The Dangers of The Tea Party

I read an article* in the NY Times yesterday by Mr Friedman delineating between what he described as the Tea Kettle Party, and the "real" Tea Party.

Now although I find Mr Friedman very interesting, over time I have come to see him as a wolf in sheep's clothing. Essentially I believe he is a conservative masquerading as a liberal.

I don't really mind whether he is liberal or conservative. Each and every reader of Mr Friedman should be less interested in his personal axe and rather should take the time to read and reflect on his writings and come up with their own opinion.

If only.

My experience is that too many of (his) readers are more concerned with who is doing the writing as opposed to what is being written.

In the article he belittles the Tea Party as rather a Tea Kettle-letting off steam without any real program. He then goes on to describe the "real" Tea Party. These are the Centrists, regardless of Party. In the Seventies they were the Silent Majority, and guys like Mr Nixon claimed to speak for them...

So what does Mr Friedman do? He dismisses the Tea (Kettle) Party and then merges them in to the "real" Tea Party.

And what do the "real" guys want? "First, a patriot: a leader who is more interested in fighting for his country than his party. Second, a leader who persuades Americans that he or she actually has a plan not just to cut taxes or pump stimulus, but to do something much larger — to make America successful, thriving and respected again. And third, someone with the ability to lead in the face of uncertainty and not simply whine about how tough things are — a leader who believes his job is not to read the polls but to change the polls."

Wow. Show me a Tea Kettle member who doesn't sign on to that. Mr Friedman rejects their movement out of hand, and then launches in with a better articulated version of their attack on the government, which he narrows down to a simple lack of leadership.

I think it is extremely dangerous to underestimate the Tea (Kettle) Party. In fact, by renaming them I am concerned that Mr Friedman has simply tried to take them out of the fringe and into the mainstream.

And in the end, after describing how it will be a more empowered and educated American worker who gets us out of this mess, he reveals his hand-we are "still waiting for a leader".

So were the Germans.

* http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/29/opinion/29friedman.html?_r=2&hp

Ignorance is Bliss?

Given that I am retired and my income is dependent upon my ability to profitably manage my portfolio I have no choice to but to sit down every morning and review the economic and political news as part of that management.

I also carry a phone with market and political news on it so I am never really cut off. What I do tend to refrain from is radio or television for my information with the exception of periodically the evening news- and generally from Germany.

My focus on the web is that I can choose from a number of providers, and read what I find interesting. On television or radio, or even in the newspapers I see/hear/read what someone else finds important.

As I have mentioned in a previous post that information, since the repeal of the Fairness Doctrine, is increasingly dependent on what either the advertisers or the owners of said media deem important.

It was somewhat easy on vacation. With few exceptions I essentially don't watch US news broadcasts as I find them unbearable. They focus on the lowest common denominator of the public intelligence producing a tepid broth with a few spices void of any depth-presented by clowns constantly interrupted commercial breaks.

Back in the UK we have a TV in the bedroom so in the morning I hear the BBC's view of the world picked up by Radio 4's continuation during breakfast.

I feel accosted by an information overflow of primarily negative news, bordering on the sensationalist, the reason for which escapes me.

I don't want to have everything sugarcoated. But surely there are some positive events taking place?

Recently a friend of mine said he had read an article in Time magazine which described doing the "Israeli" thing: Don't listen to the news; Don't read the papers; Do go to the beach.

Makes you wonder.

Oktoberfest. Prost!

I'm off to the Oktoberfest- back Monday.

I watched the Bernie Marcus interview on CNBC cause it was suggested to me that he is a "regular guy" and explains why he has turned against Obama. I was blown away at what rubbish Mr Marcus uttered. He blathered on and on without any substance other than to blame Congress, and by extension President Obama for all our nation's ills.

It was embarassing.

Measuring Fair Value

I was very pleased to see that my friends at Goldman Sachs as always have their own view or dare I say it "interpretation" of the rules and are now apparently fully behind the Mark-to-Market (M-T-M) Plan of the Financial Accounting Standards Board (FASB).

