Prominent development economist Amartya Sen (formerly of Cambridge, now at Harvard) attended President Obama´s state dinner in honor of Manmohan Singh, with third wife, Emma Rothschild (of the banking family of the Rothschilds).

Sen is best known for offering a Human Development index as a counterpoint to the World Bank´s GDP calculations. Once considered fluffy, the index is now increasingly influential. Here´s a  profile of Sen in 2001 from the socialist UK paper Guardian :

“Richard Jolly, while being an enormous admirer, says: “On the issue of liberalisation and the opening up of economies, Amartya has been rather mainstream. He hasn’t raised very deep questions about the whole process and of globalisation in general….

.…TN Srinavasan, economics professor at Yale and a long-time colleague, says: “Many of us were trained in the 50s to believe that states should be active in planning the economy. Sen did not give up that idea until later than some others. He still hasn’t added his voice to the call for more privatisation of the Indian economy and the removal of the old Gandhian protection of small-scale producers.”

…He [Sen] supports the “themes” raised by anti-capitalist and environmental protesters at Seattle, Prague and Davos, but not their “theses”, which he finds too simple. He says the problem is not free trade, but the inequality of global power. He strongly welcomes the rise of the NGO movement, which combines with media coverage to produce the beginning of some “countervailing power” to the larger corporations and the traditional policies of first world governments.

But he also attaches blame to many third-world governments for not undertaking domestic reform. He argues that the United Nations has to be saved from insolvency and given a greater leadership role [my emphasis] which escapes from the asymmetry caused by the veto power of the five richest and/or largest countries. “There needs to be a watchdog institution which is concerned with inequality and fair trade, asks why the USA and Europe are so restrictive to products from the third world, and raises questions about the pricing policy of the drug companies,” he says.

For the past 10 years, Sen has been married to the economic historian, Emma Rothschild, an expert on Adam Smith and Fellow of King’s…”

Rothschild, for her part, looks for a new deal that will go beyond cap-and-trade and transform the automotive industry, the urban landscape, and public transportation,according to this piece in the New York Review of
Books:

“A new deal in which the bailout of the automobile industry was one component of a program of investment in the transformation of the auto-industrial society would connect economic, environmental, and energy policies. It would be a commitment to current as well as capital expenditures; to a Transportation Security Agency, for example, composed not only of people who search passengers in airports but of people who drive electric buses in inner cities. Like the “Economic Security” programs of the New Deal of the 1930s, a new New Deal would be an effort to change the distant future of the United States—in this case the future use of space—by government expenditure and more open regulation.^[31]

Analyst Paul Mylchreest speculates on what happened to Asian gold stolen by the Japanese during World War II and secreted in the Philippines. Could it have been laundered through the London gold exchange in the 1990s? And is that what accounts for the sudden ‘take-downs’ in the gold price?

“In the light of the story of Yamashita’s Gold have another look at the chart of Gibson’s Paradox. There are actually two periods when the relationship breaks down in a major way and the gold price falls sharply when the correlation suggests that it should have risen:
BB The obvious one is in the mid/late 1990s which coincided with massive volume reported by the LBMA, the likes of which have never been seen since, even though we’ve been in a gold bull market for the last eight years and gold, as an asset, has become “investible” again in western financial markets.
BB The slightly less obvious one, but have a closer look, is 1986-1990. Now we don’t have any LBMA volume data for those years, but remember the story of Yamashita’s Gold – Ferdinand Marcos, who eyewitnesses testified had recovered enormous amounts of gold which he was holding in Manila, was DEPOSED in 1986.
If Alternative 2 is correct, and there is far more gold in existence than is generally understood, a strong
case can be made that the unusual behaviour of the gold price and the huge volumes of gold traded
through the LBMA in a major bear market for gold suggests that looted gold was being laundered through the London market – during these periods in particular and most likely others given the frequent counterintuitive movements in the gold price for more than a decade. The question for my friends at the Gold Anti-Trust Action Committee is whether the gold price suppression has been the result of covert sales of central bank gold or from the Yamashita hoard?

