitting to not doing one’s homework, despite the culture.

ship of state or islands and bridges

The announcement by British prime-minister to subject the country’s continued membership in the European Union to a plebiscite, something once and future, is inviting a broad spectrum of comments and opinions. From opinion polls in France and Germany, anchors of the enterprise, there is a leaning towards some kind of glee when they can ceremoniously roll out the red carpet for Britain’s exeunt, warnings from EU leadership underscored with cries against the UK for wanting to dictate terms, and perhaps most salient, there are demands on the contingencies of it all.
Putting the matter of Britain, which many conclude as foregone, to a vote by the public is bound, perhaps hopelessly, with retaining the current government, and is deferred to a future date to ensure the reelection of the prime minister’s political party. Such an opportunity is unmistakably a mandate for many of the voters. Special arrangements can certainly be made (the EU should not be mistaken for the euro), and hopefully this proposal is not a political ploy and the choice should absolutely be in the hands of the citizens, but such promises and pandering seem only confounding and leverage for more concessions that will weaken the union, inviting others to grow finicky over their own dues.

spendthrift or plakateller

A delegation of officials from the city government of Berlin will be making a rather spartan holiday to the city of Athens, hoping to glean a few tips from the Athenians for economy and efficiency in operating a municipality under budget-constraints. The trip, planned for sometime in April, seems ironic and maybe a little bit disingenuous, since the German capital is not being threatened with real austerity, despite being unable to run its affairs without a significant in-pouring of funding from other German states, though I guess someone always gets the blame for bad management in the end. I hope there is no condescension behind the idea and that people take to heart what is working and what is not.  Maybe a little bit of fiscal-restraint, executed with empathy, will make for better governance and less hubris all around.

franklin mint and in the darkness bind them

There’s a lot of talk about minting a pair of trillion dollar platinum coins, taking advantage of an economic fiction and a loophole in the language addressing what the Executive branch may or may not do in regards to with a fiat that effectively negates the statutory debt-ceiling (also an economic fiction) by having enough money in reserve to cover those outlays. At best, it may be the wedge that the US president needs to unyoke the country from financial hijacking, and at worse, it seems sort of a silly tactic that’s hard to consider fully the ramifications of and just more delays, but I don’t necessarily believe it’s the black-magic option (as opposed to the nuclear-option) and something malevolent forged in the bowels of Mount Doom.

A coin in this denomination is certainly not the same as a collectors’ item but other such limited runs of commemorate coinage definitely have a more sinister side, that some in the US government are using to their constituents’ advantage. The Legislative branch culled riders that would funnel money to pet projects in the working-copy of the budget, however, there are scads of concrete and abstract causes (witness the calendar of awarenesses for all sorts of worthy things) that are all championed by special interest groups, to whom some representatives are beholden to oblige even with their earmarks taken away. One roundabout way to appease the lobbyists is through minting commemorative coins, whose sponsors are owed any profits after production costs (borne initially by the US Treasury). The public is not forced to buy these coins but doing so would be a way to support a particular campaign or lobby group more or less directly—not to mention, collectibles are usually taken out of circulation (with or without an agenda or ideology—grandma would rather do without than spend her Lawrence Eagleburger eagle dollar coins even if she just got them as change at the toll booth) and all those dollar coins (or whatever the face value) are sequestered in individual hands—with tokens and scrip, rather the heads or tails’ of ones choosing, becoming good for all debts public and private.

cosign and spirograph

Current White House chief of staff and former budget wonk Jack Lew is the new pick for Cabinet posting of Secretary of the Treasury. Though a seasoned veteran of Washington, Lew’s appointment’s is garnering the most attention over his loopy, hoovesie signature that will eventually appear on legal tender.

My simple signature—honed and hewn down to next to nothing due to having to sign a lot of paperwork, sometimes causes people to balk and occasionally I am prompted for something a little more legible or identifiable—especially by the postal authorities. I am sure Mr. Lew’s John Hancock would not pass muster either, and it looks like an awkward scrawl of acknowledgement on one of those electronic signature pads at the checkout—the kind that you can draw anything on and the screen brightly informs you that signature is accepted and verified. I wonder where in the aether those x’s are sorted and if they’re ever brought back up.

hearth and home or genie in the bottle

Authentic efforts to heal the environment and lessen human impact is always to be applauded and Germany, which has assumed a role of leadership both in better management of ecology and economy, I think has some very good intentions and cannot be accused of bullying Greece or exacerbating its financial problems and standing. Germany’s robust push towards greener energy and industry is at risk of becoming a pyrrhic victory and zero-sum-game, due in part to the malingering and knock-on effects of that other management sphere, the euro policy.

