abacus

In response to revelations about Greece short-selling themselves and floating their solvency on currency-swaps, the main economic players the EU, Germany and France, are proffering new regulations to curtail this sort of market necromancy.  They are calling for limits to trade driven off of speculation that's been abstracted away from anything that remotely resembles a commodity to be found in this dimension or this plane of being, a future losing-bet deferred.  It's not only mathematical spin that makes things like derivatives inaccessible and incomprehensible, but also some of the loopholes that corporations are herded towards that have absolutely floored me during my protracted studies towards an MBA and make it small wonder that everyone owes everyone else and no one can cough it up.  Brokers, and businesses, it seems only make money by shifting risk.  Admittedly, there's just a smattering of actual financial mathematics, whose variables are divined somehow, and teh coursework has focused on leadership and management ethics, but even what can ultimately be stated sans formulae is incredibly obtuse and counterintuitive and sneaky.  Math is supposed to make complex things clearer--not lend credibility to some hollow shell game.  One doubts its letting out a big secret, but it's more profitable for a company to float its capital on bonds and debt, rather than reinvest its own earnings, due to how the US tax codes are written.  Who would bet on that?

concensus

After a seemingly unremitting planning phase and calls that the hired help has skewed actually US jobless numbers, the American census process is picking up.  This decade it will be conducted under the friendly auspices of the Patriot Act and with a regular calvacade of entrenched, deputized bureaucrats.  I am sure that other countries accomplish the same feat with more accuracy, with more frequency and with less general bother.  What surprises are going to be revealed?  I doubt it would be anything that could floor anyone, nor significantly alter the political landscape.  If I still lived in America and one of the concensus-takers came calling, I would tell him that 60,000 people resided at this address, so I would qualify for my own congressional representative.

I'm a Sozial!

There are quite a few campaign posters up for the next round of elections.  Many, like this one, promote the candidate as trustworthy, progressive and of course "Sozial."  In the context, I understand what they are trying to convey but it makes me think of that meme (and perhaps it was only me who thought it was such a bandwagon, per se, like saying "Rabbit, Rabbit" and doing a somersault out of bed on the first day of the month) that Michael Buckley made very funny, teasing some reality show star, I'm sure.  I am sure the committee to elect Burgermeister Meisterburger does not endorse this message.  In unrelated news, Germany has vowed that Greece will not see one euro from them until they bring their own house in order.  Germany suggested that the Greeks sell some of their uninhabited islands to raise cash.  This sounds less than optimal in practice.  After all, who is the buying spirit lately?  Dubai is not prepared to snatch up this real estate, and we would end up with Scylla and Charibdis and the Sirens named for sad old corporate maligners.

wi-fight

To be commended for exercizing some common sense and restraint, the German high court voted to overturn a 2008 dragnet on personal communications, that allowed the government to collect data indiscriminately and retain it for an indefinite period, six-months at a minimum.  The justice ministers said that the government must be selective when trawling for data and that gathering such data violated secrecy and privacy laws.

zephyr

Just as all the remaining pockets of snow melted--that dirty, crappy snow that lingers like a ticklish cough--a powerful wind storm tore across Western Europe, scouring France and our part of Germany very hard.  Gusts were in excess of 145 kilometers per hour with sustained winds of 80.  They also named the depression "Xynthia," which I think is doubly odd--for one, because German weathermen have adopted naming the slightest breeze, and secondly, because German law is very particular about how parents can name their children, and names have to be proper, real names and I don't think this one would necessarily hold up.  In the meantime, I was closely watching the little river, swollen from the snow melt, at the end of our street to see if it managed to hurdle its banks throughout the day, but I was really sort of frightened in the night to think about an invisible, creeping flood--supplanted somewhere underneath the din and howl of the storm.

pay no attention to that man behind the curtain

With the debates on US healthcare reform providing a sufficient and numbing cover, the Senate and the Congress voted to renew the US Patriot Act, which is actually an uncatchy acronym for Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism--like our unnecessary and tautologically named SORT program (aka, Keep your Neighbourhood Tidy) which is separate or recycle trash, without any safeguards or promised curtailments or gaspy, relieved sunsets.

budgetary guidance

Despite telling figures that a quarter of US home mortages are underwater, housing-starts have slumped, American consumer confidence is crestfallen, massive layoffs, endemic underemployment, and planned or threatened buget cuts in all sorts of social services are circulating, there are still priorities (aside from defense, people seem to always find the money to perpetuate wars). 

After a decade of complaints from the community for being a bad neighbor (draconian security and general bother, as well as unpaid parking tickets and some 32 million pounds in unpaid congestion fees), the US is abandoning its embassy in storied Grosvenor Square for a planned site in posh and shabby-chic Battersea.  The US apparently has a billion dollars of ease-worthy funds to invest on this crystalline Borg ship, complete with a moat.

The American government is also allocating more funds for federal prisons, in the face of general cut-backs and Grecian--stoic--austerity measures elsewhere.  That decision seems a little prescient with the proposals for a civil policing corps and all the citizens that might be pushed to resorting to what passes as criminal behavior when their budgets can't be balanced.  So many things are criminalized US and punishable with incarceration, but there still won't be a cell block reserved for the robber-barons.  Of course, at the rate that US and UK attitudes are converging, they may well arrest the hapless photographer who snaps a picture of the construction site and disappear him away to a prison in America.

suffragette city

Though still not yet a German citizen, I did receive this personal invitation to vote by mail with an official ballot to choose no more than ten candidates (out of thirteen in the running) for parish representatives to speak up for Bad Karma in the larger diocese of Bavaria.   It is not the same as being chosen as a member of the conclave to elect the next Pope, but I plan to take this seriously and am just glad for the chance to be able to vote here, even for the chance to be apathetic, confused or dismissive, too