farmdoc's blog post number 604

Every week I listen to the This American Life podcast. Each episode comprises a few stories on one theme. Today’s Farmdoc’s Blog post copies that format. The theme’s ‘money’:

I wrote last Sunday that COP15 grinds on. Now, with four days to go, it looks to be inexorably headed toward a stalemate, or an at best meagre agreement. Look at its sponsors. I don’t know of them all, but I see four car makers, an airline and a transport firm. Who the sponsors are mightn’t affect the deliberations of apparatchiks, but it’s unethical and improper for a UN conference – not to mention a climate change one – to have privates sponsors at all let alone this lot of carbon mega-polluters.

Fighting terrorists and terrorism militarily is expensive, and going by recent experience it’s not so effective either. So what to do? As per the old adage, follow the money. The Jerusalem Post reports that 18 months ago a US Federal Court froze US$2B of Iranian money which is at the centre of a legal struggle between US Marine victims of a 1983 Hizbullah terror attack on a Marine barracks in Beirut, and a Luxembourg bank (which I guess is an Iranian proxy or front). Terrorists needs lots of money. So hit ’em where it hurts. In the wallet.

Meantime President Obama and the US Congress are hitting greedy, amoral, unrepentant Wall Street leeches with a host of new measures aiming to rein in their excesses and increase their accountability. Will these measures work? No-one knows yet. But there’s no downside to trying.

Finally I’ve just read here that if Australia’s successful in its bid to host FIFA’s 2018 or 2022 soccer World Cup, it’ll cost A$2.9B. Thank you, but no thank you, FIFA.

farmdoc's blog post number 178

Rodney, a rabbinical friend in Sweetheart Vivienne’s and my past, once said that you never see a signpost walking in the direction it’s pointing. I can organise other people’s time, but less well my own. Whenever I peruse the iTunes Store’s podcast smorgasbord, my mouth waters; but it’s a rare week when I listen to even one podcast. Sweetheart Vivienne, who regularly listens to several, mostly quotes This American Life. Some months ago she recommended an episode titled ‘The Giant Pool of Money’ about the (then relatively confined) sub-prime crisis. Simply presented, it was easily understandable even by me who knew little about the topic. Last week’s TAL episode, by the same presenters, is titled ‘Another Frightening Show About the Economy’. Concerning the global credit/banking crisis, it’s also easily understandable. The title’s no misnomer – the presenters and interviewees are absolutely clear this crisis is genuine, far-reaching, and extremely major because its potential consequences are catastrophically frightening. A favourite saying of mine is that it’s useless to rehearse the past because it’s passed. But this crisis is unquestionably due to avaricious Wall Street fat cats who’ve ignored the massive potential downside risk of their conniving. And the US Government isn’t blameless because it deliberately decided not to regulate what needed regulating. I can’t predict if anyone knows how to rectify this dreadful mess. Where’s your signpost, Rabbi Rodney?