The Next Real Estate Bubble: Farmland

Farmers have been taking on mounting debt, risking a crash that would ripple through our economy

by Blake Hurst

Eeyore should have been a farmer. It’s almost impossible to find a farmer happy about his situation. The weather’s too hot, cold, wet, or dry, and prices are too low or too high, depending on whether we’re buying or selling. We can’t, at least in front of our peers, admit to prosperity or even the chance of prosperity. Although we’d never admit it at the local coffee shop, the last few years have been good, at least for Midwestern grain farmers. Prices have been strong — strong enough to make up for much of the production lost to last year’s drought. That’s terrible news for livestock producers, who’ve been faced with drought-damaged pastures and high feed costs, but for farmers producing corn and soybeans, it has been a profitable few years.

Farmers have cash, and nowhere to invest it but farmland. Farmers largely ignore equities, as they tend to balance the inherent risk in farming by investing in what they perceive as less risky places. We aren’t dumb, however, and have figured out that it's a losing game to invest in bonds or CDs at rates less than inflation while we’re in tax brackets we never even knew existed.

So, farmland prices are booming. Land prices in the heart of the Corn Belt have increased at a double-digit rate in six of the last seven years. According to Federal Reserve studies, farmland prices were up 15 percent last year in the most productive part of the Corn Belt, and 26 percent in the western Corn Belt and high plains. Closer to home, a neighbor planning his estate had an appraisal done in 2010 and again in late 2012. In that two-year period, the value of his farm had doubled. According to Iowa State economist Mike Duffy, Iowa land selling for $2,275 per acre a decade ago is now at $8,700 per acre. A farm recently sold in Iowa for $21,900 per acre.

Welcome to blackout Britain

With the bad weather causing long-term power cuts, the fragility of our energy infrastructure is becoming frighteningly apparent

The spring freeze has been a timely reminder of the need to secure Britain's energy needs

By Tom Rowley, and Auslan Cramb

Just before midnight last night, the world’s biggest gas tanker was due to dock at the Welsh port of Milford Haven. The Zarga, from Qatar, is more than a fifth of a mile long and carries up to 266,000 cubic metres of liquefied natural gas. Earlier in the day, on the other side of Britain, another Qatari tanker carrying natural gas, the Mekaines, docked at Thamesport on the Isle of Grain. Both come bearing energy supplies that Britain badly needs as winter is forecast to continue well into Easter.

Five hundred miles north, the arrival of another, rather smaller, ship was greeted even more warmly. The MV Hebridean Isles, just 85m long and usually used as a passenger ferry, docked at Campbeltown on the Kintyre Peninsula on Saturday. It carried a cargo of emergency power generators to residents suffering a power cut that has now lasted four days.

Though their size and purpose differed greatly, all three vessels were responding to aspects of the same problem: a vicious blast of winter that has revealed the fragility of Britain’s energy supplies. The Met Office predicted yesterday that we will suffer the coldest March since 1983, with average temperatures of 2.9C. This weather left a combination of snow and ice on power lines that brought down two steel pylons on Kintyre on Friday, blacking out thousands of homes and the entire Isle of Arran.

The weather has also increased demand for gas, while domestic supplies from the North Sea have continued to dwindle. The latest delivery from Qatar will top up reserves, which currently last only a few days. A further supply from the Gulf state will arrive on Friday, while a tanker from Trinidad is due next week. This ought to allay immediate fears of a crisis, but energy experts predict that our reliance on imports will only increase over the next few years as domestic production falls further. This dependence could see price rises and, as we rely more on bargaining with unstable countries, it could increase the risk of supplies being cut off entirely.

Canada Discusses Forced Depositor Bail-In Procedures for "Too Big To Fail" Banks in 2013 Budget

A plan that would turn "certain bank liabilities" into regulatory capital is a plan to confiscate deposits

by Mike "Mish" Shedlock

Inquiring minds in Canada managed to slog through a massive 433 page budget proposal and discovered Depositor Haircut Bail-In Provisions For Systemically Important Banks.

Sure enough. Right on page 145 (PDF page 155) of the Canada Economic Action Plan for 2013 we see ...

"The Government proposes to implement a bail-in regime for systemically important banks. This regime will be designed to ensure that, in the unlikely event that a systemically important bank depletes its capital, the bank can be recapitalized and returned to viability through the very rapid conversion of certain bank liabilities into regulatory capital. This will reduce risks for taxpayers. The Government will consult stakeholders on how best to implement a bail- in regime in Canada. Implementation timelines will allow for a smooth transition for affected institutions, investors and other market participants."

