A brilliant and well-connected academic, [Keynes] began as a speculator in the 1920s and initially did very well in a period that looks very much like our own, where new technology companies (auto and aircraft companies) spurred a speculative boom on wider markets.
In 1928 he had amassed a fortune of £44,000 but after the Wall Street crash of 1929 his fortune had shrunk to £8000. It is how he rebuilt his position and became a convert to what we now call value investing that is the kernel of the story. Over the next three decades Keynes evolved a system of watching and waiting for stocks he believed were undervalued by the market. He called them “stunners” and once he fixed on a bargain he went in big time.
Of course it didn’t hurt that by the 1940’s he was working inside Treasury and helping to design the budget which is part of the reason why he was able to die a wealthy man at the end of the War. But he took a bath not just in 1929, but in 1920 when he took down much of his family and many of his friends, as recorded here: John Maynard Keynes ‘a great economist but poor currency trader’.
The study found that Keynes “experienced periods of considerable losses in both the 1920s and 1930s. Indeed, he was close to being technically bankrupt in 1920 and could only stay trading thanks to his ability to borrow funds from his social circle.”
And even that understates just how catastrophic his losses were. And this was a man who worked in The City for almost all of his working life. The academic world for him was just something he did a few months a year. The General Theory is as bad for our wealth today as his speculations were for him and others while he lived. It really does irritate me to read about what a financial genius Keynes was when he was anything but.
At around the 12:00 minute mark is the moment that Fischer is given the puzzle which I am surprised Carson hadn’t seen before. I doubt the puzzle even exists today. Too mechanical for our day and age, too actually physically there and not electronic and online. Just have to slot the little squares till they are across from one at the top left to fifteen at the bottom second from the right. There is always a blank spot so that you can move a piece into an empty space. The example below is the puzzle solved but when you get it to work out it is always completely scrambled. Amazing to see Fischer was also the world champion at doing the 15 puzzle.
The present movement brings rape centre stage in a national conversation that has been unrestrained and insistent.
It has already ventilated views about power and consent likely to have a significant impact on sexual relationships, and indeed all relationships between the sexes.
It’s been both thrilling and confronting. The right for women to freely engage in sex on their terms to know that even when drunk or unconscious they will not be raped, to be protected by our legal system, has never been so clearly articulated on such a national platform for so long.
From the depths of my being I am rage. For the promising debater, Kate, who took her life in June last year. For all the women who’ve been sexually invaded and carry within them a post-traumatic stress disorder that burdens them for the length of their lives. For the women who’ve been taught to be silent even before they leave school, I am rage. For the schoolgirls stepping forward in their thousands to reveal rapes and sexual assaults perpetrated by their teenage male peers, I am rage. For all of us who’ve been conditioned to excuse questionable male behaviour. For the patriarchal club that keeps women in their place — a quieter, lesser, subservient place — I am rage. For the betrayal of all the good men out there by the odious and insecure few, I am rage; because rape is about insecurity. Power. Misogyny. Control….
Many women will remember these torrid weeks, deep in our bones. We are springloaded with rage. There is power in our anger and we’ve been culturally conditioned to suppress it but this situation is tinder to the flame. We’ve had enough. The ghost of one of us – highly articulate and intelligent but thwarted by a burden she carried throughout her adult life – hangs over all of us. Kate, we will not forget.
Which this letter to the editor tries to deal with, also from today’s Oz:
Melissa Price recycles the unhelpful claim that it is men, in general, who need to “do better” to reduce sexual abuse (“Men hold the key to ensuring women are safe”, 19/3). Research resolutely points away from men in general but usefully pinpoints a dangerous subset.
Australia’s National Community Attitudes towards Violence against Women Survey is the world’s longest running (25 years) survey of its kind. In 2013, NCAS concluded that only “ … 4-6 per cent of Australians believe violence against women can be justified.” The 2017 NCAS report found Australians were even less likely to hold such views.
It is obviously unacceptable that 5 per cent — roughly one million Australians (the majority, men) — still believe violence against women is justifiable. Unfortunately, the most likely explanation combines criminology and psychiatry; the percentage of men with mental pathologies giving rise to violent personalities — which place them beyond reason — largely overlaps with the pattern of serious violence (including rape) against women, girls and boys.
