Showing posts with label World War II. Show all posts
Showing posts with label World War II. Show all posts

Monday, October 13, 2014

Trade Agreements Bring Peace

English: Red
English: Red (Photo credit: Wikipedia)


India and Pakistan, take heed.

Network Theory Reveals The Hidden Link Between Trade And Military Alliances That Leads to Conflict-Free Stability
There was a time when historians focused largely on events as the be all and end all of history. But in recent years, there has been a growing understanding that a complex network of links, alliances, trade agreements and so on play a hugely important role in creating an environment in which conflict (or peace) can spread. ..... “The pressure to economize on alliances conflicts with stability against the formation of new alliances, which leads to instability and would suggest chaotic dynamics,” they say. “This instability provides insights into the constantly shifting structures and recurring wars that occurred throughout the nineteenth and first half of the twentieth centuries.” ...... Between 1820 and 1959, there were 10 times as many wars per year on average between each possible pair of countries than between 1960 and 2000 ..... it is the formation of trade links between countries that has created the stability that has prevented wars. ..... there has been a rapid increase in global trade since World War II, not least because of the advent of container shipping in the 1960s. ..... trade provides a reason to maintain an alliance .... these economic considerations reduce the incentive to attack another country since trade will be disrupted ......... a rich family of stable networks ...... the initiating event is a poor predictor of the eventual size of an epidemic, fashion or war.

Friday, April 22, 2011

Teamwork

Fast Company: What LeBron James And The Miami Heat Teach Us About Teamwork: What LeBron and company are attempting to do applies to any organization that's serious about winning. ...... their mutual sacrifice is a resounding vote for teamwork. Teamwork among superstars ....... Which tech company, when given the chance, doesn't raid the talent pool, stocking up on the world's best execs and engineers in the hopes of racing past the competition? Late last year, Mark Zuckerberg personally persuaded Lars Rasmussen, the cocreator of Google Maps, to join a host of elite ex-colleagues at Facebook. ....... For the most-sought-after talent, company loyalty has given way to a desire for a big, bold short-term project -- developing a breakthrough product, pursuing a new market, expanding into China ...... more and more people work from remote locations, and effective team building becomes an essential priority ...... how to define your role without subverting the group dynamic. ...... how to get a group of disparate personalities to gel and excel before they move on to the next gig ...... Like Wade, James now meets regularly with reporters. ..... the team's leaders have done what stars need to do when they merge: show a willingness to sacrifice. ...... New hires perform better when they bring a former colleague with them ...... Nothing brings a team together like a common enemy. ...... Sequestered 600 miles from Miami, in military environs, the players ate together, practiced twice a day, and toured the firing range as a group. They wore matching black T-shirts that read Heat Troops. ...... The real bonding didn't occur until the Heat Troops began to shed blood on the battlefield -- to lose, and lose badly. ....... "You need those adverse moments. When it's raw, when you don't get along, that's when there's the most opportunity for growth." ...... "We few, we happy few, we band of brothers;/For he today that sheds his blood with me/Shall be my brother." ...... On their way to the team bus, Wade teases James about not packing winter clothes. James laughs. It's obvious these guys get along. But camaraderie doesn't necessarily translate to seamless collaboration. ....... To achieve the proper balance, it's crucial to map out a strategy. Acquiring a player of James's caliber, says Groysberg, "is like acquiring a company. You need a whole integration plan." ....... game-long selflessness ..... The rich, wrote F. Scott Fitzgerald, "are different from you and me." So are superstars. ...... coaching in this league is about managing personalities ..... "All players want to be coached. They want to have discipline. They want structure. But some players get to that conclusion differently than others." ...... There is no more fragile commodity than the credibility of a team leader. ..... Everyone remembers the six NBA titles the Chicago Bulls won with Jordan, Pippen, and a cast of feisty specialists that included three-point marksman Kerr and rebounding fiend Dennis Rodman. What we tend to forget is how long it took to put all those pieces together. The Bulls didn't win a championship its first year with Jordan and Pippen. Or its second. Or even its third. ...... Chemistry takes time. The most successful superstar teams embrace shared leadership ...... They need time to crystallize. They need consistency, the same people butting heads, compromising, collaborating, day after day. ....... Chemistry isn't something you create and then ignore, like a mark on a growth chart. It's a reflection of the bonds between team members, and those bonds are fragile and needy. They're constantly changing, strengthened and fractured by the various personalities as well as the wins and losses. .......... The biggest obstacle to getting there is the blame game. Will the players resist second-guessing one another ..... True brothers, like the young soldiers in E Company who stormed the beaches of Normandy in World War II, don't point fingers. They believe in their mission and fight hard to cover one another's back. This is what any team aspires to: passion, unity, an absolute conviction that you can achieve whatever you want as a group. ....... In the face of unmet expectations and endless questions, bonds crack, friendships sour, and sacrifices, financial and otherwise, become burdensome. Guys move on. Heck, even über-successful teams struggle to keep it together. Look at what happened to the Beatles.

