Latest news with #FyodorDostoyevsky
Spectator
4 days ago
- Entertainment
- Spectator
Dear Mary: how can I point out a friend's unsightly nose hair?
Q. I'm the author of 14 books, mostly historical fiction but a few children's books, all published by a major firm. I find that I sometimes get invited to grand dinners in Notting Hill where I am often put next to a middle-aged banker's wife. When I tell them about what I do and how hard it is to sell books, they start giving me their advice. It's always the same: 'You should really go on Instagram' and 'Have you tried TikTok?'. I feel my blood boiling because these are people who have never earned a penny or done anything, and I have no desire to submit myself to a Silicon Valley platform. What should I do? – S.P., London W12 A. The trouble with being too grand for TikTok/BookTok etc is that you may be missing a big trick. Sales of White Nights by Fyodor Dostoyevsky and Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen are surging as a direct result of having gone viral on these platforms. You should thank the women pleasantly for their tips. Chippiness is not an ideal mindset to bring to a dinner. Q. A dear and popular friend, who regularly hosts us at house parties, does not currently have a girlfriend and has developed an unsightly growth of nasal hair. How, without appearing to be revolted by it myself, can I draw this to his attention? – Name and address withheld A. Silhouette portraitists, often seen in marquees during wedding celebrations, snip out likenesses in no time. They are surprisingly affordable. Next time you attend one of your friend's house parties, why not commission one to turn up to add to the jollity? Q.
Yahoo
21-05-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
It could be that some New Hampshire Republicans just need to do a little more reading
"The far right now dominating the American Republican Party is selling an idea of liberty that in practice amounts to unfettered freedom but only for the like-minded." (Getty Images) I don't spend a lot of time thinking about why Democratic politicians struggle so much to connect with working-class voters. That's for the party leaders and candidates to figure out. But it's entirely possible that Fyodor Dostoyevsky partially diagnosed the problem almost 150 years ago, when he wrote in 'The Brothers Karamazov': 'The more I love humanity in general, the less I love man in particular.' Recent Republican success winning over the working class is a little easier to understand considering America's Puritan roots. The right has long made political hay by convincing millions of voters that the degradation of society is most evident not in corrupt fiscal policies but in expressions of human sexuality. Every legislative session has its examples, and this year one of them is a book banning bill now headed to the governor's desk. House Bill 324 is touted by conservatives as 'parental rights' legislation meant to keep certain books out of the hands of impressionable young people. It reads: 'This bill prohibits material that is obscene or harmful to minors in schools and creates a procedure for removal and cause of action.' 'Obscene,' of course, always refers to sexuality and not the cherished Americana of extreme violence. And, importantly, it does not encompass the most glaring national obscenity: economic inequality. Whether or not you buy the Republican argument that HB 324 targets only 'flat-out pornography' in schools — which seems unlikely because that's already covered under New Hampshire's existing obscenity laws — author Jodi Picoult is correct in her assessment of the bill's true intent and the price we all pay for censorship: 'These parents will tell you that the books are exposing kids to topics that are salacious or revolutionary. What kids are really being exposed to are lives and mindsets different from their own, which creates compassion and empathy.' The bottom line is that what Republican New Hampshire lawmakers — and many conservative parents — don't like is LGBTQ themes in literature. Why? Because they are convinced that the four horsemen of the American apocalypse will ride into town dressed in drag. But the riders they should worry about have always been with us, gulping the rarefied air of Pullman palace cars and private jet cabins. The American right's fixation on sexuality is bad enough on its own, but it is downright confounding when coupled with Republican-backed efforts that exacerbate economic inequality. Only one of those things is an existential threat to the American experiment, and I promise you it's not Picoult's 'Nineteen Minutes.' HB 324 is an unnecessary bill that exists only to scratch the Republican itch to crush content it deems symbolic of Western decline. But the real threats to society are found elsewhere. For example, consider New Hampshire Republicans' myopic repeal of the Interest and Dividends Tax, an action undertaken in service to the state's economic elite. That move should be constantly discussed and dissected in this state, especially now as lawmakers work at cutting hundreds of millions from the next state budget. But conservatives would rather fish in libraries for words and themes to be offended by. Meanwhile, those with the least in New Hampshire are on the threshold of fresh harm from the right's cold budget priorities. If you want more evidence of this dynamic, consider the 'big beautiful