The imperfectability of humankind is such that there will always be small numbers of men prone to acts of despicable violence. Regrettably, this means that women and girls must continue to take reasonable precautions to guard against them. Indeed, if we are to base our conduct in the best evidence, Ms Price’s understandable ambition that future generations of women are “confident to walk alone at night” must be seen as sadly unrealistic and unwise.
“The imperfectability of humandkind” of course includes women.
This is from The Oz today: Men hold the key to ensuring women are safe which is by Melissa Price who is the federal Minister for Defence Industry and the member for Durack in WA. She opens with a personal anecdote which I well understand:
Last weekend, as we [ie she and her “partner”] sat in our Geraldton home and shared our thoughts on the gender equality debate and the looming protests across the country, I told him something that — at least in that moment — caught him by surprise. “I am frightened to walk alone at night,” I told him. “And every time I have to do it, I hold my longest key in my hand, sticking out between my fingers. Just in case.”
Many (most?) women live in fear out beyond the household gate, and it is the men in their lives who must take on the major elements in mitigating the risks they face. This is as true today as it must have been way back in prehistoric times. She goes on to write:
Women across the country are rallying against sexual assault, discrimination and harassment. And rightly so. It’s why I joined thousands of women outside federal parliament on Monday. It’s time for things to change.
Rape has always been illegal everywhere and in every society. So what sort of change are we looking for here? These are the specifics I have been looking for since this debate began. And again, empty rhetoric with not a proposal in sight. Instead this:
Let me be clear — this is a bloke problem, not a woman problem.
What could be more empty than this?
We are driving change through the National Plan to Reduce Violence against Women and their Children — a 12-year strategy that brings together the efforts of the commonwealth, state and territory governments to prevent and address domestic, family and sexual violence.
Last week, we launched the $18.8m third phase of the national campaign to reduce violence against women and their children, called Stop it at the Start.
These are just a snapshot of the measures we have put in place as a government, and are a significant step in the right direction. But we all know more will need to be done, both inside and outside the walls of parliament. It should start at school, where we must better educate young boys about respect for women to ensure they grow into men understanding what is acceptable, and what isn’t.
Really, that is it? You want more men to be aware that rape is illegal and wrong. So this is her big insight.
Too often we hear about the number of women who have been raped, rather than the number of men who have raped women. It is men who need to be better.
And her final word.
As a leader in the community, I am determined to help bring an end to the sexual violence and harassment too many women have had to endure. I want to help ensure future generations of women are confident to walk alone at night, and can leave that key in their handbag.
Maybe it’s good politics but it is a policy vacuum. Maybe we’ll change our mind in twelve years time.
In the meantime, let us turn to another woman who somehow seems to stand up to the hideous pressures that politics brings. Read this to find out part of what she has faced, but also read this which highlights some of the conclusions she has reached.
The fact is that the way evolution has worked its way through the millennia, men do everything they can to accommodate women. “Women and children first” was, and probably still is, the mantra in any emergency where lives are at risk. Men die so that women can survive and bring on the next generation. There is not necessarily a lot of gratitude that comes with the actions taken by men, but that is how it has always been.
“I do think, from speaking to a lot of female friends and colleagues, there are also just what I would call minor little slights, that happen all the time and which constantly make you feel like the world is designed mostly for men to be in key positions.”
“When it happens individually it’s nothing, but when it happens all the time, taken together, it can be a lot.”
So what are these horrors she has had to endure?
As an example, she said wireless microphones often used during public speaking engagements were designed for men’s clothes, and required a sturdy lapel, a heavy belt and a coat to cover it up.
“I’m always made to feel a little bit inconvenient,” she said.
There were other examples as well — such as being made to feel annoying for needing to use the toilet and being told her male counterpart never had that need; and male colleagues setting up windy filming locations suitable for men with short hair, but not women with long hair.
“Nobody involved in any of these incidents do I consider sexist, or bad people, or anything of that nature. In isolation, (the incidents) are all totally minor,” Sales said.
