Warren Buffet is losing money faster than most. He is a dangerous man. An investor who knows what he is doing. A person with a “track record” – and that has bestowed a certain wisdom upon his investment strategy in a world where investment as a strategy is not seen in a very positive light.

Successful investors like Buffet are where they are because they took risks. Financial risks do not necessarily reflect absolute truth one way or another – as independent factors may significantly affect outcomes. Therefore, it may be true that Mr Buffet has unusual skills in taking business risk and therefore deserves to control significant capital.

No problem with that. Not at all. But the expectation that every risk Mr Buffet takes is going to be gilt edged and secure is the kind of faith that this financial catastrophie is inscribed upon. Risk taking for benefit has another name: gambling. The net result on the world is better efficiency, but to claim that assets like American Express do more than provide financial instruments and therefore grease for the wheel turning in the world is use of significant imagination.

Real productivity is what the world should respect.

Compare the likes of Linus Torvalds or Google – they have created, innovated and constructed effective tools we can all use for free; compared to the Bill Gates monopolistic capitalist aggressive take-over strategy that effectively introduced and leveraged disfunctionality that slowed progress on internet these last ten years.

It’s progress vs board room gloat.

Warren Buffet is a hero basically because he is wise. He and Bill Gates have redeemed themselves by devoting their economic clout to charitible causes. How socialist can we be? The age of the beneign dictator philanthopist may not be self sustaining.

A balance between structure and activity is necessary. Excess in one, or the other causes our economic system to work against us.

Obama’s budget measures seem necessary. Although Bush overspent majestically – there is little return except for paranoia and greed. Real productivity is not just about dollars. It is about what you do. With your day. With that hour.

Let us remember, the creativity of humanity is a force of nature. Banks are in broad reality, actually nothing more than paper shufflers. Like lawyers or politicans, the result of their productivity is order, structure and discipline.

The world’s banks seem to have forgotten their central tenet. Their financial behaviour is the rock and we are the flying ganet – we expect the rock to be there for eternity so we can nest.

All this focus on the economy may mean we take our attention off the real issue. All the focus on sectional interests and pressure groups that drive the climate change agenda, instead of actual planning to change things that must change is distracting humanity from its mission, its meaning and its life.

Real progress follows talking about it, only if plans are made real without all the political watering down of meaning that occurs.

A mandate is a mandate for that reason. It allows that sudden rush of the new to take over from the safe options. When you introduce change, you do so by enacting laws that change things.

In the USA, they are bracing themselves for the worst self inflicted financial injury since the “Great Depression” (it will be renamed the “Terrible Depression”). What a meme that is. “Since the Great Depression” gives us the measure of the crisis?

This is far worse than that. That was just a run on the banks. So far the US and UK have both started to buy their banks to prevent a “run” mainly. It is not that right-wing philosophically oriented democracies want to own the money. Hell no. They want to sell it to the highest bidder! They want to change God’s nature into God’s energy and satisfy their bloated egos? Now it is not just the very rich driving their Hummers that are spoiling our world, it is toilet paper manufacturers?

Obama is taking the US of America in a new direction. It is a healthy revision of the past 50 years of capitalist excess. Do not get my politics wrong – there is nothing inherently wrong with capitalism. Nothing wrong with socialism. Or the next set of ideas to replace those that support a burgeoning population by reflecting our own gluttony upon the world by inventing “economic growth” as a human priority?

The West has been obsessed with “not”. It has been the age of denial of being. We do not want to be “communists”. We do not want to be “fundamentalists”.

America lost its sense of inate justice. This began when Kevin Starr took to the stage and convinced America that its happy (pleasure seeking) President was the definition of “corrupt”.

We grew up. Our democratic system informed us that we were no longer fooled by an administration that would have us kill strangers because of their own beliefs. Instead America has invited in the strongest community building leader into the White House who is unafraid to change things. His innovative ideas and plans have substantial momentum. You can at least see that his actions will have a result.

Compare this with the New Zealand government. The PM’s ideas are structural but about the most imaginative idea to spring from the employment symposium was the addition of a cycle way to a planned walkway along the length of the country. “It will boost tourism”.

Yes, it will but only for those who want to cycle or walk 1000 miles.

