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Money matters: Early winter is here (Part
3)
Graham Macdonald
MBMG International Ltd.
Last week we wrote that, armed with flawed research,
Alan Greenspan told a European bankers conference in Frankfurt that,
“Current account deficits, even large ones, have been defused without
significant consequences, (but) we cannot become complacent.” When you
see all this, the question has to be asked about American policy, how on
earth can you rely on a Gaelic Greco-Iberian financial model for
American and global economic salvation?
The point is that at some stage the available liquidity to provide this
funding to the US will be exceeded by demand, unless of course the
available credit is reduced before that.
According to Stephen Roach of Morgan Stanley, “The enormous US trade
deficit should be a wake-up call to America and the rest of the world.
It is a direct manifestation of a lopsided global economy that remains
biased toward unprecedented external imbalances. As long as the US
continues to live well beyond its means and as long as the rest of the
world fails to live up to its means, this seemingly chronic condition
will only get worse. The imperatives of global rebalancing are reaching
a flashpoint.”
That is quite tame in comparison to the warning issued by Former
Assistant Secretary of the Treasury in the Reagan administration Paul
Craig Roberts - “The dollar’s value and status as reserve currency
cannot forever stand the trade and budget deficits that are now part and
parcel of America’s economic policy. Unless there are major changes
soon, America’s economic future is a third world work force with a
banana democracy’s worthless currency.”
Robert Rubin forecasted some time ago that one of the first symptoms of
impending doom would be an interest rate spike. In the last 12 months
that has already substantially taken place. Another harbinger would be
the widespread selling of US$ assets by creditor nations (if you lend
money to the US government you do so by buying Treasury Bills -
effectively fixed-interest bearing loans redeemable at a future point).
Therefore, countries that have been lending money to the US have been
“buying” US dollars in the process. If they started selling dollars that
would indicate that they were reaching the point where they were
prepared to say “enough is enough”.
Australia and New Zealand have already diversified their foreign
currency reserves from just US$. “By selling U.S. dollars, securities
and assets denominated in the U.S. currency, Russia is diversifying its
currency reserves, which is in line with the policy pursued by the
Central Bank of Russia,” Andrei Illarionov, adviser to the Russian
president on economic problems, told Itar-Tass News Agency in November
last year.
In February this year it was reported that Korea’s central bank will
diversify its currency reserves and, according to The Financial Times,
29 out of 56 central banks surveyed by Central Banking Publications
Ltd., a London- based publisher, between September and December 2004
said they had reduced exposure to the dollar. On our doorstep, even the
Bank of Thailand has announced that it’s considering reducing the
proportion of its $50 billion reserves held in dollars from 80 percent
to 50 percent.
More importantly, Japan is also at the point where it looks likely to
start selling rather than buying US$ denominated assets. The big news
here may be China’s move of the yuan from a dollar peg to a currency
basket - this would reinforce estimates by Lehman Brothers that the
Chinese Central Bank started to sell dollar assets around the end of the
first quarter of this year (they’d actually let slip their intention to
think about dumping some of their 515 Bn greenbacks as early as the
Davos World Economic Forum last year).
Not only might it no longer be so attractive to these nations to fund
the US deficit - as the accumulated debt gets bigger and bigger then the
proportion of the new debt that is required to service existing interest
commitments gets larger and the proportion available to spend reduces.
This makes additional lending less attractive to Asian exporters who
have really treated the US as a client in what Saul Eslake of ANZ calls
“the greatest vendor financing operation that the world has seen”.
Not only that, the debt burden in the US has already reduced the
effectiveness of this from the point of view of their creditors and it
may be that the economic performance of the likes of China is starting
to suffer. If so, they would be less able as well as less willing to
keep the funding going as of right now.
Behind the facade of its export sector, China’s domestic demand has
already started to slow. Credit demand is down, direct foreign
investment growth has slowed, and import demand growth is now flat.