Accounting is an arcane science. One of the basic tenants is a desire for consistency which allows for comparisons to be made. This approach has its advantages, but also its pitfalls.

Specifically in this case the discussion is centered on how to value loans, which is not as straightforward as one might have thought. Without going into the details the new holy grail is mark-to-market. This is intended to be a more realistic value of a loan as it values it at the current market rate regardless of the acquisition price.

Of course there is more than one way to determine the market price depending on the nature of the loan.

Generally speaking the simplest method is for Level One assets which are considered to be actively traded and therefore have a market price. Level Two is for assets which don't have an active market, but for which a standard model could be applied thus creating a fair value. Level Three is for those assets which don't have any recognizable market indicator to determine the price and essentially ends up being an estimation, otherwise known as a guess. As an aside it is always interesting to see what portion of a bank's balance sheet is classified as Level Three. As a rule of thumb the more the scarier.

But I am straying from my subject.

In the post Credit Crisis world there is a move for banks to move away from focusing primarily on the cost of a loan (credit cost) and then arguing about its value going forward to a new paradigm which focuses on cross-selling.

Of course banks have been promoting cross-selling for ever. At Goldman it is called Relationship Banking.

You build relationships with accounts and then try and find as many selling points within the client to market your products.

Now Goldman is admitting that one of the tools of Relationship Banking is to offer credit/loans at below market rates as a means of garnering favor for other more lucrative bits of business.

Cost-accounting "hid" this practice, and now Goldman wants everyone to have to mark these loans to market.

Sounds reasonable. It is. Every bank is involved in loss-leader business. The trick is to demonstrate to management, and to the regulators, that the bank knows the real value/cost of the loan and can accurately measure the overall profitability of a relationship.

It is not an easy thing to do, and potentially will expose the fact that many banks service a large number of low or non-profitable accounts. The 80-20 rule is that you make 80% of your profit from 20% of your accounts. That leaves a lot of questionable accounts.

I don't know why Goldman is doing this. Perhaps they think they have a much higher percentage of profitable accounts and that mark-to-market will knock-out a number of weaker competitors. Maybe they want to undermine the idea of M-T-M and are only posturing.

What I do know is that they never do anything for the fun of it.

Immigration Part II

Continuing on from my previous post on the different approaches to the question of immigration in the U.S. and Germany there has been an interesting development in Germany.

The Bundeskanzler Angela Merkel, although very critical of Thilo Sarrazin's comments, and involved at least indirectly in his resignation, has now come out with her view of the immigration question.

In somewhat classic German style she has forewarned those immigrants who demonstrate an "unwillingness to integrate" into German society that they're reticence will be met with "sternness".

In so doing she addressed Mr Sarrazin's concerns, but didn't stop there. She went on to discuss that integration is the responsibility not only of immigrants, but also the responsibility of the "native" German society.

She was quick to put some of the legacy of a failed Integration Policy onto the Red-Green coalition, specifically the drive towards a "multiculti" society, but she also admitted that her party had to do more than just point out past failures.

In what I would consider a very loud "shot across the bows" she bluntly stated that Mosques will become a more common part of the German landscape, and that the general population will have to get accustomed to them.

To put this last point in context: Berlin has an immigrant community of some 13.5%. This number is over 21% in Stuttgart, the city of Daimler and Porsche. The majority of these immigrants are of Turkish heritage i.e. Islamic.

The focus in Germany is clearly on integration, and that begins with learning German.

(In)Tolerance

The other day I had a very interesting discussion with a couple who were staunch Democrats and very adamant about the virtues of tolerance.

She was Catholic and he was Jewish, and their understanding of tolerance meant that although there were many important moral decisions of the day to be dealt with, they didn't think it was a basis upon which electoral decisions should be made.

This did not stop them from pushing their views, but their concept of tolerance meant one nation, many ideas.