I remember watching an episode of I Dream of Jeannie that stuck for some reason from when I was little, where Jeannie waxes philosophical about the limitations and consequences of her wish-granting, which does kind of seem to violate the causality of the show, and tells Master that she cannot stop the rain (for a rocket launch—that or, Jeannie’s evil twin sister, called Jeannie II, tries to sabotage a mission with the weather) because it would cause a flood or drought somewhere else. That’s a bit like the greening of Europe, with energy borrowed and swapped and problems exported. The poor Greeks, in many cases, can no longer afford fuel to heat their homes and so aren’t ordering it—which surely sends chills through the market for suppliers, as well—and are praying for a mild winter and to warm a few rooms in the night are burning anything combustible—books, bits of furniture, trash. It is nothing wide-spread or dystopian yet, though desperate and I’m sure humiliating, but sure it is a dangerous thing to do and releases a lot of toxins into the air as well. Dirty, lazy smog is gripping the metropolitan areas and I would venture, undoes all of Germany’s best efforts. Concern for the globe, I think, demands some global-thinking.

MCMLXXXVII or the dream sequence always rings twice

When one tries to parse the year 2013, it seems a bit unremarkable from the perspective of numerology—not a prime number and a reprieve from twelve years of red-letter repeating dates, 12.12.12, 08.08.08. It is no grand cycle within a cycle but counting conventions do make this year hark back to a yesteryear, 1987, the last time a year was expressed with four different numerals—which is a little weird when one thinks about it. What primers and refreshers took place back then and what nascent things happened all those years ago that became emergent and formative? Western hostages were taken in Lebanon and the Iran-Contra Affair Commission scrutinizes the prosecution of US foreign policy. The Unabomber is terrorizing America. U2 released the album Joshua Tree, and Michael Eisner and Jacques Chirac close the deal for the construction of Euro Disneyland. The Simpson characters first appeared as an animated short on the Tracey Ullman Show. A 19 year old West German pilot created an imaginary bridge to the East by landing his plane in Moscow’s Red Square.
Margaret Thatcher’s Conservative government in the UK continues its reign and Ronald Reagan, from West Berlin, implores Mikhail Gorbachev to “tear down that Wall.” The accords of the European Community, forerunner to the EU, were debated and codified. Michael Jackson records the album Bad. The laboratories at Los Alamos host the first conference on the topic of artificial intelligence and bionic life, and Star Trek: The Next Generation debuted in syndication. Free trade agreements were struck for North America and the first national Coming-Out day is celebrated in Washington, DC. Medicine first describes and diagnoses what is called chronic fatigue syndrome, and ater his death, mathematician Kurt Gödel publishes his ontological proof for the existence of God. The live drama of a little girl who fell down a well in Midland, Texas captivates audiences with its televised, point-for-point coverage (other iconic portrayals on TV included Max Headroom, the precursors to reality-shows like Unsolved Mysteries and Rescue 911 and the salad days of Remington Steel, Falcon Crest, Dallas, Moonlighting, Matlock, MacGuyver, Golden Girls, Designing Women and Pee-Wee’s Playhouse). The Black Monday stock market crash sends markets tumbling, just after the Dow reached the heights of 2500 points. A high speed rail network in France and Germany breaks records, and Romanian workers revolt against the regime of Ceauşescu. Windows version 2.0 is released, as is the first Final Fantasy computer game, and the US Food and Drug Administration approves the use of the anti-depressant Prozac. The world had to say goodbye to such luminaries as Liberace, Rita Hayworth, Fred Astaire, Lee Marvin, Maria von Trapp, Mary Astor and Danny Kaye. There are of course many other iconic moments of the year, which waxed and waned into fulfillment in the fullness that characterizes any year and successor events, and I am not sure how the retreat into all things retro, just beyond the easy grasp of recorded experience, resonates through to today. That year is not the template for this one, certainly, but we would be amiss to forget the past and not try to jostle up some clues, dreamy and distant, about where we are today and what the numbers might hold for us.

down on cripple creek or stockholm syndrome

By engaging in the politics of terror, I think the United States is poised to play a very risky game that risks it becoming a caricature, mockery of the democratic process. It is unfair to lay blame squarely and solely on one party faction, since there is more than ample blame to go around—including the voting-public and the abstentious, but I think it is a safe assertion to point to one cadet wing of the Republican Party, trenchantly conservative and angry, as blocking compromise and negotiation.

