Year: 2012

Free will, or quantum indeterminism ? (Hat tip to PsybertronJr)

Stevie’s right when he asks,

When did Britain become a police state?

Little people (the people holding the event license) hide behind applying rules, to apply objectivity rather than sound judgement. It’s what gives “health and safety” and a lot more a bad name. The only point he has wrong, is in blaming the police, he should be blaming us for wanting clear application of blame. The blame game wins. More’n my job’s worth, to do anything where I could be blamed for overriding objective facts. Where he is right is that UK and Europe are much worse than US.

Never been any doubt that the workings of our minds reside throughout our entire electro-chemical system, not just the hemispheres of the organ we call the “brain” confined to our skulls. Gut feel is no joke. Case in point.

Seems strange to add this case to my agenda, just one extreme example of valuing what can be counted rather than what counts. Life is more than logic and objective calculations.

Couple of things to report – little time for reviews – quite a few half-finished reads to come back to, but for now …

I finished Martin Sixsmith’s “Russia” in 3 or 4 concentrated sittings last week whilst on aircraft / in airports / in hotel bars etc. Un-put-down-able – straightforward, knowing and journalistic history of Russia from 862 up to Putin & Medvedev and the 2011 Domodedovo terrorist bombing. The timeline of deaths per page is numbing – hundreds, thousands, millions, thousands, hundreds, tens – yet an easy witty read, packed with information from first hand research and experience. Sixsmith grew up in Russia as well as being BBC correspondent. Question – Putin really is scary, but how would you govern a “state” that spans 9 time zones from the arctic to the Caucasus and the steppes of central Asia.

Example 1: We probably knew that after Borodino/1812 Napoleon got very close to the heart of Moscow before being repulsed. That and the parallel with Hitler are still very close to modern Muscovites I detect, but did we know that the Russians pursued Napoleon’s retreat all the way to the centre of Paris? That had escaped me.

Example 2: The pragmatism of selecting a unifying “culture” – any one will do if it works as a tool of governance. Did we know that Russia chose to import orthodox Christianity from pre-Ottoman Constantinople of the Roman Empire rather than Islam from their central Asian neighbours since that would have interfered with their Vodka drinking ?

Example 3: I didn’t know “Russia” was created by Rurik the Rus in (Ukrainian, Kievan) Novgorod. Given that the Rus were Vikings from the modern-day Norway /Sweden area – we all knew Vikings explored south down the Volga I guess – but I never knew the connection between the modern Scandinavian culture of Rus and the country that carries its name today. Intriguing fact among many in a recommended read. Perhaps no so far from the truth to brand modern Norway the last remaining soviet state. Kruschev and Gorbachev came so close … hang in there Russia.

Also picked-up – in true airport-bookstall anything will do purchasing mode – a copy of Le Carre’s Our Kind of Traitor, and also finished it in just a few days. Not his best, and a tough conversational style across first and third-persons, in a mix of real-time dialogue and reported narrative – you gotta keep up with who’s who. But purely coincidentally, tying up the current threads of Banking and Morality with Russian oligarchs, top-management, politicians, terrorists, spies and sport thrown in. Fun current-affairs-founded fiction.

Agius self-assured as you’d expect and still loyal to Diamond, despite the fact both have resigned their posts – ex-chair Agius is now temporarily de-facto acting CEO – a little Putin & Medvedev there 😉

Plenty of admission of specific failures. Very clear message that Diamond was and still is wanted and seen as very strong in terms of business leadership from his board and from shareholders. Basically it was the personal loss of regulator confidence that forced the resignation. His full-year severance pay (ex bonuses etc.) is clearly a retainer for his continued cooperation and availability to the bank.

Clear that bankers were in state of terror at the time, but interesting aside that regulators’ saw Barclays itself as the best in class on compliance amongst the big banks.

Other main issue is the demarcation between investment and retailing arms and the “culture” that may or may not be shared within parts and across the whole, and the fact that Diamond was part of the move to unify – mentioned earlier note (1) here. Pretty clear that independence of investment and retailing is going to become the regulators’ preferred strategy going forward – not that that actually excuses local moral failures, whatever the divisional culture. May be that the counter-intuitive unification is actually the better option ? (Lord Thurso – who seems very respectful of Agius personal integrity – is on the right lines … which layers of culture matter is beyond any one business … IMHO)

Interesting also that many of the other perps in other banks were ex-Barclays people … no doubt quite common, as in many industries. Culture is always in layers within and across organizations. Use of the word “low-balling” also tells a story about the original “crime”. Not really concerned here with whether the original manipulation was immoral or illegal – anti-trust collusion – everyone seems to agree it was wrong, whatever I think (I have a bigger agenda) – but low-balling does suggest it was a normal negotiation game as part of setting rates – achieving a low rate was what everyone believed was needed at the time, understood – whatever their individual motivations or (lack of) instructions. A case of ends not justifying means, but clear ends nevertheless.

[Post Note :

This interesting point from Robert Peston last week. When is low-balling, lying ?

 “[Barclays] understated [their borrowing rates] to try to reassure the market.

Barclays’ defence is that it was dreadfully unfair that its perceived borrowing costs were higher than other banks. And it is convinced that many of these banks were even bigger liars than it was about what they were paying to borrow.

It also points out that in practice its balance sheet, its finances, were in fact stronger than many of these other banks: its creditors were wrong, it would say, to have so little trust in it [due in part to the complexity and opacity of some of its financial instruments].

So was its lie about what it was paying to borrow justified – especially if the survival of the bank was at stake? And if Paul Tucker at the Bank of England encouraged Barclays to lie, as is implied by Diamond’s memo, would he have been justified in doing so?

As it happens, a number of senior figures in the City who are unconnected to Barclays think this lying was the right thing to do in the circumstances. They think Mr Tucker encouraged Barclays to lie and they applaud him for doing so.

You might well say that is evidence of a cancerous moral relativism at the heart of the City. Or you might applaud their common sense realism.”

My point exactly. Those who did the dirty deed took one on behalf of the whole bank. And, of course, Tucker didn’t actually ask them to lie, to low-ball, he just needed to point out that being too high was a problem, for everyone’s confidence in a time of extreme “skittishness”.]

Niall Ferguson’s latest Reith Lecture.

Internet social networks communicate, may even communicate collective action and action collective communications, but don’t themselves take collective physical action.

Drawing extensively on de Toqueville. US experience of low individual reliance on central government and state institutions, and high propensity to form voluntary institutions for so many different ends and moral purposes. Spontaneous participation in the troupe, beyond the family. Historically, statistically such participation is declining and expectation of state responsibility for action is growing. (State should only interfere for common good – over and above the legal framework – for natural monopolies across the troupes, protection from tyrrany of majorities, etc.)

Education for example: Biodiversity of mixed and varied private and public schooling arrangements is preferable to any dead-hand of monopoly. (NB Education is a huge part of Burke’s partnership across the generations.) Good public / state education is also good, measures of quality would probably include community participation.

The challenge is still a class / affluence gap in propensity to voluntary participation ?
“Think before taking sides” – a good message, a la Zizek.

Good to hear Baroness Betty Boothroyd on BBC R4 Today this morning.

Reform needs institutional conservatism. I for one cannot believe the hypocrisy of those baying for blood at government culpability in so many political and economic so-called scandals, yet demanding popular elections for the second chamber. Reckless and ill-considered outrage, as she says.

[Surely the value of British tradition is obvious.]