In the discussion that followed however they pushed their concept of tolerance to include a desire to have creationism taught along side the "theory" of evolution in the public school system.

I was somewhat taken aback on this shift of the meaning of tolerance. Not if they believe in creationism or not-that is their prerogative. No, my concern was their desire to have it taught along with evolution in the school room, all in the interest of tolerance.

I must admit that in the first instance I had to overcome my usual surprise which admittedly borders on derision when confronted with creationism. The derision emanates from my inability to comprehend that anyone could really think that humans have only been on the earth some 5000 years.

But that was not their point so I had to start thinking just what it was that this couple was promoting. They were well educated, successful, worldly people, and yet here they were advocating creationism.

At the time I politely changed the subject but it bothered me and so over the next couple of days I reflected on it. I was annoyed that their sense of tolerance allowed for the inclusion of creationism in public education, and mine didn't. I was also bothered that their tolerance seemed to deny my opinion.

Suddenly it dawned on me that what they were trying to say was that their view of creationism was intelligent design, and that that view had as much merit as the "theory" of evolution. Their tolerance positioned them not so much as anti-evolution as such, just against the idea that it all happened haphazardly.

And I had taken their bait.

The discussion had moved from a discussion of science to one of faith. As a tenet of one's faith that there is a god and that this god is behind the creation of-well, everything-was not a discussion in which I intended to engage.

Faith is faith. Freedom of religion is one of the basic rights upon which the U.S. was formed. It is a wonderful right to have and I only wish it were granted worldwide.

But there is another basic understanding associated with the right to freedom of religion ingrained in the American Constitution. That is the separation of Church and State, for the benefit of both.

I believe this is one of the most important achievements of our founding fathers, right up there with the creation of an elected government.

There is room for basically every religion-as long as said religion doesn't contravene the American Constitution i.e. advocate overthrowing the government-and part of that Constitution is the separation of Church and State.

Public education is a reflection of that separation. The fact that faith schools exist parallel to the public schools is both confusing, and an affirmation of this separation.

The public education system sets the required curriculum for all schools. There does exist a difficult area which is how does one address religion in the public school curriculum? I would put it under ethics, perhaps history-not under religion.

I believe anyone wishing to have religious education in a specific religion should ideally go to that education outside public school buildings, and outside of public school hours, preferably in the "prayer house" of that religion.

Given the existence of "faith schools" that religious education can take place there-in addition to the state curriculum.

To argue that creationism should be taught in public schools under the guise of tolerance is clever, and insidious. It is also against the First and Fourteenth Amendments, the intention of which was to protect the secular, and the non-secular.

The Mad Hatter Party

Now I am travelling today so I didn't have that much time to follow everything as regards the primary results in the U.S. but did see that the financial muscle of the Tea Party was brought to bear and the Deleware Republican primary was won by their candidate, Christine O'Donnell.

So now it has come to pass. The right wing of the conservative spectrum in the U.S. has run their candidate against a traditional Republican in a primary and won. After casting Ms O'Donnell as completely unelectable the GOP establishment now has to decide what to do with her in the broader scheme of national politics.

Now Ms O'Donnell, not only adopts all the usual hard-line views on the major issues, she has gone so far as equating masturbation with adultery—advocating self-abstinence, and has apparently lied repeatedly about her education and political accomplishments.

This has got to be one of the most bizarre events in modern American political history, approaching, but not reaching Mr McCain's decision to name Sarah Palin as his Vice Presidential running mate and thereby opening the door to the Mad Hatter Party.

Let us hope it is just the Republican party that will now reap that which they have sown, and not the U.S.

Recharged Capitalism?

There is an article in yesterday's New York Times by David Brooks describing the decline in America's economic might as the result of a shift from manual/technical labour to office/service work.

He describes what he believes is the gentrification of America today, echoing the societal transition which took place in England as a harbinger of the "End of Empire".

