The Big Picture Archives - Page 29 of 34

September 24, 2012

Down with politics | WashingtonExaminer.com

By Gene Healy

Politics makes us worse because “politics is the mindkiller,” as intelligence theorist Eliezer Yudkowsky puts it……. we indulge our tribal hard-wiring by picking a political “team” and denouncing the “enemy.”

But our atavistic Red/Blue tribalism plays to the interests of “individual politicians in getting you to identify with them instead of judging them.”

……..We’ll get more of the same, Yudkowsky argues, until “Republifans and Demofans … stop enthusiastically cheering for rich lawyers because they wear certain colors, and begin judging them as employees severely derelict in their duties.”

via Down with politics | WashingtonExaminer.com.

Colin Twiggs

Colin Twiggs is a former investment banker with almost 40 years of experience in financial markets. He co-founded Incredible Charts and writes the popular Trading Diary and Patient Investor newsletters.

Using a top-down approach, Colin identifies key macro trends in the global economy before evaluating selected opportunities using a combination of fundamental and technical analysis.

Focusing on interest rates and financial market liquidity as primary drivers of the economic cycle, he warned of the 2008/2009 and 2020 bear markets well ahead of actual events.
He founded PVT Capital (AFSL No. 546090) in May 2023, which offers investment strategy and advice to wholesale clients.

September 18, 2012

Dangerous Waters | Foreign Policy

BY STEPHANIE KLEINE-AHLBRANDT

The wave of anti-Japanese protests that swept across dozens of cities in China this weekend, prompted by Tokyo’s purchase of three disputed islands, has obscured a potentially more worrying development that risks drawing the two countries into a larger conflict: China’s adoption of a legal framework empowering it to expel foreign vessels in disputed waters in the East China Sea.

……More frequent Chinese patrols in the area, along with the Japanese Coast Guard continuing to patrol near the islands, raises the risk of maritime clashes higher than it has ever been. Although the two countries have dealt with past run-ins — such as when the Japanese Coast Guard arrested a Chinese skipper in 2010 after his boat collided with a Japanese vessel — and succeeded in cooling tensions, the current situation is of a different order. That act could be attributed to an overzealous Chinese fisherman. But now, a skirmish between official law enforcement vessels in the current context could prove irresolvable.

via Dangerous Waters – By Stephanie Kleine-Ahlbrandt | Foreign Policy.

Colin Twiggs

Using a top-down approach, Colin identifies key macro trends in the global economy before evaluating selected opportunities using a combination of fundamental and technical analysis.

August 19, 2012

The Oil Drum | America’s Deficit Attention Disorder

According to the World Wildlife Federation’s 2012 Living Planet Report, at the current rate of consumption, “it is taking 1.5 years for the Earth to fully regenerate the renewable resources that people are using in a single year. Instead of living off the interest, we are eating into our natural capital.” This is a path to never-never land. Unlike with financial deficits, simple debt forgiveness is not an option.

When we deplete Earth’s bio-capacity—its capacity to support life in its many varied forms—we are not borrowing from the future; we are stealing from the future. Even though it is the most serious of all human-caused deficits, it rarely receives mention in current political debates.

via The Oil Drum | Drumbeat: August 18, 2012.

Colin Twiggs

Using a top-down approach, Colin identifies key macro trends in the global economy before evaluating selected opportunities using a combination of fundamental and technical analysis.

August 18, 2012

New Wave of Deft Robots Is Changing Global Industry – NYTimes.com

The cost of automated assembly lines is falling and at some point will become cheaper than their labor-intensive equivalent. The result could be a tectonic shift in manufacturing but where will the redundant assembly workers find jobs? JOHN MARKOFF of the NYTimes writes:

The falling costs and growing sophistication of robots have touched off a renewed debate among economists and technologists over how quickly jobs will be lost. This year, Erik Brynjolfsson and Andrew McAfee, economists at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, made the case for a rapid transformation. “The pace and scale of this encroachment into human skills is relatively recent and has profound economic implications,” they wrote in their book, “Race Against the Machine.”

In their minds, the advent of low-cost automation foretells changes on the scale of the revolution in agricultural technology over the last century, when farming employment in the United States fell from 40 percent of the work force to about 2 percent today.

via New Wave of Deft Robots Is Changing Global Industry – NYTimes.com.

Colin Twiggs

Using a top-down approach, Colin identifies key macro trends in the global economy before evaluating selected opportunities using a combination of fundamental and technical analysis.

August 13, 2012

Which Country Has the Best Government? – SPIEGEL ONLINE

The Craft of Ruling: Which Country Has the Best Government?
By Bernhard Zand

American political scientist Charles Kupchans claims that there is a “mismatch between the growing demand for good governance and its shrinking supply,” putting Western powers under pressure. He says it’s no coincidence that the political systems in the US, Europe and Japan are all discovering their limits almost simultaneously. Their traditional tools, such as their currency control instruments, have repeatedly proven to be powerless when faced with the sheer might of global financial groups. Likewise, democratic governments, which rely on the approval of their electorate, “have proved far better at distributing benefits than at apportioning sacrifice.” Worse still, many likeminded Western democracies no longer see eye-to-eye on how to solve global problems, from climate change to the isolation of Iran.

via Good Governance Series: Which Goverment Is Best – SPIEGEL ONLINE.

Colin Twiggs

Using a top-down approach, Colin identifies key macro trends in the global economy before evaluating selected opportunities using a combination of fundamental and technical analysis.

August 13, 2012

Putin's Russia Is Becoming a Flawless Dictatorship – SPIEGEL ONLINE

The Path to Tyranny: Putin’s Russia Is Becoming a Flawless Dictatorship
By Georg Diez, Walter Mayr and Matthias Schepp:

Medvedev’s essay “Forward, Russia,” published in September 2009, had triggered hopes of a freer Russia within the well-educated urban middle class. Putin’s successor had created an atmosphere in which the middle class had become active, recognizing that a different, modern Russia could be possible. This political thaw had since been recognized as a mistake, says Moscow political scientist Vitaly Ivanov. Putin’s team responded to Medvedev’s stated principle that freedom is always preferable to the lack of freedom with the conviction that order is always better than disorder.

via SPIEGEL Cover Story on Pussy Riot Trial and Putin – SPIEGEL ONLINE.

Colin Twiggs

Using a top-down approach, Colin identifies key macro trends in the global economy before evaluating selected opportunities using a combination of fundamental and technical analysis.

August 10, 2012

Meltdown: History of the Global Financial Collapse 2010 | Part 4

Aftermath of the GFC.

Colin Twiggs

Using a top-down approach, Colin identifies key macro trends in the global economy before evaluating selected opportunities using a combination of fundamental and technical analysis.

August 10, 2012

Meltdown: History of the Global Financial Collapse 2010 | Part 3

Collapse of the Icelandic government, unemployment and homelessness rises, street protests and industrial action.

Colin Twiggs

Using a top-down approach, Colin identifies key macro trends in the global economy before evaluating selected opportunities using a combination of fundamental and technical analysis.

August 10, 2012

Meltdown: History of the Global Financial Collapse 2010 | Part 2

How one man almost brought down the world financial system.

Colin Twiggs

Using a top-down approach, Colin identifies key macro trends in the global economy before evaluating selected opportunities using a combination of fundamental and technical analysis.

August 10, 2012

Meltdown: History of the Global Financial Collapse 2010 | Part 1

De-regulation of financial markets came about as a result of competition between London and New York to be a global financial center.

Colin Twiggs

Using a top-down approach, Colin identifies key macro trends in the global economy before evaluating selected opportunities using a combination of fundamental and technical analysis.