Credit and investment have been key drivers of China’s growth – the
current slowdown in both cannot be dismissed. It would seem that the
Chinese economy is slowing down. This would end Chinese funding for the
US deficit and spark the US recession that we fear.
So from the point of view simply of the sustainability of the current
levels of credit needed to keep the US economy afloat, we think that you
should be worried. Very worried. However, that is only the thin end of
the wedge. We’ll cover more of it next week.
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The above data and research was compiled from sources believed to be
reliable. However, neither MBMG International Ltd nor its officers can accept
any liability for any errors or omissions in the above article nor bear any
responsibility for any losses achieved as a result of any actions taken or not
taken as a consequence of reading the above article. For more information please
contact Graham Macdonald on [email protected]
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Snap Shots: Better mousetraps do not guarantee better pictures
by Harry Flashman
Over the past decade, we have become very aware of technological
advances. Hands up all those who have just ‘had’ to buy the latest
mobile phone, even though all it does is makes calls and takes calls,
when you boil it all down. The rest is technological whizzbangery.
 It
is the same with cameras. All the way through history, man has been
trying to build a better mousetrap. Photographically this is still the
case. From the old box brownie of 70 years ago, we now have the all
singing, all dancing, electronic marvels of today. Cameras that will
even “think” for you and work out the required shutter speeds for the
kind of shot you are going to take. With these sorts of mousetraps we
should all be wonderful award winning photographers. Unfortunately we
are not.
Yet, every month some camera manufacturer is releasing yet another
‘break-through’ technological mousetrap marvel. Take for example, the
Konica Minolta DiMAGE X1. This is a digital camera with around eight
megapixels, but has no focus assist lamp to allow placement of the
subject matter in low light situations. All the technology, and hit or
miss pictures!
Getting back to why technology doesn’t make instant great photographers.
The reason for this is simple. While the modern camera can get the
exposure close enough and the correct shutter speed for the type of
shot, it cannot arrange the items to be photographed in the correct
position. Nor can the camera position itself in the right place relative
to the subjects to be photographed.
To illustrate what I mean, take a look at the two shots this week. The
brief is to photograph someone on their trip to Thailand, and show them
in front of the hotel they stayed at. Now I actually see this shot being
taken every day, and every day the photographer on holidays, complete
with shiny new mousetrap, takes the left hand side photograph and ends
up with a tiny person in front of the large hotel. This was not the shot
the photographer had in his or her mind - that shot is the one on the
right. One of the principal “rules” of photography is to remember just
who or what is the “hero” in the shot. This is one (of the many) things
the better mousetrap does not know. It is not a mind reader. You have to
arrange the items and compose the shot to make the subject the hero.
With these types of “people in front of a special place” shots first you
have to compose the picture by moving the camera into place so that you
have all you want of the special building, for example. Having done
that, now put your subject in front of the camera and you will instantly
note that the person (if human) will immediately move backwards to be
closer to the building, almost as if making sure of ruining the shot for
you, before you begin! What you now have to do is to look through the
viewfinder and call the person forward till they fill at least half of
the viewfinder. Even go for a waist-up view to get the person even
larger in the photograph if you wish.
Another “rule” that I have to continually have to tell new photographers
is the “Walk several yards (metres) closer” approach. More good shots
are rendered useless by being too far away from the camera, than by
being too close to the lens.
While it would be nice if the better mousetrap could ring a bell and
tell you that you are too far away - it’s electronic “brain” isn’t that
good yet. You have to use yours. That is one reason why good
photographers will never be replaced by better mousetraps. The
technology may belong to the camera, but the “eye” is yours. Just
remember to use it!