Friday, February 25, 2011

A Gurkha Joke

A monument to the Gurkha Soldier near the Mini...Image via WikipediaMore people from Nepal died in the two world wars than people from any non warring country. The Nepalis fought on the side of the British. The feudal rulers of Nepal kept the British in India happy by supplying soldiers.

When Thatcher invaded the Falkland Islands in the 1980s, the Gurkhas were at the forefront of the swift victory. It is said they ran with their knives/khukris, not guns.

The politics of fighting for another country is another topic. And I have my views. But for now, here's a joke.

This was World War II. The British were busy defending themselves in Burma. One Gurkha got lost in the jungles of Burma in the north. After long weeks of walking he finally showed up in the capital city of Rangoon, down south. He was asked, how did you do it? How did you make it all the way to Rangoon?

"That was not a problem, Sir," the Gurkha soldier replied. "I had a map."

The officer took a look at the map. The guy had a really old map of London with him.

Monday, September 06, 2010

Treating This Like It Were A 1992 Or 1980 Recession: A Mistake

Paul Krugman, Laureate of the Sveriges Riksban...Image via Wikipedia

The government stepped in to bail out the banks. The government stepped in with a stimulus bill. But the government did not step in to create about five million jobs. That third part is the missing part of the zigsaw puzzle. The Great Recession has not been fed the Tennessee Valley Authorities of these times. It has been for the government to dream up the jobs of tomorrow and bring them home. And I am not talking cutting edge stuff that perhaps is best left to the visionaries and the qualified in the private sector, although even there, it can be argued, bold would be beautiful. Perhaps this is just the time for a Manhattan Project for the environment, or to take a man/human to the environmental moon.

The first stimulus bill was a little misguided. It was too small, the tax cuts were unnecessary. Too much of it went to just paying people unemployment and salaries until the economy went back to normal. That normal has not happened. Because this is not 2001 or 1992 or 1980. This is more like the FDR times. It is a great crisis that can be steered to create a better future than ever before existed. This is a time for big, bold action still.

Band aid solutions will not work. And caving into GOP fervor to go back in time will fare even worse. The electorate has to be saved from itself. The electorate has to be relentlessly educated to do the right thing in November.

What are the options?

Some say a second stimulus is a fiscal non event. It is not happening. I am not so sure.

The Fed has not exercised all the monetary options available. Paul Krugman seems to suggest that. And I agree. Letting inflation go up a little so it becomes expensive for the private sector to sit on the near two trillion dollars it is sitting on would be a great idea.

The president has to engage in vision talk. He has to start talking like he is the nation's CEO, which he is. You engage the leaders of all segments of the private sector in brainstorming sessions. You let them help you think in terms of the jobs, companies and industries of tomorrow. And you give a series of speeches. You are not proposing to spend. It is not about money. It is about making speeches to prop up private sector confidence. It is about pumping vision. Where there is no vision, the people shall perish. This is as important as fiscal and monetary moves, and the most in command of the top guy. And it does not cost money.

These are not normal times. The wheels of capitalism are not churning like they are supposed to. Capitalism is fish outside water right now. Political leadership matters more, not less.

This is not like 2001. This is not like 1992. This is not like 1982. This is more like 1938. What finally got America out of the flunk back then was the massive spending of World War II. For the American voter to vote for the cut-the-deficit people in November would be suicidal. This is time for more, not less spending. But more alone will not work. The spending has to be about creating the five million jobs of tomorrow. I am thinking more along the lines of basic retraining for solar panel installation and the like.

America does not need World War III, but it does need a second stimulus bill that will be geared towards giving history a push. It has to be about the government actively creating about five millions jobs of tomorrow. They would be to do with green tech, education, with health.

