Other well known Q.E.s

The economic leaders, i.e. the governments have no clue how this is going to play out. Neither do the so-called experts - the economists, the analysts, the commentators.

Due to the unmapped landscape and the all-pervading fear of this unknown scenario, politicians have literally been given a free reign to try experimental cures at alarming doses.

Just imagine going to the hospital with cancer which has been caused by exposure to some strange kind of radiation called ‘borrowtoomuch’. When you get to the hospital the doctor says he’s never seen such a case before. Then he says that the best they could do was try an experimental cure - by giving you a massive dose of ‘borrowtoomuch’! “Wait,” you remark. “Isn’t that what caused the disease in the first place?” you ask the doctor. He replies, “Yes you are right. But your body has now come to be dependent on it, like a drug addiction. The reason you have got ill is that suddenly you stopped getting it. Perhaps if we pump you full of borrowtoomuch we can jumpstart your system once more. I can’t guarantee the cancer will be cured but maybe we can keep the symptoms at bay!”

The £75 billion quick-fix

That’s what all these enormous fiscal stimuli which are being bandied about like sweeties feel like. An attempt at treating a problem caused by too much credit, by creating further credit. However crazy this all sounds, even we have to admit it does sound intriguing and we wonder if it just might work, but that is only because the true cure seems so tough and unbearable, i.e. to let everything crash and burn, to suffer deflation and depression Japanese-style for a decade or so, let greed vanish and bad companies die, let politicians and public come to their senses and realise you must first save and then spend, let real businesses which provide real services and real products drive a gradual increase in the economy, rather than institutions and individuals borrowing credit and speculating on asset classes and derivatives. This would ultimately be the healthiest way forward, but who wants to go to the physician and take bitter medicine for many years when the surgeon can remove the tumour far quicker, even if he leaves some scars and the risk of recurrence. Even in an idealistic world, this would be a tough choice. However in the real world of politicians who must win the next election, its no choice at all - it’s the surgeon’s quick hand every time.

Right now, the dear old Bank of England is ripping open the chest of the UK money system, and pouring in several gallons of cash. Glug, glug, glug. Can you hear those £75bn filling up the Governments fiscal heart? That heart hopes to pump it out into the arms of the banking system, and hopefully on from there into the hands of industry and business, to shore up productivity and jobs, as well as into our hands, through more mortgage lending. Plus, if that doesn’t work, there’ll be another £75bn ready to be pumped in just for good measure.

Printing presses off to a flying start

Darling & Brown, but where is Prudence?

Bear in mind also, that with so many extra ‘quid’ floating about, and this increased money supply chasing the same goods/assets/services - you know what it spells don’t you friends? Inflation.

Now personally we don’t think that a bit of inflation is a bad thing, in fact we’d rather have a couple of points of inflation each year rather than deflation. That would be healthy. However that level of healthy inflation needs to come from increasing economic activity and increasing productivity leading to increasing wages etc. The kind of inflation we might get from this Q.E. would not be this type of ‘good’ inflation. Instead it would be coming at a time when the economy is doing badly, companies are going bust and unemployment high. This is a time of stagnation in the economy, and inflation due to artificial stimuli at this time of stagnation is known aptly as Stagflation. This is not good, especially if it were to turn into hyper-inflation Zimbabwe-style (give or take a few zeroes!!). In an already depressed job market and time of trouble, the value of the pound in our pocket would plummet even further, and our mortgages would rise again from these historic lows. Its something we will all need to keep watching out for over the coming months.

Liquidity is not the problem!

The core dilemma we foresee with this tinkering with Q.E. is that it is trying to rectify the credit supply. Banks are not lending. The Government hopes that once they are given fresh injections of capital, the credit will start to flow again to businesses and individuals. The trouble is that it is no longer just an issue of credit supply. The banks do now have money to lend, they just don’t want to lend! They are being uber-cautious because they are scared. They don’t know what anything is worth. That’s why you can’t get a buy-to-let mortgage for more than 70% loan-to-value these days. The banks would rather hold on to their capital until the murkiness has cleared and assets have bottomed out in value.

Furthermore, even if they did want to lend, who wants to borrow? The public at large are scared. Everyone is worried about the coming years and is paying-down debt. People have actually started saving and we have entered a thrift-conscious era. Not many people want a new house or a new car (4×4 is now a dirty word, even in Chelsea). Garden centres are doing roaring trade as everyone wants to ‘grow their own’ veg. State schools are finding that their admission applications are rising as more of the middle classes opt for free State education. So even with these billions being pumped in by the Bank of England its no automatic guarantee that the economy will get the boost it needs.

Ultimately, what started out as a credit crunch, that spawned a recession, has now become a Depression. Both ‘credit crunch’ and ‘recession’ are events led by a country’s macroeconomics. A ‘Depression’ on the other hand manifests in the hearts and minds of the citizens. We are now ‘economically Depressed’. Our spending has stopped. You can’t Q.E. us out of our fear at the touch of a button or whirr of the printing press. We won’t feel like spending again no matter how many speeches you give or assurances you give. Not until we get jobs. Not until our firms stop going bust. Not until we feel safe.

Recommended related articles:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/thereporters/stephanieflanders/2009/03/qe_day.html

http://www.fleetstreetinvest.co.uk/shares/market-outlook/quantitative-easing-devalue-pound-11246.html

In return you can have a McDonalds franchise

The following statements are all fact:

(1)The USA is by and large responsible for this Global Credit Crunch turmoil.

(2)They were also the first nation to kill millions of humans with the first atomic bomb.

(3)They are the biggest exporter of war, espionage, economic & military threat, and blackmailing of sovereign nations.

On his political blog, Real Clear Politics, Dennis Prager says,

“One of the most widely held beliefs in the contemporary world — so widely held it is not disputed — is that, with few exceptions, the world hates America. One of the Democrats’ major accusations against the Bush administration is that it has increased hatred of America to unprecedented levels. And in many polls, the United States is held to be among the greatest obstacles to world peace and harmony. “

Although the piece has a heavy right-wing bias, and goes on to say that its largely leftists that hate america and further that there is a lot about America that is also loved, especially by those on the Right, he does finish by asking:

“So what America does the American left love? That is for those on the left to answer. But given their beliefs that America was founded by racists and slaveholders, that it is an imperialist nation, that 35 million Americans go hungry, that it invades countries for corporate profits, and that it is largely racist and xenophobic, it is a fair question. “

BBC poll

It seems that many common Americans do not even realize that they have since long surpassed the UK and other colonial countries as the most hated nation in the world. So this article is about our American friends’ confusion over whether they are hated or not and why?