Finally, if Alternative 2 is correct, what are the implications from an investment standpoint? If it is true
then the periodic laundering of clandestine or “black” gold into the London market has been a feature of the gold market since the end of the Second World War so going forward what’s chagned? One of the key themes of Thunder Road has been the inevitable approach of a dollar crisis (and a Sterling crisis) hence the need to own gold and silver. Alternative 2 doesn’t change the technical insolvency of the US. At the same time, nations like China and Russia are buyers of gold. My lateral thought on China is that much of the gold allegedly stolen by the Japanese is believed to come from the Middle Kingdom. Not only has China announced that it has doubled its official gold reserves, but it has started to promote the ownership of gold and silver to its people. Is China actively trying to reverse events which began more than a century ago and reclaim its gold?

From a tactical perspective, if there are still quantities of clandestine gold which can be dumped into the market periodically, short-term pull backs in the price will remain a feature in the gold market but, once again, that’s no different from what we’ve been experiencing anyway. Let’s not forget, the gold price on 15 January 2009 was US$810/oz compared with US$995/oz on the day before Bear Stearns collapsed in March 2008. In the intervening 10 months, the world economy had been decimated and governments around the world, especially in the US, had spent or pledged many trillions of US dollars created out of thin air.

Counter-intuitive anybody?

A final thought is: why did the LBMA suddenly surprise everybody by starting to publish data on the volume of gold trade going through London in January 1997? If Alternative 2 is correct, was somebody high up in the LBMA suspicious about the heavy selling of bullion which was pushing the gold price down? Was it their way of letting us know? Here is an posting on the internet from 31 January 1997 from “CMAX”. The only changes I have made are to improve the English without restraining some of his (slight?) hyperbole!

“HOW HOW HOW…in this enlightened age of information, did something exist so large as loco London??
It has been hidden all this time not by government mandate…but by private enterprise. The discovery
of loco London is akin to discovery of the New World by Columbus…these are the numbers of a GOLDEN
ALTERNATIVE CURRENCY, here and NOW.”

The One-handed Economist, via Goldseek.

“Mr. Krugman, the whole New York Times and the rest of the nation’s media supported Henry Paulson’s program to openly steal $750 billion from the American people and give it to Goldman Sachs. Paulson didn’t even pretend to be helping the poor. He was just stealing from the average American to benefit the rich. Also, the character of the rich has changed. The Robber Barons of the late 19th century were great, productive geniuses. They got rich by increasing production, and they made the rest of the country wealthier with them. Henry Ford made himself rich by making a car so inexpensive that the average guy could afford to buy it. But today’s rich get rich by having the government (via the central bank) manipulate stock prices up and thus bring them $billions in stock options. Socialists of yesterday, who violently hated the old rich, do not have any problem with today’s rich, who are nothing but a bunch of parasites.

Well, people, this is the world into which you were born. Your “education” has consisted of an onion of lies, and all of these lies were designed to steal your money and make you a serf of the new rich. The original government of America was set up to protect the right of property. Now the government robs from the poor and gives to the rich. All the “economists” you read in the news papers or magazines are charlatans and crackpots who tell us that the Federal Government does not have to balance its budget and that creating money out of nothing does not depreciate its value.”

My Comment

Strong, good, true words.

Don’t be fooled by anyone who tells you ordinary people “deserved” this for being stupid. Or, as Mr. Blankfein puts it, he was doing “god’s work.”

Most ordinary people were busy doing what they were supposed to be doing, while behind a smoke-screen of propaganda the predator class was conniving with various useful idiots to snooker the country.

From Men’s News Daily:

“Why do women and feminists seem to care more about the so-called pay-gap (which is a myth) than the female-dominated spending gap? Why do some women expect to spend most of the money that the man made?