I am for a second stimulus bill that is a trillion dollars. Its primary component would be to guarantee 100 MB broadband to all Americans. It would require freeing up wireless spectrum not 10 years from now, but today. It would require South Korea like competition into the broadband sector. The Internet is the interstate highway of today. People telecommuting are people not having to drive to work. Save the sky. There would be a massive spending on retraining the jobless for the jobs of tomorrow. Shovel-ready is a worker who only needs three months of training. Dream up five million jobs in green/clean tech, in education, in health. Install tens of millions of solar panels. Cut the obesity in the country by half in five years. Send out health care workers with the task. Bring the illiteracy down. Send mobs of mentors into the inner cities. Pay them. Turn this into a country of 75% college graduates in five years by taking all courses and lectures and textbooks and journals online that anyone anywhere can access for free, ad supported.

This second stimulus has to be a declaration of war. America can afford to go from a 13 trillion debt to a 14 trillion debt, but it can not afford Great Depression II or World War III.

A trillion dollars is what America spent in Iraq alone. Some say it is but a third of what America spent in Iraq alone. A trillion dollars is not a lot of money in the big scheme of things.

New York Times

Housing Woes Bring New Cry: Let Market Fall: Over the last 18 months, the administration has rolled out just about every program it could think of to prop up the ailing housing market, using tax credits, mortgage modification programs, low interest rates, government-backed loans and other assistance intended to keep values up and delinquent borrowers out of foreclosure. The goal was to stabilize the market until a resurgent economy created new households that demanded places to live...... a dose of shock therapy that would greatly shift the benefits to future homeowners: Let the housing market crash. .... Caught in the middle is an administration that gambled on a recovery that is not happening.... “They are deeply worried and don’t really know what to do.” ..... Sales of new homes are lower than in the depths of the recession of the early 1980s, when mortgage rates were double what they are now, unemployment was pervasive and the gloom was at least as thick...... “extend and pretend” or “delay and pray”

That ’70s Feeling:Steven Slater, a flight attendant for JetBlue, ended his career by cursing at his passengers over the intercom and grabbing a couple of beers before sliding down the emergency-evacuation chute ..... The “blue-collar blues” were so widespread that the Senate opened an investigation into worker “alienation.” ...... “I’d give the shirt right off of my back / If I had the nerve to say / Take this job and shove it!” ...... Workers have learned to internalize and mask powerlessness, but the internal frustration and struggle remain. ..... Today the concerns of the working class have less space in our civic imagination than at any time since the Industrial Revolution.

Paul Krugman: 1938 in 2010: The president’s policies have limited the damage, but they were too cautious, and unemployment remains disastrously high..... the year is 1938..... the nature of the recovery that followed refutes the arguments dominating today’s public debate, discouraging because it’s hard to see anything like the miracle of the 1940s happening again..... the stimulus raised growth while it lasted, but it made only a small dent in unemployment — and now it’s fading out......More stimulus is desperately needed ..... March 1938. Asked whether government spending should be increased to fight the slump, 63 percent of those polled said no. Asked whether it would be better to increase spending or to cut business taxes, only 15 percent favored spending; 63 percent favored tax cuts. And the 1938 election was a disaster for the Democrats, who lost 70 seats in the House and seven in the Senate....... World War II was, above all, a burst of deficit-financed government spending ..... the federal government borrowed an amount equal to roughly twice the value of G.D.P. in 1940 — the equivalent of roughly $30 trillion today. .... Deficit spending created an economic boom — and the boom laid the foundation for long-run prosperity. Overall debt in the economy — public plus private — actually fell as a percentage of G.D.P., thanks to economic growth and, yes, some inflation, which reduced the real value of outstanding debts. And after the war, thanks to the improved financial position of the private sector, the economy was able to thrive without continuing deficits. ....... when the economy is deeply depressed, the usual rules don’t apply. Austerity is self-defeating: when everyone tries to pay down debt at the same time, the result is depression and deflation, and debt problems grow even worse ...... Even under F.D.R., there was never the political will to do what was needed to end the Great Depression; its eventual resolution came essentially by accident. ..... politicians and economists alike have spent decades unlearning the lessons of the 1930s, and are determined to repeat all the old mistakes..... the big winners in the midterm elections are likely to be the very people who first got us into this mess, then did everything in their power to block action to get us out .... a little bit of intellectual clarity, and a lot of political will.

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Monday, July 26, 2010

The Economy: Uncharted Waters

Dorothea Lange's "Migrant Mother," a...Image via Wikipedia
The convulsion of the Great Recession has been the birth pang of a new kind of economy, a new kind of world. We had already been moving towards a post-industrial society, towards an information age for over a decade, but our pace had been too slow, not global enough, not as drastic as it ought to be. We are still unsure as to which directions to go. There is open talk of a double dip recession. The jobs are not here yet. It is still scary times.