Modern Medicine: How safe are “natural” remedies?
by Dr. Iain Corness, Consultant
Unfortunately, despite all the advances in medicine, it is
still somewhat of an inexact ‘science’. We do not have the cures for all
ailments, in fact far from it. But we have not given up. We continue to try,
to experiment and, most importantly, to test. Regular readers of this column
will know that I have mentioned the acronym EBM many times. This stands for
“Evidence Based Medicine” and is a key factor in modern medicine. It just
means we test until we have the evidence that any drug or treatment really
does work. This all takes time, as the evidence cannot just hang on one
person who got better. It required huge series, across the globe.
However, as patients, or sufferers of any complaint, we want that “cure”
right now! Consequently, with all medical conditions where we cannot give
the patient the “wonder drug” there is then a tendency for them to try
something else, anything else, hoping for the relief that conventional
medicine has not promised or delivered. For the musculo-skeletal conditions,
for example, the “alternatives” are multiple, from magnets to mussels from
New Zealand. But do they really work?
The problem with the non-pharmaceutical mainline pills and potions industry
is in unbiased scientific testing. The tablets that Roche, Parke-Davis,
Bayer and all that lot produce are rigorously and vigorously tested. Not
only do the drug companies have to show that their pills actually work, but
they also have to show what side effects they can produce and whether or not
they interact with other pills and potions to make explosive mixtures. The
“alternative” pill and potion manufacturers have not had the same degree of
scientific scrutiny.
There are those who will claim that because the pills come from plants, that
the ingredients are then “natural” and therefore OK for us humans. This is
pseudo-scientific nonsense. Extracts of plants and herbs are chemicals – and
some chemicals can kill, that is why wild animals can die after eating the
wrong plants. So can you!
So let us look at a few of the alternative treatments and analyse just
whether they are indeed efficacious. Willow Bark is one that is used for
arthritis, because it was imagined that since the tree grew in damp
environments, and arthritis was thought to be caused by “damp” then
treatment with the bark was “logical”. The herbalists got the right answer,
however, no matter how wrong the reasons! Willow Bark does have an effect
because it contains salicylates – more commonly known these days as aspirin!
Other “natural” sources of aspirin include poplar tree bark, black cohosh (a
North American plant), pansies, violets and meadowsweet. Aspirin works!
Have you heard of Devil’s Claw? This South African plant has been studied to
see if it has any anti-inflammatory action in arthritis. The small studies
that have been done show no effect, but it is an analgesic (pain killer), so
those people with arthritis do feel better when they take it. In fact,
demand is now outstripping supply – but they would do just as well with a
strip of paracetamol tablets. And cheaper too!
Another of the well touted treatments for arthritis is the green lipped
mussel. According to the pundits, this form of treatment has had numerous
clinical trials, and unfortunately, the same number of clinical failures!
However, I believe they are quite nice steamed with garlic, ginger and
shallots!
One other niggling problem with the “natural” therapies is that for
musculo-skeletal problems, most of which are of a long standing chronic
nature, even less scientific work has been done to see what happens when you
take these medications for a protracted period of time. Until long term
safety has been ascertained, I would counsel caution, and beware mixing
pharmaceutical drugs and over the counter “alternatives”!
Reactions to pharmaceutical items are still reasonably rare and well
documented. I cannot say the same for the “natural” remedies.
 Heart to Heart with Hillary
My Dearist Choklit Munchin Illery,
Refurin ter yer resent correspondense from the riter wot give you the grif
of 50 per-sent way of dosing wiv yer lady. Meself and me own bird as a
similar system, wot be that er duz the graft and keeps yours trooly appy (if
yer gets my drift, ‘chukle chukle’) while I learns er Inglish lingo an
ritin. Problam is, er tends ter be noy-nid slow up top (note my grasp of Tie
after only 18 yeers in Tieland) an is grately acerdermicly infeerier to wot
I be an is even startin to come over commin soundin an embarises me wen er
opens er gob in the sircles with wot I sircumsize. Yer, rabbitin like wot
yer do, an cwik ter correct them bad spelin riters wot ave the cheak ter put
pen ter payper, ull likely no ow ter andle the situashon tactferly, like not
callin er buffalow brane like wot I duz! Sorry no champers for elpin me old
lush, but a swig er meths awates yer at me (temporary acomadayshun awaitin
benefits) at end er old peer, (wotch fer missin 3 planks arf way)!
