What does this mean? Are the Spanish looking to the Greeks as a model? That would be really weird. Esos griegos tenían un gran éxito con su incumplimiento de las deudas. Hagámos lo mismo. Or is it a matter of queueing up? Greece has first dibs on default, and Spain just has to wait its turn. Or is this setting up a resonance in a Sheldrakian morphic field of default patterns? Perhaps we are witnessing the final consummation of the marriage of 21st century mathematics and 20th century pseudoscience that finance has been tending toward for the past three decades (at least).
Surely the impact on investors will depend in part on the effects seen from a Greek euro withdrawal. At the very least If we think back to recent history, presumably any reasonable person would have thought, after the Lehman Brothers shit-storm, that the US financial authorities would be less likely to allow another similar bankruptcy to proceed. So, if Greece leaves the euro in a ball of flames, Spain will be unlikely to see it as a model. And if Greece’s exit from the euro isn’t so terrible then… maybe it’s just not so terrible.
Speaking at the recent Conservative party conference, a government minister has said that the mass arrests and prison sentences for decent citizens who chose to rob shops and set buildings ablaze in London and other cities during a recent wave of looting, had brought the law into disrepute.
Our laws against arson were introduced centuries ago, when a typical London building was built of wood. There have been huge advances in fire-fighting technology since then. Our blanket ban on arson has been discredited, because it failed to keep up with these changes. And what about “vandalism”? Should the law really be fixated on the practices of wandering bands of hairy Germanic tribesmen? Can anyone genuinely say he thinks our laws against burglary are fit for a 21st century economy? By allowing a portion of the shops’ overpriced merchandise go up in flames, and another portion to the informal vending sector, where it is substantially marked down, we bring thousands of decent firebugs and thrifty shoppers back within the law, restoring the legitimacy of the penal system, improving productivity and delivering hundreds of millions of pounds of stimulus that the economy sorely needs.
The 70mph motorway speed limit has become “discredited” and resulted in millions of motorists breaking the law, Transport Secretary Philip Hammond said today as he confirmed plans to consult on allowing it to rise to 80mph.
Mr Hammond told the Conservative Party conference the move would “restore the legitimacy” of the system and benefit the economy by “hundreds of millions of pounds”.
He said: “The limit that was introduced way back in 1965 – when the typical family car was a Ford Anglia.”
Mr Hammond said he owned an Anglia, as did Baroness Thatcher when she became an MP, but added: “Things have changed quite a bit since then. There have been huge advances in car technology, road deaths have been reduced by three-quarters.
“Meanwhile, the 70mph limit has been discredited because it failed to keep up with these changes – with almost half of all motorists exceeding it, bringing the law into disrepute.
“So I will consult on increasing the limit on motorways to 80 mph, bringing millions of decent motorists back within the law, restoring the legitimacy of the speed limit system, speeding up journey times, improving productivity and delivering hundreds of millions ofpounds of net economic benefits.”
We should start making a list. Laws that need to be ruthlessly enforced when they are disobeyed en masse: Arson, burglary, “theft by finding”, receiving stolen goods. Laws that need to be abolished when they are disobeyed en masse: Tax laws, speed limits. Hmmm. What’s the pattern? Prosperum ac felix scelus virtus vocatur. [Seneca. A successful and happy crime gets to be called virtue.]
Of course, Monty Python nailed it while I was still a toddler. In this case, the Mouse Sketch:
Make a thing illegal and it acquires a mystique. Look at arson – I mean, how many of us can honestly say that at one time or another he hasn’t set fire to some great public building? I know I have. The only way to bring the crime figures down is to reduce the number of offences.
Home Secretary Theresa May has asked the Metropolitan Police to check whether banning theft and arson is an effective strategy for preventing crime. Some criminologists have claimed that widespread looting and arson mean the laws are not having the desired effect. Speaking on BBC Radio 4’s Today programme, Mrs May hinted that the riot laws remained under review. She added: “There’s not much point in having laws that are inefficient.” She suggested that the funds currently spent on policing might be better spent on reconstruction.
No, sorry, I got that wrong. It wasn’t the Home Secretary, it was the Chancellor of the Exchequer. The correct quote is:
Chancellor George Osborne has asked the Inland Revenue to check whether the 50p top rate of income tax is actually making money for the government. Some economists have claimed that tax avoidance and evasion mean the rate is raising less income than expected. Speaking on BBC Radio 4’s Today programme, Mr Osborne hinted that the 50p rate remained under review. He added: “There’s not much point in having taxes that are very economically inefficient.”
I was just listening to Deutschlandfunk, and there was a weird report in which a typically serious-sounding and besorgt German banky sort of person prophecied doom, now that the US Fed is promoting cheap money with promises of long-term low interest, “und wie hoch die Inflation dann steigt, das fragt keiner.”
And then, a breathless reporter telling us that the one question on everyone’s mind in Frankfurt is: “Ob der Dachs sich erholt.” And this while the British are killing badgers because they spread disease to cattle.
