talleyberry

I know what Cristiano Ronaldo really wants. At least, I think I do.

The former Manchester United winger and current Real Madrid superstar is the subject of constant speculation. Will he return to England or stay in Spain? Will he eventually move to MLS?

A lot of the speculation focuses on Cristiano’s motivations. Fans in Manchester dare to dream every time a Sunday rag claims the Portuguese still loves United. Madridistas, on the other hand, take solace from reports that he’ll finish his career with the club he grew up supporting. I believe the key to Ronaldo’s future is a more concrete motivation:

Cristiano Ronaldo thinks it’s possible for him to finish his career as the leading all-time goalscorer at both Manchester United and Real Madrid. Which means he may be eying a move back to Manchester as soon as August.

Continue reading “Is This Cristiano Ronaldo’s Ultimate Goal?”

I’m six months late, but I’ve just read this Forbes editorial by Tim Worstall. And I’m very confused.

Why I’m Confused

The article is about Paul Krugman’s take on the IMF’s take on inequality’s effect on growth. One way inequality affects growth is by reducing opportunities for the poor to use their talents. I’m going to quote Mr. Worstall at length here, so you can understand the source of my confusion:

Yes, it’s most certainly true that the poor in the US (most especially the urban and African American poor) do not have the same opportunities to make use of their talent. But this is a comment upon the disastrous state of the urban education system rather than anything else. That a system can have pupils for 12 years, spend $11,000 a year on each and every one of them on average, and still have people coming out of said system functionally illiterate and innumerate means that there’s something very wrong indeed inside that system. It’s not a lack of resources here, other school systems in other countries do very much better on much less money. Heck, the parochial school system inside the US does better on less money. Given that those inner city school systems are, and have been for decades, controlled by the sort of lefties who complain about inequality I’d say there’s some soul searching rather overdue there myself.

So, since urban schools spend a lot with little to show for it, there’s no “lack of resources” holding back the urban poor. And, of course, schools outside such poor areas do much better.

Wait…what?

Isn’t the fact that schools in poor areas struggle to achieve results no matter how much money they spend a very strong argument in favor of the idea that the poverty of the students themselves is what’s preventing them from reaching their full potential? How likely is it that the same “something very wrong indeed” just happens to present itself only in schools attended by impoverished students? There is not, to my knowledge, a unified “urban education system” that coordinates the efforts of its leftie controllers across America’s poor regions. And do those miraculous “school systems in other countries” happen to be located in places that do a better job of keeping their citizens above the poverty line?

Mr. Worstall seems to be forgetting that we’re talking about inequality rather than spending, which I can only assume is a favorite bogeyman of his (oh…quite). Poor kids are held back by the lack of resources that hangs over every aspect of their lives, not by academic under- or over-spending. That’s the problem with the poverty prevalent in unequal societies, of course: it creates obstacles too great for a bit more school spending per student to overcome. And that’s what Tim Worstall is – inadvertently – telling us about inequality.

Why Else I’m Confused

As an aside, I’m also confused about the article’s “important point.” Here’s Mr. Worstall:

And thus we reach our important point. Yes, it’s true, excessive inequality can damage economic growth. Yes, reasonable measures to reduce inequality can increase economic growth. But most industrialised countries are already above that level and it’s really only the US that is particularly below it. And even for the US there’s not all that much room to do more in inequality reduction before we do start damaging economic growth. Another 3 points off the gini perhaps is possible.

Ah. So we should really be talking about this specifically in the context of America. What did Professor Krugman actually say?

This (emphasis mine):

American inequality has become so extreme that it’s inflicting a lot of economic damage.

And this:

Think about it. Do talented children in low-income American families have the same chance to make use of their talent — to get the right education, to pursue the right career path — as those born higher up the ladder? Of course not.

And this:

Will the new view of inequality change our political debate?

And this:

And government programs that reduce inequality can make the nation as a whole richer.

So which nation does Mr. Worstall think Professor Krugman is talking about? I’m confused.

The European Central Bank finally announced today a 1.1 trillion euro program of quantitative easing (buying private bonds in addition to government bonds). It may not be enough, and the ECB won’t be getting much additional (fiscal) help from European governments.

Though ECB president Mario Draghi famously promised two years ago that the body he leads would do “whatever it takes” to save the euro, the consensus seems to be that today’s announcement comes too late to prevent a prolonged period of trouble for Europeans. Even this larger-than-expected round of QE will be hard-pressed to stave off the clear and present deflationary danger that necessitated it.