bill' now in the works in Washington, D.C. Once again, a few will win and the struggling many will lose. But the trick to sneaking garbage like that through is to make people look for threats in the wrong places. Immigrants, diversity programs, books with titles like 'Gender Queer.' Republican voters are made to believe that those are the issues pulling at America's seams and not the obvious culprit: the 1 percent's scorched-earth pursuit of limitless wealth. Riding shotgun with all of this is the rot of hypocrisy. The far right now dominating the American Republican Party is selling an idea of liberty that in practice amounts to unfettered freedom but only for the like-minded. That is why the party so consistently defends bigots and punches down on the vulnerable. You can see evidence of this in the always-uneven Republican application of 'local control.' How is HB 324 in alignment with local control? How are any of the laws targeting transgender rights in alignment? Well, they're not, because 'local control' isn't a Republican principle. It's a label applied or removed as a matter of philosophical convenience. The New Hampshire Legislature's latest go at book banning is unsurprising, considering the puritanical forces as old as the nation itself that continue to influence conservative ideology. But if they're as concerned about the degradation of society as they say, one can only hope that they'll realize before it's too late that the call is coming from inside their house. Because sexual content in a novel isn't going to be America's undoing, but the continuation of policies that increase the nation's already obscene levels of economic inequality almost certainly will.
New Indian Express
02-05-2025
- Business
- New Indian Express
Trumpian economics, Jenga games and the coming financial inferno
A new financial crisis is close. The surprisingly durable era of hyper-financialisation faces its most severe test to date from a confluence of economic and financial conditions allied to rising geopolitical and environmental pressures. The lack of resilience and limited capacity to respond are compounding factors. Investors and policymakers are remarkably complacent after their experience of rapid recoveries from previous reversals which ultimately provided profitable opportunities to buy assets. This confidence is unjustified. Excessive optimism underlies high-risk thinking. Fyodor Dostoyevsky thought that "it takes something more than intelligence to act intelligently." Trumpian Economics The primary catalyst is the new US administration's actions, which are rooted in victimhood. Apparently the European Union was created with the purpose of "screwing the US". In his April 2, 2025 statement announcing reciprocal tariffs, President Trump declared "economic independence", lashing out at "foreign cheaters… and…scavengers" who had taken advantage of America. The answer is tariffs – a beautiful word in the limited Trump vocabulary - that, the American president believes, will restore America's greatness, bring back manufacturing, lower inflation and even make income taxes redundant. Channelling Alice in Wonderland's Humpty Dumpty's "when I use a word … it means just what I choose it to mean", the White House spokesperson stated that tariffs are "a tax cut for the American people" - something hitherto unknown in economic circles. Other administration officials claimed that the tariffs would be a $600-billion tax rise, amounting to about 2 percent of GDP and one of the largest in US history, increasing the federal tax share to over 19 percent of output, above the average since 1975 of 17 percent. This decrease in individual and business income combined with the Elon Musk-led DOGE job cuts and other austerity measures will be economically contractionary. Internationally, if implemented, the tariffs may trigger a trade war as other nations respond in kind. Irrespective of the details, average tariffs rates are going to rise, perhaps to levels of the 1930 Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act, which led to a sharp contraction in global trade and worsened the Great Depression. The exposure now is greater because global trade in the 1930s was lower. US imports then were 3 percent of GDP against13 percent currently. The US administration's economic advisors believe that foreigners will absorb the tariffs to maintain access to US markets, the largest in the world. They rely on the 2016 experience when a strong dollar partially offset the impact of tariffs. But, in one of many policy inconsistencies, the Trump administration wants to weaken the dollar whose strength is reducing American export competitiveness. Other Trials The international monetary system is in crisis. There are around 28,000 sanctioned entities or individuals in Russia alone. There are sanctions on Iran, North Korea and China as well as the usual African and Asian suspects. The US has used these measures to gain extraordinary extra-territorial powers. Secondary sanctions are especially pernicious. If a third party deals with a sanctioned party, where it has no prohibitions on such transactions, then payments in dollars flowing through the American payments system creates sufficient nexus making it liable to prosecution for breaching US sanctions endangering any US assets. Following its invasion of Ukraine, the US and Europe froze $300 billion in Russian overseas assets, including central