Thirst for justice 1; Truth 0

It started this morning listening to John Humphreys interview TUC chief Brendan Barber. Why, Barber was asked, should public sector workers be able to avoid the pay cuts and job losses seen elsewhere in the economy.

Barber's reply was that this was because many public sector workers are low paid (true) and that they were not responsible for the mess the economy is in (highly debatable). Humphreys demurred, saying that only a small number of people were responsible.

This reminds me of a piece by Zoe Williams in the Guardian last week. It is not the most coherent of articles but where it does focus, it says that people want to slake their thirst for justice more than they want to understand the issue. I couldn't agree more.

It it possible that we jump up and down at our MPs because we enjoy doing so, not because the crimes they committed are uniquely heinous. Much of the reason they claimed expenses because of an institutional cowardice to ask for higher pay. The fees office was frequently complicit in the claims made, a part of the Telegraph story that never really fitted with their sensationalist reporting.

The danger of this approach is that nothing significant changes but our world becomes less meaningful and more fearful of media attacks.

A senior civil servant I spoke with a couple of weeks ago says that a majority of her time is now occupied with trivial media requests, as is much of government, and this feeds substantially into policymaking.

Is this how it should be? Does the media use its increased power responsibly? Very few people seem to be asking this most urgent question.

Russia's deal

Good piece about how Russia operates at the top.

'Yurgens outlined Putin's thinking and what he described as his "gentleman's agreement" with Medvedev thus:

'OK Dmitry. If you can make it, make it. I will be firmly behind you with all the siloviki whom I control...and in four years, if everything goes all right we will find a solution for me and you carry on. Go, go.'

...

'If Chinese growth is 8 percent, oil is at $60 a barrel, the global financial system starts working and credit lines are unblocked, then I think we are probably all right,' he said.

'If not, then there will be very special measures.'

Cheque-book journalism

"Observing all this, few in bars and at breakfast tables are asking how The Daily Telegraph got hold of the revelations. But one day, a fascinating story will be written about how the entire, uncensored, expenses claims ended up in the hands of a newspaper. The data may well have been stolen, although that does not seem to matter right now.

It is not confirmed whether the newspaper paid for its information, but it is widely believed that it did, with guesses in a range of £60,000 to £150,000. Given that sales on Friday last week, the first day, were up 95,000, and ahead in days thereafter, the investment was probably sound. The Telegraph keeps about 60p to 65p of the 90p cover price, so every 100,000 extra copies is worth about £60,000, less the cost of printing."

From here

And while ITV cancels the South Bank Show, for budget reasons, they pay Cheryl Cole two million quid.

I don't think this is a parody

"In a new Special Comment, entitled "On the Hook -- Update on Moody's
Global Macroeconomic Risk Scenarios 2009-2010", Moody's explains that the
"hook"-shaped scenario has the steep downturn signalled by the U-shaped
scenario, but neither the steep but delayed rebound of the U scenario,
nor the flat stagnation of the L-shaped scenario. Instead, it has an
upward tilt that lies somewhere in between, illustrating the painful
recovery that the headwinds of a severe and synchronised balance sheet
restructuring will cause. The "hook-shaped" scenario is a variant of,
rather than a departure from, the U-shaped recovery -- the previous
central forecast."

Source: Moody's

Blogs and news

Been a bit quiet recently, focusing on the day job. Allowed me to some time to reflect on how blogs and news works. At the moment, I am leaning towards the day job - hard news reporting - and question claims made by those that argue that blogs will ultimately do a better job.

The continuing challenge of good news reporting is well documented, and I'm struggling to see good internet journalism.

I thought this when I read Andrew Gilligan's article for Greenwich.co.uk which simply seems a repeat of the demented man's prejudices against the local council. But that said, he repeats much of the same unsourced partisan hackery for the Evening Standard newspaper too, so honours even I guess.

Then there are the hard-working souls at FT Alphaville. Much of what they report can be found elsewhere but in there are new angles, and indepth work. But without the discipline of a (word limited) newspaper, sometimes the journalists write curious articles like this, or rambling pieces like this.

I will shortly be doing some professionally blogging myself if I'm not careful, so I'll be looking not to fall into the same traps. Can't avoid either blogging or the mistakes I guess!

Seen it all before

A long-in-the-tooth asset manager I was speaking to last night affected an air of general boredom about the credit crunch.

"Seen it all before am afraid. Debt builds up then gets blown away. Everything comes and goes in cycles."

And this was no crusty old bore, indeed he is in the process of setting up a company to fund green energy projects.

But on the other side of the coin, breathless journalists reel with shock at discovering finance.

"The world is in an era of epic economics. So huge are the challenges, they will define domestic politics for years," pants youthful Faisal Islam at Channel 4 News in his blog, which launched today.

Economics is the new, new thing it seems.

I wonder how long this will last. The attention-disordered media spotlight rarely cares about anything long enough to improve it, so I fear that this late conversion to economics will be as good for finance as Paris Hilton's Damascene moment was for (robed) men in cloth.

But, ever fearful of being over-cynical, feel free to take up Islam's final plea:

"An epic economic era requires an equally epic response, so please get involved."

Flat is the new growth

A month ago or so I took the plunge and started investing in shares after a long time playing safe. My reasoning was that apocolypse was then, not now, and people's gloom was overblown.

Sentiment around the first couple of months this year was like the dot-com boom inverted.

Back then, we knew there was huge change coming and lots of money would be made, somewhere. Like a modern-day gold-rush, investors poured in, putting money everywhere, anywhere, in the hope of another big strike.

The credit crunch has been the reverse. We knew there were black swans out there, ready to strike down investments, and lots of money would be lost, somewhere. And money was indeed lost, in structured finance and real estate in particular.

Now, the flow of black swans is easing. There hasn't been a massive shock for a few weeks now. Even retailers are doing alright. Flat is the new growth.

So a glance at share prices shows that confidence is trickling in, with bleeding-edge investors doubling their money on high-risk equities such as Taylor Wimpey. Even Lloyds TSB's share price has doubled in the last month.

Impossible (literally) to predict where this will end up, but at the moment it looks like an excess of negative sentiment is working its way out of the system. Real growth, however, still looks some way off.