Governments entangle themselves in detail. They persue their own destiny by distraction after distraction. We expect them to attend to what outrages us. However, New Zealand seem to have a reasoned leader (in John Key) who is certainly smart but I feel that his insticts are not so much about what people do, but about structuring. It works in the commercial world. Just look at how wealthy it made America…

No. New Zealand voted in a Right-wing government when Left-wing economics may have been appropriate? But then again that may be because New Zealand is well placed to lead the world out of the recession. America may need a heathly bout of social spending as education is the key to actual progress.

New Zealand probably does need some rationalising and to be more economically in control of its productivity, in other words – structure.

So, it appears democracies made the correct choices.

Before Christmas, a local homeware and gifts shop had a 30-percent-off sale – before Christmas! Last year, there was no discounting when I bought my presents there. This led me to put out a “sell” order on all retail shares in clients’ portfolios. In January, the same shop had a 50-percent-off sale. Now it is closing down.

An innocuous little quote. A little provincial perhaps but all too revealing as to the way that the financial system – the fabled “markets” we all relied upon to look after us in our old age fail to look after all of us. Markets so addicted to excess they took their bonuses straight out of the “rescue package” put up by lowly taxpayers. Bonuses measured in as many as 7 or 8 digits. We have been blinded by the math for too long.

The quote is from a New Zealand news columnist (emphasis added) – giving out sound financial advisories in light of a struggling retailer. What is disturbing here is that broad recommendations like this stimulate runs on the retailers shares. It is wise to remove capital from a business that blinks? If the public at large withdrew their capital from the company, it is the same effect for the company as a “run” on the banks. They go out of business. Why?

Share prices have been above value for so long that the market has become reliant on continued false growth. When you have done that for a few years, then the fall will be precipitous. Yes. Big companies have enough cash to cushion the blow. 200 minus 50 is 150. 25 minus 50 is fatal.

Retailing as a business model is meeting new competition from alternative channels, and not just the internet. Long has been the shadow of late night direct marketing campaigns and in case we forget TV advertising as a sort of belief system is an invention really of the second half of the twentieth century. Newspaper advertising is an older art, and like the automobile industry is experiencing a redundancy as bloggers take over? It depends of course on the quality of the writing and journalism. With the noted exception of Bruce Sheppard (my old accountant) NZ newspaper bloggers are not very intriguing. They sort of write “like they are not journalists” but hardly let loose.

Advertising is communication. The problem with the internet is that it dilutes advertising’s impact because it makes it so cheap to advertise that only some of the billions of messages can get through. And the internet is more interactive and distracting. The campaigns that get through this fog are not always the ones with the big money behind them. Democratic economics seems a better model for everyone that these vast empires of capital control that suddenly fold overnight because their risk factoring was too complex even for their highest paid cadres of genii.

It just shows that trust in the power of the inheritance as a way to provide tribal continuity is a mirage. The way to provide for all people is to enable everyone to be able to pick themselves up regardless from what station they started. It is only by the guarantee of the highest quality of education that we can exert a greater pressure upon the future and see it improve by dint of our own efforts.

The illusion of wealth is that it does something. Yes, collected wealth may be invested and that may provide jobs. But when education slips so does the work force. But the aristocracy is bound to slip. Decadence (and making the most of every day) is too tempting to simply ignore!

The folly of the reliance on growth as a religion ignores quality of life. The market ignores life as a quality. It is time to redraft the bargain. A new deal for life may require more fruitful economics.

A discussion in the scientific community to find ways to reverse global warming contains one or two novel ideas.

The ones that make the most sense are the Lovelock tubes in the sea and the flettner ships cloud seeders as they have zero energy output, therefore as passive machines, it is fairly simple to switch them off when no longer needed, or to increase their effect by increasing their number.

The objection (in the article) that they do not reduce “the carbon” is a bit like hearing people go on about “sodium” when they mean salt. Carbon is an element and not the criminal. It is the climate that is going awry because we decided that the narrow blanket of air we breath was another resource we could rape and abuse.

Lovelock’s idea that the Earth is an organism Gaia – it is a model by which we can understand our place in nature. We need to learn to exist within our means. Then this planet and its thin grace of air around it may last for many more millions of years. The climate will change – that is constant – but we could stimulate it in the right direction.