This one faction is hijacking, ransoming  US policy, and as a result, is not only holding captive its close associates but also the broader Republican Party, the entire legislative branch and the executive besides, not to mention the ameliorating US economy, only just shooed away from the precipice and it’s not going to be something fun or exciting like a roller-coaster or going over the edge of a waterfall in a barrel—that has already been done. On some levels and in some ways, too I fear, the hostages are starting to identify, relate to their captors, though most are roundly alienated and marginalized. By all measures, the US economy is driven by consumer spending and consumer sentiment and not the ripples and tides of investment and abstract enterprise, but sacrificing the former at the bidding of the latter proves that authentic finance is just more and more relegated to show and pretense.

cliffhanger

Loggerheads, not develop- ments or discourse regardless of tone, concerning the state of the budget and forward-policy regarding taxation and funding for prosecuting wars of all ilk in the US is diabolical in the detail and shortfalls, and despite whether trailing or leading discussion and coverage of the issue, I suppose that these particulars do not matter overmuch nor ever survive the next cycle of austerity American-style.

A polarized, frightful and fear-mongering legislature, with an array of cadet tentacles and inventive pseudopodia (ψευδοπόδια, false feet), is projecting away from any language of compromise, familiarly and characteristically stalling, a move taken from a playbook that could be transposed anywhere and for any episode, showdown that has passed recently and for the foreseeable future. Such inflexibility and laming division allows government to conveniently ignore the mandate of the people who they are supposed to represent and stoke other external pressures, like business and the markets, which always trump congressional indolence and force many hands. It is a vicious cycle of dismantling and up-building inverted, where the conventions razed or raised are the opposite of what’s in anyone’s long-term interest and more and more dulling with each passing deadline and limit.

MMXII: revue and not for prophet

I am sure that in the moment and even more in the near future, the apocalyptic associations of the year will evaporate, replaced with stauncher stuff and remembered for what’s important. While most of the fretting and hand-wringing involved issues of less cataclysmic proportions, there was still surely a bit of vanity in being the height, the end, or possibly final straw of humanity, the Holocene age, and maybe the shadow of rush or procrastination (else, of satisfaction and contentment, too) in the back of people’s minds. Here’s a poorly remembered selection of just a few moments of the past year. It is a little early for superlatives, maybe, but no one is writing 2012 off just yet and it is certainly not a diminishing but rather the opposite as events past into the chronicle.

January: The European Union and others levy trade embargos against Iran over the countries continuing efforts to enrich uranium and nuclear research in a process and debate that has lasted through the year.

February: Queen Elizabeth II celebrated her Diamond Jubilee on the throne of Great Britain and the Common Wealth States. We had to say goodbye to Whitney Houston.

March: After 244 years of publication, the Encyclopædia Britannica is no longer in print—that is, in book form.

April: World stock-markets drop precipitously in reaction to talk of euro-zone debt realities and rumour. China unpegs the yuan from the US dollar and threatens the dollar’s status as a world reserve currency. The Arab Spring continues with uprisings in Bahrain and Syria. We had to say good bye to long-time Band-Stand and New Year’s Eve gala host Dick Clark—well-played, Mayans, well-played.

May: There was spate of bizarre and gory attacks in the United States that invoked both cannibalism and zombies. We had to say good bye to Vidal Sassoon and Donna Summer.

June: We had to say good bye to visionary author Ray Bradbury. Germany rejects proposals to pool EU debt, arguing it is an individual responsibility, while Greece elects an anti-austerity government.

July: CERN laboratories isolate the Higgs-Boson particle. Electricity blackouts in India leave more than a half-a-billion without power for days.

August: The rover Curiosity lands on Mars and begins exploring. We had to say good bye to astronaut Neil Armstrong.

September: A number of terrorist attacks are coordinated against Western interests overseas, including American embassies in response to outrages over contemptible portrayals of culture and religion.

October: A sky-diver plunged from the stratosphere and descended faster than the speed of sound. A hurricane caused death and destruction from the Caribbean up through the eastern seaboard of North America.

November: Barack Obama was re-elected for his second term as US president. The United Nations voted to grant the Palestinian territories with cadet status. We had to say good bye to Larry Hagman.