After the Great Depression, America very clearly became an industrial economy. It was no longer the agriculture economy of Abraham Lincoln's time. A huge economic shift had been made. But there was pain along the way.

It is one of the failings of democracy that you need a big, bad event to get people riled up to go do something big. FDR wanted to enter the war long before Pearl Harbor happened, but he waited, and waited and waited until Pearl Harbor happened.

Why do you need a 9/11 before you realize the cause of democracy needs to be furthered across the Arab world? Why do you need a Gulf Oil Spill before even the average person starts thinking in terms of a zero emissions future? Why are intellectual extrapolations not enough? Or perhaps Hollywood is not doing its job.

I supported the Obama stimulus plan, but my criticism was and is that it was not forward looking enough. Roads and bridges are important but those are rickety swings of the industrial age. The roads and bridges of the information age are to do with the internet.

The stimulus bill was not big enough. It should have been a trillion. And it was not future oriented enough. The stimulus needed to be about turning America into a country of 75% college graduates. You can't do that with the existing colleges and so you turn the entire country into one big college. Universal broadband. Free up the spectrum, not in 10 years, but now. (India Broadband Spectrum Bids)

It was lack of vision that brought down Wall Street more than anything. Pumping more and more money into real estate is not my idea of visionary investment. They were accumulating so much money and all that needed to go somewhere. And so they came up with ever nefarious ways to put more and more money into real estate.

Wall Street was not thinking in terms of the jobs of tomorrow, the companies of tomorrow, the industries of tomorrow. It was not thinking futuristic enough. It was not thinking global enough. If it had been thinking global, it would have sunk a few trillions into global microfinance and seen returns that were better than that of the S&P 500. It would have put the money into global infrastructure projects. There were clear alignments to be sought between self interest and global interests, but they were not sought.

BusinessWeek: Lucky for Obama, U.K.'s Cameron Is Embracing Austerity First
Plugging their economies into the life-support system of central bank liquidity and massive government stimulus packages was the easy part. The tough question is how long their governments should stand in for a private sector too nervous about the future to invest and hire. With the world economy threatening to slide into a double-dip recession, both the U.S. and the U.K. are nevertheless talking about fiscal austerity. The only good news for Obama is that Cameron is going first. ..... spending cuts of as much as 40 percent ..... the U.K. doesn't want to be the next Greece. ...... bond vigilantes are driving U.K. economic policy. "Questions that were asked about the liquidity and solvency of banking systems are now being asked of the liquidity and solvency of some of the governments that stand behind those banks" ...... "The austerity debate is now not about whether fiscal tightening in advanced economies is necessary, but on when it should begin in earnest." ..... growth collapses if all of the members simultaneously abstain from spending. Too many governments curbing spending and raising taxes in parallel would snuff out the nascent recovery. ...... Consumer confidence has dipped ..... government aid can't be removed without risking a relapse. ..... With so many job cuts, Cameron could find himself coping with strike action on a scale not seen since Margaret Thatcher neutered the nation's private-sector unions. ...... The banking industry, meanwhile, is crying foul at the prospect of bonus caps and a top income-tax rate that will climb to 50 percent from 40 percent. Threats to leave for Switzerland may prove more than empty. ...... The path Cameron is charting is so arduous, and public opposition is likely to become so intense, that rating agency Standard & Poor's isn't convinced he can deliver ...... If he forges ahead, there is a real chance that Britain returns to a recession. Neither scenario is cheery—and neither is beyond imagining for the U.S.
I am for a second stimulus bill that will focus primarily on creating jobs. It was finally the massive spendings of World War II that ended the Great Depression. Bold action is necessary.

A second stimulus package would be big, it would focus on a radical freeing of the wireless spectrum with a goal of cheap, universal broadband, it would entail creating millions of new government funded jobs, likely in the education and health sectors that people can go for with short training periods.

A lot of smart people ran banks. But banks had to be bailed out. Then the stimulus happened. That was the government bailing out the government. A lot of money has gone to keep unemployment benefits rolling, to keep paying teachers and police officers and firefighters. We did not expect the private sector to take care of the bailout and the stimulus. Similarly in these times, it has to be the government that has to step in to create millions of new jobs. Just like the banks paid back, the people will too.

The deficit and the debt will have to be reigned, but now is not the time.
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