É isso ...

Martin Wolf Looks the Economic Situation Squarely in the Eye

And boy is it depressing. Martin Wolf:

Struggling with a great contraction:

Yet all is not lost. In particular, the US and German governments retain substantial fiscal room for manoeuvre – and should use it. But, alas, governments that can spend more will not and those who want to spend more now cannot. Again, the central banks have not used up their ammunition. They too should dare to use it. [....] The key, surely, is not to approach a situation as dangerous as this one within the boundaries of conventional thinking.

Eu também gostaria de ver recursos devotados a melhorar a capacidade e a tempestividade da informação estatística que permita, de modo efectivo, perceber o estado da economia dos Açores

No entretanto,  poderemos usar o desemprego como proxy para sobpesar a dimensão dos problemas económicos dos Açores? Hum, talvez, mas só como forma de precisar um limiar inferior da amplitude da situação e, isso, só com um conjunto grande de qualificações - por exemplo, ver o caso da Madeira onde a restrição do endividamento foi mandada às urtigas: nesse caso a informação dada pelo desemprego sobre a efectiva situação económica é, no mínimo, muito limitada.

Talvez não fosse despiciendo ponderar a possibilidade do cumprimento do efeito Seneca (ver a anterior nota) à situação das regiões autónomas.

EconoMonitor : EconoMonitor » Policymakers Need Better Data on the Economy

As I’ve written about before, I would like to see resources devoted to improving our ability to understand the state of the economy in (near) real time. The lack of accurate data made it much more difficult to respond to the current recession,

[....]

Focus On Unemployment To Measure Output Gap, by Mathew Ygesias: Sveriges Riksbank deputy governor Lars E.O. Svensson, my favorite central banker, delivered a speech a few months ago (it’s English title “For a Better Monetary Policy: Focus on Inflation and Unemployment” makes it sound totally banal but it’s not) that had bearing on the question of what’s a policymaker to do in a world where government statisticians can’t accurately measure recessions fast enough to do stabilization policy. He argues that we should forget about the GDP output gap and just pay attention to unemployment.

O efeito Seneca, ou os efeitos adiados, ou o banquete das consequências - de aplicação generalizada a diversos domínios

The Oil Drum | The Seneca Effect: why decline is faster than growth

"It would be some consolation for the feebleness of our selves and our works if all things should perish as slowly as they come into being; but as it is, increases are of sluggish growth, but the way to ruin is rapid." Lucius Anneaus Seneca, Letters to Lucilius, n. 91

Very often, we fail to understand the delayed effects of our actions. John Sterman reminds us of this point in a talk on global warming quoting Robert Louis Stevenson as saying, "Everybody, sooner or later, sits down to a banquet of consequences." The models shown here tell us that the Seneca cliff is the result of delayed consequences.

As always, the future is something that we build with our actions and the models can only tell us what kind of actions will lead us, eventually, to a certain outcome. Used in this way, models can be extremely useful and can even be applied to systems which are much more modest than an entire civilization, for instance to a single company or to our personal relationships with other people. In all cases, the Seneca effect will be the result of trying hard to keep things running as usual. In that way, we may run out faster of the resource that keeps the system running: be it a physical resource or a reserve of goodwill. The way to avoid this outcome may be to let the system run the way it wants, without attempting to force it to go the way we want it to go. In other words we need to take things in life with some stoicism, as Seneca himself would probably have said. 

Thinking of the worldwide situation and of the problems involved, global warming and resource depletion, what the models tell us is that the Seneca cliff may be the inevitable result of putting too much strain on already badly depleted natural resources. We should try, instead, to develop alternative stocks of resources such as renewable (or nuclear) energy. At the same time, we should avoid to exploit highly polluting and expensive resources such as tar sands, oil shales, deepwater oil, and, in general, applying the "drill, baby, drill" philosophy. All those strategies are recipes for doom. Unfortunately, these are also examples of exactly what we are doing.

I don't know what Seneca would say if he could see this planet-wide effort we are making in order to put into practice the idea that he expressed in his letter to his friend, Lucilius. I can only imagine that he would take it with some stoicism. Or, maybe, he would comment with what he said in his "De Providentia" "Let Nature deal with matter, which is her own, as she pleases; let us be cheerful and brave in the face of everything, reflecting that it is nothing of our own that perishes."