fund reserves. The legality of these actions is uncertain. Moscow has retaliated forcing Western businesses to sell Russian assets at a substantial discount (50 to 60 percent) and pay an exit tax on the proceeds (15 to 35 per cent). Foreign firms have suffered over $170 billion of losses as a result. Banks from countries like Russia have been excluded from the SWIFT international payment system. One measure under consideration to devalue the dollar and address America's unsustainable public debt is to forcibly convert some US treasuries into one-hundred year (century) bonds or perpetual (no maturity date) securities with low or zero coupon. This would constitute a technical default. If such a measure is even seriously contemplated, then investors would accelerate sales of holdings of US Treasuries and dollars. Foreigners own around own $7 trillion of US Treasuries, $5 trillion of US corporate bonds and $19 trillion of US equities. The result would be large interest rate increases, falls in the value of the dollar and chaos in money markets. Despite the challenges, there is now serious interest in reducing the role of the dollar through alternative payment systems and broadening reserve currency options. Increases in the gold price, in part, reflect central bank demand to reduce their dollar reserve exposure. The 'sell America' shift, already underway, will cause serious disruption and instability. The climate crisis continues to accelerate. The UN's World Meteorological Organization recorded 151 unprecedented weather events in 2024. America's NOAA's National Centres for Environmental Information (probably slated for closure by the Trump administration) logged 27 individual US weather and climate disasters in 2024 with at least $1 billion in damages, the total cost of which was approximately $185 billion. The global cost is probably five to six times this and significantly underestimates the true cost. This will require budget sapping spending. Global climate adaptation costs estimates range from $1.7 to $3.1 trillion annually by 2050. This is besides the $38 trillion estimated to be needed by 2050 to tackle the effects of committed climate damage. Additionally, the world will need to spend on emergency relief and for migrating energy systems away from fossil fuels. The pandemic never went away with new variants of the SARS-CoV-2 virus regularly emerging. The cost of long Covid (lost quality of life, reduced earnings and medical expenses) in the US alone, which affects up to 30 percent of people infected, is $3.7 trillion. This equates to roughly $11,000 per American or about 17 percent of pre-COVID US GDP and rivals - in aggregate the cost of the 2008 Great Recession. The global long-term losses will be larger. New pandemics, such as avian flu or an easily transmissible mutation of haemorrhagic infections like Ebola, cannot be discounted, especially as governments are scaling back spending on disease control. A Bloody Peace Dividend Reversed The geo-political environment is unfavourable. The relative prosperity since the early 1990s owed much to the 'peace dividend' following the end of the first Cold War. While there were bloody and costly wars in the Middle East, Afghanistan and Africa, limits to great power rivalry allowed globalisation of trade and capital flows. Nearly 4 billion consumers and 1.5 billion low-wage workers, some highly skilled, entered the international economy. Relocating production to cheaper locations reduced costs lowering inflation. Cross-border capital flows from countries with high saving rates and trade surpluses lowered interest rates, allowing for cheaper and larger borrowings. Corporate profits benefitted from expansion of markets and lower costs. Despite flagging, the Chinese economy is the largest driver of economic activity, currently contributing around 30 percent of global growth. Reduced defence spending funded lower taxes and other government spending. Europe was able to redirect €4.2 trillion in funds over 30years. UK defence spending fell from around 4 percent in the 1980s to around 2 percent by 2021. US military spending declined from 6 percent to 3 percent of GDP. Today, there are expanding hot wars in Ukraine and the Middle East. Ignored conflicts in Myanmar, Congo, the horn of Africa and the Sahel continue. Confrontation in the Far East and the South China Sea is possible. A new Cold War between the US and its allies and Russia and China has commenced. Geo-political flux means higher defence spending requiring diversion of funds. Europe plans to spend up to €800 billion on rearming. Additional global spending may reach $3 trillion per annum, reversing the peace dividend. It also means a retrenchment of globalisation. Higher levels of disruption are probable with implications for commodity prices, especially for energy supplies and prices. The Western-rules-based international order, which its proponents invoke when it suits their agendas, is disintegrating. International bodies, such as the United Nations and the International Criminal Court, have lost authority and credibility. America and its allies' acquiescence in the Gaza genocide and Israeli territorial expansion will have long-term consequences. A return to earlier asymmetric warfare against Western citizens and assets is possible. If the mighty do as they please, then the weak will fight back with available means. Within countries, the rule of law is