According to a new BBC poll it wasn’t just George W. Bush’s personality that made America so unpopular but there are underlying foreign-policy issues,” says Steven Kull, director of the Program on International Policy Attitudes, which conducted the BBC poll. “[Obama’s] election alone is not enough to turn the tide. People are still looking to see if there are significant changes in US policies.”

Ex President Bush said that these terrorists hate democracy & freedom and therefore attacked the USA. I beg to differ, those attacks were a result of anti-American hatred more than anti-Democratic sentiments. America, as a self-identified military big brother has been harassing much of the developing world for multiple decades.

“Shock, rage and grief there has been aplenty. But any glimmer of recognition of why people might have been driven to carry out such atrocities, sacrificing their own lives in the process - or why the United States is hated with such bitterness, not only in Arab and Muslim countries, but across the developing world - seems almost entirely absent.” The Guardian, Sep 13 2001.
The main reasons for the overwhelming cry is that the USA has bombed, suppressed Islamic Nations and restricted them financially, commercially and politically. This has snowballed since the demise of the perception of a communist threat. There is utter desperation that Washington is crusading against Islam and that recent events are only an excuse to continue a Christian oppression. Many Muslims believe that the American people have been deceived by their government. Others just want the endless poverty and strikes to stop. There is a strong feeling of repression and of being hated. A mood of resentment toward America and its behaviour around the world has become so commonplace in their countries that it is bound to breed hostility, hatred, and then renewed physical violence. The West calls it “terrorism”, they call it “retribution” against the American symbol of Western oppression. Another sore point is that the USA continues to protect, encourage and finance Israel’s 6 decades of ethnic cleansing in Palestine. The USA thwarts every humane gesture by the United Nations. The USA encourages and financially supports the slaughter of several hundred innocent people in Palestine every year by the Israeli death squads.

Global leaders in consumption

To sustain their lifestyle US citizens consume about 10 to 20 times the resources per capita of the average of the rest of the world including Europe. Americans think they’re the most productive people on Earth. They are not. They don’t produce the most. They just consume the most. Just as one example, they burn about 25% of the fossil fuels which are consumed by all people on Earth, but US citizens are only about 4% of the population of the Earth. So that means that they consume about (25/4)/(75/96) = 8 times the average of all other nations. US citizens consume about twice the fuel of western Europeans for approximately the same standard of living. But when countries which supply critical materials to the USA threaten to deny supply, the USA is quick to go in with the military to ensure continuation. Americans think that their excessive consumption is an indication of their moral superiority, but in fact the opposite is true.

An eye for an eye makes the World blind

Of course, there is no possible moral justification for killing 3000 innocent civilians on 11th Sept 2001. The 9/11 terrorist attack was a deep blow for the USA and the West as a whole. However in the grand scheme, this loss of life was but a mere drop in the ocean compared to the suffering inflicted on the world by the USA. Perhaps I should mention that the murder rate by guns in the USA is about 110 per million per annum or about 30,000 deaths each year for the whole country. So the deaths on 11/09/2001 equalled a typical 5 weeks of murders in the USA. The USA has killed about 150,000 people in Afghanistan and Iraq since 11/09/2001. That’s a 50-to-1 revenge ratio.

You can’t make someone love you by beating them with a stick. Americans should find ways of feeling good without killing people. Killing foreigners is not the only way to feel proud to be American.

Sometimes I wonder if the USA has been using a “Killing the chicken to frighten the monkey” strategy. In other words perhaps the US government does not care if they are killing the wrong people. Maybe they just kill tens of thousands of Muslims so that there will be general fear of the USA to make the world respect the USA. The “chicken-killing” strategy was used by Lenin in 1917/1918 when he ordered thousands of Russians to be killed at random to terrorise the population in general. One of his followers asked for trials so that the innocent could be spared. But Lenin said he could not allow innocent people to feel safe. He said that no one should be allowed to feel immune from the terror.

The USA in many ways is an excellent country. The real reason why the USA is rich and powerful is research. There is no country on Earth that invests so enthusiastically in real research as well as the USA. The problem is that this research is so often at cost to the rest of the world both in wealth and lives. Many of today’s achievements would not be possible without the help or aid of the USA. Many medical or technological advances and much human aid and third world relief comes from this rich nation [As an aside, I remain sceptical about the lunar landing - watching the hollywood film “Capricorn One” did not help the case either.]

Machiavellian mindset

any means (however unscrupulous) can be used by a ruler in order to create and maintain his autocratic government

The USA has only 4% of the world’s people. So having friends is really essential, but Americans won’t make friends as long as they think that other countries are populated only by barbarians and theme park attendants.

America is perceived to stand for its commitment to democracy, the rule of law, human rights, and free speech, which ironically are the very source of the disappointment. It is the country that has a “World Series” of baseball with teams from all over the “World of USA”!

Maybe investing some profits from the USA global positioning system [GPS] into teaching basic geography to the ordinary Americans would help them realise the presence of other poor souls sharing this “world” with them.

Human ingenuity reaches new dizzying heights

Could it be that the building of record breaking Skyscrapers could be used as a tool to predict the onset of economic downturn?

The answer according to economist Andrew Lawrence, research director at Dresdner Kleinwort Wasserstein, is quite possibly, Yes!

Back in Jan 1999 Lawrence put forward a concept which he called The Skyscraper Index.

He suggested that Skyscraper construction seemed to have a direct correlation to business cycles. Many skyscrapers over the past century seemed to have been constructed on the eve of economic downturns, at the end of a business cycle when economic growth had been exhausted. It wasn’t that they caused the downturn, just that they were a predictor of it.

Andrew Lawrence linked this phenomenon to economic factors which seemed to progress through a boom and peak at the end of the boom cycle. These factors were overinvestment, speculation and monetary expansion.

A decline in interest rates at the beginning of a boom has at least three effects which contribute to skyscraper construction. Firstly it drives land prices higher, hence the attractiveness of constructing a tall building with a small footprint and thereby increasing vertical density. Secondly, declining interest rates allow an increase in the average size of a company, creating demand for more office space. Thirdly, low interest rates provide investment to construction technologies that enable developers to break earlier records. All three factors peak at the end of the growth period.

