| Dear Naked Capitalism Reader, Welcome to October and the Best of Naked Capitalism. We have more items than usual this month as we have a full complement of authors writing at (seemingly) full speed. It's been an enjoyable challenge to pick their best for this compilation. In case you missed our fundraiser, we've included an excerpt from the introductory post. And it's not too late - you can make a donation by visiting the tip jar here. Of course, the news didn't stop, we have posts on the War in Ukraine, COVID-19, financial news, a couple of book reviews and much more | | Breaking News
09/30/22 Post by  Nick Corbishley, European Systemic Risk Board Issues First Ever 'General Warning' About 'Financial Stability Risks'. "The European Systemic Risk Board is essentially an offshoot of the European Central Bank. And central banks are normally the last to admit that a crisis is around the corner, if not already here. The European Systemic Risk Board (ESRB), an advisory body set up in the wake of the Global Financial Crisis to monitor the macro-prudential risks bubbling below the surface of Europe's economy, issued a 'general warning' yesterday (Sept. 29) about the financial system. It is apparently the first time the body has taken such a drastic move since its creation in 2010, when Europe was in the maw of the sovereign debt crisis, and it comes just a day after the Bank of England bailed out highly leveraged pension funds. … The board's members include representatives from the ECB, national central banks and supervisory authorities of EU member states, and the European Commission. And the chairwoman of the board is Christine Lagarde. In other words, it speaks with the full authority of the EU's two most powerful institutions, the Commission and the ECB. … Another reason this is important is that central banks are normally the last to admit that a crisis is around the corner. In fact, when they finally sound the alarm, it means the damage is already done and the crisis — which they invariably helped create — is already here."
hemeantwell comments: "A question: if these chickens come home, are they remediable in the same way as the liquidity crisis of the GFC? I've wondered if, as implied by what Tooze usefully brought out in Crash, the big stick the US now holds over Europe is withholding a Fed intervention on a scale we saw back then. It seems, though, that a big difference is that during the GFC the idea was that a lot of assets had been devalued in a panic and so support was only needed until the panic subsided. The current situation looks more 'real,' with the quotation marks gesturing at the amazing conjuring capacity of capitalist finance."
Major Stories
09/22/22 Post by Yves Smith, Further Thoughts on Russian Partial Mobilization and Next Steps. "But the commentariat made many insightful observations yesterday about Putin's announcement of Russia's partial mobilization and the scheduling of referenda in the 'liberated' regions of Ukraine. These decisions to move ahead were made with signs of haste, which is not how the Kremlin normally operates. But the plans for partial mobilization and the referenda were likely already in place, but their launches were moved up. The most plausible explanation was a disconnect between military priorities and political needs. Russia has been coordinating different forces: its own military, which provides intel, artillery and missiles, air power and anti-missile protection, and some infantry, but mainly in Kherson. The main infantry muscle comes from the DPR and LPR militia, with the Chechens and the Wagner Group. Some Western commentators have taken some of Putin's responses in Q&As to indicate that the military has very broad latitude to achieve its goals. And it's regularly used mobility to its advantage, ceding ground and often succeeding in pulling Ukrainian troops into exposed position where they can be cut down or captured."
Lex comments: "What the western analysis is missing is that legally it's not possible for Russian military units to be active in foreign countries. There have obviously been workarounds in Ukraine, but it's part of why so few regular army units are involved and the parsimonious use of manpower. That's the big change that comes with the referenda and mobilization. … Partial mobilization means the ability to backfill rear duties in the conflict zone as well as border duties in the western military zone and along the Russian-Ukrainian border. With the referenda, regular army can be applied at large scale against a degraded AFU and with loosened rules of engagement concerning infrastructure. It's openly telegraphed to give DC another chance to act rationally. If not, you go NATO on the degraded AFU, infrastructure and aim to give the west a crushing defeat on the battlefield of its choosing. It will be costly but could achieve encirclement of the AFU in Donbas/Kharkov as well as the capture of Odessa. And I maintain that if Odessa FAA, the US taps out. in this scenario we all have to hope the US doesn't further escalate because that escalation ladder will see nukes. NATO leadership thinks it can manage and win a 'limited nuclear war' and it doesn't handle losing very well."