If natural slow processes are used, the climate will gradually adjust. It does not excuse us for polluting the atmosphere and the sea however. We have to also stop doing that.

Otherwise it’s the end of civilization – sometime in the next two hundred years at a guess – nobody really knows but when houses can stay standing due to wind, when there is no rainfall in the grain belts, when the food chain starts to corrode: there is no much we can do about that. Invent life all over? Not in our skill set.

Correct the environment now? Seems we can but it is a two sided process. Stop pollution. Start stabilizing the atmosphere. All will be well. It is more realistic than some new “war on global warming”, God forbid.

NY Times reports that the internet as is is too full of tricks and basically, corruption – that we should start over. They suggest gated communities where you surrender your privacy in exchange for a guarantee of safety.

“Unless we’re willing to rethink today’s Internet,” says Nick McKeown, a Stanford engineer involved in building a new Internet, “we’re just waiting for a series of public catastrophes.”

Indeed. This poor man’s network has been infiltrated by enterprising thieves who given the tools are nearly as effective as the US Financial markets at costing huge amounts to the taxpayer? Do not buy this – it could be a policy of the DHS in the US to distort things so they can spy on everyone now that the President will not help them.

Although I agree there is criminal activity on the internet and unfortunate exposures of just what kind of creature mankind can encompass. Security means keeping the evil dudes out of our compass so we can enjoy our lives. Perhaps there is a space for an ISP who filters human communication to the ones they find acceptable and a suburban nice family that want their services.

But I would rather criminal activity were a) exposed and b) dealt with.

It is not the internet at fault. It is poverty and imbalance combined with opportunity and accumen. Perhaps a better way of harnessing that needs to be found. One thing about these Nigerian scam letters – if you are fooled by them, you ain’t part of this world. A few have nearly got me excited – occasionally one is the product of a really talented copywriter with a very strong story idea. They even start providing “proof” by giving you links to their CVs ! I can not wait to read the fake Robert Mugabe CV (when he flees Zimbabwe).

Harness the human brilliance at work – you do not have to give aid – give these enterprising geeks some work – they could probably help DHS with a few investigations, they do seem to have remarkable connections to widows of Idi Amin and the like.

The next attack potentially is yet another own goal. We will change our society. What a shame. It was just starting to become more varied and interesting.

Please, only comments from Nigerian Letter writing artists below. No spam or viruses – but be straight with me –
do you want a job? If so, have you thought of writing your resume?

"Mr Swindler"
July 2004 - first email to 3,400,000 patients in South America. 12,000 replies. 3 phone calls, got $1200.
Aug 2004 - three mailouts to 9,400,400 shoppers in cities begining with A, 3,400 replies. 10 phone calls. $4,000
...
Jan 2009 - 2500 bots did 3 billion mailouts. No calls. On holiday.

The tab for the “financial crisis” appears to be only $7.36 trillion dollars. That’s from CNBC who had estimated it at about $3.5T a few days before.

Seems that when the numbers get this big, it just does not stop.

PHILOSOPHY & RELIGION

The role of God has the appearance of playing a very large part in the way we develop thought. That some will already find the bile of objection to definition of a deity rise, is in part the conditioning of faith upon the critical ability.

We divine wisdom we define as inherent knowhow that accumulates over time and exists as a diamond crown above the heads of those who have lived.

Faith appears to accumulate as indicated wisdom. It would be folly to say that such wisdom is not ‘worldly’ but indeed, it is focused on the non physical – a representation of love that only exists within that faith, that part of the person we call the “soul” that only seems receptive to or active in prayer and certain kinds of music.

A Llama is expected to accumulate wisdom through meditation – through nothingness. From nothing the only harvest is one that exists in the universe of thought. Modern media distractions shake the ability to accumulate wisdom by distracting and disconnecting the involvement.

Learning without experience provides no wisdom. “Oneness” is required for wisdom accumulation, that being a part of something requires that one submits to the will of another is an act of grace. Done with dignity, we call it “work” and devise instruments to transfer “value” so we can stay convinced that we are doing the right thing.