December: A horrific school shooting happened in a Kindergarten in Connecticut. We had to say good bye to architect and incubator Oscar Niemeyer, sitar-man Ravi Shankar, and jazz innovator Dave Brubeck.

We will see what the close of the year and the new one to come bring.  A lot of the matter of 2012 appears to be continuation of old business, only to out-do itself and be more glorious or notorious.

And though attention and tolerance usually seek out familiar shores right away, it might be that some of the incidents and accidents of the past chapter of months make their consequence known and bring about reform and inspection, like in terms of managing violence and protection or environmental stewardship, in the next.

googleganger or shift + print scrn | sysrq

Since the federal moratorium on purchasing pilfered or questionable data—far from quality intelligence and doing far greater damage to German/Swiss relations, some constituent states are still engaging the bounty of opportunists and scorned employees for compact-disks whose authenticity and reconnaissance is never guaranteed. One of the latest dossiers is apparently little more than a screen-capture from a bank’s terminal, but it still fetched a high price.

Bavaria, among the other states, is a hold-out and so far has refrained from seeking out or taking up any offers that purpose to tattle on tax-avoiders—directly, least, but has allowed other authorities in some cases to extend their jurisdiction and have cooperated in investigations. While in America one’s identity is tethered to a social security number (though it was never intended to be a universal identifier and certainly not a better or more secure system) or the like, in Germany one is triangulated through name, residence and date of birth. In a case of mistaken and insisted identity from earlier in the year that was only very recently resolved (not identity-theft but rather identity-burden), a woman from a community in Bavaria with the very ubiquitous name of Kristin Muller was approached by out-of-state tax-agents (Bavaria had agreed to allow these agents to fight crime by proxy) who rifled through this housewife’s modest home and accused her of hoarding a half-million euro in Swiss institutions. The woman was aghast, naturally, but at quite a loss when it came to distinguishing herself from her sister-in-name, who remains unknown and at-large. When Muller tried to clear her record with the reporting bank, no one was able to confirm or deny whether Muller and Muller-Prime were the same individual or not, since this data list only contained names and account numbers, due to Swiss banking secrecy laws and even if the bank knew more, it was legally bound not to disclose it. What an awful mess to untangle for Frau Muller and other potential victims of circumstance, and I wonder if should could have claimed the balance of the deposit along with the liability the tax-agents insisted she owed. Perhaps Bavaria has been right in not pursuing what’s lauded as maverick justice and a way to level the playing field but in reality does not always deliver.

gaslight or don't step on the mollraths

Quite by accident, I stumbled across an affair that seems fit for treatment as a thriller by Alfred Hitchcock: some seven years ago, an employee of one of Germany’s beleaguered big bad banks was remanded to the custody of a high-security psychiatric hospital after being diagnosed as having chronic paranoid personality disorder. I missed any coverage of this story in the local media but the UK Guardian featured a pretty frightening and unflattering article.

Herr Gustl Mollrath was consigned to incarceration because he insisted that his former employers and co-workers (including his then-wife) were involved in money laundering operations, including smuggling of enormous amounts of euro to Switzerland. Mollrath’s case was cinched once his spouse alleged he was becoming violent towards her, gaslighted, as he grew more and more obsessed with his “conspiracy theories.” Maybe Mollrath’s only crime was being too visionary, realizing not all was above board in the financial sector some three years before everything started imploding and before one had reason to question the integrity of these institutions. While there seems to be holes in the story on both sides, I think it is amazingly chilling that a bank could disappear an inconvenient person or whistle-blower in a dungeon and hold him there for years. Mollrath has been released but probably won’t be vindicated, because the institution is likely to dig in against any admission of wrong-doing, despite mounting evidence to the contrary, and the implication of governors who have since taken up some high position in the German government. What a nightmare to be discredited and have one’s sanity question for daring to question the conduct of banksters. I am sure that this gentleman is not searching for continuing intrigues and further adventures, but I would like to see how this plays out and who else might be tossed in an oubliette.

jobbing or come-uppance

Following the template of job security safety nets already in place in Austria and Norway, the European Union social services commission will put forward, within an obligatory framework, a mechanism to hold the problems of high unemployment among young people to account.

