Utopia, you are standing in it!

Here’s a long episode of Jonathan Pie (the alter ego of comedian Tom Walker), playing, as he often does, a reporter. But this time the story is about him, a “documentary” of Pie covering pro- and anti-Brexit marchers. (For Americans: “UKIP” is the UK Independence Party, a prime mover of the Brexit initiative that has, says Matthew, “mutated into a far-right home for Nazis.”)

The conceit is although Pie is a liberal, he’s taken down by social media, who decides to take his words and actions out of context and portray him as both a “Leave-r” and an “alt-righter”. And this is after he extols social media for being a boon to journalism (“journalism for toddlers”), enabling reporters to find just the right quote they want instead of having to interview a bunch of wankers.

In the end, Pie comes a cropper, and the coppers come for him—for perpetrating “hate…

Scott Sumner wrote a post commenting on my previous post about Paul Krugman’s column in the New York Times last Friday. I found Krugman’s column really interesting in his ability to pack so much real economic content into an 800-word column written to help non-economists understand recent fluctuations in the stock market. Part of what I was doing in my post was to offer my own criticism of the efficient market hypothesis (EMH) of which Krugman is probably not an enthusiastic adherent either. Nevertheless, both Krugman and I recognize that EMH serves as a useful way to discipline how we think about fluctuating stock prices.

Here is a passage of Krugman’s that I commented on:

But why are long-term interest rates so low? As I argued in my last column, the answer is basically weakness in investment spending, despite low short-term interest rates, which suggests that those rates will…

Not long after I started blogging over two and a half years ago, Nick Rowe and I started a friendly argument about the money multiplier. He likes it; I don’t. In his latest post (“Alpha banks, beta banks, fixed exchange rates, market shares, and the money multiplier”), Nick attempts (well, sort of) to defend the money multiplier. Nick has indeed figured out an ingenious way of making sense out of the concept, but in doing so, he has finally and definitively demonstrated its total uselessness.

How did Nick accomplish this remarkable feat? By explaining that there is no significant difference between a commercial bank that denominates its deposits in terms of a central bank currency, thereby committing itself to make its deposits redeemable on demand into a corresponding amount of central bank currency, and a central bank that commits to maintain a fixed exchange rate between its currency and the…

For California, 2019 was a welcome reprieve from recent record-setting wildfire seasons. According to Cal Fire, approximately 260,000 acres burned across the state. A large area to be sure, this pales in comparison to the approximately 2,000,000 acres burned in 2018 and 1,500,000 acres in 2017.

However, state policy may lead to even worse fire seasons in the future. Despite the governor declaring a wildfire emergency last year, thereby lifting some regulatory obstacles to forest and grassland management, the state’s insurance regulator is frustrating efforts by insurers to have rates reflect real risks.

In California, insurance carriers require government permission to adjust their rates, introducing political considerations into what should be an economic decision. Unsurprisingly, rate increases aren’t popular with voters who have to pay them.

Although rates have increased, in some cases substantially, they remain capped. Consequently, the logical response for insurers is to continue offering coverage to customers…

The Conservative manifesto pledged to repeal the Fixed-term Parliaments Act, but was silent about what, if anything, would replace it. Robert Hazell argues that it is not enough to simply repeal the Act; new legislation will have to be drafted, parliamentary scrutiny will have to take place, and the options for reform should be properly considered.

Can the Fixed-term Parliaments Act simply be repealed? The short answer is: no. As always, it is more complicated than that. But the commitment in the Conservative manifesto was unambiguous: ‘We will get rid of the Fixed Term Parliaments Act [sic] – it has led to paralysis at a time the country needed decisive action’ (page 48). And decisive action is what the government hopes to display through early repeal of the FTPA. It does not seem to be one of the issues to be referred to the new Constitution, Democracy and Rights Commission…

Four years ago, I read Kim Ghattas’ account of Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s tenure at Foggy Bottom.  The book was personal, clear, concise and analytical.  Her latest book, BLACK WAVE: SAUDI ARABIA, IRAN, AND THE FORTY-YEAR RIVALRY THAT UNRAVELED CULTURE, RELIGION, AND COLLECTIVE MEMORY piqued my interest in light of recent events.  Iran’s attack on Saudi oil fields, the proxy war in Yemen between Iran and Saudi Arabia, Iran’s machinations dealing with shipping in the Persian Gulf, and President Trump’s recent order resulting in the assassination of Qassim Suleimani, the commander of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards, and the head of its Quds force makes the book extremely timely, but also very important as we seek to understand events in the most explosive region in the world trying to discern how the competition between the world’s leading Sunni and Shi’a countries will unfold.

Ghattas’ task is…

The hatred of industrial wind turbines being speared across their rural landscape has stirred the renowned French passion for resistance and revolt.

Not so long ago, French renewable energy rent seekers thought they could count on their countrymen’s love of énergie éolienne to provide a social licence to carpet France in these things and to thereby destroy its picture postcard vistas, into the bargain.

Well, that was then, this is now.

Bernard Durand is a French environmentalist, engineer, researcher and naturalist. Durand has written extensively on the growing French opposition to wind power in the past and has pulled it together with the publication of his book: Un vent de folie: L’éolien en France: mensonge et arnaque?” [ Mad as the sea and wind: Wind power in France: a lie and a swindle?]

Unfortunately, Monsieur Durand’s book is yet to be translated into English. However, he gives a reasonable…

A Feb 2nd Guardian op-ed on the new US peace proposal by Diana Buttu, former legal advisor for the PA negotiating team, was predictably loaded with anti-Israel vitriol, smears, half-truths and outright lies about Israel and the history of the peace process.

However, she did, quite inadvertently, get one thing right in the headline:

Whilst this headline is inspired by a passage in the op-ed arguing that, for Donald Trump, what Palestinians think doesn’t matter, these words can be taken another way – one that Buttu clearly didn’t intend, but which accurately reflects the truth, at least insofar as media coverage is concerned.  What we’re referring to is a dynamic eloquently expressed by former AP Jerusalem correspondent Matti Friedman in his essay at Tablet (“An Insider’s Guide to the Most Important Story on Earth”, Aug. 26, 2014).

A reporter working in the international press corps here understands quickly that what…

I didn’t realize that Steve Pinker was teaching a general-education course on Rationality at Harvard, nor did I know that it was livestreamed—for free. All of us can watch this course, and I’ll be tuning in from time to time. Here’s the relevant tweet with the link.

Today’s lecture begins with one of my favorite songs (and presumably Steve’s): “Reason to Believe”—the Rod Stewart version. I guess he precedes each lecture with a song, which is a great idea. From that I’ll be able to discern his taste in music.

Anyway, I’m watching this lecture at lunchtime (today’s topic: “Why should we follow reason”?), and you may want to peek in. A screenshot:

When you go to the lecture page, you’ll see a small video screen in the…

The French get 85% of their power from nuclear plants and haven’t suffered so much as a scratch since they started in 1962. By contrast, the wind industry (which really only got off the ground in the late 1990s and still generates a trifling amount of electricity) has clocked up around 190 fatalities, so far (eg, see above).

Climate alarmists railing about carbon dioxide gas and not talking about nuclear power generation, can’t be taken seriously. Nuclear power is the only stand-alone power generation source that does not emit carbon dioxide gas during the process.

The fact that, among climate warriors, those seriously promoting nuclear power are few and far between, speaks volumes about what’s really driving them. If CO2 really was about to destroy the planet, these characters would be talking about nothing else but nuclear power, and how to deliver it to all and sundry.

Instead…