Isto sabe-se, ou devia saber-se, donde deve-se ler, ou para recordar, ou para perceber ...

Day’s End The 9/11 decade is now over. The terrorists lost. But who won? Frank Rich

By portraying Afghanistan and Iraq as utterly cost-free to a credulous public, the Bush administration injected the cancer into the American body politic that threatens it today: If we don’t need new taxes to fight two wars, why do we need them for anything? But that’s only half the story in this alternative chronicle of the decade’s history. Even as the middle class was promised a free ride, those at the top were awarded a free pass—not just with historically low tax rates that compounded America’s rampant economic inequality but with lax supervision of their own fiscal misbehavior.

Foi assim que, provavelmente, aconteceu...

Supercomputers Allow First Detailed Milky Way Simulation - Staff - International Business Times - RichardDawkins.net

Excelente simulação. O processo de formação das galáxias foi tumultuoso e isso, conjecturo eu, poderá ser um motivos porque poderá ter sentido o que defendem alguns que os "outros" estão a emergir como civilizações estelares ao mesmo tempo (à escala galáctica) que nós, e por isso mesmo, não nos estão, ainda, a bater à porta, qualquer que seja o modo como o venham a fazer no futuro.

Os problemas económicos dos EUA são, com efeito, auto-infligidos ...

Our Medium-Term Deficit Is Solved by a Presidential Promise to Veto Every Bill That Is Not Ten-Year Deficit Neutral

Why Obama did not make such a promise and January 2009 and why he has not repeated it every day is beyond me.

Astronomy Picture of the Day, 2011 August 29 - Grupo de Galáxias Hickson 44

Astronomy Picture of the Day

Hickson 44 in Leo
Image Credit & Copyright: Stephen Leshin

Explanation: Scanning the skies for galaxies, Canadian astronomer Paul Hickson and colleagues identified some 100 compact groups of galaxies, now appropriately called Hickson Compact Groups. The four prominent galaxies seen in this intriguing telescopic skyscape are one such group, Hickson 44, about 100 million light-years distant toward the constellation Leo. The two spiral galaxies in the center of the image are edge-on NGC 3190 with its distinctive, warped dust lanes, and S-shaped NGC 3187. Along with the bright elliptical, NGC 3193 at the right, they are also known as Arp 316. The spiral in the upper left corner is NGC 3185, the 4th member of the Hickson group. Like other galaxies in Hickson groups, these show signs of distortion and enhanced star formation, evidence of a gravitational tug of war that will eventually result in galaxy mergers on a cosmic timescale. The merger process is now understood to be a normal part of the evolution of galaxies, including our own Milky Way. For scale, NGC 3190 is about 75,000 light-years across at the estimated distance of Hickson 44.

Jupiter com Ganímedes, Io e Europa

Astrophoto: Jupiter with 3 Moons by Jamie Ball

Jamie Ball captured this photo of planet Jupiter along with its 3 moons – Ganymede, Io and Europa (left to right) on August 12, 2011.

Curiosidades

Em 1647 a colónia de Massachusetts impôs por lei que todas as crianças deviam frequentar a escola.

Em 1860, logo antes da Guerra Civil norte-americana, a taxa de alfabetização dos Afro-Americanos era de 21%, enquanto que os valores para a população da América Latina (todas as etnias) eram os seguintes: Argentina, 24%; Brazil, 16%; Chile, 18%: Guatemala, 11%; Honduras, 15%; Porto Rico, 12%.

Na mesma data, a taxa de alfabetização de toda a população norte-americana era 89%, e a do Canadá de 83%, com os analfabetos a concentrarem-se na primeira geração de imigrantes.

No entretanto os dados apresentados numa publicação de 2002 (Nations of the Globe, electronic database de Wadsworth, Thomson Learning) sobre os anos de escolaridade são os seguintes; EUA, 12,3 anos; Canadá, 12,1; Argentina, 8,8; Chile e Perú, 7,6; México, 7,2; Venezuela, 6,6; Equador, 6,4; Colombia, 5,3; Brazil, 4,9; Nicaraugua, 4,5; Guatemala, 3,5; Espanha, 7,3; Portugal, 5,9 anos (?).

(The Victory of Reason, Rodney Stark).

A China como superpotência inevitável

Leitura interessante.