In case you are unfamiliar with bank parlance, deposits are not "assets" they are "liabilities". A plan that would turn "certain bank liabilities" into regulatory capital is a plan to confiscate deposits.

As noted in Fraudulent Guarantees; Fictional Reserve Lending; Comparison of US to Cyprus; What About New Zealand? 

I believe guarantees on deposits are inherently fraudulent. But at least the Reserve bank of New Zealand is upfrnot about the situation. Canada is not.

Turkey Cracks the Whip

If Netanyahu wants rapprochement with Ankara, he must do more than apologize for the Mavi Marmara killings

By PHILIP GIRALDI 

One of the surprise results of President Barack Obama’s recent trip to the Middle East was the last-minute phone call between Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel and Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey that took place from a hastily set-up trailer near the Tel Aviv airport as Obama was about to leave.

The two nations had once cooperated closely and were generally viewed as strategic partners, but the Turks had begun to distance themselves from Israeli policies in early 2009 when the Turkish prime minister confronted Israel’s President Shimon Peres at a January international meeting in Davos. Referring to the slaughter of Gazan civilians earlier that month during Operation Cast Lead, Erdogan told Peres, “you know well how to kill.” In the one-hour discussion of Gaza that was moderated by David Ignatius of the Washington Post, Peres was allowed 25 minutes to speak in defense of the Israeli attack. Erdogan was given 12 minutes. During the debate, Peres pointed accusingly at Erdogan and raised his voice. When Erdogan sought time to respond, Ignatius granted him a minute and then cut him off, claiming it was time to go to dinner. Erdogan complained about the treatment and left Davos, vowing never to return. Back in Turkey, he received a hero’s welcome.

The bilateral relationship then hit zero when, in June 2010, the Israelis boarded the Turkish ferry Mavi Marmara in international waters. The Mavi Marmara had only humanitarian supplies on board, but the Israeli naval commandos from the elite Shayetet 13 unit were met by a number of Turks wielding improvised weapons made from the ship’s rails and deck chairs. The Israelis killed nine Turks, one of whom was also an American citizen; most were shot execution-style. Israel could have defused the crisis by admitting it had erred, apologizing, and offering to pay reparations, but refused to do so. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who had personally directed the operation, claimed that the Israelis were acting in self-defense.

"We know we will be slaughtered anyway.”

Limassol fears for life after Russians

By Courtney Weaver 
For more than a decade, the Cypriot city of Limassol has marketed itself as a haven not just for Russian money but for Russians. Fur shops line the palm-fringed streets and an entire expat community has sprung up catering to Russian tourists and residents with special beauty salons, tour agencies and restaurants.

Yet during the past week the Mediterranean island’s beachfront party resort of some 100,000 residents has had the feel of a ghost town.

While a collective sigh of relief echoed across Cyprus on Thursday as calm prevailed when the banks reopened after being closed for almost two weeks as the island’s bailout was finalised, for Limassol the future is less certain than ever.

The beachfront hotels favoured by Russians saw an influx of guests last week but restaurants and shops in the city centre were largely deserted, a rare sight even for the off-season, residents say.

With four weeks to go until tourists typically begin descending on the city en masse, locals are starting to wonder if Russians will continue to view Limassol as a second home or holiday destination if they have given up on it as a financial centre.

At the post office across the street from Limassol’s Four Seasons hotel, Mikhalis Gavrialidis was jovial with the few customers who came in, jokingly charging foreigners a bailout worth €5.8bn in exchange for the price of postage. However, when pressed on the future of Limassol, he turned grave.

“Limassol will possibly be affected the worst in Cyprus – because of the Russians,” he said. “It’s not just the billionaires who are based in Limassol, there are normal businessmen. I wouldn’t be surprised if they took their money and disappeared. Wouldn’t you do the same?”

Limassol has not seen protests like the ones that broke out briefly in Nicosia, because the people are resigned to their fate, Mr Gavrialidis added.

“Things are calm because we are civilised. It’s not in our hands. We know we will be slaughtered anyway.”

While some Russians initially worried that locals would turn on them and question why the island’s foreign billionaires or the Kremlin had not paid a larger share of the bailout, most locals’ anger has been directed towards the EU and Germany for refusing to pay the full €15.8bn-bailout bill, when they had happily thrown billions of dollars at Greece, and for the manner of the rescue itself.

In a poll this month, one Cypriot television station asked viewers whether the country should become further integrated into the EU or lean towards Russia instead. Over two-thirds of respondents chose the latter.