Of course, though the new monetary measures may fall short of alleviating that danger, European governments aren’t likely to budge from their hard line against fiscal intervention. Angela Merkel recently came out in favor of economic distres…er, pressure. And today Draghi himself said, “It would be a big mistake if countries were to consider that the presence of this program might be an incentive to fiscal expansion.” That’s despite historically low borrowing costs and high unemployment in large swathes of Europe.

We Americans should be careful about throwing stones, though. In a similar position for the last few years, we’ve also been relying on unorthodox monetary policy instead of fiscal stimulus. And as far as I know, the Europeans don’t even have the benefit of regular bridge collapses to point them toward a potential use of stimulus funds.

The two big problems with using QE instead of fiscal measures to revive consumption/inflation at the “zero lower bound” are that 1) it’s inefficient, and 2) it tends to exacerbate inequality.

They’re related problems. Since QE usually involves a central bank pumping money into the economy by buying private bonds from large corporations, the immediate beneficiaries are the wealthy (as this famous-but-not-terribly-nuanced video demonstrates). Hence its inefficiency; the wealthy are much less likely to spend additional income than the poor. It should already be clear now why it promotes inequality, unless you’re still practicing voodoo after all these years.

But for now quantitative easing is Draghi’s only viable option in Europe. The reason liberal economists like Paul Krugman support QE, despite its flaws, is that it’s probably better than nothing. Let’s hope so, for the Continent’s sake.

Oh, and speaking of Professor Krugman, here’s Draghi’s blunt reasoning for warning against fiscal measures: they “would undermine confidence.” Expecting a Confidence Fairy blog post in 3…2…1…

Yesterday, I clicked hopefully on a link reading “Obama and Cameron: Prosperity Is Key To Defeating Terrorism.” President Barack Obama and UK Prime Minister David Cameron had penned a coöp-ed in the Times (UK). The piece is headlined “We won’t let the voice of freedom be muzzled,” which is an interesting choice from a president often accused of cracking down on press freedoms and a prime minister who is currently calling for an end to privacy on the internet. But more interesting to me was the subtitle:

“Safeguarding our way of life depends on economic strength and standing up to terrorism and international aggression.”

Though the second half is standard-issue meaningless tough talk, that “economic strength” set my heart aflutter. Had these two powerful world leaders finally concluded that Islamic terrorism’s primary cause was neither violence inherent to Islam nor barbarism native to Middle Easterners but the region’s explosive mixture of poverty, hopelessness, and youth unemployment? Would we be cutting spending on our mind-bogglingly massive defense budget and battling future terrorism by reinvesting it in a global pro-education, anti-poverty fund?

No, of course not. Here’s what they actually wrote: “We reaffirm our belief that our ability to defend our freedoms is rooted in our economic strength.”

In other words, we need to focus on making sure our own wealthy nations stay wealthy so we can keep pouring money into whack-a-mole military solutions.

Sigh.

The past year, everyone has been talking about the rise of inequality in the world, and in the United States, over the past few decades. In 2015, the richest .01 percent of Americans own over 11 percent of the country’s wealth.

But another .01 percent has been in the news today, although I haven’t seen the number put in such terms, as guns (~33,000) are likely to have recently surpassed automobiles (~32,000) in number of Americans killed per year. 33,000 is, of course, slightly more than .01 percent of 320,000,000, the population of the United States.

It’s obviously not a coincidence of any statistical significance, but it’s still interesting to note that America is either violent enough or unequal enough (or both) that the same number of people are shot to death yearly as own more than a tenth of the country’s wealth.

Today’s Translated Thai Joke, below, comes to you in illustrated form courtesy of Thailand’s massive “Fan Club Man U” – and its members’ no-bull approach to appraising their team.

Welcome to Old Trafford, Angel Di Maria! Good luck handling the pressure.

“Quite A Bit Of Pressure”

In case you can’t read the cartoon:

Juan Mata: “Angel…you’re going to be under quite a bit of pressure in the first match.”
Angel Di Maria: “Because I’m wearing the #7 shirt and the club paid a lot of money to buy me, right?”
Mata: “No…because Young, Evans, Jones, and Fletcher are all playing.”
Di Maria: “…………”