The Inevitable Superpower | Best of the Moment | The Browser: 

Essay (13-page PDF) arguing that China’s future economic dominance is more imminent and will be both greater and more varied than is currently supposed. Interesting points on relative decline of the US and how it may play out

Ensino da matemática

Isto que é dito aqui tem, a meu ver, algum sentido, e é algo que me tinha ocorrido já.

How to Fix Our Math Education - NYTimes.com

THERE is widespread alarm in the United States about the state of our math education. The anxiety can be traced to the poor performance of American students on various international tests, and it is now embodied in George W. Bush’s No Child Left Behind law, which requires public school students to pass standardized math tests by the year 2014 and punishes their schools or their teachers if they do not.All this worry, however, is based on the assumption that there is a single established body of mathematical skills that everyone needs to know to be prepared for 21st-century careers. This assumption is wrong. The truth is that different sets of math skills are useful for different careers, and our math education should be changed to reflect this fact.

Curiosidades

Em Florença, em 1338, cerca de metade da população em idade escolar frequentava a escola (Rodney Stark, em The Victory of Reason). Gostaria de saber como essa variável se foi comportando ao longo do tempo: se regrediu face à perda de poder económico da cidade, ou se o "costume" se manteve. Não estou seguro disso, mas aquele valor, penso eu, só seria alcançado por Portugal no início do século XX.

Eurobonds e de como sendo iguais, uns são mais iguais que outros

A questão de saber se a emissão de eurobonds é a solução para a crise vivida, actualmente, na zona Euro, e se deve integrar o conjunto de alterações necessárias ao debelar das fragilidades estruturais que a UEM demonstrou está longe de ser redimida (ver aqui). Eu por diversos motivos, onde a falta de trabalho e aplicação pesam, sou, no entretanto, e até mais ver, agnóstico na matéria.

Daniel Gros é um dos que se opõe à idéia (ver aqui) mas não é por isso que o chamo à colação. No artigo referenciado apresenta-se informação interessante sobre a governança onde se demonstra que a periferia europeia - a situada a sul - tendo um quadro de características semelhante tem, no entanto, diferenças curiosas como seja o caso de Portugal. A minha dúvida reside em quanto desse comportamento diferenciado se deve aos anos Sócrates.

Eurozone governance indicators: core versus Club Med or Southern Periphery)

	Government Effectiveness	Rule of Law	Control of corruption
CORE EUROZONE	1.66	1.68	1.8
GREECE	0.61	0.64	0.12
ITALY	0.52	0.39	0.05
PORTUGAL	1.21	1.04	1.08
SPAIN	0.94	1.13	1.01

Astronomy Picture of the Day, 2011 August 21 - Nebulosa da Águia

Astronomy Picture of the Day

The Fairy of Eagle Nebula
Image Credit: The Hubble Heritage Team, (STScI/AURA), ESA, NASA

Explanation: The dust sculptures of the Eagle Nebula are evaporating. As powerful starlight whittles away these cool cosmic mountains, the statuesque pillars that remain might be imagined as mythical beasts. Pictured above is one of several striking dust pillars of the Eagle Nebula that might be described as a gigantic alien fairy. This fairy, however, is ten light years tall and spews radiation much hotter than common fire. The greater Eagle Nebula, M16, is actually a giant evaporating shell of gas and dust inside of which is a growing cavity filled with a spectacular stellar nursery currently forming an open cluster of stars. The above image in scientifically re-assigned colors was released in 2005 as part of the fifteenth anniversary celebration of the launch of the Hubble Space Telescope.

Hum ... Sinais do que aí vem?

The space industry: Satellite states | The Economist

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Bem, a ver vamos ...

A Portuguese silver lining? | Brussels blog | News on the European Union from the Financial Times – FT.com

Financial markets today have been whipsawed yet again by data showing the one bright spot on the eurozone’s economic horizon – the German growth engine – may be faltering. But Eurostat’s quarterly report on the currency region’s economic health did have at least one unexpected positive surprise, too: Portugal.

Anomalias em curso (IV ?)

Most Himalayan Glaciers Retreating; 21% Stable or Expanding, Survey Finds - Pallava Bagla - Science AAAS - RichardDawkins.net

NEW DELHI—A new study by the Indian Space Research Organization and the Geological Survey of India in Kolkata reports that although 21% of India's Himalayan glaciers are showing no increase in melt rate, the majority are receding. The pattern is a worldwide phenomenon and part of a natural cyclic process, according to a statement from India's environment minister, Jayanthi Natarajan​. Her statement surprised many observers in that it did not attribute the glaciers' retreat to climate change.