Although some critics have dismissed the index as being an unreliable tool, nevertheless it appeals to the common sense approach when we consider the above mentioned factors in relation to speculation and overinvestment during boom times.

The table below lists previous skyscrapers which were all built on the cusp of recessions, and were often completed after the booms were well and truly over.

Record breaking skyscrapers and associated crises

As for the Burj, the coming year will tell us whether Emaar will be able to add yet another accolade to its collection - that of No.1 Endorser of the Skyscraper Index.

The Burj Dubai - the latest record holder

For more on this indicator, try the following:

Skyscrapers and Business Cycles [Ludwig von Mises Institute]
Skyscraper Index [Wikipedia]



This article first published here on www.dubaipropertycrash.com

Some fresh punches have recently been thrown in this 60 year old boxing match between the two South East Asian nuclear rivals. The latest game was started after the Mumbai attacks when the Indian government blamed Pakistan and was adamant that surely the Pakistani government couldn’t be totally unaware in such an incident when only 10 insurgents caused havoc for a week for the Indian special [and not so special] forces.

Pakistanis have responded by saying that as yet no concrete evidence linking any official Pakistani government agency or even any individual has been provided. I guess they have a point.

Let’s just say for the sake of argument we take the line of reasoning that if the insurgents are proven to be from Pakistan then this fact by itself will prove that the Government of Pakistan was indeed involved in the Mumbai attacks. Then it can be argued in the same fashion that surely the Indian Government is involved at the highest level in the recent high profile Satyam espionage case at the World Bank!

For people unaware of Satyam this Indian IT company is/was run by Ramalinga Raju who has been hailed as one of the leading lights of Indian enterprise. The World Bank who were one of the bigger clients of Satyam discovered that spy software was covertly installed on workstations inside the bank’s Washington headquarters. Was Satyam used as a tool of espionage by the Indian government to steal proprietary information from important agencies, companies and countries?

Frances Karamouzis, an analyst at Gartner says “This is a crisis of trust, it’s not really Satyam at stake; it’s the India Inc. brand”. As a result India’s Sensex index tumbled 7.3 percent on Jan 7th 2009 led by a 78 percent plunge in Satyam after Chairman Ramalinga Raju said profits at the company had been inflated for years and then resigned. Satyam American depositary receipts fell $8.42 or 90 percent to 93 cents before the opening of the New York Stock Exchange, which then halted trading in the stock.

This has brought out into the open that outsourcing to India is becoming increasingly dangerous and the service delivered by the Indian IT companies is in a continued state of decline. Not only is this reflected in the quality of output but also in the falling standards of plain old fashioned business ethics. According to The New York Times of 8th January 2009 “The financial fraud at Satyam is rippling through the technology services industry, as customers scramble to line up other suppliers and rivals look to pick up business. Already, competitors are angling for a share of Satyam’s nearly $2 billion in annual revenue. The big winners from the fallout are likely to be two American companies Accenture and IBM”.

Gartner evaluated 30 countries in three world regions that could address enterprise companies’ outsourcing needs. Considering 10 key criteria, Gartner scored the potential of numerous cities to provide the right mix of English language proficiency, local government support, infrastructure and technical considerations such as data security and “privacy” [yes guys the key word here is privacy - the next paragraph explains.]
The future of offshore telemarketing in India was thrown into doubt after UK’s Channel 4 Dispatches Program revealed the incredible lack of security in India’s call centres. Channel 4 senior reporter, Sue Turton exposes the seedy world of the trade of personal data in Indian call centres. In a 12-month undercover investigation, Turton infiltrated criminal networks which trade British consumers’ bank and other confidential information for huge profits in India, the world’s new call centre capital. The show showed how the process works from beginning to end. Call centres dialling for mobile phone companies extract credit or other banking information from people they sell to which is part of a legitimate sales process. This data including credit card numbers, expiry dates and security codes is stored by the call centre and even though the data is sent through to their clients in the UK, a copy is stored on the databases at the call-centre. This data is then taken out of the call centre through a variety of methods including memory sticks. It is then sold through a network of middlemen to other clients or to criminal gangs for between £5 and £25 per record. In some cases the call centre owners are involved in the sale of this data.

The latest Gartner report confirms that India might not be the only country that comes to mind when considering outsourcing work overseas. The location selection is a key factor companies need to consider when thinking of sending work overseas. The city they choose will impact the success of the offshore engagement. “Whether you have a country-led or vendor-led approach to offshore services, you must understand the offshore location landscape,” according to a presentation by Gartner research vice president Ian Marriott. He further adds “Determine which vendors are the right fit for your organization, don’t just seek the leaders”.

Something tells me Pakistan stands to benefit from the unfortunate Indian turmoil because Gartner had previously released a report titled, “Analysis of Pakistan as an Offshore Service Location” which placed the country in the First Category destinations and also acknowledged that Pakistan’s labour costs were 30% lower than India’s, while Telecom costs were the lowest of any outsourcing destination. No wonder Pakistan had a USD 1Billion worth of outsourcing business closed in 2008.

Even in this time of Economic doom and gloom [mostly caused by confusing policies and not enough action by the ruling Pakistan People's Party] Pakistan’s private sector is ever inspiring and has the power to impress and lead. I would start by mentioning that Pakistan enjoys the world’s largest WiMAX network. Wateen Telecom rolled out WiMAX in 17 cities throughout Pakistan - can USA catch up?

Futuristic chalets in Islamabad

Perhaps I should also tell our scientifically minded readers that Around 27 Pakistani scientists and technicians took part in the flawless start to the CERN’s LHC [Large Hadron Collider] ‘Big Bang’ experiment that will re-enact the first moments of the universe. ‘Fifteen physicists, ten engineers, five Lasers and Opto-electronics experts, six computer professionals and six students from National Centre for Physics (NCP) and Pakistan Atomic Energy Commission (PAEC) are involved in the experiment.

Pakistan has also bagged 3 of the 16 APICTA [The Asia Pacific ICT] 2008 awards. However I am not too happy to report that Karachi based Integrated Dynamics are providing the state-of-the-art UAV [unmanned aerial vehicles] to the US border protection service which are probably indirectly being used to kill fellow Pakistanis! These UAVs, with their sophisticated navigation and monitoring software [also written in Pakistan] have been deployed to protect the borders of the United States. Even Wired magazine covered Pakistan’s growing UAV capabilities in one of its articles.

