subjectHarold
And it isn't random. You can acquire this property if you want. But be aware, you seem to be expecting to acquire the "entire society's wealth"...most of this land isn't that valuable and that land that is requires work (which is why it is valuable).
Again, I don't understand what your point is here beyond anger that someone else has something you want?
EDIT: Are you actually familiar with the population distribution and density in Scotland? A good chunk of this land is just agriculture and rough grass that has few economic uses. This isn't land that anyone wants to live on. The main concern of the govt, as I understand it, is to encourage forestry (which will mean more large owners, not less).
I am sure this is attractive to you because you are a member of the "virtuous class" no doubt, but have you checked your family tree? How far back? What genetic crimes prohibit property ownership? Class traitor? Rightist? Capitalist Roader? Perhaps religion?
And why do these people still own land? Presumably you aren't personally being pressed into involuntary labour, so why do you as someone who is doing "all the work" still have nothing? These inbred landowners are presumably so feckless they would take anything (certainly, lots of these estates go for sale every year).
The Church of England, Anders Povlsen, and others have all acquired huge amounts of land recently (that is why there is so much complaining about landowners from England who only come up to shoot). There is tons of forestry to bid on, and if you offer the right price then you will find willing sellers...if you offer the right price.
Afaik, the only solid evidence against is an apparent lack of "participation" from local communities on land use. Unfortunately, this is an issue that applies as much to council as private landowners in Scotland and also tends to elicit opinions on what "should" be the case, rather than what is actually possible (i.e. people who live in the middle of nowhere complaining about the lack of economic development, complaining that the landowner isn't selling them a house at a cheap enough price, complaining that the landowner only comes up from England to shoot, etc.)
There has been an abundance of loose reasoning on that is justified only by the perception that of unfairness (and, unf, a bit of light bigotry about the English). One of the sources for the rather brief Land Commission report was some political theory on power and participation (https://landcommission.gov.scot/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/R... - Section 5 - I studied Politics postgrad btw, theory shouldn't be used this way...it is basic). Madness.
Also, most institutions aren't particularly short-term in their outlook (if you are an institution buying a stock that has a valuation like FB...you have to be taking the very long view). Where the short-term "meme" comes from is analysts (whose bark significantly outweighs their bite) and the pressure that failing companies get to preserve shareholder value (and the real-world evidence here is that managers win close to 100% of the time and take shareholder's money down with them).
In my experience, I have seen countless companies decimated by unaccountable managers (no super-voting shares to my recollection, just weak oversight). I am not aware of any public company harmed by short-term thinking. The only possible exceptions are private equity (but for different reasons, still terrible) and acquisitions...but in the latter case, this happens for a ton of other reasons too. In most cases, there is no pressure.
Tbh, I don't even understand the logic...you can invest heavily, and that isn't showing up on your income statement immediately. It is true that most investors don't understand the difference between ROI and marginal ROI (these situations probably represent a good chunk of my lifetime returns) but companies feel limited in what they can disclose (and I have had conversations with non-US companies to that effect) and, in the end, the market always works it out.
Most people are, I think, quite forgiving when it comes to failing in these situations. The issue often is that some people, most in my experience, have no idea how to behave when things go wrong (and, given enough time, something will always go wrong).
Germany is influential because they have a large population i.e. high vote weight in the Council AND they lead a bloc of other nations with similar values (Austria, Belgium, Netherlands, etc.).
It is worth noting though: the UK leaving the EU will likely change this (they usually voted with Germany and had a 13% weight of the EU population). Germany will likely retain some moral leadership but, at the very least, a blocking minority vote (35% of population and 4 members) is possible (the most likely scenario is a France/Italy combination with two other minor members).
If I want to see if I have made a payment, I just open the app...which takes 10 seconds instead of a 5 second push notification.
You can buy £400bn of deposits with Lloyds for £40bn (and get paid 5%/year for the pleasure). Or you can pay £1bn for a loss-making company with £100m in deposits...it is pretty simple.
Monetary policy is essential, none of the things you mention are more important. Why? Because the boom can't occur without monetary policy (this is usually not obvious to people who have only looked at US financial history where capital markets are developed).
Lots of reasons are given ex-post to rationalise these movements i.e. changing technology "caused" the Canal boom...but technology is always changing. And human nature is certainly interesting...but it is an invariant (just like technological change). The enabling factor is always money. Btw, this isn't to say that, for example, regulation wasn't a factor in 2008...it was but the thing is that regulation is always a problem because when money gets loose then regulations follow.