The new results come from the "Snow and Glacier Studies" project, undertaken with government support by the Space Applications Centre (SAC) in Ahmedabad. Completed in 2010, the satellite-based survey took an inventory of the snow cover and glacier extent across glaciated regions of the Indus, Ganga, and Brahmaputra River basins. Speaking in Parliament on 8 August, Natarajan said the 5-year research project monitored 2767 glaciers and found that 2184 were retreating, 435 were advancing, and 148 showed no change.

Depoimento magnífico - este tipo é um conservador inglês e eu sou de esquerda, mas estou de acordo com aquilo que diz, nomeadamente, em relação ao que diz sobre a educação liberal - sejamos cautelosos, no entanto, com a extensão do acordo: pelo menos como base de partida de uma análise mais profunda, já que fica muito para explicar

ConservativeHome's Platform: Simon Marcus: Listen to the children

A while ago two of my students said they were going to 'turn over' a large house in a wealthy area near them. I asked why? They said they had it tough, they wanted a new TV, and it was something to do.

I listened, and then explained that just because they were poor they didn't need to rob a house. I told them that I didn't even have a TV, which amazed them. I explained to them how my Grandparents grew up in the East End during the great depression. There were few jobs, no money and no welfare. They went without food on occasion, suffered discrimination and had to deal with fascism, yet they emerged from poverty. I explained how they did it: They worked hard, sacrificed for the future, educated themselves, showed respect for the law and other people, had strong families and never gave up. The two boys looked thoughtful for a while and then one said: 'Yes, but I never had a father to tell me that'.

Um capitalista explica o sarilho em que estamos metidos no que respeita à sustentabilidade e ao aquecimento global, ou, talvez, já agora, a ter de se escolher entre tipos de intervenções malucas, da desejabilidade dos EUA ocuparem, militarmente, Morrocos - acreditem, seria muito mais racional do que terem invadido o Iraque

Can Jeremy Grantham Profit From Ecological Mayhem? - NYTimes.com

Sitting in a Panera in Boston’s financial district in early July with Jeremy Grantham, I suddenly found myself considering how I might safeguard my children’s and notional grandchildren’s future by somehow engineering the U.S. annexation of Morocco. Grantham, the founder and chief strategist of the asset-management firm GMO, was reading aloud from a rough draft of his next quarterly letter to investors, in which he ranks some long-term crises of resource limitation along a scale from “merely serious” to “dangerous.”

Energy “will give us serious and sustained problems” over the next 50 years as we make the transition from hydrocarbons — oil, coal, gas — to solar, wind, nuclear and other sources, but we’ll muddle through to a solution to Peak Oil and related challenges. Peak Everything Else will prove more intractable for humanity. Metals, for instance, “are entropy at work . . . from wonderful metal ores to scattered waste,” and scarcity and higher prices “will slowly increase forever,” but if we scrimp and recycle, we can make do for another century before tight constraint kicks in. 

Agriculture is more worrisome. Local water shortages will cause “persistent irritation” — wars, famines. Of the three essential macro nutrient fertilizers, nitrogen is relatively plentiful and recoverable, but we’re running out of potassium and phosphorus, finite mined resources that are “necessary for all life.” Canada has large reserves of potash (the source of potassium), which is good news for Americans, but 50 to 75 percent of the known reserves of phosphate (the source of phosphorus) are located in Morocco and the western Sahara. Assuming a 2 percent annual increase in phosphorus consumption, Grantham believes the rest of the world’s reserves won’t last more than 50 years, so he expects “gamesmanship” from the phosphate-rich. And he rates soil erosion as the biggest threat of all. The world’s population could reach 10 billion within half a century — perhaps twice as many human beings as the planet’s overtaxed resources can sustainably support, perhaps six times too many. 

Um capitalista, Warren E. Buffett, explica a disfuncionalidade do tratamento fiscal dado aos mais ricos da sua classe, no seu país. A dúvida é quantos destes estariam de acordo com esta análise ou, o que diriam disto aqueles portugueses que mudaram a sede fiscal das suas empresas para a Holanda. Bem destes últimos não tenho dúvidas quanto à sua linha de defesa: ah, a invocação da disfuncionalidade do país.