Staying on the old adage of building a tank and then chasing after an anti tank weapon, Pakistani scientists are also developing a sophisticated system to hit high flying spy planes as recently confirmed by Federal Defence Production Minister Abdul Qayyum Khan Jatoi. Much of the involved technology is in networking the disparate radar systems - writing detection software and applications that can interpret large amounts of raw data emanating from passive sensors deployed over vast geographical areas. Sophisticated UAVs, especially those covered with Radar Absorbent Materials provide a very small RCS [Radar Cross Section]. Herein lies the challenge of detecting them. It’s not very different to an air defence that can detect and tackle stealth aircraft. In some ways, perhaps even more challenging since the audio signatures from slow flying stealth UAVs are smaller than those of their manned counterparts.

No wonder the Indian government stopped its forces on attempting any “surgical strikes” within Pakistan. According to an Indian defence analyst the Indian army lacked key artillery equipment and adequate ammunition supplies. According to him “The 400-odd Bofors guns we bought in the 1980s are falling apart for want of spares. The 600-odd Shilka anti-aircraft cannons are in desperate need of upgrade. And, this is just the tip of the iceberg,” he wrote, quoting an unidentified retired general. The same general disclosed that India’s numerically vast tank fleet was in poor shape and it did not have any mobile artillery to speak of.

Most of the Indian armaments are still of Russian origin and due to Soviet breakup there is no backup for servicing or spares. The Aamir Khan starring bollywood film “Rang De Basanti” was also based on the ever crashing historic Indian ‘flying coffin’ MIG aircrafts. The Indian military is in tatters and feared that the Pakistanis would take Indian territory in case of a war. Moreover the US forces are using Karachi port for its supplies to the troops in Afghanistan and the Indian Govt just could not take the chance of any of their “surgical strikes” taking out a US convoy or plane because then uncle Sam would send Bruce Willis to kick some butt.

In comparison Pakistan has a ready churning program of Al-Khalid MBT [main battle tank] and joint strike fighter plane JF-17 Thunder built in Pakistan with the co-operation of long standing friend China and with the help of France a Mirage Rebuild factory is in full swing. Pakistan also has acquired the technology from France to manufacture Agosta class submarines. A few squadrons of F16s and A5s are also ever ready for some special urgent pizza deliveries to Indian hot spots.

What does all of this say about our dear countries of India and Pakistan? You won’t be surprised to know that Pakistan is spending a major portion of its budget on defence to keep India at bay. No doubt India does the same. Why oh why????????

It’s not like Pakistan and India don’t have more needy causes. The recent terrific bollywood flick Slumdog Millionaire gave the most honest and raw version of the poverty rife in the Indian heartlands. Unfortunately this tends to be hidden from the world’s attention through the perverse portrayal of sari-clad super-rich clans propagated daily on satellite channels like Zee TV and StarPlus. The ever conspiring women depicted in these never-ending screensaver soap operas are always in full makeup during the rain, in the bed or even at the death bed. They talk only in hundreds of millions and every man in the cast has either married them or else is manipulated by them! Bravo to directors like Danny Boyle, who has shown a glimpse of the reality for the impoverished Indian underclasses in Slumdog. There were some great performances by Dev Patel (Jamal), Madhur Mittal (Salim) and Freida Pinto (Latika). However Anil Kapoor (gameshow host) was straight out of one of the Zee TV dramas mentioned above.

Big Brother points gun at Little Brother

Unless we have an epic scenario of drifting sub-continental tectonic plates, causing Pakistan & India to get separated [now THAT would make a great movie – any director listening?] both the countries have to realise that they are conjoined twins. India’s side may have a few more heads though! Anyway pun aside India definitely has had better rulers than Pakistan, for example the current Indian President Manmohan Singh is definitely more educationally polished then his Pakistani counterpart. Manmohan Singh earned his DPhil from UK’s Oxford University as compared to Pakistan’s President Asif Ali Zardari [zard-aaree = yellow saw] whose biggest and only qualification is marrying Benazir Bhutto [RIP] the twice Prime Minister of Pakistan. Zardari is also responsible for telling the US VP Candidate Sarah Palin that she is “gorgeous” and said: “Now I know why the whole of America is crazy about you”. When the photographers asked the two to keep shaking hands, he replied: “If he insists I might hug you”. This was just one day after he delivered an emotional speech at the UN in NewYork waving a photograph of his deceased wife who was assassinated only a few months prior.

It should also be mentioned that India are a stronger democracy with the proof that their Army unlike Pakistan so far has never intervened in the country’s affairs, not even when leaders like Indira Gandhi or Rajiv Gandhi were assassinated.

I have said this before and I am saying it again - Pakistan and India are two nations full of energetic and very intelligent individuals. Together we run the worlds IT networks, and we make up a large portion of the western world’s health and telecommunications professionals.

No prestigious educational institution on the face of this earth has been without a Pakistani or Indian student coming on the top. For the sake of saving and developing our economies this boxing rope-a-dope has to end. Let’s face it, both countries cannot risk to use nuclear weapons against each other because both are scared of the fallback, both are aware of the MAD [mutually assured destruction]. So why are we wasting our energies and resources on trivial issues fighting each other? Why can’t we use our brains to better our peoples’ lives with food, health, clean water, security, communication…? Anyone?

jq@ultranomics.com

Happiness is such a vague concept, one that means so many different things to different people. In economics terms I guess one could argue that happiness is that state of being which we spend our working hours in the pursuit of. There are those lucky few who actually enjoy the work they do and who therefore derive happiness from their jobs. Yet still even those people are not totally happy. They still aim for a mythical time, somewhere in the future, when they will have no financial worries, all their reasonable desires will be purchasable, they will have leisure time, good health, an esteemed status amongst their peers, and their family around them will be in a similar state of affairs. Yes I know that is very generic, but I reckon that’s a reasonable shot at the transcendent question.

I wonder what my father’s idea of happiness was when he arrived in uk 50 years ago in search of a better life? At that time I think the majority of those desires mentioned above probably applied, but in totally different proportions to today. For one thing, the sense of family responsibility of economic migrants from Asia in those days was very high compared to today, and the happiness derived from knowing you were supporting your loved ones in the village (who mostly never turned out to be thankful) ranked high on the list. Those guys were highly altruistic. Personal comfort and possessions ranked much further down than is the case today. Even we, their children here in the uk had to keep our requirements to a bare minimum (oh the stories I could tell of scrimping and saving!!) But you know what, we didn’t know any better, and I guess we were happy. In fact we were truly happy - we at least had the love of our parents. Benjamin Franklin wrote in “Poor Richard’s Almanack” that “A child thinks that 20 pounds and 20 years can never be spent.” I remember thinking that!