Examples of booms without bubbles: post-WW2 in the US, financial conditions were stable in the few decades (not strictly true but for our purposes) because the the main concern of monetary policy was government finance. Another example: Japan 1960s-1992, MOF had total control over lending so no bubble (only popped when they lost it).
In these cases, you need to really understand how money is being created and intermediated. If you understand this then you understand why bubbles do and do not occur. If you look at unimportant things like technology, you only have reasons why bubbles do occur (this is the kind of terrible history that you presumably learn at law school).
You also picked one of the absolute worst examples to demonstrate your point. The Greenspan Put was vital, "irrational exuberance" and the contrast between that approach and that of a McChesney Martin (for example) is important. Even just the change in policy under Greenspan...really bad example. I tried but was unable to think of an actual example...
No-one cares about Bitcoin. We are talking about financial history, not Beanie Babies.
For HK stocks, you get the press releases/filings from: http://www3.hkexnews.hk/listedco/listconews/advancedsearch/s... - and this is the annual report, http://www3.hkexnews.hk/listedco/listconews/SEHK/2019/0311/L...
As said though, I have no idea if I am looking at the right company (you sometimes find that there is a holding company or a stock with a similar name or something). Pretty sure it is the same Meituan...but maybe not (and if it is, I still don't understand the losses they booked to equity).
VCs aren't some unique species that have cracked investing. Human nature is the same as always: people will do stupid stuff. If someone turns up with a check for $100m, you don't check to see whether you can invest it safely. You become a true believer, you gather assets, and if you weren't a true believer at the start you will be after you make enough...it always ends badly but this is why cycles happen.
In fact, the last cycle has been particularly unusual because we have actually see the bad firms driving out the good ones (I don't know about VC but it is happening everywhere else). And this is definitely due to monetary policy.
You are right. At the level of the investment, people aren't saying we should seed this company because of monetary policy...but no-one says this in any bubble. Rather what happens is that the demand for securities goes up and finance finds ways to fill this demand. Human nature being what it is, this always ends badly.
To say this another way: people will find endless ways to rationalise a bad decision. And if someone is paying you to make bad decisions sound good...well then, what do you think will happen?
Btw, just generally, I think VCs are less sophisticated than the average investor. The current environment has just been very forgiving. I don't think we will see anything like this again (if central bankers lose control which seems inevitable), literally firms with billions in cumulative losses trading for $10bn+. These IPOed firms will probably destroy hundreds of billions in capital alone.
The number quoted by Bloomberg (quoting from Nikkei) is comprehensive income including the conversion of pre-IPO securities...so not really reflective of operations.
What is kind of staggering is the cumulative losses to equity ~170bn RMB or $25bn. And presumably, there are options and all sorts. Tbh, I am not even sure how this number is correct given the business isn't even ten years old...I don't look at HK companies very often (and I am aware funny stuff happens in HK)...but how the equity account be wrong?
The reason it only shows 26-39 is that Nazis came to power in 1932. The worst year in the GD was 1931-32, other countries were not moving out by 1933, most didn't move out decisively until WW2. The UK isn't a good comparison (the UK was still way ahead of most other nations at this point, Germany wasn't particularly similar).
It is definitely possible that without Schacht, the boom wouldn't have occurred. The constraints on resources were massive and required the invention of a range of complex economic devices to manage. Even at the time, there was the same backwards thinking about this: Germany must have managed to do this because they had the resources. No, they had no resources. What they did was very unusual. The only comparison that occurs is the international monetary co-operation in the 1960s to maintain the $ peg to gold...and even then, the level of sophistication required was nowhere near and the results achieved far less significant.
Yes, the performance of the German economy was considerable. But the point with Schacht for all economic historians is that the German economy was operating under immense constraints. And what impresses is the way Schacht created endless devices to keep production growing despite these challenges.
And yes, they did measure things the same way. The way of the world today is to look at historical statistics and assume that no-one had a clue about economic policy before the 1980s (Germany was actually one of the most earliest adopters of stats in policymaking). But if you actually look at the primary sources, it is apparent that there was actually a great deal of knowledge. And, in some ways, that understanding was far more deep than today (as it was often based on practice and experience). As the article says, Schacht is an example of this.