fractured. The US administration's assertion of executive power and disregard of judicial authority threaten a constitutional crisis. Western liberal democracies are increasingly ungovernable. They are normalising autocracy, adopting techniques associated with once criticised authoritarian states such as undermining the checks and balances of an independent judiciary, public service and press, persecuting political opponents, and surveillance of citizens. The immediate concern is a sharp shock in economic activity and income as well as breakdowns in supply chains with resulting disruption and higher prices. A full-blown trade war alone between the US and its trading partners could cost $1.4 trillion with serious consequences for interconnected economies. The other factors, combined with an aging population and slow productivity improvements, will drive long-term stagnation. Jenga Games In parallel, the global financial system is now dominated by debt and speculation. It is a precarious Jenga game where progressive removal of safeguards have created a more unstable structure vulnerable to even small disturbances. Central to this fragility is global borrowings, much of it by governments since 2008, which has reached around $315 trillion (330 percent of the world GDP) up around a half from around $210 trillion a decade ago. Debt is temporary capital. Inability to meet interest and principal commitments threatens financial distress. Where true risk capital, like equity, is a soft bed, debt is one of sharp nails. Debt should ideally be serviced from cash flow generated by the spending. But household borrowing primarily funded consumption. Corporations borrowed to finance share buybacks or mergers and acquisitions rather than investment in research and development and new production facilities. Investors used debt to leverage purchases of existing assets to increase returns. Government borrowed to finance recurrent spending. The productivity of debt is measured by the Incremental Capital-Output Ratio (ICOR), the ratio of investment to growth. High ICORs signify low productivity of capital or low marginal efficiency of capital. Global ICOR is currently around 4 to 5 meaning an additional $4 to $5 dollars of debt is needed to generate $1 of additional GDP. The US, Europe and Japan are probably around that average. This compares to an ICOR ratio of around 2 in the 1950s. China's ICOR is around 9, up from around 3 in 2007. Over and above explicit borrowings, the financial system has significant embedded leverage, where financial engineering increases loss intensity for a given event. Digital or binary options (which if triggered have an agreed fixed payout independent of price movements) allow sellers to trade-off large losses in the event of a remote event occurring and a larger premium received. Junior securities in a securitisation have similar leverage to corporate financial distress. In the case of a few defaults, an investor diversified across an entire portfolio of loans would suffer small losses. If they are invested in the riskier equity or subordinated debt tranches that bear first losses in a securitisation of identical obligations, then the same number of delinquencies would result in large losses or the entire investment being wiped techniques disguise often sizeable exposures to a particular market move or financial event. Questions of Quality Valuations of stocks and real estate are elevated. There is a systematic decline in the quality of public and private securities. The creditworthiness of borrowers has deteriorated. Amongst sovereigns, only Australia, Canada, Denmark, Germany, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Norway, Singapore, Sweden, and Switzerland are AAA rated currently by all major credit rating agencies. There are only two AAA rated corporations - Johnson & Johnson and Microsoft. Corporations now target a bare investment grade rating (around A/BBB) adjusting their balance sheets with more debt to lower their cost of capital making them more vulnerable to economic slowdowns. The majority of highly-rated securities are asset-backed securities (ABS) created by securitising mortgages and corporate, usually non-investment grade, loans. The high rating relies on subordinated securities absorbing first losses on the underlying asset pool based on models using estimates of future default rates, losses given default and correlations between defaults, none directly observable. There are no known cash losses on AAA rated ABS, but a weak economy and rising defaults will reduce subordination levels driving ratings downgrades and wider credit spreads with consequential falls in value. Securitisation structures, that proved toxic in 2008, have re-emerged under new branding. Outstandings of CLOs (collateralised loan obligations) and SRT (synthetic risk transfer) are around $1 trillion each. While advocates argue that they are less egregious than the earlier models, they remain untested in a serious downturn. Public equity quality has declined. There is significant concentration risk with the US now constituting over 60 percent of global equity indices before its recent declines. 