“But it’s also the fact that all of these things can be immediately skewed to make me sound like the world’s biggest pain in the arse … It’s very easy for women in these situations to turn into the person who is ‘the problem’. When actually, the problem is that this is designed for men.”
“She rang her father first, to give him a heads up. ‘He was at a party, and I said: “I have to tell you something. I’m about to do an interview with The Sydney Morning Herald. By the way, I got sexually assaulted when I was 13. Bye!” He was like: “What?” It was confronting for dad at first.'”
Was it the man who lived next door, her uncle or some fellow teenage lad who was trying to work out how to approach a young maid?
She believes there has been some tangible change: from the people who have told her they have understood, for the first time in their lives, that they experienced sexual assault and it wasn’t their fault.
How could they not have known that they had been sexually assaulted? But what I am most interested in is what ought to be done. I do not doubt that young women find the going more difficult than in my time, but I cannot picture what the rules are or should be, and who is supposed to enforce them.
So here is another vacuous bit of empty rhetoric with nothing there about what the rules should be. If Chanel was assaulted when she was thirteen but never mentioned anything to her father for more than a decade, seriously, what specifically does she want done? This will not help at all: Embed consent education in school curriculum, Liberal MP urges.
Dr Martin said education about protective behaviours should begin as soon as children started to talk, in an age-appropriate way such as reading a picture book like Tess Rowley’s Everybody’s Got A Bottom. Protective behaviours include teaching young children the proper names for body parts, what is private and how to respect and protect their bodies.
Relationship skills could also start being taught to preschool children through conversations about who their friends were, who they played with and what made a good friendship, she said. As children got older, this could evolve into assertiveness training, giving them the confidence to speak up against bullying or about other unhealthy relationships.
Consent means a girl gets to choose which boy she will pair off with, not that there will be no pairing off at all.
BTW Leigh and Chanel, if you were on The Titanic, would you get into the lifeboat first? I bet you would.
Feminism as in equal outcomes for men and women is a dead letter. This was the kind of feminism I was brought up on. And the reality has been that girls can do anything a boy can do once a boy has done it first and then shown them how. And even then, only a handful of girls will even be interested.
The feminism that works for me is where women should be free to attempt anything they like but should not be given an easier ride and must be held to the same standards as men. Second stage feminism argued that women were not given the opportunity to succeed. However true that might once have been it is true no longer.
We just went to see New Movie Looks Through the Eyes of the Man Who Killed Israel’s Prime Minister. In Israel, the film is called Yamim Noraim which has a religious meaning, but in English is it titled, “Incitement”. This is an interview with its director followed by some passages from the above-linked article.
At the core of “Incitement” (“Yamim Noraim” in Hebrew) is an artistic decision that will cause the Israeli viewer’s heart to skip a beat: The decision to turn Yigal Amir, the man who murdered former Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, into a cinematic hero. This is a choice that appears, at least at first, to be completely unreasonable if not outright mad. After all, Amir, in the eyes of most Israelis, is the number one enemy of the Jews – not a national hero. He is the man who crossed the line that nobody crossed before him. We thought that a Jew doesn’t kill a Jew. But Amir did. And he even found a justification based on halakha (Jewish religious law) for it.
Is it ethical to discuss Yigal Amir’s motives? Is it ethical to decipher his personality, to give him volume and feelings?
Twenty-four years after he committed murder, Amir has become the hero of a full-length feature film which was screened earlier this week at the Toronto International Film Festival and will be released in the coming weeks in Israeli movie theaters. The very idea of watching such a film causes great unease. We have become accustomed to loathing him, to regarding him as an abomination.
What happens when we suddenly see him as a well-rounded character, like the medium of cinema requires? Is it ethical to discuss Yigal Amir’s motives? Is it ethical to decipher his personality, to give him volume and feelings? What happens if we identify with him? What happens if the sharp and clear boundary we have drawn between ourselves and the murderer for the past 24 years begins to fade? Will we find ourselves understanding Yigal Amir?
The plot of “Yamim Noraim,” directed by Yaron Zilberman (who also wrote the script with Ron Leshem) begins about two years before the assassination. Amir, portrayed well by Yehuda Nahari Halevi, is a law student at Bar-Ilan University, who participates with his friends in stormy demonstrations against the Oslo Accords and then-Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin.