“People hate [Angela] Merkel,” said Paris Antoniou, who was tending an empty bar in Limassol’s old town one recent evening, referring to the German chancellor. Few blamed the country’s big foreign depositors, he said.

“The Russians have the right to react the way they have. You can’t have your millions invested in a bank and then simply taken away from you,” said Mr Antoniou. “It doesn’t matter how they made their money, money laundering or whatever. It is the Russians who are keeping our economy going.”

The Knowledge Economy's Two Classes of Workers

The knowledge economy has important implications for both workers and organizations

By Charles Smith

Setting aside that our economy is by and large organized to benefit a State-financial Elite and the technocrat Caste that serves them, let's consider the two classes of worker in what Peter Drucker labeled the Knowledge Economy in his 1993 book Post-Capitalist Society.

At the risk of simplifying Drucker's nuanced account, here is a précis:

The Marxist class division of labor vs. capitalist/management no longer adequately describes the new economy, as knowledge workers own "the means of production" which is first and foremost knowledge. Corporations and government offer an organization within which workers can apply their knowledge (i.e. the means of production in a knowledge economy).

Since the new economy is no longer characterized by capital vs. labor, it is a post-capitalist economy.

Knowledge workers are a minority of the workforce; the majority are service workers, either skilled or low-skilled.

Economist Robert B. Reich divides the workforce into similar categories: "symbolic analysts" (knowledge workers) and two classes of service workers: "routine producers" and "in-person servers."

Since the service workers own and leverage less capital (knowledge), their ability to create surplus value and thereby demand high wages is intrinsically lower than the knowledge workers.

This creates a structural tension, as society has to establish a way to maintain the wages of the service workers in an economy where the value and income they can generate by their labor is capped.

Let's be clear about one thing: it is misplaced nostalgia to pine for the "good old days" of high-paying but soul-deadening factory jobs. Fully 40 years ago, workers were already rebelling against the yoke of rigid machine-driven production: 1970-1972: General Motors, the Lordstown struggle and the real crisis in production:

The other root cause of our present difficulties with the workforce might be termed a general lowering of employees' frustration tolerance. Many employees, particularly the younger ones, are increasingly reluctant to put up with factory conditions. Despite the significant improvements we've made in the physical environment of our plants. Because they are unfamiliar with the harsh economic facts of earlier years, they have little regard for the consequences if they take a day or two off.

For many, the traditional motivations of job security, money rewards, and opportunity for personal advancement are proving insufficient.

Large numbers of those we hire find factory life so distasteful they quit after only brief exposure to it. The general increase in real wage levels in our economy has afforded more alternatives for satisfying economic needs.

Jeroen Dijsselbloem, eurozone reformer

The Dutch finance minister is shaking up crisis policy

By Matt Steinglass and Peter Spiegel

No one expected the new Dutch finance minister to be a source of excitement. “Boring and responsible” was the prescription offered by one senior Labour party MP during coalition negotiations late last year – and he was the person who ended up getting the job: Jeroen Dijsselbloem.

The reality has been somewhat different. Five months on Mr Dijsselbloem has ignored his job description in some style. With a few ill-considered comments about who should take losses when banks fail, the man who also heads the eurogroup – the political body of Europe’s single currency – killed his reputation for being boring.

His remarks signalled a sea change. Whereas earlier in the eurozone crisis it was largely government money that paid for rescues in countries such as Ireland and Spain, the approach in the latest trouble-spot – Cyprus – was a sign of things to come, Mr Dijsselbloem said. Now private investors, including senior bond holders and even uninsured depositors, would foot the bill in what would be the new norm in eurozone crisis management. “Now that the crisis seems to fade out,” he argued, “I think we have to dare a little more in dealing with this.”

His words spooked markets. But for those who had watched his career, such bluntness is no surprise. The former agricultural economist with tight-pressed lips and a sharp, forbidding manner – he once received a text message from his party leader ordering him to smile more in interviews – has always been most comfortable playing the stern reformer.

“The Dutch have a long reputation for being blunt and open, and Dijsselbloem is a classic example,” says Boris van der Ham, a former MP from the D66 party. “With him in Brussels, it’s a bit of a culture clash, as if you have a room full of people drinking wine and suddenly here comes somebody who drinks milk.”

Mr Dijsselbloem’s steadfast manner was nurtured in Eindhoven, an industrial city in the southern Netherlands where he was born 47 years ago to an apolitical teacher couple. His interest in politics began in 1983, spurred by the mass protests against US cruise missiles that drew hundreds of thousands of Dutch youth into leftwing movements.