26 stocks, primarily technology firms, account for half the entire value of the S&P 500 index. Many companies have no earnings or barely enough to cover their interest bills. There is over $12 trillion of private equity and debt investments in businesses, real estate and infrastructure encouraged by abnormally low costs of capital and abundant liquidity. The higher returns claimed necessitate additional risk taking, including greater leverage and lack of liquidity. Another concern is the lack of transparency, especially the valuation of these private investments which have not fallen as much as corresponding public are suggestions that private valuations, derived from successive funding rounds, transactions between private investors or internally between funds managed by the same asset manager, or models, have deferred adjustments in anticipation of a recovery. Recent transactions illustrate the dysfunction. In an interesting parallel to WeWork (a real-estate business masquerading as a technology firm), CoreWeave is an equipment rental business that purchases Graphics Processing Units (GPUs) in demand for AI applications from Nvidia and rents them to users. The business model is predicated on the current scarcity of Nvidia chips. Analysis of its operations reveals a reliance on sales to two main customers, a close relationship with Nvidia (an investor in the company), uncertainty around the rate of depreciation and obsolescence of the chips and significant borrowings. CoreWeave's March 2025 initial public offering sought to issue shares totalling $2.7 billion at $47-55 each. The transaction only raised $1.5 billion at $40 per share of which $250 million was a last-minute order from Nvidia. Three investors took up 50 per cent of the offering. The underwriters had to allegedly intervene to avoid the shares falling below the issue price on its first day of trading. The concern is that values of some private securities currently are overstated and may have to written down if markets turn down. Bovine Gatherings Investment and trading are focused on few strategies. The preponderance of passively managed Exchange Traded Funds (ETFs), which track major indices, have created homogenous, momentum following markets. Over-weighted, liquid, large stocks benefit disproportionately from forced buying by ETFs and other funds which track indices to some degree, who have no investment discretion, increasing the risk of price bubbles. Passive fund managers, reliant on lowering costs, emphasise scale, exacerbating concentration. Markets are dependent on flows from a few large passive products. Active investors, whether guided by fundamental or quantitative analysis, are clustered around the same crowded trades. This is compounded by the prevailing 'risk-on or risk-off' approach – when perceived risk is low, investors purchase higher-risk investments reverting to safer investments if risk increases. This reduces the benefits of diversification as price changes across risky and safe assets are highly correlated. Herding behaviour is evident with participants placing similar bets. Common strategies involve highly leveraged treasury basis trades (arbitraging small price differences between bonds and bond futures), carry trades (borrowing in low-cost Yen or Yuan and buying higher-yielding currencies or assets) and wagers on stability (selling options for modest premia against the risk of large loss). The financial system is now a long inter-connected chain complicated by the rise of lightly regulated and opaque shadow banks, whose share of global financial assets in 2022 was around 47 percent, up from 25 percent in 2007-08, compared to conventional banks' 40 percent. The majority of transactions are routed via a few large dealers, investors and central clearing counterparties for derivatives. All participants rely on near identical models to quantify and manage risks. What could go wrong? Tinderbox The line separating investment and speculation is ill-defined. All periods of expansion thrive on large doses of easy money that provides investors with effortless and seemingly riskless profits. Recalling the post-US Civil War age of unfettered growth, Thomas Mellon observed: "It was such a period as seldom occurs and hardly ever more than once in anyone's lifetime… In which it was easy to grow rich. There was steady increase in the value of property and commodities… One had only to buy anything and wait, to sell at a profit; sometimes… at a very large profit in a short time." The expansion of credit over the last four decades rewarded speculation and created a fake prosperity for some. Such unsustainable conditions must, like our revels, end. As Fred Schwed wrote in Where Are the Customers' Yachts?: "When 'conditions' are good, the… investor buys. But when 'conditions' are good, stocks are high. Then without anyone having the courtesy to ring a bell, 'conditions' get bad." That is now happening. The trigger for the final tumultuous phase of the unravelling is unknown. As Mao Zedong understood: "a single spark can start a prairie fire". It could be a recession, credit losses, share price falls, failure of a trading strategy, a large corporate failure, fraud or a geopolitical event. The world today is a tinderbox. (Satyajit Das is a former banker and author of numerous technical works on derivatives and several general titles: Traders, Guns & Money: Knowns and Unknowns in the Dazzling World of Derivatives (2006 and 2010), Extreme Money: The Masters of the Universe and the Cult of Risk (2011) and A Banquet of Consequence – Reloaded (2021). His latest book is on ecotourism – Wild Quests: Journeys into Ecotourism and the Future for Animals (2024).)