It is a common theme, beautifully illustrated in Thomas Mann's novel "Buddenbrooks-the decline of a family" which is an excellent metaphor for the decline of empire.

Mr Brooks seeks to explain the malaise and discontent in the U.S. today as a cultural shift rather than an economical one. It is an unfortunate distinction.

There was indeed a cultural shift at the end of the 18th century which allowed for the "scientification" of industry in that technological advances were finally "freed" from most discussions of science versus religion and the creation of homo faber.

Many will try and explain that unfettered capitalism is what drove the industrial revolution. They will accept a "cultural shift" that allowed technology to be put to practical use, but they will focus on two other ingredients.

The first is the introduction of the joint-stock company. This is an interesting point for with the joint-stock company we got a better application of capital, and the introduction of limited liability. This is often seen as the "birth of capitalism".

I find this ludicrous. It was a brilliant improvement, which allowed for a more efficient use of capital just as the machine gun was a vast improvement over single shot weapons. But neither the machine gun nor joint-stock companies created war or capitalism-they were both refinements.

The second ingredient is the idea that it is socially acceptable to have massive inequities of wealth. It is the personification of Social Darwinism, which I believe is the never spoken underlying ethos in the U.S.

Everybody has a chance. There are no barriers to entry. All you must do is be a risk-taker, be entrepreneurial, and eat what you kill.

Thus the hatred of taxation by the American psyche based on a false interpretation of the Boston Tea Party .

But there is something more sinister than this afoot.

Unfettered capitalism creates a zero-sum game which rapidly assumes the shape of a pyramid with a very small group of super-rich at the top and masses of the downtrodden and poor with a thin buffer between them of those dreaming of upward momentum and fearing slipping back into the abyss.

Even a Bismarck realised that this structure was not sustainable and although generally known as the father of "Realpolitik", he is also the father of the German welfare state.

All the discussions led by those in the laissez-faire "invisible hand" block harp on on why capitalism in the American version is so successful because since its creation there has been a self-defense mechanism against the rhetoric of income redistribution. I know some that describe this as common sense-and self interest-the middle class pursuing the American Dream of crass luxury.

But I think the argument, and at this stage in the American election process there is definitely an argument, is between spending and taxation. It is a simplification of a complex problem and leaves no room for discussion, or for reflection.

There is a need to recharge the American economy. It does and will be a recharging of capitalism. It will require something which is anathema to Americans, as it is immediately castigated as government intervention and then falls into the pit of "socialism" if not outright "communism".

It is the creation of an Industrial Policy. It will require a shift from pursuing profits through any means which in the U.S. means the service industry and a return to a manufacturing society.

A Step too Far

A couple of days ago I wrote a piece which compared the crimes of Nazi Germany with the financial crimes behind the Credit Crisis.

It was a step too far on my part. Although there is no doubt that the financial crimes committed have created hardship on large swathes of the population, it was a crude comparison and poorly chosen.

For that reason I have retracted the post and apologise.

Tearing Down the Nanny State or Everybody is a Freeloader

Today I read an article* on the evils of the Nanny State by a Mr David Warren of the Ottawa Citizen newspaper. What was interesting in the piece was how he chose two examples of why the Nanny State is bad, and then quickly jumped to why the Tea Party was the only solution to our ills.

His methodology was almost perfect. First give a couple of examples that many people could and would understand and then blame the problem on freeloaders, human rights, and spending out of control at the expense of the rich. End up with a solution-small government focused solely on national defense and domestic law and order, and provide the relevant political movement- the Tea Party.

Small governement is the main refrain of the Tea Party songbook. It's a catchy tune, reducing everything down to simplistic answers to very complex problems.

But back to his examples.

The first is the refusal of the French to recognise that the current retirement age, 60, is not sustainable. Retirement at 60 was introduced at a time that the French government could afford it and was a ploy to help get younger workers into employment.

Retirement at 60 is not viable currently although if you were 60 and were expecting to retire and were now told you had to work another 2 years you might be a bit upset. Regardless, this was an easy target.