But there’s a serious question here: The metaphors that are used for describing market trends are bizarrely elaborate, compelling, and contradictory. On the one hand, a stock index is like a climber subject to gravity: It “slips” or “falls”, it “climbs” and “slips back” or “sinks”, it “claws back” its losses, or is subject to “corrections”, it “soars” unless it is “weighed down” by bad news, in which case it might “dip” or “plunge”. (I’m sure there are lots more colourful words that I’m not thinking of now. In German I’ve seen reference to a “Börsentalfahrt”. And at least the stock market is springy — after it crashes, it tends to “bounce”.) So, the gravity metaphor suggests that the natural tendency of markets is to go down, even”crash”.
On the other hand, the stock (or other) market is also a sick person, who may be “infected” from someone else (usually “the economy“, but it could be “caution” — well, I guess caution is the disease), but whose natural tendency is to “recover”.
Further reflections on non-transitive folk probability
Continuing my thoughts about zero-one probability from here, I come to the recent decision of Standard & Poor’s to lower their rating of US treasury debt. There are plenty of reasons to doubt their judgement, both because they’ve been absurdly wrong in the past (subprime mortgage backed securities were AAA, but treasury bills are risky?), because they can’t read budget estimates or can’t do basic arithmetic, because they are trying to project political trends, which they surely know even less about than about arithmetic, or because the people who work there are generally known to be pretty dim. But from a probabilist’s point of view what’s strange is the timing. Whatever you may think of the recent deal to avoid the US defaulting on its debt, it did avoid defaulting on its debt. Surely the likelihood of a default went down after the deal was passed. So why is the credit rating lower this week than it was last week? Now, this is all perfectly consistent with the view that S&P is not actually making a prediction of future default probability, but simply seeking the best opportunity to promote its wares. Certainly, the way they operate is not the like someone trying to give what will be perceived as neutral advice; they act more like central bankers, timing their announcements to try to move markets and (above all) seem relevant. They’re reminiscent of the folktale of the rooster who threatens to withhold his crowing, which inevitably will forestall the sun rise. The other animals plead with him to relent, but it’s a threat that only works as long as the rooster is modest enough to recognise that he can’t hold out forever. In the case of the US treasury bonds, S&P held out, and still the sun rose.
But there is something about their approach that seems to make sense to intelligent people, and not purely idiosyncratic. I’m reminded of Tversky’s famous conjunction fallacy, with studies seeming to show that people’s everyday probability intuitions don’t necessary satisfy the apparently inevitable law of conjunction: The probability of A or B must be bigger than the probability of A and the probability of B. Here we see intuitions of probability that don’t seem to satisfy the law of total expectation: If are possible future states of the world, and is the probability of event A conditional on happening, then the probability of event A now must be some kind of average of these conditional probabilities.
The well-known history of enclosure riots in 16th and 17th century England fascinates above all for their orderliness. Describing one riot in early Jacobean Bedfordshire, V. Magagna writes “The assembly that plotted the riot met in the church[…] The leader of the riot was the village constable.”
I thought of this when I read the following on the BBC web site, on the third day of riots and looting throughout London:
“Full scale looting going on at Clarence convenience store right by the burning car on clarence road. “One by one” shouts one man as people crowd round to get into the shop, whose entrance has been smashed in. Women calling: can you get me a magazine? Other people asking for alcohol.”
One by one. That’s British looting for you. They’ll pillage, and they’ll rampage, and they’ll kill, but they’ll queue up in an orderly fashion to do it… particularly if they have hopes of being rewarded with alcohol.
“Petitioning implies a belief in a natural order of society protecting the interests of rich and poor alike, which the authorities can be expected to enforce once the misdeeds of individuals are brought to their notice. Even riot can be seen in this light, for the intention was usually to compell authority to maintain a traditional order, rather than to overturn it.” Underdown, 1985, p. 118
It’s starting to look like we’re all going to be entertained this summer watching the monetary reality show, Euro Survivor: Who can be the last country left in the Euro? Greece has already been voted off the island, even if it hasn’t left yet. Ireland and the Iberians are looking decidedly unpopular, and Italy seems headed downhill as well. (I never understood why Italy was not on financial deathwatch. Is such a massive default just too horrible to contemplate? Or perhaps people just assumed Italy couldn’t possibly print lire until Berlusconi has arranged adequate shell companies to siphon the printing contracts discretely into his own syndicate.) My money is on Luxembourg. It seems fair that they should get to keep the Euro for themselves, since I can’t remember what their currency was called before the Euro. Belgium may end up with two new currencies. (But what’s the first prize? Maybe they get the rump European Central Bank, and a free set of dominoes.)
When a government (let us say, in Athens) could possibly renege on promises made to banks who loaned them money or bought their bonds, which that government is unable to fulfill without draconian cuts to public services, all right-thinking people attack the feckless politicians and threaten a collapse of confidence and the world economy. This is a DEFAULT! Other governments and the IMF might jump in to pour money into the state coffers, on the condition that they flow out the other end into the investors’ pockets.