After his studies at the university of Wageningen, a small town in the central Netherlands where he still lives with his partner and their two teenage children, he had a series of jobs in agricultural policy before moving into politics.

His first term in parliament in 2000 was unremarkable, but he started to show an unorthodox streak in his second term, when he joined the so-called “red engineers” campaign. Along with two other MPs, including Diederik Samsom, now Labour’s leader, he donned scarlet overalls to criticise their party for having lost touch with its base.

He later led a parliamentary commission that issued a report blasting educational reforms, mostly designed by Labour governments. “He didn’t try to soften the report at all,” said Mr van der Ham, who worked on the report. “He prefers to rip off the bandage all at once.”

Europe gets real – not before time

The right plan for Cyprus after dreadful unforced errors

by FT editorial

Europe has arrived at the best available remedy for Cyprus’s woes – but not without first trying every other option and nearly letting a tiny peripheral economy shatter the monetary union. The deal agreed early on Monday, especially the tortuous route by which it was secured, sets profound precedents for eurozone banking and finance, in some ways for the worse, in others for the better.

Few in Cyprus may agree, but the island state has got the best deal it was entitled to expect. This was not the morality play rolling across media bulletins that paint the country as an innocent victim of European highhandedness. It chose a high-risk strategy of living off a banking system far bigger than the state could support. Two years after Nicosia lost market access, the banks still have books seven times Cyprus’s annual economic output. Even proportionately small losses are unaffordable for the state to make good.

A metastasised banking system sucked in more funds than it could usefully deploy at home. Beyond fuelling a housing bubble, Cypriot banks recycled funds to Russia and other origins, and made a big bet on Greek sovereign bonds. In the event, Athens’s restructuring killed the Cypriot banking sector. But the choice to hitch the economy to offshore banking was made with the complicity of leaders and the acquiescence of a population content to live beyond its means.

Other countries made clear that their taxpayers would not pay for a model Cyprus itself cannot afford with loans it could never pay back – from their public treasuries or the European Central Bank. They kept a €10bn rescue loan to meet the government’s financing gap – but not cover banks’ losses – on the table throughout. Even ignoring claims (not all frivolous) that the banks also serviced tax avoiders and money launderers, the idea cannot be sustained that European solidarity entitled Cyprus to more, flattering as this is to Nicosia. The perception of Cypriots and others that Europe “forced” the island to ruin depositors only testifies to abysmally bad communication by the rest of the currency union.

Cyprus will suffer. The banking meltdown will worsen a contraction some forecast at 25 per cent. But no other package of policies would be better than this – as orderly a restructuring as could be hoped for. Rather than a tax on small depositors that keeps zombie banks alive, both big banks will be sacrificed. Laiki will be closed; its insured deposits and central bank debt moved to Bank of Cyprus. It, too, will be restructured with noninsured deposit-for-equity swaps. The relative victors are small depositors, who faced an unconscionable haircut, and non-financial business which was spared much worse chaos in a euro exit.

Much work remains. Jobs and profits in offshore banking will not return; banking itself will not return without good policy. Cyprus must chart a new economic course, probably by accelerating natural gas exploitation. Restructuring holds the best prospect for quickly re-establishing a functioning banking system. But the crucifixion of Cypriots’ trust in banks – a casualty of the original tax on insured deposits – means any “good” bank rising from the ashes will struggle to win their confidence. Hence the introduction of capital controls. While necessary to guard against an immediate run when banks reopen, they are incompatible with monetary union in the long run.

Cyprus and the rest of Europe must work together to ensure capital controls are lifted as soon as possible. If they can be limited to the two problem banks, it will send a very positive signal. It will focus punitive actions on where the rot resides and teach uninsured investors – including depositors – to monitor the institutions to which they entrust their money.

A contemplated deposit raid and actual capital controls will weigh on the European economy. Against that, some healthy precedents are set by the deal. Broke banks can be resolved and not kept alive by the taxpayers of their own or other countries. The hierarchy of claims will be respected: the bail-in of senior bonds is a big improvement on earlier “rescues”. The quiescence of markets prove they can tell solvent debtors from insolvent ones.

The political fallout has no such redeeming features. Somehow, politicians did not foresee a backlash from Nicosia’s attempt to place the burden on small savers. Berlin did not understand it would (wrongly) be blamed. Russia never had much to offer, but defter European diplomacy would have left relations less damaged. Most worryingly, hopes of the euro navigating the debt crisis successfully were hit badly by its leaders’ breathtaking amateurishness in the Cyprus case. 