The second example was the attempt to make 800 London Underground workers redundant and the ensuing strikes by the unions in support of their fellow workers. Mr Warren only points out the chaos caused by the strikes-and it was chaotic and damaging-but spends no time explaining the redundancies other than to a.)blame the Nanny State for their initial employment and b.)bring in the unions as the root of all evil.

Now my favorite part. He splits the world into "the party of Entitlement" and the "the Party of Tax-Cuts". He goes so far as to admit that the tax-cut party are the rich; he conveniently omits that the entitlement guys are the poor preferring to castigate them as freeloaders-people who think they deserve a pension,and then slandering the majority by accusing them of never having paid into social security.

From there he hones in on the public's basic fears explaining how the government is cutting the police, the military and essential public services, because of all the other non-essential "entitlement" spending.

It is an almost perfect piece of demagoguery-it even warns of the evils of demagoguery, from the left.

I think I am beginning to understand how it is that some 50% of the American voting public continually votes for a party that does not have its interest at heart.

*http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2010/09/10/the_nanny_state_has_blown_the_bank_107091.html

What Value Inflation-Linked?

One of the many market-related websites I follow is a blog written by the fund managers of a major British Insurer with a large Asset Management component.

As such I tend to discount some of what they write given that I assume that in general they are "talking their book" which in this case means the portfolio(s) they manage.

Still, I find them interesting, especially when they get a little more esoteric so when they held a raffle the other day to win the book "When Money Dies" by Adam Fergusson I didn't detect anything untoward but rather thought it an interesting topic-the nightmare of the Weimar inflation.

I didn't win the book but purchased it anyway and found it to be an interesting read which did an excellent job not only discussing the causes and effects of inflation, but also adding the socio-political aspects within Germany in the aftermath of their defeat in World War I.

It was therefore somewhat surprising if not outright disturbing to find out a week later that the aforementioned asset management firm was launching two inflation-linked corporate bond funds, and the book raffle was actually part of their pre-launch marketing.

Obviously there is nothing wrong with marketing a fund, and one could even say that it was relatively educated to do so by suggesting a book as part of the marketing campaign.

My problem is in the immediate comparison they are trying to make between the horrors of hyper-inflation in Weimar Germany and the current environment. I understand the value of comparing the present with the past, but also feel it is necessary but not sufficient to just compare- one must also contrast the past with the present.

This marketing piece amounted to little more than scare mongering at a base level-I wonder how many readers of their blog actually read the book, or did they just want to plant the idea/fear of hyperinflation as a precursor to their new fund?

But what really concerns me, and I don't have an answer, but somehow I doubt that inflation-linked securities are actually a protection against hyperinflation. I have severe doubts that an interest rate pegged to inflation but connected to a worthless currency is a viable defense against hyperinflation. It becomes even more unlikely when the issuer's involved are non-sovereign and might very well not survive the hyperinflation.

In 1923 Hjalmar Schacht revalued the German Mark by wiping off 12 zeroes. With that action he essentially created a clean slate for the new currency, and defaulted on the national debt accumulated in the 7 years since the start of the first World War.

Anyone holding debt in the old currency, regardless of the issuer, was instantly wiped out.

If we are not on the cusp of hyperinflation why put that "pistol on the mantelpiece", and if we are, is investing in an inflation-linked corporate bond fund really the answer?

Immigration-Different Views

There are two very different debates on immigration taking place in Germany and the United States which might shed some light on the whole immigration issue.

Specifically I am referring to the Arizona Immigration Laws recently enacted and the removal of a Governor of the Bundesbank (the German Central Bank) for his comments on immigration.

Let's start with Arizona. It is strange that the big discussions about illegal immigration are taking place now after the overall illegal immigrant numbers as provided by Homeland Security are down around 10% over the last two years and there are estimates that the numbers of new illegal immigrants is down by almost 2/3rds over the same period.