But when a government (could be in Athens, or in London, or for that matter Madison, Wisconsin) has made promises of pensions to government employees, but has failed to fund them adequately, it is short-sighted and greedy for these civil servants to insist on these promises being honoured.
Why is a default such a terrible thing? Because, they say, if the country defaults on its debts it will be shut out of the credit markets. Hmmm. Let’s suppose it is true. Why? Suppose you own a bank, and your thinking of lending to one of two countries, let’s call one of them Piigsia and the other Sameria. Both are heavily indebted. Piigsia introduces crushing austerity measures, while Sameria repudiates its sovereign debt. Which of those countries would you rather loan your bank’s money to? The one that’s shown a great willingness to pay off its debts but is financially crushed, or the one who may be more likely to try to weasel out of its debts, but is eminently capable of paying. Solvency is not merely (or even primarily) a state of mind. I mean, what good is it to have the current government express a willingness to pay off its debts, knowing that it’s likely to be punished by voters for these “good” intentions? Maybe they just don’t want to be serial defaulters, so having avoided defaulting this time will encourage them to default on the next batch of loans.
As for Sameria, it sucks for the other banks that have lost their money, but why should I give up a chance to make a good profit for the sake of punishing Sameria for hosing my competitors? In fact, in a competitive market, why shouldn’t I be happy that my competitors have made a loss, and just try to get better conditions for my loan?
Solving the democracy deficit through modern science
With the impending union of male and female royalty breeders, there has been increasing tendency to cite Thomas Paine’s evergreen mockery: “the idea of hereditary legislators is as inconsistent as that of hereditary judges or hereditary juries; and as absurd as an hereditary mathematician, or an hereditary wise man; and as ridiculous as an hereditary poet-laureate.” (Paine never got to see the number of mathematician children filling the posts in most of today’s leading mathematics departments, but the point is well taken.) Seen as the monarchical version of an election — the keystone of the procedure by which a legitimate head of state is created — a Royal wedding certainly feels a trifle arbitrary. But this opposition to monarchy, though it wears the finery of modernity, has failed to keep up with advancing technology. True, it might formerly have been the case that the hereditary principle made the choice of head of state no different from a lottery (for which, see this suggestion). It seems impossible to unite the hereditary principle with the increasingly popular beliefs that rulers should be selected by some non-random process, and that hoi polloi should have something to say about it. But now the following arrangements have been announced by the Palace (a particularly sodden corner of the palace wine cellar, to be precise)*:
Following the wedding, a selection of at least 5 royal spermatozoa** will be extracted and fully sequenced by a specially selected team at the Royal Institution for Genetics Pedigree Studies. The secret method (which, in a nod to popular taste, does use beer as a reagent) has been designed to be maximally non-destructive.
The sequences will published on the website princesperm.gov.uk. The public will have 5 days to register and vote for the one that they prefer be invited to form their new ruler.
The elected sperm will invited in the first instance to inseminate the royal egg. Should it fail in its attempt, the second-place sperm will be sent in. In the case of a repeat failure, a national referendum will be held to determine the correct voting procedure.
* It may be argued that this election proposal, being purely fictional and even farcical, has no bearing on the justification or not of the British monarchy. A dangerous argument indeed, for those who would dispense with fiction and farce would leave central pillars of the British constitutional order bereft of all foundation.
** Why are the future queen’s eggs not also sequenced? Choice of the ovum is a royal prerogative, cf. Blackstone, Commentaries on the Laws of England, v. 5, section 113 (Oxford 1765-1769).
A Press Release from the Ministry for Calendars, Clocks, and the Underclass
Deputy minister for Temporal Affairs Nigel Thwart (Lib-Dem) is releasing today guidelines for the coalition’s plan to save £120 billion by cancelling the new year. ‘We found that 1983 was still in excellent condition. Military chronologists have refurbished the year and put it into place to be serving us again starting shortly after 23:59 GMT on 31/12/2010. The year has functioned flawlessly in intensive testing, and we are confident that it will meet all the nation’s chronological needs through December, if not longer. We do recommend early bedtimes, though, to avoid overstressing the slightly threadbare post-midnight hours.”We reject claims of some malcontents that the Liberal Democrats have violated the pledge famously signed in blood* by Nick Clegg and other party leaders to “move the country into the future”. This is a coalition government, and we cannot expect to govern as we would like to had we a majority. We are most proud of our party’s influence to moderate the initial Conservative Party plan to return to 1940, which is currently owned by the Smithsonian Institute in Washington. While this year would have been substantially cheaper, the Liberal Democrats maintain that such a regressive move would blatantly contradict our election manifesto pledge.’The year will be sold to a consortium of private investors, and leased back by the Crown, leaving the taxpayers with substantial savings.’We are confident that it will still be possible to modify the year to introduce a referendum on election reform.’
* Mr Clegg’s spokescaitiff has emphasised that it was not the Deputy Prime Minister’s own blood on the signature.
are possible future states of the world, and 
Common Infirmities 