09/28/22 Post by John Helmer, The Bornholm Blow-Up Repeats the Bornholm Bash — Poland Attacks Germany and Blames Russia. "The military operation on Monday night which fired munitions to blow holes in the Nord Stream I and Nord Stream II pipelines on the Baltic Sea floor, near Bornholm Island, was executed by the Polish Navy and special forces. It was aided by the Danish and Swedish military; planned and coordinated with US intelligence and technical support; and approved by the Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki. The operation is a repeat of the Bornholm Bash operation of April 2021, which attempted to sabotage Russian vessels laying the gas pipes, but ended in ignominious retreat by the Polish forces. That was a direct attack on Russia. This time the attack is targeting the Germans, especially the business and union lobby and the East German voters, with a scheme to blame Moscow for the troubles they already have — and their troubles to come with winter."
Ignacio comments: "Now it seems legit to attack crucial infrastructures. Legit by some twisted logic or at least some want to whitewash illegal actions. The final objective? EU to shit and total breakdown? Possibly not an objective by itself but an outcome of repeated mistakes, misjudgements and mismanagement. It is amazing to see how fast this is unfolding. EU turns opposite of original intentions becoming a malignant tumour with no easy escape. Eastwards expansion could possibly have marked the beginning of the end of the adventure."
09/12/22 Post by Yves Smith, Fog of War, Military and Economic. "Now to the war war. The Western press is predictably agog with Ukraine getting off its first successful offensive since 2014. Even Russian Telegram was apparently in hair-tearing mode with what a great loss this was for Russia, how Putin was in trouble. … As a reflexive skeptic, I was bothered by the emotionality of many of the takes. … The widespread initial reaction was that Ukraine had forced Russia out, when this operation looks more like a pullback. There were few Russian casualties, no evidence of a rout or even an over-hasty retreat. Larry Johnson pointed out that modern militaries do not turn on a dime and that Russia had to have planned to leave. Aside from the lack of a meaningful Russian body count, which is what you'd see if Russia really was caught with its pants down, Military Summary provides anectata that Russian soldiers were being pulled out"
Col 'Sandy' Volestrangler (ret) comments: "I keep trying to point out to people that the ground lost (or in play) was a small chunk of territory compared to the 20% or so of pre 2014 map Ukraine that Russia now occupies. Armies that seem hapless and on the ropes but are lavishly equipped can still launch local counterattacks with some success. The Confederates in 1865 were still able to pull off some battlefield victories - and they were wretchedly equipped but highly motivated. Ukraine has managed to hit some ammo dumps with rockets so they're not completely useless."
09/05/22 Post by Lambert Strether, Biden Opens Campaign Season with MAGA Exorcism in Idiosyncratic Philadelphia Speech. "Just before the Labor Day weekend that traditionally opens campaign season, the head of the Democrat Party, President Joe Biden, gave a campaign speech at Independence Hall in Philadelphia[1]. (Because it was a campaign speech, the networks didn't run it, preferring reruns.) On the White House site, the text is titled 'Remarks by President Biden on the Continued Battle for the Soul of the Nation,' 'soul' being significant, as we shall see. As readers know, the Democrat Party faces — or refuses the face — an existential predicament: Its base in the Professional-Managerial Class (PMC) is too narrow to win elections all on its own, year after year, unlike the fabled but long-dismantled FDR coalition. The Democrats could solve that problem by bringing non-voters among the working class they betrayed back into the fold, but class interests and sensibilities rule that out. … As I read it, Biden is speaking to three segments: MAGA Republicans, Democrat loyalists, and — here are the voters at the margin Biden needs to attract — non-MAGA Republicans, particularly suburban Catholics in the important swing state of Pennsylvania, where Biden gave the speech."