Just as there are para- chutes to try to slow the other concussions and pancaking of the fall-out of currency crisis, the EU is recognizing the debilitating and demoralizing urgency of the lack of prospects and direction, especially among the youth, which besides over-taxing government welfare and lends less to pension funds, leaves young people with some difficult and disheartening choices about career, family and home. Governments would like to be able to guarantee all people under twenty-five years old either a new position or at the very least, an apprenticeship, within no longer than four months after losing a job through redundancy or upon completion of their education and poised to enter the workforce. The details, associated costs and trade-offs are still being ironed out (in most EU countries, there are weighted social criteria, years to retirement, number of dependents, that are statutory considerations when it comes to letting people go, and whether such guarantees over warranties bias the scale and hurt established workers) and the promise may prove too ambitious, but it is a positive signal for governments to commit to their well-being of their up-and-comers and much as for their own reputation and safekeeping.

bankster or the man who sold the world

I heard the song The Complete Banker for the first time just the other day as an interstitial piece during a radio interview with no less than a former World Bank employee, turned charitable advisor and gadfly to neo-colonialists. I had initially pegged it as a much older tune, somewhat reminiscent of a David Bowie song, for its bouncy rhythm and Thatcher references. Having not had the benefit of growing up exposed to quite few classic English ballads, the occasional, surprising work does pop up from time to time. The song, however, is part of a larger legacy of more recent songwriting by a band called The Divine Comedy and is from their 2010 album. It remains quite a good hymn for our times.

tympaneum or archivolts and dosie-dotes

The de-coupling in phases of the world’s monetary supply from the Gold Standard is often cited as the cause of all the world’s ill, and I think I tended to buy this footnote wholesale without really understanding the circumstances but projecting the same consequences. The ability to imagine a different outcome from the same precepts is a good test for anything, including one’s own humanity, and even if one cannot really see an event through to an alternative conclusion—it’s an important exercise, nonetheless. In order to finance an unpopular and lost war with more latitude and flexibility (made inflexible by the lack of a legislative declaration of war and in part by foreign lenders that had grown increasingly wary of the America’s ability to make good on its obligations) than was afforded by dollars not yet fiat, US President Nixon, in 1971, abandoned the Gold Standard as the economic unit of account (at the time, about $35 per ounce and the move was the last echoes of economic inheritance that started with the Tulip Stock Market Bubble of Old Amsterdam or Istanbul) and declared the dollar inconvertible.
That measure, though serviceable, was just a means to an end— something universally arbitrary and scarce, and I am sure had it remained in place, mankind would have long ago harvested all the asteroids and be well on its way to colonizing that diamond planet. This untethering was quickly adopted by all markets and gave central banks license to weave new economic policies. The price of gold (denominated in dollars) has increased exponentially over the past four decades, as has the global population of dollars but I don’t imagine that the relationship is mathematically commensurable in any rigourous or positive way, since all those new dollars (and euro and yen, too) are floating currencies—unpegged to the exchange of any commodity or treasure. I am sure that the long–term consequences were pushed aside by immediate liquidity back then and no one could envision a system buffered but not buffeted, supported by any independent reckoning of wealth. Markets never move lock-step and there are inherent inequalities to begin with, so one should have anticipated deleveraging and inflation, though since that fateful, fitful decision. Financiers and croupiers, however, since have been busily spinning new and complex instruments and shadowy banks to hide the true impact of rising prices and wages that don’t keep stead. This concealment has served up a political and civic situation wherein governments are caught in the web of business interests, behoving them not to make a misstep for fear of attracting everyone’s notice, and lack a clear direction or goal, since any deviation is washed over with money matters. Among divided populations, every nuanced and blatant move turns back on itself and to the economy. It is not indecision that makes some fear a People’s Republic of America or a United States of Europe—there is division and uncertainty, true, but when calls for discussion or warning cannot rise above the din of money matters, we just get unenlightened despots thrall to business.

pseudoscience or bulls and bears

Unlike Math Bear here, being a numbers’ man in the bourses does not demand poise, genius or meditation. Solutions probably are not gained via reason or sudden intuition. King Consumer’s sentiment that underpins larger economic models is not rocket science either, and the thresholds and triggers that influence commerce cannot be rung up and down the totem pole to in a show of correspondence, neatness, predictability.

