Our biggest problem with Internet, Google, Facebook, Twitter, is that our attention span scarcity is not duly valued

Sir, you write: “It is clear that Google, Facebook, Twitter and a few others have become an important part of the social fabric. The dissemination of fake political news around elections in the US and Europe has illustrated as much”, “New realities confront a maturing Internet” September 12.

I don’t get it. If there was any “fake political news around elections in the US and Europe” that was that Hillary and Remain were shoe-ins. And although the dissemination is important the fact is that others produced these news… mostly the political correctness clans.

But let me get to the real issue here. We humans do not have more than 7 days a week with 24 hours each with 60 minutes each and 60 seconds each. That’s all! And social media is claiming more and more of that limited attention span and there is little we can do about it, if we do not want to disconnect entirely.

Perhaps if anyone outside our circle of friends would want to send us a message, like a fake news or an irresistible click-ad, had to pay us something, then we could perhaps align the incentives better. Some could charge one cent per message, others one dollar and perhaps a Nobel Prize winner or an important politician 100 dollars for 30 seconds.

If it were so, many more would think differently about losing their time with their silly useless messages… and we would all live happier.

@PerKurowski

“Whut you goin' to do when a [lefty] gits starts to talk purty? I'm jist a [socialist] who cain't say no”

Sir, Janan Ganesh writes: “At some indistinct point in the recent past, the left lost its monopoly on rebellion. To rebel was to be conservative or libertarian. It was more transgressive to buck the sensitivities of the age on race, gender, sexual preference, climate change, civil liberties, mental health and religion than to walk on eggshells around them. This shift in what it meant to be a radical was the price of the left’s success in the culture wars. The more it policed language, the more it inadvertently glamorised anyone who gave voice to unreconstructed sentiments — even if… they almost never mean them.” “Counter-elite mentality” May 6.

The left also lost out when it was not able to resist the siren songs of false sirens like Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez and Nicolas Maduro. I am always reminded of Oklahoma’s Ado Annie singing “I Cain't Say No!”

“Whut you goin' to do when a [lefty] gits flirty

And starts to talk purty? whut you goin' to do?

Whut you goin' to do when he talks that way

Spit in his eye?

I'm jist a [socialist] who cain't say no”

Also, even though they understand that terms like “deplorable” do not serve any useful recruiting purpose, they just can’t resist going on and on, like with for instance their current “We and time will make you understand how truly dumb you were/are voting for Trump”, arguing every little minuscule happening into a Trump fault, losing perspective on things.

Frankly, a President who can drop an A-bomb basically at his will cannot fire an FBI director for whatever cause at his will?

@PerKurowski

Why has the world not been duly informed about the impact on jobs of robots and dumb bank regulations?

Sir, I refer to your “incisive new global business columnist” Rana Foroohar writing, from a local perspective, that “Trump’s trade policies won’t help my town” March 6.

Let me for the umpteenth time comment on two issues 

Foroohar writes: “small and medium-sized businesses create about 60 per cent of jobs in America.” And it is precisely to “risky” SMEs that bank regulators have assigned among the largest risk-weights; which mean banks need to hold the most capital when lending to these; which means they have dis-incentivized bank lending the most, to what we most need to have access to credit. It is all so loony, especially considering that major bank crisis never result from excessive lending to this type of client… since these are perceived as risky.

Foroohar also writes: “Carrier recently cut a deal with the president to keep 1,000 jobs in Indiana rather than moving them to Mexico, only to come under fire from unions for outsourcing hundreds of others and replacing workers with robots… Those who might in the past have worked $25 an hour factory jobs now do $11-$13 an hour shifts at Walmart.”

That should indicate that our society has been surprised, unprepared, for a major event, namely that immense structural unemployment that might result from the use of robots and other variants of automation. How should we handle it? Do we not need decent and worthy unemployments? Should we at least not tax robots and cousins with any type of taxes we load on the employed so that these latter could at least compete fairly for jobs? There are hundreds of questions waiting to be answered but in this data world, we don’t find any data on for instance how many jobs were effectively taken over by robots and cousins during the last decade.

Of course, as Foroohar says, “when it comes to trade Mr Trump is fighting the last war”. But the main reason for that is that no one informed Trump or the rest that there was a new war going on”. Did anyone mention the insane bank regulations war on risk-taking, the oxygen of development? Did Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders talk of the robots coming? Was a Universal Basic Income possibility raised in any town-hall meeting? Who told Trump and the electorate that the building the Mexico Wall could itself represent the last decent job opportunities for many, on both sides of the wall? Sir, clearly the world has a lot of urgent catching up to do. 

@PerKurowski

A good slogan for any candidate would be: “Make the Land of the Free and the Home of the Brave, Free and Brave again”

Sir, I refer to Gillian Tett’s discussion on the importance in politics of good slogans “Make slogans great again” October 1.