And the issue is not whether you agree with the policies adopted by Rabin. The issue is whether there are circumstances when the assassination of a political leader is legitimate. A fascinating film that had me gripped the whole way through since following the logic of the debate is what it is about.
Should Hitler have been assassinated? By1945, the answer was easy. But any such assassination would have had to occur in 1933-37 to have mattered. History just unfolds with all of its might-have-beens that can never be answered. I will say only this. That a political leader with a majority of 61-59 in Parliament should not attempt such divisive policies. And for more on that, there is this article to consider: Religious Zionism and The Rabin Assassination.
Prime Minister Yitzchak Rabin was assassinated by Yigal Amir, an Orthodox Jew, a student in the law school at Bar Ilan University, and a graduate of Yeshivat Kerem B’Yavneh, two of the most prominent educational institutions of Religious Zionism. Amir claimed religious justifications for his act, quoting halakhic arguments widely discussed in rabbinic circles of Religious Zionism at the time. He determined that Rabin’s policies endangered Jewish lives, which placed Rabin in the category of rodef (pursuer), whom one is permitted to kill. It has not been determined whether Amir had specific rabbinical approval for his act. He has denied it, saying that the permissibility of the assassination was sufficiently clear that he could act on his own. His brother Hagai, who was convicted as an accomplice to the assassination,
has repeatedly asserted that there had been rabbinical approval, although
he has not mentioned a name. In the broader community there remain strong suspicions that Yigal Amir’s actions were approved by many Religious Zionists, including rabbis, even though only a small fringe has openly said so.
But religious approval is also not a justification for murder. The movie however does go through the various considerations that went into the assassination, as well as the personal circumstances that surrounded Amir. It tries to explain why he did what he did, not in any way to justify what he did.
There’s been a lot of discussion lately about “consent” but the entire concept remains extraordinarily vague and imprecise. I’m all for consent, but still do not know what anyone is being asked to consent to or how that consent is to be obtained, or proved to have been obtained at a later date. In my day, which was a long long time ago, one asked for consent either with the words, “Will you marry me?” or even with the words, “I do”. Well, I’m not actually that old, but grew up during the 1960s which was a very decadent period, I can assure you, where sexual morality changed for all time, and I cannot say that it has changed for the better. We had, to assist our philosophical growth on such matters, Germaine Greer’s The Female Eunuch on the one hand and Hugh Hefner’s The Playboy Philosophy on the other. Oddly, in their own way they both conveyed the same message.
So into this moral mess we are engaging in a public debate on who should be allowed to do what to whom and under what circumstances. So in this vein we have this today: Embed consent education in school curriculum, Liberal MP urges. The only problem with this article is that it does not answer any of the questions that need to be answered. This is not a promising start:
The member for Reid, who was a psychologist before entering federal Parliament, says this would set up children for a life of healthy relationships and the ability to recognise coercive control and sexual abuse.
Which ends with this absolutely empty piece of advice:
Dr Martin said education about protective behaviours should begin as soon as children started to talk, in an age-appropriate way such as reading a picture book like Tess Rowley’s Everybody’s Got A Bottom. Protective behaviours include teaching young children the proper names for body parts, what is private and how to respect and protect their bodies. Relationship skills could also start being taught to preschool children through conversations about who their friends were, who they played with and what made a good friendship, she said. As children got older, this could evolve into assertiveness training, giving them the confidence to speak up against bullying or about other unhealthy relationships.
We are not discussing dealing with Uncle Fred or the next door neighbour. We are not discussing paedophilia. We are instead talking about a girl going out on a date (or whatever the term nowadays is) in a post-Monica-Lewinsky world where internet porn is universally available along with contraceptives. And where often, but not always, the girl is as keen for some kind of sexual adventure as the boy. Will You Love Me Tomorrow is a very old song with a very modern message. It was released in 1960 just a few years before Germaine Greer and Hugh Hefner were releasing their books.
The most decadent pop song in history. And it has nothing to do with consent. The question today is whether she will try to bring a prosecution for rape in two and a half years’ time.
Law of Markets 