Furthermore, the Homeland Security and DHS numbers for illegal immigrants in Arizona show that of the total in the US around 5.5% live in Arizona, and that they make up less than 1.75% of the Arizona population.

Granted there is extreme violence taking place in Mexico as the various Drug cartels battle it out for supremacy, and granted that a new area of profit for these cartels is human trafficking, it is still somewhat confusing that the discussion in Arizona has suddenly taken on a fever pitch. Or is it?

There is a mid-term election. The right wing press is full of stories of how the Obama Administration and the Democrats in general are focusing on the illegal immigrant communities. This "unwritten contract" is muted to be "you vote for us and we make you part of the entitlement society".

It's almost as if the Democrats were somehow in cahoots with the Mexican cartel to ensure that the demographics provide Democrat Governments into eternity.

Now to me this sounds ridiculously far-fetched, but as I said it is trumpeted in the right wing press almost daily. It appears to be making good electoral sense as well as it plays on fears of the unknown and frankly hints of discrimination if not outright racism.

Now it gets even more sordid however. There appears to be a close relationship between Governor Jan Brewer (R) of Arizona and a private prison company that stands to make significant profits incarcerating illegal immigrants "discovered" by the Arizona Police Force.

Chuck Coughlin is Brewer's campaign chairman, policy adviser and a lobbyist for the largest private prison company in the country. And he's one of two people in the Brewer administration with ties to Corrections Corporation of America which just happens to be a major contributor to her campaign.

Long story short, it would appear that the question of immigration in the US as it is being played out is primarily aimed at creating a populist message to discredit the current administration as part of a great "socialist" plot. It would also appear that there are some serious questions bordering on corruption at the highest levels of Arizona state politics.

Now turn our attention to the immigration scandal in Germany.

Thilo Sarrazin, former Finance Minister for the State if Berlin and currently a Board Member of the Bundesbank has written a book "Deutschland Schafft Sich Ab" which essentially translates into "Germany Self-Destructs". The premise of the book appears to be that the current demographic trends in Germany-rapidly declining birthrates of "native" Germans and rapidly expanding birthrates of immigrants, especially in the Turkish/Muslim communities in Germany is resulting in a "dumbing down" of Germany.

He posits that there is a cultural tendency in Islam not to promote integration in general and specifically is anti-educational, especially for women. He singles Islam out as promoting violence, dictatorship and terrorism, and blames a culture of "honor" as specifically promoting violence in young men, especially those who do poorly in school.

Now Mr Sarrazin claims that he has always been willing to address issues directly and that he has written this book to promote discussion and welcomes arguments which disprove his theories. I would perhaps accept this approach if it were not that he also writes that all Jew carry the same gene, as do Basques. Why he includes Basques is beyond me, but the more important point is that he thereby takes what was ostensibly a discussion of a culture clash and turns it into a racial identity debate.

Given the past history of such debates he disqualifies himself to me-and thereby in my opinion should be removed from his position at the Bundesbank.

But, and this is a difficult point for me, he has opened up a debate which currently takes place in private and has to be brought into the open.

How do countries integrate immigrant groups into their society at large? Is assimilation the goal, is it possible?

To me the debate in the U.S. seems to focus on illegal immigrants. I appreciate that this is a concern. But I am more interested in how we as a nation are dealing with the integration of our "legal" immigrants.

I am always taken aback when I first arrive in the U.S. how I am constantly presented with the choice to continue in English, or Spanish. One of the first tenets of integration in my mind was the requirement to learn the language of the country to which one had arrived.

This doesn't appear to be occurring in the U.S., and it is part of Mr Sarrazin's discusson, despite however distastefully wrapped.

Education, beginning with the need to learn the language of the "new" country has to be the primary objective of immigrant communities. If we fail in this basic endeavour, than I fear that all nations with immigrant communities could suffer divisive disruption in the future.