For my generation (the 2nd generation british asians) reaching adulthood in the uk towards the end of the 20th century, our future desires and goals were like a carrier wave. On that carrier wave was piggy-backed the signal transmitted from the hearts of our parents. After their industrious achievements and success of paying the debt of servitude to those back home, their youth was gone, and they now made a vow to not let their children endure the same soul-destroying treadmill. Hence the rise of the doctor-lawyer-accountant-engineer army of british asians amongst whom I can be counted.

Our generation now sees happiness through the eyes of the 21st century. Our concepts put leisure and personal pleasure far higher up on that list. Family responsibility is somewhat further down (although still there). The experience of our forefathers has been diluted, perhaps even lost. What they learnt through bitter hard graft and toil is evident in the house, or in some cases houses, which they bequeath us and in the businesses they pass on to us. Their emphasis on saving can be seen in the pensions which they receive each month. Their globalised equity is evident whenever you travel back to your village or town of origin back in Pakistan/India etc and people there show you some respect (more so if you flash some cash but its there even if you don’t as long as your dad once did!).

In this way, to some degree, our parents ultimately achieved their happiness. We are still looking for ours.

With the new Great Depression upon us, we may get a chance to revert to older fashioned pathways to happiness. Ways which involve saving and working hard before ‘earning’ the right to own a house or a large car. We may find ourselves getting pleasure from more of the things that don’t cost - the walks in the park, the mountain hike, the nights in playing monopoly or watching a dvd, cooking a pizza with the kids.

The coming year will bring mixed blessings to us in the West. On the one hand we will have a toning down of our consumerist tendencies forced upon us, but on the other hand we just may realise that happiness was never about all that stuff anyway.

Wishing all our readers every happiness and success for 2009.

The national broadcasting corporations of both countries, the BBC & PTV, resort to demanding a television fee from almost everyone who has a television. Pakistan does it through adding a nominal supplement of Rs.25 to the electricty bill of each one of its 13.9 million electricity consumer base. Pakistan Television [PTV] started to earn a hefty amount of Rs 4.1 billion annually from 2004 onwards through this method. Prior to this arrangement people had to pay their television fee as a separate tax. This addition to the electricity bill was a hundred per cent jump from what the corporation was earning previously (Rs 2.1 billion from approximately seven million television licence holders in the country.) In the UK the annual licence fee is £139.50 which is paid by more than 25.3 million UK households equating to £3.4 billion of monopoly money for the BBC.

The latest audit report submitted to Dr Shahid Masood, PTV’s Chairman/Managing Director, found some serious irregularities and inefficiencies in the channel’s operations. One serious oversight and missed opportunity was that prime time advertising rates had not been raised since 1999! The comprehensive audit report also pointed out that PTV’s operating cost per employee is Rs 420,000 per annum while revenue per employee is Rs 418,000! Dr Shahid Masood is now being offered other BIG responsibilities elsewhere - perhaps some Pakistani bureaucrat or politician was displeased by his efforts to streamline PTV’s affairs?

As for the UK TV Licence Fee, a recent Ipsos Mori survey asked people whether the licence fee, which raises a total of £3.4 billion a year, was good value for money. A significant 47% thought it was not. Sir Antony Jay the co-creator of classic BBC sitcoms Yes Minister and Yes Prime Minister has asked “what was the point in the BBC spending £200m just to get Formula One away from ITV? How does that benefit the licence fee payer who could watch it on either channel?”.
Is it just me or can you also see the similarities between the BBC & PTV’s affairs, like governmental control, national broadcasters being used as a money making machine and a propaganda tool, heavy involvement of red tape/bureaucracy, inherent inefficiencies etc? The list goes on. Since we are based in the UK I am more dented by the BBC fee so it’s no wonder that the BBC takes most of my attention today.

I strongly believe that paying £6 million per annum for the talents of the likes of Jonathon Ross out of tax payers money just cannot be justified especially during the credit crunch. For those of us immune to his cheeky chappy charms and mundane film reviews £6m p.a. is too much to pay for Jonathan Ross. The fact that a chunk of that fee goes to pay Ross’ sidekicks to laugh at his terrible fortune cookie jokes explains the real reason for those laughs! How can the BBC justify extorting £140 each year from me and 25.3 million others to pay for it?

The BBC is a public service broadcaster funded by a compulsory ransom. In these troubled times why doesn’t the BBC take a 50% pay cut? In the case of Jonathan Ross let’s make a special exception of a 100% cut and release him from his contract to find out if he is as valuable as deemed by the BBC bosses and whether the market holds him in such high regard to be head hunted by another channel for the £6 million salary. The recent Jonathan Ross and Russell Brand affair has tarnished the already tainted BBC reputation by bringing into public focus the ridiculous sums paid to its so called star celebrities. On top of that they could sack a few people keeping in line with all the banks and major UK companies in these tough times and cut out a few obscure channels. Then they would surely be able to halve the license fee or better still get rid of it.

According to figures obtained under the freedom of information request by the Lib Dems last year £10.4m was spent by the BBC on flights, out of which £3.1m went on business or first class tickets. The BBC’s own guidelines say that flying business class should only happen in ‘exceptional circumstances’. Party transport spokesman Norman Baker said the costs were “staggering” and money should not be “splashed around”. Mr Baker also said “It is hard to believe that there can be £3m worth of exceptional circumstances in a single year”. The BBC spent just under £5m on train tickets last year, about £520,000 of which went on first class travel. This total for 2006/07 was £4.8m. So why is it so important sending a bunch of reporters to foreign countries for reporting the same news from multiple locations in the same country? Surely one person would be enough! It just seems like the BBC enjoys squandering our money.

This just in… surprise surprise! Yet another example of the constantly falling standards at the British Broadcasting Corporation. The below findings conclude Ofcom’s investigations of audience participation in the BBC programmes broadcast up to and including 2007:

[Thu, 18 Dec 2008 10:36] Ofcom has today fined the BBC a total of £95,000 for breaches of Ofcom’s Broadcasting Code (“the Code”) in respect of its services Radio 2 and BBC London 94.9FM. The fines have been imposed for the unfair conduct of competitions. Ofcom has found the BBC in breach of Rule 2.11 of the Code (“Competitions should be conducted fairly…”) for inviting listeners to enter competitions in pre-recorded programmes that were broadcast ‘as live’.