Nairod Remraf
Deer Nairod,
I think yer poolin me legg, Nairod. I doant ware floriel print dresses. I
must say I am also amayzed that your sircumsised sircle is so small. Have
yoo seen yer doctor abowt this? Maybe even the rabbi? Abowt the invite fer
the swig er meths, can I wate till neggst weak, coz the city cownsil sez
it’s gunna fix the planks, so I’ll come after the peer is repayred?
Dear Hillary,
I still wonder if the letters you get are real. Surely people aren’t as
stupid as they make themselves out to be? It seems as though these people
are on a course of self destruction, because they all fall for the same old
traps and tricks. Are there that many lonely people out there?
Leroy
Dear Leroy,
Sorry to disappoint you or have to give you a lecture on human nature, but
actually there are that many lonely people out there, and many come to
Thailand to get over their loneliness problems, but once they are here
forget they are buying rent-a-friends, not a lifetime lover. If you don’t
think the letters are real, just look at the one above yours, complete with
cartoon. I certainly didn’t draw that one, did I? I’m much better looking
than that, and I don’t wear glasses when I’m tripping around.
Dear Hillary,
Why is there so much in your Agony Aunt column about love-sick, spurned and
hopeless men? Don’t they understand that all of life is a lottery and
there’s only a few winning tickets. When you don’t win this one then you
line up again for the next lottery – after all there’s plenty of lotteries
and plenty of tickets! I buy a new lottery ticket every week and I’m
enjoying every one of those tickets and one will be a big winner one day. I
know I’m only 23 so I’m probably more of an attraction to women than they
are, but you only live once, as they say! These hopeless guys should just
get off their asses and stop moaning and get on with life, but I suppose for
most of them they are really past it. The world belongs to the young, don’t
you agree Hillary, or are you past it too?
Lawrence the Lottery player
Dear Lawrence,
Aren’t you just the cat’s whiskers, my Petal. Hillary is glad to see that
you are only 23 as it helps explain your arrogance. We were all 23 once, and
next year it will just be a memory for you too. Normal men have emotions,
just as do normal women do. That is why men write in with their emotional
problems. It’s a bit of a release for them. That is what these sorts of
columns are about, my precious Lawrence. However, you do show me that you
also are a loving person, Lawrence, unfortunately it is only for yourself.
Have you ever thought about changing your name to Narcissus? Hillary will
bet you can’t walk past a mirror without checking your reflection either.
Ever heard the expression “You’ve got tickets on yourself”? Well you
certainly have, and it’s not all lottery tickets. Your time is coming
Lawrence the lottery lover. Now please go outside and play.
Psychological Perspectives: Our e-mail messages might not be as clear as we imagine them to be
by Michael Catalanello,
Ph.D.
If you use email regularly, you’ve
probably had an experience similar to this: The party receiving your
message grossly misinterprets the content of your message. Perhaps you
thought your message was clear, obvious to all but the mentally
deficient. Research in social psychology suggests, however, that you
might be overestimating the clarity of your written communications to
others.
With the advent of computers and the internet, those of my generation
have seen a remarkable revolution in communication. Perhaps nowhere is
this revolution more apparent than in the establishment of e-mail as a
popular and widespread means of communicating with others.
Along with the speed convenience of e-mail, however, comes certain
hazards associated with communications using the written word. Because
they usually rely exclusively upon text to convey ideas, e-mail messages
are devoid of inflections in voice tone, facial expressions, gestures,
and other nonverbal cues that assist us in interpreting meaning in
face-to-face verbal communications. The absence of these cues in written
communication makes it particularly subject to misunderstandings by the
reader.