*Why are there seemingly so many more chivalrous male feminists than female masculists [sic]?

*Why do many men treat women as “queens” when many women treat men as “worker bees”?

*Why are so many men “took to the cleaners” after a divorce? Don’t men have feelings like women do?

*How many women are willing to support a stay-at-home husband (and let him spend a large portion of her money)?

*Why do “tomboys” and “daddys girls” seem to be considered charming or cute while “mama’s boys” and “jill girls” seem to elicit images of laughing stocks that still live with their parents and are too “unmanly” or “lazy” to deserve a girlfriend?”

 

My Comment:

Obviously, I post this somewhat tongue-in-cheek. Women do experience discrimination and difficulties in certain areas of the work-place, beyond what might be expected by an equally skilled male.

And while it’s true that men, more than women, are expected to perform in the workplace…it’s also true that women, more than men, are expected to perform outside the workplace – in the family. The author forgets the expectations placed on women in the area of physical looks….and housework (for most of the world, at any rate)…in maintaining the family and its relationships..

Note wiki manipulation below

Note also: I have changed the heading of this post from Climate-Gate: Hacked emails set blogosphere on fire (my early and mistaken impression of the story) to Climate- Gate Whistleblower data sets blogosphere on fire, which I believe now to be accurate.

Updates:

http://mindbodypolitic.org/2009/12/10/climate-gate-is-the-work-of-a-whistle-blower/

http://mindbodypolitic.org/2009/12/07/danish-climate-gate/

http://mindbodypolitic.org/2009/12/07/climategate-wiki-distortion-and-censorship/
http://mindbodypolitic.org/2009/12/07/climate-gate-summary/
http://mindbodypolitic.org/2009/12/06/gordon-brown-calls-climate-skeptics-flat-earthers/
http://mindbodypolitic.org/2009/12/06/climate-gate-media-muffles-scientists-back-tracking-on-warming/
http://mindbodypolitic.org/2009/12/05/climate-voodoo-chief-jones-steps-down/
http://mindbodypolitic.org/2009/12/03/freakonomics-says-funding-drives-climate-models/
http://mindbodypolitic.org/2009/12/03/un-funds-missing-billion-plus-in-climate-change-donations/
http://mindbodypolitic.org/2009/12/02/monbiot-suggest-jones-%C2%A8guilty-as-charged-should-go/
http://mindbodypolitic.org/2009/11/30/pollution-not-global-warming-is-biggest-environmental-threat/

In recent news, hackers apparently got into the prestigious Climate Research Unit (CRU) at the University of East Anglia. They found that supposedly scientific researchers were plotting to shut out dissenting editors from peer-reviewed journal boards, cook evidence, and manipulate the submission of papers, according to Climate Depot blog. The evidence runs to more than 1000 emails and 3000 documents

Correction: The evidence was culled from a trove of more than 1000 emails and 3000 documents.

The scientists include some of the best-known proponents of anthropogenic global warming (AGW) and their language is decidedly political. They nurse fantasies of beating up opponents, warn of colleagues who might be “unpredictable,” suggest deleting emails demanded by FOIA requests, and even want to cancel the decades-old dissertation of a global warming skeptic on the basis of a minor mistake. From the emails, it’s clear these are true believers, zealots, with a distinctly socialist mindset. Here’s a good round up of the details. Climateaudit.org has a detailed analysis of the most notable (so far) manipulation of data – the famous “hockey stick” graph apparently showing rising temperatures.

Now, I’m all for skepticism about climate change (AGW). But I’m also a strong advocate of privacy. This is a violation of the privacy of the researchers.

If hacking the email of political figures (Governor Sanford,  or Sarah Palin) is wrong, if government monitoring of personal emails and telephone calls, or bending of banking privacy laws is wrong, so is hacking the emails of research scientists, even if what they’re doing is wrong. So, I’m not linking the emails.