More broadly: the job of the economic historian is not to work out whether things were "good or bad ideas". Historians realised many decades ago that the answer to these questions is subjective. You have to look at these decisions within the conditions that existed at the time.
Lalalala....ACTION! Supa Kicker!
The passion is inspiring.
EDIT: Vice also did something on these guys (it seems all the BBC does these days is recycle content) - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sy0OOVTmsJI
> workers might be much happier in countries where they can work without the possibility of being fired at any moment
The reason why this is an issue is nothing to do with actually being fired, it is due to the difficulty of getting rehired...which is a bigger issue if labour markets don't function (and in most European nations, as the higher unemployment has risen, the more desperately the privileged few have clung onto their protections worsening the issue).
This is why Denmark went the other way: the logic for inflexible labour markets is only consistent when labour markets are not flexible. Remove that and target spending where it is actually needed i.e. on meeting the needs of the market.
The idea of stronger safety nets is also not particularly true (the idea of strong/weak never made sense to me). Social security is not universal as in the UK or US, it is based on contributions. And the reasons unions work, again in contrast particularly with the UK, is that they collaborate with employers (Denmark's union participation rate is anomalous but even compared with somewhere like Germany).
The issue, and I think this is something that most economists would definitely dispute, is that there are few real hard and fast "laws" of economic behaviour. And this leaves scope to construct theories and even test theories in a way that is not objective. This occurs in other sciences too ofc but there is far more scope for this in economics.
If we go into the meta: I think all disciplines go through this at some point. History went through it in the late 19th century, and eventually got over it by simply acknowledging that historians are human too. Economics is very far from this point but it will get there. And once it becomes more clear what actual knowledge looks like then I think economics will be on more solid footing (I don't think economists understand that no-one believes their bullshit about objectivity, I really don't and it reflects badly on them).
Also, the OP mentions finance...there is a big difference between finance and economics. First, things that get published in academic finance have an effect on the data. If you publish a strategy that works, returns will that strategy will drop off. Second, there is a lot of self-promotion. Finance is a fast-moving, aggressive field which is great because it leads to high output but a lot of the results can't be reproduced.
In particular, "Elite MBAs did perform relatively well as CEOs in healthcare and consumer staples". Not significant statistically but the reason this is true is because both healthcare and staples (until recently) have had a killer run.
So I don't think share price performance is the best metric but...even then...you would still expect to see something totally different to the actual results. The stuff that looks at the portfolios of bankers is more understandable...but this has been shown elsewhere (generally, poor fund managers do better).
There is nothing immoral about gambling. Smoking and alcohol are infinitely more harmful, are they immoral too? On what basis? If you enjoy gambling, fine...good for you. Addiction affects a tiny proportion of the population, under 1%. And we can reduce this by being adults, and working with operators on harm reduction rather than judging people. The implication that people who gamble or gambling addicts are immoral is quite sad. It is common to most theocracies but these are usually places that will rail against immorality of things like gambling and then drop bombs on their citizens the next week. Moral authorities indeed.
Every regulated market has removed the incentive completely for organised crime. In addition to substantial harm reduction measures that actually make it easier for addicts to get help (where I am, gambling addiction charities are well-funded to an almost obscene level i.e. probably $100m+ in a country with a population of tens of millions) and work with operators to exclude these people from any form of gambling. Again though: this isn't unknown. Lots of countries are doing this, you just need to know about the world beyond your small corner.
If you regulate gambling properly, you actually have tools to control harm. If you don't, then you are increasing harm.
More to the point though, the absolute worse way to help people who are sick is to criminalise their sickness. By legalising gambling you can generate money to invest in harm prevention.
The way the US approached the issue has led to terrible outcomes for gambling addicts, funding for organised crime, and has led to the creation of a powerful lobbying groups (in Las Vegas Sands/Adelson) that obstructs progress.
It is kind of bizarre to see these comments in the 21st century. For the rest of the world, these issues have been solved.
That probably sounds slightly crazy but how many people actually do end up leaving and doing something else? Not many. They end up in those jobs because they want the lifestyle, the status, and being "the guy" is critical to their self-image. Faking it would be pointless (it would probably lead to severe unhappiness).
And if you are an employer, your job is to feed into that. I don't think it happens consciously but most of these places have working environments where the stick and carrot are used quite heavily. If you "win", the rewards in status are huge. If you "lose", you will be crucified. And most people who do exit, exit because they lose. Not because they win and decide they have had enough...no-one does that.