Ofcom considered that these breaches of the Code were serious. The investigation found that BBC had repeatedly taken pre-meditated and deliberate decisions to include audience competitions in pre-recorded programmes. The BBC invited listeners to enter these competitions at the time of the broadcasts, in the full knowledge that the audience stood no chance of either entering or winning.

The full adjudications are available on the Ofcom website here

Perhaps if you didn’t actually think it was okay to force an entire country to subsidise the viewing habits of a decreasing BBC fan club this would not be happening. Next is the issue of compulsion of payment. People are given no choice about whether or not to pay for the BBC. If they have a TV they must purchase a licence. That to me and all of the people who signed this petition at www.petitions.number10.gov.uk/FairpayTV/ is unacceptable. This petition which was submitted by David Cormack at the Number 10 Downing Street website asking the Prime Minister to “Abolish the UK TV licence and permit advertising and other means of finance generation to the BBC” had this response from the government:

“During the latest review of the BBC’s Royal Charter (completed in 2006), the Government considered whether the television licence was still the best way to fund the Corporation. We also sought the views of members of the public on this and other BBC issues as part of the Charter Review consultations. When compared with the alternatives, the television licence fee was widely considered to be the best way to pay for the BBC for the period of the new Charter that is to say until 2016. None of the alternative funding options would enable the BBC to continue to provide its full range of public services while safeguarding the Corporation’s independence. It was therefore agreed that no changes would be made. We intend to review the scope for alternative funding mechanisms once we have the conclusions of Ofcom’s review of public service broadcasting (due to be completed in 2009). This will take in account the final costs of switchover and the outcome of the wider review of Public Service Broadcasting (PSB) funding to which the Government committed in the Charter Review White Paper”.

John Lloyd writes in the Financial Times in his article The Shadow of Prison Bars on TV Screens :
This ad which was put out by consortium of companies contracted by the BBC TV Licensing is a disaster. You may have seen the posters of a huge memory chip which, vastly magnified, looks like a cityscape. Beneath it are written the words: ‘Every unlicensed address is in our database. Evasion is not an option’ (look on my database, ye viewers, and obey!). What are they thinking of those who collect our TV licence money? It reminds us that if we have a television we must support the corporation on pain of criminalisation (licence fee evasion accounts for more than half the criminal convictions among women.) It does so by giving substance to a “surveillance society” as mentioned in the George Orwell novel Nineteen Eighty Four where Big Brother spies on the population through telescreens.

TV Licence Evaders Beware - Big Brother is watching

A spokesman for TV Licensing said: “If you only watch the iPlayer and watch or record no live programmes, you don’t need a television licence, although very few people are likely to do that.” What that spokesman forgot to mention is that more than 700,000 viewers are downloading BBC programmes every day through the iPlayer service. Launched at the beginning of this year it is expected to have one million daily users by Christmas and can be watched without a licence fee!

Mark Thompson, the Director-General of the BBC, spelt out the limits of the current system when he told MPs on the Culture Select Committee that “if you watch live television through a mains powered device, you have to pay a licence fee” and that “live content is the key point in the current definition”. Most content on the iPlayer has been transmitted previously so the service is not classified as live. Don Foster, the Liberal Democrats’ culture spokesman said: “It does look like the BBC have shot themselves in the foot a little by creating this licence fee loophole with the iPlayer.”

The BBC is funded by TV License fees paid by anyone in the UK who watches television. They don’t have to watch the BBC but have to pay this license fee in any case. Although it is called a “fee”, since you have to pay it regardless of whether you receive the service it is actually a tax and was recently officially acknowledged as a tax. So by calling it a “fee” are they not misrepresenting something that is a tax?

Looking at this TV tax deeply with the help of ultranomics spectacles you will find that it’s not just that it’s a nuisance for TV viewers of all denominations, whether BBC watchers or not, it also has far reaching implications like forcing poor families, especially women, into criminality as mentioned above. According to the Daily Express of 24th November 2008, last year the BBC prosecuted more than 150,000 people for licence evasion. It is claimed women are much more likely to be caught because they are more often at home during office hours when the TV inspectors usually call. In the The Howard Journal of Criminal Justice Christina Pantazis & David Gordon have stated that “The purpose of this paper is to identify and address important gaps in criminology regarding the extent and nature of female criminality. A neglected area of academic interest is investigated namely offences relating to television licence evasion”.

The BBC should find a way to place their usage taxes on the signal and not the device itself. Why can they not make it a pay as you go subscription service which is technically possible and practiced by Sky premium movie channels and many Asian channels like Geo TV, Sony ARY Digital etc. or better still abolish the fee altogether like Australia and many other countries did and make it free by resorting to advertising and by selling BBC “quality” programmes internationally. It’s just not fair to keep demanding ever increasing TV tax from people who feel the BBC does not suit their tastes and who have a lot of alternatives to watch instead. Maybe a zero tolerance approach to government bureaucracy might work as mentioned in this edition of The Daily Reckoning.

For PTV I would say it should now be privatised because gone are the days when we used to have quality comedy programmes like fifty fifty or dramas like waaris which had a cross border fan following and had the actual effect of bringing traffic to a standstill whilst live on-air. School children bought each episode in small pocket size story books [I was one of those kids]. With the advent of private channels and the Indian media invasion PTV now stands for Purana [old] Tele Vision rather than what it used to be i.e. Pakistan Television.

For the BBC I would like to quote an excerpt of an article written by Emily Bell of The Guardian newspaper “We are still no nearer to deciding what exactly the BBC is, given that it is now much more than a broadcaster”.

Are you sick to death yet of the credit crunch/subprime crisis/global meltdown/worldwide recession ? Have we missed any of the Armageddon terminology being used these days? Probably - so please, email us with your suggestions and we will publish a full list in the next Ultraletter.

The thing is, the current situation unfolding across the world is the worst of its kind for a generation. This one is the big one - a recessionary storm of tsunami-scale proportions. Yet tell us, dear dedicated readers, does it feel that way to you? Deep within are you feeling the fear and the panic? Do you lie awake at night and feel sick through the day?

