the corner office

Why do governments want to punish car companies that do well and sell cars that the public want, by subsidising car companies that don't do well and sell cars that people don't want?

If governments are supposed to act in the interests of citizens, why are citizens forced to cough up money for failed car companies that citizens had obviously chosen not to give money to in the first place?

Hrmph. UNISA rolled out a new service called 'MyLife' which is advertised as a student email address for life, but is in effect just a front-end for Microsoft Live. Adding insult to injury, UNISA no longer allows you to use any other email address for correspondence.

If it were voluntary then I'd understand that MS are providing a service that UNISA needs, no doubt with all sorts of cushy terms and incentives, but hey, that's the way things go and good luck to those who want to use it. But forcing students to use this address is a different story. I can't think of any way in which this is in students' best interests. I can jump through hoops to redirect or forward the email, but I shouldn't have to. I should be able to have my UNISA correspondence mailed to me at an address of my choosing.

Shame on you, UNISA.

BBC: Schools switching to clip-on ties

The emergence of clip-on ties is part of a growing sensitivity towards health and safety, says the association, along with modifications such as high-visibility trimming on scarves.

Clip-on ties take away the risk of pupils having accidents with their knotted ties.

Schools have raised concerns about ties catching fire in science lessons, getting trapped in technology equipment or ties getting caught when pupils were running.

Generations of school boys have been imperilled. It's about time they did something about it.

My domain registrar had the wrong card details on file so the thecorneroffice.org domain quasi-expired and showed a Go Daddy splash site for a day.

I don't like domain registrars much. That is all I have to say on the matter, really.

The rush to 'reform' MPs expense claims is the usual response but entirely unnecessary. All it'll do, as with most of these things, is generate a new set of rules to create the appearance of addressing the problem, but which will in reality allow the piggies to keep their snouts in the troughs - the only difference being that the troughs will be a little smaller than before. For now, at least.

Instead, the past week has shown quite convincingly that the only thing that is needed to control MPs expense claims is for them to made public every now and then.

I'm wary of writing about economics and stuff, because Ronwen says she doesn't read these posts. That's half my audience gone. But I'll keep doing it because it interests me and because I think it'll be interesting to come back to some of these posts and articles in future, when this is all over, and the world has (possibly) ended up a really different place.

I've noted before that boring old not-free-market Canada has emerged from the crisis, relatively unscathed. One Canadian economist's opinion of why Canada hasn't been as affected:

1. We never had restrictions on interstate banking, so Canadian banks spread their assets and liabilities across Canada. (So it doesn’t matter if a local housing market goes bust).

2. We don’t have Glass-Steagal. The investment banks joined the retail banks some years ago.

3. We don’t have mortgage interest deductibility from taxes. So paying down your mortgage is a tax-free investment. So most people want to pay down their mortgages.

4. (Except in Alberta), mortgages are fully recourse. You can’t just walk away from a negative equity home and hand the keys to the bank; the bank will come after you for the difference.

My (admittedly uninformed) interpretation: Point 1: the Canadian government doesn't impose artificial constraints on where banks can do business. Point 2: the Canadian government doesn't impose artificial constraints on what a 'bank' can and can't do. Point 3: the Canadian government doesn't tailor its tax regime to make it easier for people to stay in debt. Point 4: the Canadian government doesn't have laws that make it easier for you to be irresponsible with your debts.

It is true that Canadian banks are regulated in other ways, but you have to ask exactly why 'free markets' and 'deregulation' are to blame for the credit crisis, when more freedom and less intervention are the reason Canada's not in so much trouble?

This has generated some discussion on the economics blogs I follow, and led to this comment on how respective governments approach bank regulation, by economist Arnold Kling:

In any case, back to the original quote, it gets to the distinction that I make between "letter of law" regulation and "spirit of law" regulation. I keep insisting that letter-of-the law regulation is bound to fail, because the natural impetus toward profit maximization will lead the banks to innovate in ways that are consistent with the letter of the law but violate its spirit.

Anyone who's had the displeasure of dealing with UK banks (or most UK corporates, for that matter), know exactly what that is all about.

South African politicians may be corrupt, but if it's any consolation, first world politicians are pretty corrupt too.

I like Barack Obama and admire many of the things he's done so far (Iraq, Guantanamo, torture). But I don't agree with his economic policies, and I think his handling of the impending Chrysler bankruptcy borders on dismal; at the very least, it places him well and truly in the camp of 'typical politicians'.

In a nutshell, Chrysler's going down the drain. In an attempt to avoid normal bankruptcy proceedings, and spare some pain for many unionised auto workers, Obama has tried to arrange a deal in which Chrysler is kept alive long enough for it to profit from the real-soon-now sea-change in attitudes which will see hordes of Americans rush out and buy smaller, more fuel-efficient cars. Or something.

The only catch is that this plan requires Chrysler's creditors to write off some of the debt. Lots of it, in fact. Many of Chrysler's biggest lenders are banks who themselves are juiced up on government bailout money, so no surprise that they're willing to take a knock to keep the government happy.

Not all creditors have agreed, however. A minority of them, including some hedge funds, are against the deal because they believe they'd get more of their money back if Chrysler went into bankruptcy proper. Obama reacted by getting all cross and blaming all the world's troubles on hedge funds who won't do their bit and make a 'sacrifice' for the good of the economy.

Reasonable, you might say, to be angry about those greedy evil hedge funds, until you realise that what some of those hedge funds are being asked to 'sacrifice', is your pension.

Anyway, one hedge fund manager got mad and wrote a letter, and it's refreshingly blunt:

Let's be clear, it is the job and obligation of all investment managers, including hedge fund managers, to get their clients the most return they can. They are allowed to be charitable with their own money, and many are spectacularly so, but if they give away their clients' money to share in the "sacrifice," they are stealing. Clients of hedge funds include, among others, pension funds of all kinds of workers, unionized and not.

The managers have a fiduciary obligation to look after their clients' money as best they can, not to support the President, nor to oppose him, nor otherwise advance their personal political views. That's how the system works...

...

The President's attempted diktat takes money from bondholders and gives it to a labor union that delivers money and votes for him. Why is he not calling on his party to "sacrifice" some campaign contributions, and votes, for the greater good? Shaking down lenders for the benefit of political donors is recycled corruption and abuse of power.

(via)

I kind of wish the BBC, when talking about Jacob Zuma and mentioning how the charges were dropped yadda yadda, would point out that the dude on the other side of the bribes ended up in jail because of them.

Notwithstanding political meddling in the case or prosecutorial incompetence, Zuma was and always will be a crook.

A byline from an article in the Times about Severn Trent's plans to put sewage to good use:

In-house scheme is the first step in a programme to develop raw sewage sludge into pellet fuel to burn in power plants

'Pellet fuel'. Hehehehe. I know it's juvenile, but still. 'Pellet fuel'. Hehehehehe.

More seriously, I strongly believe that technology will help us to achieve the sorts of energy efficiency and sustainability we need. And let's be honest, you don't get more 'sustainable' than the inputs for 'pellet fuel'. Hehehehehe.

The article is clearly a journalist's dream. The title is "Flushed with enthusiasm, Severn Trent sees light at the end of the tunnel for its new revenue plan".

Hehehehehe.

I will end with one more quote:

"Sludge has half the calorific content of brown coal, so this is a very viable fuel," Mr Wray said. "The trick is to find new ways to dry it. Wet sludge is not very economical to use."

That's a mental image you won't be able to shake for a while!