Here’s Ms. Palin’s response to her hacking experience:

“I was horrified to realize that millions of people could read my personal messages, including the thoughts of a friend who had written of her heartbreak over her pending divorce,” Palin writes, adding: “What kind of responsible press outfit would broadcast stolen private correspondence?'”

Ny Comment

[Correction: I should note that there’s a big moral difference between hacking personal information irrelevant, or marginally relevant, to public policy, and hacking emails that are crucial – as these are – to understanding how policy is being reached.

Morally, the two are quite different…. so perhaps I shouldn’t have brought in the personal attacks on Palin and Sanford as a comparison. Still, whose property those mails are remains an issue. More below on that…]

You don’t really need to play “gotcha” to come to the right conclusions about things. Good analysis, according to studies of intelligence, beats “spy-versus-spy,” or James Bond-type games.  Journalists can use public information alone to come to the right conclusion.

Should “Global warming” (AGW) skeptics of a libertarian disposition be celebrating a triumph for libertarianism in one area (economic and intellectual free markets) that sets back libertarianism in another area (privacy rights)?

I know some libertarians don’t even believe that there is a right to privacy. However, according to the Constitution, rights “not enumerated” are reserved to the people. Privacy, as I see it, is a right that “emanates” (yes, that controversial word from the Roe versus Wade debate) from our ownership of our bodies and our property.

There’s a lot of scare-mongering going on now to get us from where we are to world government.

“Global warming” has been enlisted in that effort. That’s clear enough if you study the people and institutions promoting it. I’m not sure there’s any need to stoop to data theft to know that.

As to the other pertinent point:

Can CRU be treated as a government entity?

A reader comments that the hacking was justified in this case, because government employees don’t deserve any privacy. My response (in the comment section) can be summarised as follows:

1. The University of East Anglia is not directly under the British government (so far as I know)
2. Even if it were, it would be upto a government review panel or some form of legitimate investigation to keep track of what’s going on. Vigilante hacking isn’t the best way.

Still, when I went back to check whether the CRU was government-run, I found that indeed, it receives an overwhelming proportion of its funding from government agencies.

Admittedly, that makes it more justifiable to monitor its work

Here is an incomplete list of the funders:

“The European Commission of the European Union (EU) provides the largest fraction of our research income under the Environment and Climate Change Programme. Since the mid-1990s, CRU has co-ordinated 9 EU research projects and been a partner on 16 others within the 4th, 5th and 6th Framework Programmes. Although EU funding is very important, we also endeavour to maintain the diverse pattern of funding reflected by the research described in this “history of CRU” and in the list of Acknowledgements below….”

and

“British Council, British Petroleum, Broom’s Barn Sugar Beet Research Centre, Central Electricity Generating Board, Centre for Environment, Fisheries and Aquaculture Science (CEFAS), Commercial Union, Commission of European Communities (CEC, often referred to now as EU), Council for the Central Laboratory of the Research Councils (CCLRC), Department of Energy, Department of the Environment (DETR, now DEFRA), Department of Health, Department of Trade and Industry (DTI), Eastern Electricity, Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC), Environment Agency, Forestry Commission, Greenpeace International, International Institute of Environmental Development (IIED), Irish Electricity Supply Board, KFA Germany, Leverhulme Trust, Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food (MAFF), National Power, National Rivers Authority, Natural Environmental Research Council (NERC), Norwich Union, Nuclear Installations Inspectorate, Overseas Development Administration (ODA), Reinsurance Underwriters and Syndicates, Royal Society, Scientific Consultants, Science and Engineering Research Council (SERC), Scottish and Northern Ireland Forum for Environmental Research, Shell, Stockholm Environment Agency, Sultanate of Oman, Tate and Lyle, UK Met. Office, UK Nirex Ltd., United Nations Environment Plan (UNEP), United States Department of Energy, United States Environmental Protection Agency, Wolfson Foundation and the World Wildlife Fund for Nature (WWF).”