Some Dude comments: "I predict that a hundred years from now, people will ask why Biden felt the need to escalate. Let me tell you how this speech landed in MAGA country. It was yet more proof to the normie-MAGA voter that 'they hate you and they want you dead.' There will be no reconciliation. The group that calls you insects (MAGATs=maggots) has now declared you an enemy of the state and threatened you with state level violence. … I'm sure this sounds overly dramatic and ridiculous to almost everyone on here. Let me assure you Russia-Gate sounded exactly the same to MAGA and yet it led to two impeachment votes and hamstrung Trump's presidency. On an intellectual level I find it fascinating. The facts of the conflict echo the lead up to the Spanish Civil War; power trading hands … . But it also feels like the crazy self-destructive way Europe slid into WWI. Everyone knows this is a terrible idea, but it feels inevitable."
09/11/22 Post by Lambert Strether, Hospital Infection Control Departments Tenaciously Resist Airborne Transmission, Aided by CDC. "What is infection control? According to the CDC: 'Infection control prevents or stops the spread of infections in healthcare settings.' Which, arguably, hospitals are. In fact, hospitals have administrative structures for Hospital Infection Control (HIC). Again the CDC: 'The role of the hospital infection control committee (HICC) is to implement the annual infection control programme and policies… HICC shall meet regularly… once a month and as often as required.' Since we're now 924 days / 30 = ~30 months = 30 meetings into the latest Coronavirus pandemic, one would have expected those regular monthly meetings to have culminated in robust and coherent 'politicies and procedures' to prevent the airborne transmission of SARS-CoV2. But who am I kidding? Nothing could be further from the truth."
Basil Pesto comments: "If the vaccines had been capable of single-handedly ending SARS2, then I'd argue that would be fair enough. But they never were (and the extent to which people were misled about this being possible really does remain fairly mind-boggling). But for the most part, people did what they were told and expected to be commensurately rewarded, ie with the promise of removing masks, aka 'The Scarlet Letter of the Pandemic' (Walensky) because they were told the pandemic was over, and are now told that we have the tools (but not masking, which is apparently a tool of the 'you do you' variety, which some might argue is the perfect summation of a selfish culture and/or era)."
09/14/22 Post by KLG, The Scientific Response to COVID-19: What Does the Biomedical Literature Say? "It was known long before COVID-19 that lasting immunity to coronaviruses is problematic, so when the vaccines neither prevented infection nor transmission, despite various and sundry rationalizations from the politico-biomedical establishment, a new clinical endpoint was proposed: Vaccination prevented severe disease in many of those infected. Reasonably true, but not exactly what the people naturally expected of a vaccine. Nothing new here to the Naked Capitalism community, and I hope to return to this soon. While there seems to be no rhyme to our collective response to the pandemic, the reasons are plain if largely hidden. What I would like to do here is consider the overall scientific response to COVID-19, as demonstrated by a view of the COVID-19 scientific literature, first from 30,000 feet and then at ground level."
Basil Pesto comments: " Furthemore, for those who have made their mind up to some extent … confirmation bias is always a risk, especially when a SARS virus has been so idiotically politicised from day one. And confirmation bias isn't just a risk for laymen of course but also the twitter scientist tribalism scene – which can be quick to promote preprints etc."
Business/Finance
09/27/22 Post by  Nick Corbishley, Fast-Shrinking TBTF Giant Credit Suisse Is Living Dangerously. "Time, money and options are fast running out for Switzerland's second largest lender, Credit Suisse. After a string of hugely costly, self-inflicted crises (sound familiar?), Credit Suisse appears to be in the process of prising the mantle of Europe's most troubled systemic lender from Deutsche Bank, which the German bank has held for most of the past decade. As the Wall Street Journal noted a few days ago, 'Credit Suisse has taken pole position in a race to the bottom among big, but weak, European banks.' The scandal-splattered bank has already reported losses of over $2 billion in the first half of this year, significantly under performing expectations as revenue at its investment bank has continued to plunge. That was after reporting an annual loss of $1.7 billion in 2021. Since the second quarter of 2021 CS' asset base has slumped in value from $941 billion to $753 billion. Net revenues are also falling. Over the past nine quarters the bank has only managed to muster one quarter of actual year-on-year growth."