A financial crisis may be the result of too much faith – that type of “wisdom” that exists in the eyes of the desperate, the addicted gamblers who believe their future is tied to luck and that is a function usually of what they are saying to themselves as they cast the die. They even mutter little prayers to God, sometimes – even if they are agnostic or atheist.

Are the blindly relying upon a sense of faith to carry on risking their livelihood to make that point? Gambling, addiction and faith only belong together in the most cynical of sentences. But the wide eyed acceptance of the rules of the house and fickle chance dictate the relationship of this individual to any asset they may possess. In other words, it is their irrationality that is providing “wisdom” based on randomness, externally it can be seen as folly but inside the problem and the gambler is more than intent on their own self destruction. Active belief – a perverse sort of faith – lets them go on hoping.

FINANCIAL CRISIS

The financial crisis is a crisis of a too much faith for too long without recognising the distraction from action – that has resulted in the evaporation of wealth, seemingly from all. When wealth is calculated by bankers who put their hands out for economic relief we start asking ourselves what is the point of all this economics.

We have accumulated all this “wisdom” to no effect. Knowledge is thrown back and forth as economists and governments disagree on the solution to the problem.

We are driven by conflict and achievement. We are not driven by a race to relax. The enjoyment of reward is a major factor in motivating people in business. It (money) is seen as confidence – the strange sister of faith, they seem to be the same but in fact they are opposed. When money value is negotiated no wisdom is passed with that change of value. Confidence comes about when faith is not broken. Like a run of doubles. As the confidence rises, the faith actually declines. The winning streak is bound up in confidence, the losing streak is all about faith.

It is not so much an economic crisis but a crisis of confidence in the frightening mathematics. Financial instruments and currency are a form of instant contract – they assume faith – but the gambler, the criminal, the banker – they lose the concept of money as value as they are no longer participating in the “being a part of responsible humanity” model. They are instead being a part of the mechanisms of belief transfer between disparate entities. They broker distance and difference with a purely conceptual and fluid exchange of value – with no other manifestation resulting – except the accumulative assumed difference created by displaced value.

FAITH IN HOPE

The Obama philosophy is to restore the effect of economics to action away from the belief of the gambler and back to a confidence in a job well done.

It is to bring back to the concious mind (of the world) the ability to act without greed. To act from a better place – for the family – for the spirit of community and for each other. Interaction requires that the wealthy spend money and pay the not yet wealthy for their valuable contributions.

The actions of those who wish to prop up the world on faith without action, the gamblers and speculators who want to dissolve their relation with others by inflating cost without adding value are incrementally taking from everyone.

Real contributions to the world do not have to be tangible. They do have to be valuable. The world economic state gives us reason to act in ways we could not when constrained by greed.

It is not just a better world. It is a world where confidence can again have the effect of building experience.

NEW YORK Buffalo

A plane has crashed upon a residential area near Buffalo in New York State. One person on the ground was killed and all on the plane – 49 people died. Fire fighters are in attendance on the scene.

The Q400 Bombardier aircraft was flying late Thursday from Newark Liberty International Airport in New Jersey to Buffalo Niagara International Airport in light snow, fog and 17 mph winds. It crashed around 10:10 p.m. (0300 GMT Friday), about 10 miles (16 kilometers) from the airport. It had 44 passengers and a crew of four.

A US website which records live conversations between planes and air traffic control crews posted a recording of what it said was the flight’s female pilot communicating with ground crew in Buffalo, which showed nothing unusual before contact was suddenly lost.

Within minutes of the crash this youtube video was in a news site.

Guardian UK video content

The next big climate change conference in Copenhagen will address developing economies with percentages of reduction. The New Zealand Herald interviews Tim Groser – is the minister responsible for climate change negotiations, in the recently installed National Party John Key Government.

The National party is the major right wing party, conservative but with a friendly face, it won the last election. To read the climate change minister Mr Groser lightly dismiss the driving intent to bring change urgently and introduce ghastly notions of “realism” that usually mean status quo – is a little unnerving as one became used to reading the Left go on about how serious things were and NZ had to do its little bit. I think it is damaging to the Nation’s pride and motivation to do good to describe the goals as pie in the sky – but to use “noddyland” to describe honest efforts and intent is insulting and makes one feel one’s efforts are simply superfluous.