Cyprus Solution Sealed on Feb 10th 2013

Radical rescue proposed for Cyprus

By Peter Spiegel and Quentin Peel, Financial Times, February 10, 2013

A radical new option for the financial rescue of Cyprus would force losses on uninsured depositors in Cypriot banks, as well as investors in the country’s sovereign bonds, according to a confidential memorandum prepared ahead of Monday’s meeting of eurozone finance ministers.

The proposal for a “bail-in” of investors and depositors, and drastic shrinking of the Cypriot banking sector, is one of three options put forward as alternatives to a full-scale bailout. The ministers are trying to agree a rescue plan by March, to follow the presidential elections in Cyprus later this month.

The new plan has not been endorsed by its authors in the European Commission or by individual eurozone members. The memo warns that “the risks associated with this option are significant”, including a renewed danger of contagion in eurozone financial markets, and premature collapse in the Cypriot banking sector.

The radical proposal is intended to produce a more sustainable debt solution for the country, cutting the size of Cyprus’s bailout by two-thirds – from €16.7bn to only €5.5bn – by involving more foreign depositors and bond holders.

It would reduce Cyprus’s outstanding debt to just 77 per cent of economic output, compared with 140 per cent in the current full bailout plan.

By “bailing in” uninsured bank depositors, it would also involve more foreign investors, especially from Russia, some of whom have used Cyprus as a tax haven in recent years. That would answer criticism from Berlin in particular, where politicians are calling for more drastic action to stop the island being used for money laundering and tax evasion.

Senior EU officials who have seen the document cautioned that imposing losses on bank depositors and a sovereign debt restructuring remain unlikely. Underlining the dissuasive language in the memo, they said that bailing in depositors was never considered in previous eurozone bailouts because of concern that it could lead to bank runs in other financially fragile countries.

But the document also makes clear that both options remain on the table despite public insistence by eurozone leaders that Greece was “unique” and would be the only country to default on sovereign debts.

Labelled “strictly confidential” and distributed to eurozone officials last week, the memo says the radical version of the plan – including a “haircut” of 50 per cent on sovereign bonds – would shrink the Cypriot financial sector, now nearly eight times larger than the island’s economy, by about one-third by 2015.

But the authors warn such drastic action could restart contagion in eurozone financial markets, and put forward two more cautious alternatives.

One more moderate “bail-in” option would involve junior debt holders, but not bank depositors, and would aim to shrink the size of the banking sector by half over 10 years. It would seek to raise corporate income tax to 12.5 per cent (from the current 10 per cent), and increase withholding tax on capital income to 28 per cent. It would also seek to extend the maturities on the €2.5bn loan that Cyprus received from Russia last year.

A third option would allow Cyprus to sell the shares it acquires in its ailing banks to the European Stability Mechanism, once that eurozone rescue fund is allowed to provide direct recapitalisation for banks.

Cyprus’s bailout, while small compared to Ireland, Portugal and Greece, has proven unexpectedly difficult because its size relative to the country’s gross domestic product would increase debt to levels considered unsustainable both by the International Monetary Fund and the German government.

The memo says that without any relief, the bailout would stand at €16.7bn and increase the country’s debt to 140 per cent of GDP by 2015, the end of the three-year programme. That would make it the highest in the eurozone except for Greece.

The document says that the ministers must decide what should be the appropriate debt-to-GDP level for Cyprus. Some have argued for 100 per cent by the end of the programme period (2015), while others believe it would be sufficient to hit that target by 2020, it says.

The Deeper Meanings of Cyprus

Eurozone's neocolonial, neofeudal structure

by Charles Hugh-Smith

At long last, Europe's flimsy facades of State sovereignty, democracy and free-market capitalism have collapsed, and we see the real machinery laid bare: the Eurozone's political-financial Aristocracy will stripmine every nation's citizenry to preserve their power and protect the banks and bondholders from absorbing losses.

The deposit-confiscation "bailout" of Cyprus confirms the Eurozone's fundamental neocolonial, neofeudal structure and the region's political surrender to financialization.

The E.U., Neofeudalism and the Neocolonial-Financialization Model(May 24, 2012)

Let's list what Cyprus reveals about the true state of financial-political power in Europe:

1. The Core-Periphery terminology masks the real structure: the E.U. operates on a neocolonial model. In the old Colonialism 1.0 model, the colonizing power conquered or co-opted the Power Elites of the periphery regions, and proceeded to exploit the new colonies' resources and labor to enrich the Imperial core.