griffen comments: "Circling the drain at last, will they follow in the steps of Lehman Brothers but obviously on a much delayed timeline. I stay long the stupid, and venture a guess of an arranged suitor aside from UBS if only to not have that scenario. I can remember a time, long ago on a distant planet, when disastrous companies were no longer sustained on a lifeline. I have little sympathy for these international firms. Also, only a buyer would acquire this firm after scouring the books for better than a few days ala the disastrous choice by Ken Lewis and Bank of America to buy Merrill Lynch."
09/20/22 Post by Nick Corbishley, Digital Dollar and Digital Euro Just Took a Big Step Closer to Becoming a Reality. "It is a rare experience to find oneself in more or less full agreement with a senior central banker, particularly these days. Yet that is what happened to me just over a month ago. In early August, Neel Kashkari, ex Goldman, ex Pimco employee, currently the President of the Minneapolis Fed, lambasted the idea of creating a digital dollar, arguing that US consumers already had access to instant digital payments through private-sector platforms.* Speaking at the 2022 Journal of Financial Regulation conference at Columbia University, he also flagged concerns about the threat central bank digital currencies (CBDCs) could pose to privacy, anonymity and other basic freedoms. 'I can see why China would do it,' Kashkari said. 'If they want to monitor every one of your transactions, you could do that with a central bank digital currency. You can't do that with Venmo. If you want to impose negative interest rates, you could do that with a central bank digital currency. You can't do that with Venmo. And if you want to directly tax customer accounts, you could do that with a central bank digital currency. You can't do that with Venmo. I get why China would be interested. Why would the American people be for that?'"
shinola comments: "Elimination of physical currency has been the ultimate goal of the Federal Reserve Bank for decades. I worked for the Kansas City FRB as a telecom. analyst in the late 70's/early 80's. New employee orientation included basic explanation of Fed functions (& basement-to-roof tour of the building*) At that time it was openly stated that paper money was considered inefficient & they were looking forward to one day having all 'money' be thru 'electronic' transactions. *In one large section of the basement there were rows & rows of women at small desks counting & bundling old, worn out bills. The bundles were collected & shipped out in armored cars to be incinerated. All the counters were women because, it was claimed, women have a better sense of touch than men. These jobs (i.e. costs) could be eliminated if cash was no longer used… ."
09/23/22 Post by John McGregor, Australian State Government Bails Out Owners of Taxi Licenses After Uber Destroys Their Value. "When Uber first began to operate in Australia, it did so illegally. Its rideshare service drivers were breaking the law and risking large fines for a couple of years in New South Wales before the government introduced new legislation to cover all taxis, hire cares, and ridesharing in 2016. As with much of the rest of the world, documentation of this plan to break the law I order to break the market was revealed in the Uber files. By worming its way into the Australian market, Uber collapsed the price of local taxi licenses. In October 2012, the year Uber first entered Australia, a NSW taxi license was worth about AUD 400,000. Right now, a licence is worth somewhere around AUD 100,000. … Under the euphemism of an 'industry adjustment package', the government promised to distribute AUD 250 million to taxi license owners as compensation to soften the blow to the value of their licenses (which they would retain)."
lyman alpha blob comments: "Some bailout, with the recipients receiving far less than what the value of the medallions was before allowing Uber to operate illegally. Sounds like the bailout is only giving current market value to the mums and dads, ie mark-to-market. Contrast that with the terms the bankers got after the meltdown in 2008. If I recall correctly, there was a great wailing and gnashing of teeth when mark-to-market was proposed then, and the bankers managed to have their worthless assets valued at 100% of the original face value for bailout purposes. Funny, that."