Written communication in the form of letter writing has been with us for
centuries. E-mail, however, seems different in important ways. For one
thing, traditional letter writing is usually done infrequently, perhaps
monthly or weekly at best. By contrast, people commonly send e-mail
messages daily, often sending scores of messages during the course of a
day. Messages are typically composed quickly, with little planning or
editing. The language of e-mail is also typically less formal that that
of traditional letters, often making use of obscure abbreviations, email
slang, and symbols to communicate meanings.
In order to try to streamline web-based communication, and overcome the
shortcomings of the written word, “emoticons” were developed using typed
punctuations and other keyboard symbols to represent expressions of the
human face. Well-known examples include :-) to suggest a smiley face,
;-) to suggest a winking smiley face, and :-( a frowning face.
Unfortunately, many emoticons are ambiguous in their meanings. Who knew,
for example, that :*, stands for love/affection :w, for sarcasm/insult,
and :o represents “reaction?”
Misunderstandings in e-mails are particularly likely when the
communicator is attempting to convey subtle messages, such as those
relying upon humor or sarcasm. The difficulty in interpreting such
messages is probably related to their ambiguity. For example, I know I
am being sarcastic if I refer in my column to the “impeccable
cleanliness of Pattaya City streets;” however, my sarcasm might not be
apparent to my readers. Because it is difficult for me to separate my
own experience from that of my readers, I might not realize how
ambiguous my words might be to others. A study published recently in the
American Psychological Association’s Journal of Personality and Social
Psychology demonstrates how our understanding of the experience of
others is biased by our own private experience.
A team of researchers led by psychologist Jason Parker demonstrated that
our overconfidence in the clarity of our messages might result from an
inherent difficulty we have in detaching ourselves from our own
perspective, and viewing things from the perspective of another person.
Subjects in Parker’s experiment were instructed to e-mail a series of
“deep thoughts” by Jack Handy (a.k.a. comedian Al Franken) to another
individual. “Deep thoughts” included arguably humorous observations like
this one:
“Whenever I see an old lady slip and fall on a wet sidewalk, my first
instinct is to laugh. But then I think, what if I were an ant, and she
fell on me. Then it wouldn’t seem quite so funny.”
Half of the subjects simply read the jokes, and then e-mailed them to
another person. The other half watched a videotape of the jokes being
read on the popular American TV comedy show Saturday Night Live (SNL).
Obviously, the timing and delivery of a joke, as well as the actual
words spoken play an important role in determining its perceived
funniness.
As the investigators had predicted, those who had first viewed the SNL
video tape rated the jokes as funnier than those who had simply read
them. Moreover, those attitudes effected subjects’ predictions of how
funny the e-mail recipients would judge the jokes. All subjects
overestimated the degree to which e-mail recipients would experience the
joke as funny; however, the degree of overestimation would be greatest
for those who had seen the jokes performed on SNL.
Experiments like these demonstrate our human tendency to allow our own
experiences to influence our judgements concerning the experiences of
others, the difficulty we have in imagining others’ experiences
independently our own. In the case of email communications, we
overestimate the degree to which the meaning of our written
communications will be shared by our e-mail recipient. This might help
explain why we are so often shocked when others arrive at
interpretations of our words we never imagined possible.
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Dr. Catalanello is a licensed psychologist in his home State of Louisiana, USA, and a member of the Faculty of Liberal Arts at Asian University,
Chonburi. You may address questions and comments to him at [email protected], or post on his weblog at
http://asianupsych.blogspot.com
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A Female Perspective: Women Drivers
with Sharona Watson
This is a subject that always manages to
raise the temperature of people, especially men you might think? Well,
whenever I hear it, it makes me overheat too. What is it about men that when
they see what they consider to be bad driving, that they think it is
something to do with the sex of the person, the result of some genetic
defect? It’s just typical!
 The
way men imagine things should be?