In Neocolonialism, the forces of financialization (debt and leverage controlled by State-enforced banking cartels) are used to indenture the local Elites and populace to the financial core: the peripheral "colonials" borrow money to buy the finished goods manufactured in the core economies, enriching the Imperial Elites with A) the profits made selling goods to the debtors B) interest on credit extended to the peripheral colonies to buy the core economies' goods and "live large", and C) the transactional skim of financializing peripheral assets such as real estate and State debt.

In essence, the core banks of the E.U. colonized the peripheral nations via the financializing euro, which enabled a massive expansion of debt and consumption in the periphery. The banks and exporters of the core exacted enormous profits from this expansion of debt and consumption.

Now that the financialization scheme of the euro has run its course, the periphery's neocolonial standing is starkly revealed: the assets and income of the periphery are flowing to the core as interest on the private and sovereign debts that are owed to the core's central bank and its crony money-center private banks.

This is not just the perfection of neocolonialism but of neofeudalism as well. The peripheral nations of the E.U. are effectively neocolonial debtors of the core (quasi-Imperial) banks, and the taxpayers of the core nations (now reduced to Germany and The Netherlands) are now feudal serfs whose labor is devoted to making good on any bank loans to the periphery that go bad.

Though we can term the E.U. a plutocracy or oligarchy, the neofeudal structure compels us to distinguish a class of those holding wealth and political power that is not limited to national border: this is an Aristocracy.

Serving the Aristocracy is a well-paid technocrat class of factotums, lackeys, toadies and enforcers. Below this well-compensated caste of technocrats is the larger class of debt-serfs, enslaved to interest payments on either their own debts or the debts of others, and bound by their class powerlessness to protecting banks and bondholders from losses.

Cyprus merely adds an expropriation twist to this well-oiled plunder: deposits will be expropriated directly to insure no Imperial (core) banks or bond holders lose money on their absurdly risky loans to periphery nations and serfs.

2. This is a supranational plunder. While commentators can wile away years debating how much Germany benefited from the euro, the real core is not national, it is supranational banks and the political machinery of the E.U. the banks have effectively captured.

The citizenry of Germany may approve or disapprove of the Cyprus expropriation, but it doesn't matter either way: their own serfdom to banks and bondholders is simply being masked: the bailouts of periphery nations are transparently bailouts of core banks and bondholders.

The nation-states of the neocolonial periphery are simply convenient propaganda placeholders, useful misdirections aimed at the naive and sentimental, hollowed-out national structures propped up to mask the ugly neocolonial reality of servitude and plunder.

The Death of the Family

Real 'modern family' not so funny

By mark steyn

Gay marriage? It came up at dinner Down Under this time last year, and the prominent Aussie politician on my right said matter-of-factly, "It's not about expanding marriage, it's about destroying marriage."

That would be the most obvious explanation as to why the same societal groups who assured us in the Seventies that marriage was either (a) a "meaningless piece of paper" or (b) institutionalized rape are now insisting it's a universal human right. They've figured out what, say, terrorist-turned-educator Bill Ayers did – that, when it comes to destroying core civilizational institutions, trying to blow them up is less effective than hollowing them out from within.

On the other hand, there are those who argue it's a victory for the powerful undertow of bourgeois values over the surface ripples of sexual transgressiveness: gays will now be as drearily suburban as the rest of us. A couple of years back, I saw a picture in the paper of two chubby old queens tying the knot at City Hall in Vancouver, and the thought occurred that Western liberalism had finally succeeded in boring all the fun out of homosexuality.

Which of these alternative scenarios – the demolition of marriage or the taming of the gay – will come to pass? Most likely, both. In the upper echelons of society, our elites practice what they don't preach. Scrupulously nonjudgmental about everything except traditional Christian morality, they nevertheless lead lives in which, as Charles Murray documents in his book "Coming Apart," marriage is still expected to be a lifelong commitment. It is easy to see moneyed gay newlyweds moving into such enclaves, and making a go of it. As the Most Reverend Justin Welby, the new Archbishop of Canterbury and head of the worldwide Anglican Communion, said just before his enthronement the other day, "You see gay relationships that are just stunning in the quality of the relationship." "Stunning": what a fabulous endorsement! But, amongst the type of gay couple that gets to dine with the Archbishop of Canterbury, he's probably right.