Yes, Blame the Regulators-But That Doesn't Make Dick Fuld Innocent

There is a very strange discussion taking place at the Financial Crisis Panel Hearings. All of a sudden Lehman Brothers was not a firm which had over-leveraged itself, indulged in a myriad of speculative investments any number of which were quite possibly fatal. Even more worryingly, in an apparent attempt gloss over Lehman's illegal activities, it was conveniently forgotten that the firm had engaged in Repo 105 activities.

Now, two years later it is no longer Lehman's fault, but the regulators and administrators who allegedly "chose" to let Lehman fail while helping Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley and Wachovia.

The focus is now on the "controversial" way that the bailouts were conducted.

I am quite tired of Mr Fuld. He has managed to blame everyone without ever accepting a ounce of responsibility. He and his firms management knowingly misled the markets as to the true size and composition of its balance sheet playing "hardball" with the street and suddenly got caught with their pants down with no one rushing in to help.

Well that is not entirely true. A bid was made for Lehman, which Mr Fuld didn't accept as it wasn't strong enough. Funny how risk turns into a four letter word when it goes against you. Lehman had as little interest in financial regulation as the rest of the street when it was all good. But then the music stopped and there wasn't a seat for Lehman and Dick Fuld.

Suddenly the discussions around "moral hazard" shifted from the theoretical to the practical. The list of bailouts over the past 20 years starting with the S&L crisis in the 90's through to the financial crisis of the noughties had lulled the street into a sense that they could do no wrong. It was really a "heads we win tails you lose" mentality, with the "you" being a moving target as long as it wasn't the investment banks.

And then it was.

Now the discussions have become partisan. The bailouts took place under GW and Mr Paulson. There are questions to be asked why one firm was allowed to fail, while others were not. But we are now looking back with the benefit of hindsight. As it turned out Lehman's failure suddenly looked to be the catalyst for all the banks to fail. It was the defining moment as to just how bad things were, and how much worse they could get.

There were a lot of things wrong across the board and the new Financial Regulations will help, but only if the Dick Fulds of the world start to assume some responsibility, and dare I say, find their moral compasses.

The Politics of Fear

While trolling through various market reports trying to get a grip on the state of the economy and determine what if anything I should do to my portfolio I came across a very interesting article in the most unlikely of places.

I guess I am the embodiment of my comment yesterday on the distinction between politics and economics as every day I spend the first few hours of the day analysing market reports and trying to maximise the capitalist maxim that "money works", and then spend the next couple of hours looking at the political landscape.

Being a capitalist does not automatically qualify me as an uncaring ignoramus in everything else I do however. Unfortunately, being a capitalist does appear to qualify many people in precisely this manner, making them extremely susceptible to the politics of fear.

The ideologues from the right depend on this ignorance. They focus on the fear that haunts the wealthy-will they be able to maintain their privileged position. They focus on the fear of the middle-class, who are striving to become part of the wealthy and terrified that they will become (economically) lower-class. And they focus on the fear of the economically poor-will they ever get the chance to be part of the American Dream.

Which takes me back to the article I read this morning in MarketWatch. The title was "Why should you care about palliative care?".

The article begins with the question, "What, exactly, is a 'death panel?'. Now MarketWatch does not normally concern itself with questions on Health Care unless it is from an economics perspective and the impact it will have on the market in general and specifically the health care industry.

So it was almost bizarre to find an article in a financial report rationally dismantling one of the "fear" myths propagated by the right in their crusade against the Health Care program. The other major "fear" myth was the cost associated with the program, which plays on our preoccupation with taxation, but that is not my focus today.

The article's goal was to debunk the myth of death panels and to discuss our fear of death, and how our medical system has become more concerned with "ridding their patients body of the disease" then "to really focus on the bigger picture of that person's life".

It is actually both horrifying and terrifying that the politics of fear can take a concept such as palliative care, essentially a question of a patients quality of life and a support system to deal with the inevitable in a dignified manner can be twisted into a "death panel".

It is the first step to "NewSpeak".