Tim Groser said :

“The idea that Copenhagen could, in the language used at the Poznan conference, result in a ‘full and certifiable international agreement for the second commitment period’ is Noddyland stuff.
“…if you follow an impossible objective like that the risk is you end up with nothing.”

Right wing rhetoric often takes this form. Finding a point of “natural ridicule” and rubbing it in at any opportunity, until the public tires of it. That was now Bush took power from the American people in 2000. That was how the Republicans took Bill Clinton down. Find a point that you can claim as true with a sort of finger wagging “of course, you should already know this!” and make your opposistion squirm as though secrets were being revealed about them.

It is a great strategy, it works – so why I am complaining?

Because it is inauthentic.

Claiming that an international resolution to result in a ‘full and certifiable international agreement for the second commitment period’ is “the stuff of noddyland” is insulting to the hundreds of people working urgently to present evidence of climate catastrophie.

The advantage of politics is it ensures compromise. Nature is not compromising and the climate science community has been painted with ridicule for years by Republicans and Conservatives – all that is doing is ensuring that the cost of reversing out of this catastrophie will be so expensive it will make this economic meltdown seem like Toyland. And Mr Groser is doing a similar dance. It reminds me of the GW Bush economic shuffle.

It is cute that there are those who still believe that “climate change” is clap-trap. Heartening to know that there are just a few of them. It is not trendy or a political point of view. It is not PC. And taking “less major, realisitic actions” because what needs to be done is impossible means that we will continue hoping that it will just go away. If the patient has gangriene, you amputate. Governments have just done the impossible to fix the banking sector. If the same degree of funding was applied to pollution – we would not be having a climate change problem.

No, it is time to be serious about this crime. And it is not climate change or global warming that is the crime. They are the natural and expected consequence of the crime of extreme greed. The crime of greed and doing little about it is what the Copenhagen get together should confront. It is not a political issue but both right and left wing politicians only seem able to look at it like that.

It would be more real to say – how can we export clean coal burning to China and India, reduce the need for oil (or work out how to keep the CO2 from escaping in engines) by 90% this year in developed countries – and it seems quite obvious. Technology. All this govenment investment into roads as an economic driver will only work with cost effective technology. Limiting our goals at this stage is stupid.

We have to take this opportunity to take bold world-changing measures or continue to be losing economically as climate change starts to cost precipitously.

The real truth is we have to be twice as clever and act twice as fast. The time for being “measured” is gone. This has more destructive potential than a world war, yet we continue to think we can leave it uncorrected.

It is a terrible mistake.

What we really learned from 9/11 is that it is possible to outsmart the “security” systems which instead of making us safe (like a community) make us suspicious of everyone. Let’s face it, conspiracy, complicity or outright being suspended in lollyland, the Bush adminstration spent more on security and for the most extraordinarily bad result.

Nobody likes terrorism what ever its source. Most would surmise that the GWB complicity factor is probably one of convenience rather than planning. GWB’s intent was to go to war with Iraq, I think formed about the time of the end of the first Gulf War. In the sense that was a an act of policy that required collusion, three is evidence of conspiracy. But the notion that they met with bin Laden first is less credible than Al Qaeda – acting from their own cruel insane agenda. The Taleban are children of the dead. They are deadly serious, reactionary and brooding in the extreme. Militantancy is their way of living. So they fit right in. Should the USA consider this a military or political force? Therein lies the real problem. They seem to be attempting to be both guardian and philosopher. The Taleban’s future is uncertain, but what is the alternative to being at war with them?

It seems more likely that that Al Qaeda simply took advantage of GWB in the White House, an ideal time to slip in a few harmless looking individuals who were on NSA’s radar perhaps, but cost reductions were the name of the game, and who is going to waste budget on insignificant assets? Foreign nationals in flight schools are not unusual. Rich idiot children from Middle East emirs seem not unlikely.

9/11 was designed by Al Qaeda to change the USA according to their belief system.

Imagine the different outcome if 9/11 happened when Clinton was in office. His revenge was brief hard and focused and nearly took bin Laden out after the Cole attack. You can not admire failure; but, the USA would have won the battle and war before 2001, and maybe now would not be facing financial chaos (which may indeed be the second attack, self inflicted – but probably privately claimed by bin Laden).