Lower down the socioeconomic scale, the quality gets more variable. One reason why conservative appeals to protect the sacred procreative essence of marriage have gone nowhere is because Americans are rapidly joining the Scandinavians in doing most of their procreating without benefit of clergy. Seventy percent of black babies are born out of wedlock, so are 53 percent of Hispanics (the "natural conservative constituency" du jour, according to every lavishly remunerated Republican consultant), and 70 percent of the offspring of poor white women. Over half the babies born to mothers under 30 are now "illegitimate" (to use a quaintly judgmental formulation). For the first three-and-a-half centuries of American settlement the bastardy rate (to be even quainter) was a flat line in the basement of the graph, stuck at 2 or 3 percent all the way to the eve of the Sixties. Today over 40 percent of American births are "nonmarital," which is significantly higher than in Canada or Germany. "Stunning" upscale gays will join what's left of the American family, holed up in a chichi Green Zone, while, beyond the perimeter, the vast mounds of human rubble pile up remorselessly. The conservative defense of marriage rings hollow because for millions of families across this land the American marriage is hollow.

Five Principles of Urban Economics

Things we know and things we don’t

By Mario Polese
Scholarly journals have published hundreds of articles about urban economies. The questions are always the same: Why do some cities grow faster than others? Why do some generate more wealth? Why do some decline? No simple answers exist, and much remains open to speculation. However, the accumulated wisdom of more than 50 years of research does allow us to state certain principles about the economies of cities. I propose five.

Before getting to them, a word on the nature of cities is in order. Cities are first and foremost places—agglomerations of people—rather than economic and political units. That fact complicates the study of urban economies. For starters, delineating urban areas can be done in a variety of ways. Exactly where does New York begin, and where does it end? We might opt to study the entire New York metropolitan area, figuring (correctly) that such a definition is more economically significant than merely the area of New York City proper. But even then, we have to remember that a metropolitan area’s borders can expand or shrink over time. The boundaries of the New York metro area aren’t the same today as they were 50 years ago, so one can easily draw mistaken conclusions from the statement that it has grown from 12 million people in 1960 to 20 million today.

Also, cities’ power to make economic policy is limited. (City-states like Singapore are an exception.) The policies that most significantly affect urban economies usually come from higher levels of government. This doesn’t mean that local policies don’t matter, but it does mean that their ability to affect broad economic and geographic trends is sharply circumscribed. It also explains why the scholarly literature focuses on determinants that urban policy can do little about, such as location and “agglomeration economies” (essentially, the beneficial effects of urban size and diversity).

Sharks in the Water and Out

On the abuses of “work-related stress”

BY THEODORE DALRYMPLE
Earlier this month, British newspapers reported the story of Paul Marshallsea, a Welshman who, while on a two-month Australian holiday with his wife, wrestled a six-foot shark to prevent it from attacking children in the water. Marshallsea happened to be filmed while doing so, and the pictures went around the world. He was proclaimed a hero.

Unfortunately for him, the pictures also reached Wales. He and his wife were supposed to be on sick leave at the time with “work-related stress,” and his heroics didn’t impress his employers: they sacked him, on the not-unreasonable grounds that if he could travel to Australia and wrestle with a shark, he could probably have made it into work. Moreover, photographs of the couple suggested that they were having the holiday of a lifetime, rather than merely recuperating from serious illness.

Under the best circumstances, “work-related stress” is a slippery concept, almost an invitation to fraud. And here the context is important. Marshallsea lives in Merthyr Tydfil, long known as the sick-note capital of Britain. Up to a fifth of its people of working age receive a certificate of sickness from doctors sympathetic to the plight of the unemployed. (The sick get higher state benefits than the merely unemployed.) There is thus almost a presumption of sickness in Merthyr, once a prosperous industrial town. Unemployment is virtually a hereditary condition, having been passed down to the third generation. Were it not for the public sector, unemployment in Merthyr would be nearly 100 percent.

The work that caused the Marshallseas so much stress was with a so-called charity—the Pant and Dowlais Boys & Girls Club, for whom they had worked for ten years. The object of the club is to help Merthyr Tydfil’s boys and girls develop their physical, mental, and spiritual capacities through leisure activities. This included providing them with a disco.

The largest single donor to the “charity” last year was the Welsh government (more than 20 percent); the year before, it was the Merthyr Tydfil Council (more than 40 percent). In Britain, the distinction between charity and government has been blurred to the point of eradication by the fact that government, local or national, is often the largest contributor to charities—sometimes, indeed, almost the only one. And he who pays the piper calls the tune.

The principal beneficiaries of charities often seem to be their employees. Staff costs of the Pant and Dowlais Boys & Girls Club last year amounted to 63 percent of the club’s income. It is likely that the Marshallseas were well-paid; Australia is one of the most expensive countries in the world, and two-month holidays there, even when staying with friends, as were the Marshallseas, don’t come cheap. Sick leave is fully paid, so the charity funded the couple’s holiday.

