On June 9 I observed that the fix is in and Kevin Rudd will return. And so he has, more awful than ever. It must be terrible to be a Labor supporter, having to pick amongst Mark Latham, Julia Gillard and Kevin Rudd.

The last day of the Parliamentary sitting was the only time to make the switch so now the deed has been done.

But since even I could see it coming, obviously everyone else could as well. My guess is that this entire scenario was worked out weeks ago, the steps that would be taken, the painful decision by Penny Wong, the regretful switch by Bill Shorten and the final vote engineered just as it was. It is likely that even Julia was herself in on this, playing her part right to the end.

My work has been unrelenting. I have finally finished and returned my edited copy of Defending the History of Economic Thought, have sent in the preliminary outline of my Anti-Keynesian Reader and have submitted two papers to journals. I have also been at the APEE conference in Hawaii which may have been the best conference I have ever attended. And my Economic Analysis for Business is now part of the Online Universities Australia which requires an enormous amount of work. Blogging has therefore been a distraction I could not afford but back from Hawaii and with maybe a bit of time to spare, maybe, I will return to my posts.

[Via Smalldeadanimals]

Here begins a diatribe against cats.

Beyond the hard-to-refute argument that they are the world’s most useless animals, cats appear to have everything going their way. In the past 20 years, they have overtaken dogs to become Britain’s most popular pet, relentlessly raised their social profile, and colonised the internet to such an extent that Google has now installed special programmes to monitor their advance.

Cats are the first choice pet of anyone with an independent soul. Aside from their total dependency on being fed, the need to clean out their cat box and their perfect indifference to the welfare of others, cats are easy to have around, don’t wake up the neighbours and are perfectly capable of taking care of themselves. That they munch their way through billions of their fellow mammals along with a few billion birds a year is just the law of nature. If Obama thinks he has a fight over ridding the US of guns, just let someone try to get rid of our moggies.

It’s about a magician who freaked out Penn of P&T.

A few years ago, at a Las Vegas convention for magicians, Penn Jillette, of the act Penn and Teller, was introduced to a soft-spoken young man named Apollo Robbins, who has a reputation as a pickpocket of almost supernatural ability. Jillette, who ranks pickpockets, he says, ‘a few notches below hypnotists on the show-biz totem pole,’ was holding court at a table of colleagues, and he asked Robbins for a demonstration, ready to be unimpressed. Robbins demurred, claiming that he felt uncomfortable working in front of other magicians. He pointed out that, since Jillette was wearing only shorts and a sports shirt, he wouldn’t have much to work with.

‘Come on,’ Jillette said. ‘Steal something from me.’

Again, Robbins begged off, but he offered to do a trick instead. He instructed Jillette to place a ring that he was wearing on a piece of paper and trace its outline with a pen. By now, a small crowd had gathered. Jillette removed his ring, put it down on the paper, unclipped a pen from his shirt, and leaned forward, preparing to draw. After a moment, he froze and looked up. His face was pale.

‘Fuck. You,’ he said, and slumped into a chair.

Robbins held up a thin, cylindrical object: the cartridge from Jillette’s pen.

Incredible article. Want to see this guy in action.

In The Age this morning and also The Sydney Morning Herald there’s an article on climate scepticism by their long-time cartoonist John Spooner. How sound, how sensible, how on the money. Such a pleasure to read. You should read the whole thing yourself. Here is a bit just to get you going:

I was once told by a friend that when it comes to scientific issues of major public concern, it is ‘not what you know but who you know’. I think he meant that my fledgling scepticism about dangerous anthropogenic global warming (DAGW) was pointless, for as a cartoonist I was as unqualified to assess the science as he was.

The implication was that all who are untrained in ‘climate science’ are required to accept the scientific and political authority of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and its local colleagues such as the CSIRO: the scientific establishment.

I found my friend’s advice baffling.

Anyone familiar with the judicial process knows the gravest issues of liberty and fortune are often determined by a jury selected from the public. Expert witnesses can give evidence in support of either side at a trial. The judge must rule on questions of admissibility, but in the end it is the jury that decides which scientific evidence is to be believed.

When it comes to climate change, we are the jury, not the IPCC. Dead on the money from end to end.

It’s not that he says it but that he believes it that makes this so pathetic:

WAYNE Swan has blamed the conservative Tea Party movement in the US for damaging the global economy and contributing to the “whack” to Australia’s budget position that has ruined Labor’s planned 2012-13 surplus.

The Acting Prime Minister and Treasurer used Twitter yesterday to warn that the looming fiscal cliff in the US, coupled with the European debt crisis, had directly affected Australia by reducing tax receipts, thus undermining next year’s budget surplus.

But Mr Swan saved his key criticism for the Tea Party, accusing it of holding the world to ransom and setting back the post-global financial crisis recovery for the past 18 months.

‘The impact of America’s fiscal cliff saga combined with Europe’s deep problems is having a real impact on the entire global economy,’ he tweeted.

‘Of course, we’re seeing that impact first hand in Australia with the huge whack we’ve copped to our revenue base.

‘The fact is, no matter what happens this week, huge damage has been done over the last 18 months thanks to the Tea Party’s influence. It is lamentable that so much of the world’s post-GFC economic recovery has been held hostage in such a reckless way by the Tea Party.’

Automatic cuts to social security and defence accompanied by scheduled tax increases are threatening to plunge the US back into recession, with President Barack Obama cutting short his Hawaii holiday to return to Washington yesterday to try to hammer out a solution to stop America sliding over the fiscal cliff.

Personal responsiblity for any of this is zero. Why he wants a surplus here but thinks the US can go on forever with its insane deficits he does not explain.

A discussion about markets and entrepreneurs. This is economics as it ought to be:

Markets work. Market prices provide information about lots of disparate things instantaneously. Market prices tell you to dig deeper for more. Every single activity belies a market. Angel investing has a market, with supply and demand and market prices. When someone tells you that in the midwest they could only raise capital at a $3M pre-money valuation, but on the coasts could do it for $6M-is that a bubble on the coasts? Or is the midwest undervalued? Who’s right and who’s wrong is the answer that everyone wants to know.

The answer is that markets set the price and there isn’t a way to arbitrage between angel markets on coasts. Investments are stuck in probability theory. It’s either x, or 1-x. Once the check is written, there are only two outcomes, success or failure. Since it’s easier to start a business than ever before, it’s no surprise that we are seeing a lot fail.

Each separate market is efficient. Additionally, they each have their own supply and demand curves. More supply in this case means more capital. If demand for that capital stays the same, prices will rise. As prices rise, more demand enters the market and you have what looks like a bubble as long as the supply of capital can keep flowing to meet higher and higher levels of demand.