09/26/22 Post by Conor Gallagher, US Tightens the Screws on Turkey Over Cooperation with Russia . "Two of Turkey's largest banks are no longer accepting Russia's Mir payments system. The moves on September 19 come following threats from the US of secondary sanctions. Turkey's largest private lender IsBank and Denizbank, a Turkish unit of the United Arab Emirates' NBD, were the banks who suspended services. Visa and Mastercard suspended their Russian operations back in March, which means all transactions initiated with such cards issued in Russia will no longer work outside of the country and any cards issued outside of Russia will no longer work within the country. The European Union has also banned Russian banks from SWIFT, the system that enables financial transactions all around the world. Russia created the Mir payment system in 2014 out of fear that the US and Europe would one day enact these very sanctions. … It does not appear the US has directly threatened any of the other nations to stop using Mir, but making an example of out of Turkey seems to be having its desired effect."
schmoe comments: "I am a little surprised that Turkish private sector banks did not put up more of a fight. Turkey has considerable leverage over the European financial system and could drive it into chaos if it were to default after the US imposes secondary sanctions (granted, that would be MAD given Turkey's financial position)"
Continuing Themes
09/04/22 Post by Yves Smith, Naked Capitalism Fundraiser 2022: Your Situational Awareness Guide as Tectonic Plates Shift. "If someone in 2006, when we started this blog, had written up some of the events to come, no one would have believed them. Oh, perhaps an epic financial crash would be plausible….but massive bailouts with no accountability? Millions of preventable foreclosures? Globalist elites using trade treaties to gut national laws and regulations? … ? Donald Trump becoming President, and the Democrats even before he took office trying to undermine his legitimacy and then spending two years on an investigation to nowhere? … Deteriorating health, from Covid deaths shrugged off and the world ex China a big disease reservoir, to an ongoing high level of opioid deaths, as well as a marked rise in gun fatalities? And grinding relentlessly in the background, global warming going from a possible big problem in 2100 to an imminent threat in the 2020s … Last year, we described this trajectory as early stage collapse. … If you value this informational heavy lifting, please go straight to the Tip Jar and give generously."
PlutoniumKun comments: "NC is by a very long distance the best, most reliable guide to what is happening to the world. I've thought this for years, but after being bombarded the last 6 months with a relentless barrage of naked lies and outright stupidity over Ukraine I feel this even more strongly now."
09/09/22 Post by Yves Smith, EU Wrangling Over Energy Plans That Amount to Band-Aid Over Gunshot Wound. "As we've said, the freight train of energy shortages is bearing down on Europe. Most of its leaders seem in denial about how bad the impact will be. Mind you, some do understand … But you wouldn't get it from the tone and expected substance of an emergency EU energy meeting set for Friday. Politico reported yesterday on the main proposals from the European Commission. Some countries were miffed, since this leak was obviously intended to give EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen more control over the debate. … The article said only two measures had broad support. The first was funding support for utility companies. The excuse is that they are having to pay ' sky-high collateral cash needed to trade on energy exchanges.' That conveniently omits that many of these utilities are in serious trouble, as we wrote a few days ago, due to bad derivative bets. Generally, the problem was they went short, as in bet prices would fall, and instead they went to the moon. It's hardly a secret that this is the big reason they are in financial pain"
Berlino comments: "As a German resident, my impression is that the German population is completely oblivious to the tsunami of suffering about to crash over their heads. Sara Wagenknecht is the only politician of any stature who has stood up to the anti-Russian hysteria, besides Gerhard Schroeder, and they have both been viciously attacked for it. I believe that many Germans are secretly pleased with the existential thrill of making a sacrifice to „punish' Putin, their lives being otherwise quite boring. Moreover, they merely calculate their increased energy costs and conclude it is payable. They never consider that German industry, the bedrock of their prosperity, will be eviscerated and will never return. The exception to this is a significant number of Greens who actually do understand the implications and welcome de-industrialisation due to romantic notions of simplicity and a fanatical wish to reduce carbon emissions at any cost. Unfortunately, the more likely result will be social conflict or even civil war."