The story illustrates a fundamental truth about contemporary Britain: it is now a sink of corruption, moral, intellectual, and financial, all of it perfectly legal.

The First Victim of Cyprus Contagion

Slovenia faces contagion from Cyprus as banking crisis deepens

Slovenia’s borrowing costs have rocketed over recent days as it grapples with a festering financial crisis, becoming the first victim of contagion from Cyprus.

By Ambrose Evans-Pritchard

 “Banks are under severe distress,” said International Monetary Fund in its annual health check on the country. Non-performing loans of the Slovenia’s three largest banks reached 20.5pc last year, with a third of all corporate loans turning bad.

Yields on two-year debt in the Alpine state have tripled over the past week, jumping from 1.2pc to 4.26pc before falling back slightly on Thursday. Ten-year yields have reached a post-EMU high of 6.25pc.

“The country has lost competitiveness since joining the euro and it’s lead to slow economic collapse. Markets have been very complacent, but it has been clear for a long time that the banks need recapitalisation, and it is not easy to raise money in this climate,” said Lars Christensen from Danske Bank.

The IMF expects the economy to contract by 2pc this year, following a fall of 2.3pc in 2012. “A negative loop between financial distress, fiscal consolidation and weak corporate balance sheets is prolonging the recession. A credible plan to address these issues is essential to restore confidence and access markets,” it said.

The new prime minister Alenka Bratusek told the Slovene parliament on Wednesday that the fears are overblown. “Our banking system is stable and safe. Comparisons with Cyprus aren’t valid. Deposits are safe and the government is guaranteeing them.”

Slovenia’s bank assets equal 130pc of GDP compared with 700pc for Cyprus, though the Cypriot figure is misleading since a large part of its banking system is made of “brass plate” subsidiaries of foreign lenders such as Barclays or Russia’s VTB.

Tim Ash from Standard Bank said the events of the past two weeks had pushed the country over the edge. “Slovenia is now inevitably heading towards a bail-out. The eurozone shot itself completely in the foot in Cyprus,” he said.

The Slav-speaking state - a Baroque jewel with historic ties to Austria - has a population of just 2m and is too small to pose a financial threat.

However, analysts say a crisis in Slovenia would further complicate EMU politics, forcing the northern creditor states to define their rescue strategy yet again. Austerity fatigue in Germany and Holland has already caused policy to harden.

Stopping the Keynesian Death March

The shadow of Keynes unfortunately still darkens policy debate to the detriment of long-run prosperity

by John P. Cochran

Marray Rothbard recommended two ways for reducing deficits.

1. “While deficits are often inflationary and always pernicious, curing them by raising taxes is equivalent to curing an illness by shooting the patient.”

2. “Deficits, then, should be eliminated, but only by cutting government spending.”

In “Escape From Spending Hell” (Wall Street Journal,March 14, 2013), Daniel Henninger discusses recent work on austerity programs by Harvard economist Alberto Alesina (with Carlo Favero and Francesco Giavazzi) that provides strong historical support for Rothbard’s points.

Henniger summarizes the current problem and possible policy options as follows:

Ever since Ronald Reagan legitimized the efficacy of tax cuts, Democrats have sought to discredit his idea and restore the New Deal theory of a Keynesian multiplier, which dates to 1931. It holds that more public spending will revive a struggling economy.

No president has believed more in the miracle of the multiplier than Barack Obama. Across four years he has led the country on a kind of Keynesian death march, pushing federal spending to 25% of GDP and producing weak growth. We’re looking at four more years before the Keynesian mast unless the Republicans can offer an intellectually respectable alternative.

Mr. Alesina has identified the alternative. His work the past decade with how struggling economies revive suggests that the Obama spend-more solution is the opposite of what the U.S. should be doing.

The work on which Mr. Henniger’s commentary is based is “The output effect of fiscal consolidations” (August 2012 for the National Bureau of Economic Research). Henniger argues that there is a general consensus on two things:

(1) The U.S. economy is emerging from the deepest recession (depression) since the Great Depression followed by, I would add, the most anemic recovery since the Depression.

(2) The public “debt level is unsustainable.”

What are the relevant results highlighted in the paper? From the abstract:

This paper studies whether fiscal corrections cause large output losses. We find that it matters crucially how the fiscal correction occurs. Adjustments based upon spending cuts are much less costly in terms of output losses than tax-based ones. Spending-based adjustments have been associated with mild and short-lived recessions, in many cases with no recession at all. Tax-based adjustments have been associated with prolonged and deep recessions. [Emphasis mine]