Their point of view is easy to take apart. Firstly, why do men think they
know what bad driving is? What qualifies the male sex to be judges of
drivers any more than women? Then, there’s the idea that it is your sex that
decides how you can or cannot drive a car. I’m struggling to understand how
the two things are linked together.
I should think that it is far more likely that things like your age, your
eyesight, your intelligence, or your physical coordination have more to do
with it.
How can anybody judge what good and bad driving is anyway? Who decides? The
answer is that most of us know when we see it and most of us know when we do
it. If it’s the insurance companies which decide, then sorry males, you
can’t drive very well at all. Because I think by well, I mean, “safely”.
When you look at the insurance rates for young men between the ages of 17
and 30, you get the picture.
For men who think it’s just women who can’t drive well, it’s a mental thing.
A male thing. I am sure that we have all heard the story that the car is
just a phallic extension of the man who owns it – the flashier and bigger
the car – the more they are making up for something else they don’t have!
But why do men think (as they seem to) that being able to drive really fast
and dangerously but not crash is an example of good driving? All the time at
parties I hear men bragging about how fast they have been that day, how big
their new car is, the size of the engine, the shape of the wheels (joke!).
Honestly!
If there is a difference between men and women drivers, maybe it just
reflects that women seem to be more caring than men. They always seem to be
very courteous drivers, very safe. Women are just not aggressive. Anyway, a
car, or any machine for that matter, is a great responsibility and should
not be used without proper care and consideration for others. Look, you
don’t often see women charging around the streets like crazy. Maybe it’s
because we are mothers and we are always thinking that perhaps a child will
rush out into the road; at the very least that we should expect the
unexpected.
As far as I can see, men seem to believe that they will always have time to
stop, no matter where they are and how fast they are going. And here’s
another point – when women see bad driving, they don’t automatically look to
see whether it’s a man or a women driving – like there’s someone who needs
blaming. They just get on with it. Men always seem to need someone to blame
other than themselves.
Of course, saying this, I should point out that my husband, whilst he likes
driving very fast, never blames other people in an angry way – just laughs
at them. What else can you do? It’s the right reaction. You hear all these
dreadful stories about road rage fights. How many of them involve women? I
suppose it’s a hunting thing, except there’s nothing to chase, except the
clock.
If you’re not driving dangerously, you are fifty percent less likely to get
in an accident, right? Because you can be pretty sure that if you’re not
driving like a madman, someone else will be. You have to look out for the
‘nutters.’ I have to say that the speed thing scares me. Where are these
crazies going? What’s the rush? With Andy, it’s like being in a space
rocket. I tell him to slow down and he does this ridiculous thing where he
takes his foot off the accelerator for about five seconds and then puts it
back down again. Does he expect me not to notice? The Chutspah of the man!
And why is it that most of the time you see a car with a man and a women
inside, it’s the man who’s driving? Have you ever wondered about that? Does
the man imagine that if he is driving, then this means he is the boss? Why?
Well, maybe it’s the other way around. Think about it. We ladies sit there
in comfort and get chauffeur driven wherever we need to go. Now, I’m pretty
sure that our men don’t think of it like that – we are just passengers to
them – but that just makes it better. Except when you want to change the CD.
Does your man make a fuss when you try and change the music?
And what about when there are two couples in the car? Do both guys sit in
the front, or is there one couple in the front and the other in the back?
How many times have you been in a car of two men and women and the two in
the front have been women? For men, it’s like they care about these things,
racing for the front seat, changing the music without a second thought.
Turning the AC up and down without any consideration. As it happens, I don’t
think women care half as much about the little things but it’s like I said
last week: where’s the gallantry?
Thankfully, I’ve never had an accident. And I know what you men are saying,
“I bet you’ve seen thousands though!” Well actually, no. Bad drivers are bad
drivers no matter what sex they are. Next week, I’m going shopping.
[email protected]
Next Week: Going Shopping
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