For those currently threatened with repossession or job loss, the answer to this question will undoubtedly be yes. Yet for the vast majority of us, we suspect that it still feels like just another scary news story, albeit one that has been going on for longer than most now. We know something bad has happened and we can see that prices of houses in our street have fallen a bit. But nausea and panic? …..Not really.

Take for example the stock market. After spending the first half of 2008 well above the 12000 mark, the Dow Jones Index fell to a low point of 7552 on Nov 20th. Yet since then there has been somewhat of a retracing and the Dow Jones ended the last week at just over 8400. Overall this was a positive week for the stock market, despite President Bush (fresh from dicing with the deadly dinner shoes) agreeing a multi-billion bailout for the obviously terminally-ill american car industry, and in spite of the desperate rate cutting by the Fed to a record low of 0.25% with the promise to print as much money as needed to bailout the nation, prosaically called ‘Quantitative Easing’.

a misleading stock market indicator

There is no doubt that if my pet cat was thrown from the top of the Empire State Building and then observed to spring back up off the pavement (sidewalk) - there would be a truly heartfelt impulse to believe that the pet had survived the fall. Yet one’s intellect would still be the best judge and we would realise, if we were sane people, that more than likely the moggy is indeed dead.

Unfortunately, the share traders and financial pundits out there are still listening to their hearts right now. They are hoping against the odds that tiddles the cat is still alive and has merely sprained a cat-ankle which is already on its way to getting better after a few shakes of the leg.

We on the other hand, remain with yellow pages in hand, looking for the number of the nearest pet cemetery.

You too should be very wary of this bounce. This is danger territory friends - a classic post bubble bounce. Much of it is down to technical traders trying for some short term gains. There are also short sellers in there, covering their trades. But also, average people still have hope left in them. They still remember the good times. Something in them thinks that the good days have just taken a breather and no doubt will be back again some moment soon. There are those who are counting on Obama doing a magic trick in early 2009 and lifting the economy with his bailout initiatives. The recent decline has not been internalised. People still view it all as some phenomenon that is in major part affecting those other than themselves. They look pitifully at their poorer neighbours who are obviously feeling the pinch. So the fall becomes a ‘buying opportunity’. The financial pundits are complicit - they tell us that stocks always go up in the long run. While this is no doubt true, it still doesn’t mean this is the time to pile in nor does it inform us as to how long the long term might be. The element of ‘risk’ is perhaps still being misunderstood at this juncture.

These ’sucker rallies’ happen in bear markets, we all know that. We are still too hopeful and curiously watching the show, chatting about it, considering whether or not to make a ‘play’ or sit it out some more. We see the daily doom, the companies in strife, the unemployment levels rising and the repossession levels growing. But still the worldwide indices are holding their nerve. We would humbly suggest that weighing things up in total, it is not worth taking upwards bets at this point, even though there may be some sorely tempting rallies in the next 6 months.

If you really believe in buying and holding, and do not mind the long term being more than a decade then we are sure that buying into high quality best-of-breed companies will work out well over that time frame. However if you are aiming for an investment span of 5 to 10 years, then be exceedingly careful with your selections.

When your neighbours look like this, time to buy shares again!

The latest round of interest rate cuts around the world have taken rates to amongst their lowest points in half a century. In the UK, USA and Japan they are approaching 0% and according to some analysts are likely to get there soon.

It hardly seems fair.

Yet there is another school of thought, which predates our modern day economists by a fairly wide margin and that could shed an alternative light on the debate. We all know (or should do) that the three major monotheistic faiths, Judaism, Christianity and Islam all have in their literature a prohibition on interest. The Torah, The Bible and The Quran all advise against dealing in interest, whether charging it or even paying it. References on these can easily be googled so I won’t elaborate here.

To my understanding of the idea behind this prohibition, it seems that just like the Paradox of Thrift mentioned above, there is another paradox when it comes to interest. Although at an individual level it may seem totally reasonable and even desirable for banks to extend loans in return for interest so that we can buy a house or start a business, on the macro-economic level it may eventually play a large part in causing the booms and busts that we experience. The theists will argue that taken as a whole, the harm caused by interest is far greater than the good that might come of it, hence it is not allowed. It is a complex subject and not one that can be covered in detail in this Ultraletter, but one worthy of a separate article which we promise to write up soon in the name of research and understanding. In the meantime here is an excellent guide from one of the UK’s leading ethical financial advisers, 1stethical.com, on the subject of Interest based lending in the modern banking system

At the crux of it though, the ‘good savers’ that put their cash away into savings accounts were after interest income without risk, or making money directly on their money without doing any economic activity, e.g. trading or renting out an asset. They were not actually contributing to the economy by spending or investing, but rather trying to earn money whilst taking no risk, i.e. capital was secure. Accordingly since no risk is being taken, to be honest they deserve no reward. It could be argued that its the people buying houses, paying stamp duty and VAT in the process, then spending thousands doing up their houses in the pursuit of happiness and profit who are the real stars of the economy. They are the ones who put their butts on the line! Those amongst them who took too great a risk, i.e. self-certified loans beyond their means or where they had a shaky cashflow, have been punished automatically by losing the asset they acquired.

The Board of 'The Bank of God' do some blue-sky thinking

Suffice to say that with falling rates across the globe, whether willingly or not, the world’s bankers are getting closer to a more divine banking system month-by-month! We wonder though if they will ever see the light. Our breaths are not being held !

I remember learning in biology class about Darwinism and survival of the fittest. We were taught that the dinosaurs became extinct 65 million years ago due to some cataclysmic event, most likely a comet impact, from which they were unable to recover. Does this sound familiar at all, Detroit folk? No doubt that dinosaurs walked the earth for over 165 million years, but when their time was up, it was up! There was no bailout - period!

But it had to be that way - they were no longer viable in the changing climate. Their large size meant they were resource-hungry and inefficient. They’d had it easy for too long. They could not adapt, so nature allowed their era to come to a close. Were it not for that event however, it’s unlikely that the meteoric rise of the mammals could have occurred. The wondrous creation known as Homo Sapiens may never have had its time. We have been around perhaps only a couple of hundred thousand years - yet look at the astonishing things we have done.

The point is that entities, whether species or companies, should not be given life-support beyond their natural end. If we do that, we will never find out what ingenious ideas or objects may have come in their place. In any case, even if we do try, the end is usually just postponed, not averted.