Stop Coddling the Super-Rich - NYTimes.com

OUR leaders have asked for “shared sacrifice.” But when they did the asking, they spared me. I checked with my mega-rich friends to learn what pain they were expecting. They, too, were left untouched.While the poor and middle class fight for us in Afghanistan, and while most Americans struggle to make ends meet, we mega-rich continue to get our extraordinary tax breaks. Some of us are investment managers who earn billions from our daily labors but are allowed to classify our income as “carried interest,” thereby getting a bargain 15 percent tax rate. Others own stock index futures for 10 minutes and have 60 percent of their gain taxed at 15 percent, as if they’d been long-term investors. 

These and other blessings are showered upon us by legislators in Washington who feel compelled to protect us, much as if we were spotted owls or some other endangered species. It’s nice to have friends in high places.Last year my federal tax bill — the income tax I paid, as well as payroll taxes paid by me and on my behalf — was $6,938,744. That sounds like a lot of money. But what I paid was only 17.4 percent of my taxable income — and that’s actually a lower percentage than was paid by any of the other 20 people in our office. Their tax burdens ranged from 33 percent to 41 percent and averaged 36 percent.

Anomalias em curso III

Thinning Arctic Sea Ice Poised to Undergo Record Decline in Mid-August, Volume Minimum Likely | ThinkProgress

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Astronomy Picture of the Day, 2011 August 15 - Marte, Cratera Endeavour

Astronomy Picture of the Day

Rover Arrives at Endeavour Crater on Mars
Image Credit: Mars Exploration Rover Mission, Cornell, JPL, NASA

Explanation: What can the present-day terrain in and around large Endeavour crater tell us about ancient Mars? Starting three years ago, NASA sent a coffee-table sized robot named Opportunity on a mission rolling across the red planet's Meridiani Planum to find out. Last week, it finally arrived. Expansive Endeavour crater stretches 22 kilometers from rim to rim, making it the largest crater ever visited by a Mars Exploration Rover (MER). It is hypothesized that the impact that created the crater exposed ancient rock that possibly formed under wet conditions, and if so, this rock may yield unique clues to the watery past of Mars. Pictured above, the west rim of Endeavour looms just ahead of the Opportunity rover. Opportunity may well spend the rest of its operational life exploring Endeavour, taking pictures, spinning its wheels, and boring into intriguing rocks.

Isto está cada vez mais sinistro, ou existe uma internacional negra, ou, por favor, é preciso perceber o que se passa nos EUA

"With all the talk of Standard & Poor’s downgrade, no one mentioned that the ratings agency’s business model is, essentially, lying for money.

Instead, many politicians insist that the S&P downgrade is the reason for the market turmoil — not the banking freeze-ups in the Eurozone or political paralysis here. The credibility accorded to S&P by U.S. political elites shows that the rot is indeed deep — and worrisome.

Let’s note, at the start, that this downgrade was absurd. The credit rating of the United States is not in jeopardy. The U.S. government prints dollars — it can no more run out of dollars than a bowling alley can run out of strikes.

What’s really happening is an attempt by both parties to justify slashing Social Security and Medicare. Republicans have long wanted to roll back the New Deal. What is relatively new is that a Democratic president is now dead set on cutting these programs as well.[....]

Continuar a ler em Opinion: An excuse for slashing entitlements - POLITICO.com Print View.
 

Mais uma posição sobre o que se está a passar em Inglaterra de um, presumo eu, "real conservative"

The moral decay of our society is as bad at the top as the bottom – Telegraph Blogs

David Cameron​, Ed Miliband​ and the entire British political class came together yesterday to denounce the rioters. They were of course right to say that the actions of these looters, arsonists and muggers were abhorrent and criminal, and that the police should be given more support. 

But there was also something very phony and hypocritical about all the shock and outrage expressed in parliament. MPs spoke about the week’s dreadful events as if they were nothing to do with them.

I cannot accept that this is the case. Indeed, I believe that the criminality in our streets cannot be dissociated from the moral disintegration in the highest ranks of modern British society. The last two decades have seen a terrifying decline in standards among the British governing elite. It has become acceptable for our politicians to lie and to cheat. An almost universal culture of selfishness and greed has grown up.