Other Politics
09/27/22 Post by Conor Gallagher, Mission Accomplished: 'Super Mario' Draghi's Legacy and the Italian Election. "Italians elected their next government on Sunday, and as expected the Brothers of Italy Party (Fratelli d'Italia or FdI) and its leader Giorgia Meloni came out on top with a projected 26 percent of the vote. The bigger winner, however, was disillusionment. It was the lowest voter turnout in Italy since World War Two. … The cruel reality is dawning on Italians that no government will be able to reverse the decades-long decline in Italian living standards. Rome has little choice but to go along with Brussels dictates; if they don't the European Central Bank is likely to threaten excessive deficit procedures or engineer a debt crisis as it has in the past. … Meloni and the Fdl campaigned primarily on anti-immigration efforts coupled with tax cuts and piecemeal financial assistance to a beaten down electorate. But the biggest point in their favor was that it is the only party that has opposed the pro-EU and technocratic governments of the past ten years. That includes the most recent led by the former vice chairman and managing director of Goldman Sachs International and president of the European Central Bank Mario Draghi."
DJG, Reality Czar comments: "Thanks for this summary. I think that it is important for people / media denizens to stop hyperventilating about fascism and start focusing on economic and political problems as exemplified by Italy. (Although you do give me the task of writing that if Hillary Clinton is sending compliments to the fascista Meloni doesn't that make Hillary a fascist, too?) This line is a good summary of the strategy over the long term: 'There is little movement in areas of broad support as such policies are blocked by EU rules on deficits. And neoliberal programs don't garner support; they are therefore pushed through during times of crisis under non-elected governments like Draghi's.' Esatto."
Science and Technology
09/02/22 Post by Nick Corbishley, China Just Gave a Foretaste of One of the Biggest Dangers of Biometric Surveillance Systems. "As previously reported on Naked Capitalism, biometric surveillance systems, a common trope in dystopian novels, are being hastily rolled out across the West, with next to no public debate. That, of course, is for an obvious reason: if an open, informed debate on the pros and cons of biometric surveillance systems was actually allowed, the public would overwhelmingly reject it. Which is why these systems are increasingly encroaching into our lives under the radar, with limited public knowledge or understanding. "
Eureka Springs comments: "I wonder just how energy intensive all this surveillance and it's trappings might be? A recent article pointing out a smart phone is pinged and data saved over a thousand times a day, nothing good can come of that. I told someone the other day, remember those nosy loud Karen neighbors on shows like Andy Griffith and how everyone hated them, well they rule the world now, it's the most profitable business model, and they know everything. And the point about what happens when your theft of face, dna, fingerprints, which are not something one could change like an I.D. number should be an all stop moment. I mean seriously, anyone aside from say, a medical professional needing dna info or plastic surgeon needing face info should be arrested for even asking for these things."
Literary and Lifestyle
09/08/22 Post by Thomas Neuburger, Chokepoint Capitalism Strangles Us All. "Yves here: Rebecca Giblin and Cory Doctorow have written a book that takes on the predatory nature of modern capitalism as it impacts what they call 'creative labor' markets. We would call this the broad, deep and thickened soup of content we consider 'entertainment,' the consumable mental food that serves our leisure. Chokepoint Capitalism: How Big Tech and Big Content Captured Creative Labor Markets and How We'll Win Them Back has been written, agented, and sold to a publisher (in this case, Beacon Press, owned by the UU church) … Yes, it's available on Amazon. As predatory as Amazon is, they don't — yet — control all access to hard copy books. Supporting them supports a beast, but there are still other online stores and brick-and-mortar establishments from which to buy. But unlike Amazon, Audible, an Amazon acquisition, does control almost all access to audiobooks — not just access to the audiobook market but, through its control of that market, to audiobooks themselves."
JBird4049 comments: "The only real thing I want people to understand is that in every field someone has become a gatekeeper, ceased spending money for the future, or look for any talent, and made the industry a façade, even book publishing. Where before there were many gatekeepers, it is down to less than a handful. It is part of the financialization of everything where the goal is to choke out as much profit as possible even if it ultimately kills whatever is being made, created, or expressed. It all about profit and humanity can go die."