T Rex was late again to the Extinction Convention

We can understand the quandary facing the politicians. The US car industry reckons it accounts for 1-in-10 US jobs, of which 250,000 are direct employees. In addition, a bankruptcy or failure of the Detroit Three would threaten billions of dollars of financial instruments, according to credit market analysts. On an international level there are also many hundreds of thousands of jobs in related industries that are likely to suffer. So there are a lot of people’s livelihoods at stake here, and we are not callous enough to not care about all of that, so we say go ahead lawmakers, give it a shot. Where you have spent billions on the bank bailouts, why not give some to the car makers too? If you like you can send a couple of cheques our way too. We are sure you wouldn’t even notice a few K’s amongst all those billions.

Ultimately though, it appears that these corporates have already squandered their advantages. Their cars are inefficient and the quality is simply not there. They had decades to get it right. They didn’t have to export since their target market, i.e. the biggest consumers of cars in the world, was at their doorstep. They could understand their customers needs since they were from amongst them. They had the ear of politicians and finance was easy. It was all downhill driving. Yet now the world has decided that they do not want Detroit cars. They want German and Japanese cars. Maybe they don’t want cars at all and they just want LCD TVs instead. So by bailing them out, congress is saying to the world “NO, you must have our cars!” - The world will answer, “Hello? We don’t want them!!”

2009 ain’t lookin’ too good for the Detroitosaurus Rex.

What the…….!

No really, these are two funky new terms that we have come across this week whilst surfing the web and of course, we like keeping our readers up to trend with the latest fashions.

So - who fancies joining the new Frugalistas?

It’s the latest fashion of the thrifty chic. Living to excess is so last year. Expensive restaurants, SUVs, luxury holidays and overseas homes? - how passe! Definitely no longer cool. ‘Frugalista’ is the new black. Yes folks - you too can be poor and stylish !

Find some hot tips at sites such as Tips From The Frugalista Moms and The Frugalista Files

On the other hand, if you believe Barack Obama, we must all spend, spend, spend - if not at the consumer level then certainly at the governmental level. Its the only way to lift our economy out of the black pit of recession. Apparently! Nick Robinson of the BBC calls this philosophy Obamanomics, which reminds us of a website we quite approve of

In essence what we are alluding to here is something called The Paradox of Thrift - a term coined by the economist John Maynard Keynes in the 1930s, during the Great Depression. He stated that although being frugal and thrifty seems to be the best policy for individuals, as far as the overall economy goes it can be damaging. So the paradox is that the more we save, the more we reduce demand for goods and therefore the worse the economy gets. It can be quite a vicious circle. The slumping economy means businesses invest less, hire less and increase redundancies. Ultimately the effect cascades through the system and overall income for everybody declines, leading to less money for people to be able to put aside and save. Simply put, as a society overall, the more we save the less we earn. In this way the decline self perpetuates. Bear in mind this is all a theory.

In fact it is part of the Keynesian economic theory that is currently in fashion with Gordon Brown, Barack Obama and their global counterparts.

John Keynes’ suggested solution to the Paradox of Thrift conundrum was that to offset the thrift of consumers in times of recession, the government must step in and take their place. Keynes argued that the state should increase public spending - on hospitals, roads, infrastructure projects etc. in order to inject cash into the economy and try to keep businesses humming and people in jobs. This is even more vital when interest rates are also dropping and deflation (falling prices) is happening. Falling prices can reinforce the thrift instinct in individuals when it comes to big-ticket items because no-one wants to buy a new house or new car if they can see that in 6 months time these items will be even cheaper. Hence they stash the cash and kill the till.

Across the ocean, Obama has a Lightbulb moment………….

The Keynes effect is in full force over in the USofA. In fact it seems there is no end to the amount of money congress is willing to hand out to the ailing US economy. A fortnight ago another half trillion tax payer dollars were earmarked to ‘fight the crunch’. This time Bush (remember him?) wanted to address credit and housing, which experts say must recover to pull out of recession. That’s on top of the previous $470 billion bailout of the Wall St financial institutions (Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and the rest).

Remember this is in the light of the steepest slump in US consumer spending for 30 years. Not only that but this weekend we heard that US employers axed 533,000 jobs in November, the biggest job cut since 1974. The unemployment rate is now 6.7% which is the highest in 15 years. Yet more record breaking statistics, the likes of which we are kind of getting fatigued of hearing now.

When Obama steps in in January he wants to hand out a further $500 billion +. This will be a ‘jobs rescue package’ with a definite ‘Green’ tint. He says that an “Immediate Infusion of money is needed to jumpstart the system” - looks like Obama has some surgeons and motor mechanics on the fiscal team! Amongst his many green-tinted Keynesian initiatives will be to make government buildings energy efficient by changing all the lightbulbs. Also new alternative energy projects will be an important theme. All these projects will create employment. Strangely though, his other initiatives such as increased road building and bridge construction as well as bailing out the big-3 car manufacturers, although meant to create jobs, are hardly going to help the environment. But right now the mantra is, that the price of doing nothing far outweighs that of the Obamanomics megaspend.

Rest-assured, like any theory, the Obamanomics-Keynesian theory also has its detractors. These critics feel that the infrastructure schemes will simply take too long to get off the ground and out of the planning stages to have any meaningful effect. By the time these projects get on line, the economy might already be past the rock-bottom stage anyway. Furthermore the effect known as ‘Rational Expectations’ may kick in. The general population may come to realise that all this hyper government spending will one day in the future have to be recouped through higher taxes. This expectation may make people spend even less than before and save even more, thus somewhat negating the effect of the increased public spending. Tricky isn’t it? But intriguing!

The biggest worry is that these strategies will not prevent a recession or depression, and worse still we may end up with Stagflation - the thankfully rare malady of a stagnating economy coinciding with a spike in inflation, such as that experienced in the 1960s and 70s, which took until the 80s to recover from (I promise to touch upon the how and why of what stagflation is in the next Ultraletter - so stay tuned - I don’t want to fry your brain cells and mine all at once! )

In the UK Gordon Brown and Alistair Darling are going hell-for-leather down the same route as Bush and Obama. The Germans are meanwhile hissing with scorn. Their finance minister, Peer Steinbrück, tore into Gordon Brown’s £12.5bn cut in VAT, describing the move as “crass Keynesianism” that would raise Britain’s national debt to levels that would take a generation to pay off

Whether we are about to see a new era of Stagflation, possibly on a global scale remains to be seen. Even we are intrigued to see if Keynesianism will do the trick this time around. In case it doesn’t just remember we were dubious all along.