Investing is a calculated gamble but has as much to do with recklessness and risk than any de-natured economic principles or discipline. Yet the luck and hubris that is far from savant knowledge of the fundamental commodities for which money and monetary instruments is only an ethereal medium continues to be accorded with a level of respect and awe, assuredly with self-promotion and carefully crafted perception. The guesswork and gloss are even perpetuated against strong evidence to the contrary, put on horrid display over the past four years. The same dangerous configurations and unscrupulous behaviours are being vetted to continue the game, unbesmirched. All art and practice demand clarity and discipline and, regardless how particular and idiosyncratic and a framework of rules. Flexibility and responsiveness has created a drain on necessity, replaced with a codex of economic-relativism that allows one to dictate the rules as one goes along. While it is equally limiting to rely on false constructs, imagine what can still be done according to traditional arithmetic.

snowball

Those who criticized and ridiculed the Occupy Movement as something disorganized, unfocused and undisciplined are already getting a good dose of evidence to make them want to retract that statement through their help for the displaced by Super Storm Sandy and other charitable works. The cynics, however, might learn soon not to underestimate the power of the people through their latest venture. It goes without saying, I think, that there’s no revenge or getting back at the powers that be motive behind such projects—getting even is hardly hopeful or affirming and I think such objectives pull down the whole enterprise to the same sort of thinking, characterized by greed and insecurity, that got all of us in this mess to begin with.

Next week, beginning with a gala, old-fashioned fundraising telethon, the Occupiers will launch Project Rolling Jubilee. Taking a cue from the business plans of the worst loan sharks, bounty-hunters, repo-men and usurers—the practice of selling or unloading loans and mortgages that have the potential of becoming risky or going into arrears amongst each other at a discount, the organizers plan to buy up distressed debts from the lien holders for pennies on the dollar and forgive the car loans, medical bills, student loan debt and underwater house payments. Occupy owns the loans and liability and can discharge with them however it sees fit.  An outlay of $25 translates to about $600 worth of debt loans, and cumulatively that can add up quickly and rescue a lot people from a burden that they could not hope to dig themselves out of otherwise and do things more productive with their time and resources than worry and work to enrich a system that has avalanched so far afield from fair commerce as to be alienating. This cause sounds like an unbeatable and most sustainable return on investment.

dice, deed and deck or weal of fortune

It is an interesting irony and twist of commerce that one of the most popular and enduring board games, Monopoly, was originally meant to be stark warning against allowing land and real estate (utilities and transport too) to be concentrated, hoarded in the hands of the few.

Rather than encouraging accumulation and acquisition as a life-skill, the inventor of The Landlord’s Game, a brilliant reproduction shared by a Happy Mutant on the wonderful Boing Boing, was hoping to indoctrinate young people and families in the economic philosophies of Henry George (DE), who was an advocate for business and commercial enterprise (in so far as it was something that one built oneself) but believed that natural resources and land ought to be in the hands of the public, and the property held privately, by exception, ought to be taxed at a high rate. George did not want the government to nationalize assets or limit ownership but thought a progressive tax, on the landed gentry, could help pay for the public weal and work to discourage such amassing of wealth (via rents rather than industry) in the hands of the few, privileged and to the manor born. Just as the original was not propaganda for socialism, the familiar modern inspiration and all its variations are ruthless games of capitalism and probably still illustrates the dangers of high-rent districts and slumlords and an anti-competitive landscape.

eenie meanie or ένας μια ενα

Some time ago, I recall reading a broad overview (not disjointed but just non-sequitur and sparse explanation, like a freak-show of strange foreign customs) on Christmas traditions. According to the article, some Greek households leave a colander out on the doorstep (unlike stockings hung over a heath or a boot on Sankt Nikolas Tag in Germany for gifts) to confound mischievous spirits and keep them from entering the home.

Like our friend from Sesame Street, Count von Count (Graf Zahl), imps and demons have a condition called arithmomania, the irresistible compulsion to count things and would be drawn to counting out the holes on the strainer. Incidentally, vampires in general tend to be distracted by disarray and would stop to fully account for a tossed handful of rice grains or something similar, should one need a second to escape from one. Did the Count’s character, I wonder, come from his mild version of the disorder or vice-versâ? Because of the demon’s infernal nature, however, it would only manage to count one, two before being cast back on the number three—three being the holy trinity. The spirit could rematerialize and try again but never make it past three. It’s a bit early (and maybe a bit too exotic) for Christmas but I think it might be a nice and maybe more effective gesture of solidarity for the Greek people to help them through these trying times (after all, the people of Iceland ousted their corrupt politicians by banging pots and pans), which none of us may be so charmed as to avoid.