09/26/22 Post by Lambert Strether, A Review of Barbara Tuchman's 'The March of Folly'. "The title of this post is a bit of a misnomer, because I'm not going to go through the Tuchman's work in any great detail. That's because I think that Tuchman's central conceits — folly being 'against self-interest' and 'timeless and universal' — are misconceived and ahistorical. Which is really too bad, because I like Tuchman very much; her Guns of August (though superseded by subsequent scholarship, including The Sleepwalkers) sparked my lifelong enthusiasm — not a passion, or even a hobby, but an enthusiasm — for military history. That's one thing a good popularizer should do, and I'm sure many readers have had similar experiences. (The Proud Tower put me onto Der Rosenkavalier, at least after I was old enough to understand it, at some point in my thirties.) The title The March of Folly — 'folly' from Old French folie 'folly, madness, stupidity' (12c.), itself from fol 'fool' — must strike a chord with readers who have adopted the phrase 'this is the stupidest timeline.' That is why the idea of reviewing it appealed to me, at least. In March, Tuchman provides several cases studies of events along our stupid timeline."
Karl comments: "Thanks, Lambert. I, too, have long admired Tuchman's writings, have thought highly of 'March of Folly', and have often considered its relevance to present circumstances. While you may be right that Tuchman's claim about the universality of Folly (as she defines it) may be too pessimistic, she does make a compelling case that Folly has had numerous exemplars in history. I suspect if she had lived much longer (she died 1989) she'd see folly in NATO expansion, threats to China over Taiwan (actually a folly in progress), the 2nd Iraq War, and others. Her chapter on Vietnam, in my view provides a template for potential new chapters in this book on these later near-identical U.S. follies, rooted in hubris. There are abundant examples of all three of Tuchman's criteria having been met in each case. Maybe the repeal of Glass-Steagall, Brexit and the creation of the Eurozone will turn out to have been follies in the economic realm. I believe the three criteria apply to these as well."
And another thing….
09/11/22 Hayek's Heelbiter comments: In the height of the pandemic, I lived in a collective with 90 other artists in East London in a decommissioned Salvation Army hostel. Almost immediately as information about Covid became available, we instituted policies and protocols based on SARS and MERS. Unlike most communal living situations, we had NO endogenous CV-19 cases. The hostel was specifically designed to minimize air flow, and no matter how much scientific research I threw at the property manager showing that the cheapest and most effective way to reduce CV-19 transmission was to maximize air flow by keeping as many windows and doors open as much as possible, they insisted on keeping all doors and windows closed with a zealotry worthy of Oliver Cromwell. Ultimately, I escalated the dispute to the London Fire Brigade, going so far as to hand deliver pages of research to the Fire Brigade Commissioner. Their response? Regulations are regulations. It did not matter that in all of the UK in 2019, there were 262 fire-deaths vs. 130,000 CV-19 deaths as of that point. If I wanted to keep the doors and windows open, the regulations would have to be changed. The second most effective way to destroying aerosol transmission iof CV-19 is UV-C air sanitizers. The NHS never gave them a second thought, whereas TFL (Transport for London) installed them in their Underground stations. A huge number of people I know actually contracted CV-19 in NHS hospitals and waiting rooms. Can't say about the people who might have caught it on the Underground. But what is the world coming to when it is safer to travel on the Underground that go to an NHS hospital?! A friend who works for the NHS explained that the TFL is actually not a government entity and can make rapid decisions like purchasing UV-C air sanitizers. (A fact I didn't know). The NHS is a huge bureaucracy, and by the time all the testing, writing specs, putting out tenders, purchasing and distributing the sanitizers was complement, the pandemic would be over. Even if, as it turns out, this was not the case. | | And there it is - October at Naked Capitalism. Thank you very much for your time and attention and we'll see you again next month.
The Crew at Naked Capitalism
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