I do not consider myself a slogan maker, but I sure know that the much more than a slogan slogan I would most like to see, is “Make the Land of the Free and the Home of the Brave, Free and Brave again”

That is because bank regulators, with their dangerously stupid risk weighted capital requirements for banks attacked the very core of the American spirit, namely the willingness to take risks and the equal access to opportunities for all.

Sir, after hundreds of letter on this I do not feel the need to expand more on it… some aide memoires should suffice.

@PerKurowski ©

Martin Wolf, bank regulators ordered trust to crumble, so the west is already falling. Your silence is complicit

Sir, Martin Wolf lashes out at the possibilities of Donald Trump being elected president of US and on its consequences. I agree though I would not go to such extreme as arguing that “It would, for example, end efforts to manage the threat of climate change, possibly forever”. "If trust crumbles, the west is lost" September 28. 

But I also believe that the possibilities of the US, among democrats, republicans and We the People, to put a stop to most potential Trump lunacy is very big… almost a certainty.

But in my firm opinion the west is already crumbling thanks to those statist and risk adverse regulations that were introduced in 1988 with Basel I and that really exploded in 2004 with Basel II.

The credit risk weighted capital requirements with their risk weights of 0% for the sovereign, 20% for the AAArisktocracy, 35% for residential houses, 100% for We the (unrated) People and 150% for the below BB-rated outcasts, has completely distorted the allocation of bank credit to the real economy. The west was not built with such regulations but the west is certainly doomed to gloom with it.

Unfortunately, the world of top experts, renowned academicians and famed journalists, which includes Martin Wolf, have not been able to even bring up Basel’s distortion of bank credit into discussions. And the testers of bank stress keep on looking only at what is on the balance sheets and without caring a iota about what does not, like sufficient loans to SMEs and entrepreneurs.

If the west had to choose between Donald Trump and the Basel Committee, I know who I would vote for, again of course counting on a lot of support to reign in his worst excesses.

PS. Here are two questions that if a moderator of the US candidates for president debate I would ask:

Donald Trump, how much damage would the republicans and democrats allow Hillary Clinton to do if she is elected president?

Hillary Clinton, how much damage would the democrats and republicans allow Donald Trump to do if he is elected president?

@PerKurowski ©

Do you think Trump wants to lose big? To risk hearing “You’re fired!”? What if he first negotiates with GOP and then quits?

Sir, I refer to Philip Delves Broughton’s article on the candidature of Donald Trump, “The nominee whose tactics make history irrelevant” August 13.

It is incomplete because, there more than 80 days until November 8, a very long time in these times when things can turn around in seconds, and it does presuppose that Trump would be willing to accept a very significant loss, having to hear “You’re fired!”, without considering the possibility he negotiates with the GOP, and quits, and thereby quite possibly allow an alternative republican candidate to win the elections. He is a businessman after all... or not?

And what of the Democrat party if Clinton loses? Would not Obama for instance then hold on to much more influence in it? Will Michelle run someday? Sir, you see there are plenty of questions in the air. 

@PerKurowski ©

Financial Time’s Hillary Clinton interview

Sir the following is my reaction after reading the interview of Senator Hillary Clinton, conducted by Financial Times ’s Washington bureau chief Edward Luce.

Protectionism: Full fledged competition in a globalized world would have eroded the profitability of many companies had we not awarded them the protection of intellectual property rights, and invested some serious money in making that shield mean something. Can you imagine Microsoft in a world where efficient software copiers are free to roam?

Therefore since most of labor have not been furnished similar new protections, and some old ones have in fact been taken away, it should not come as a surprise that the share of labor income as a percentage of GDP is dropping, and that this is, certainly and rightly, creating a source of conflict.

So what’s to be done? There are only two choices? Either we award to labor similar protections which would set us all on a de-globalization route, a lose-lose proposition; or we must require that the beneficiaries of intellectual property rights give back some extra of their quasi-monopoly based extra earnings to the society. As an absolute minimum, this should represent the direct cost of enforcing and defending their rights. Is this protectionism? No at all!

Review of existing trade agreements: Absolutely. In some of the US bilateral agreement some prohibitions were imposed on developing countries because at the time they were considered as appropriate, but hindsight has led to other conclusions and so these clauses need to be revisited. For instance some US trade agreements prohibit any restrictions on capital movement even though now these restrictions are deemed quite good at taking away some of the excessive volatility that the waters of the global financial oceans can have on local bathtubs.

Energy and environment: “the most important thing is getting the US focused on energy efficiency, on clean renewable energy, combating global warming on raising gas mileage etc.” Just like the recent Nobel price recipient Hillary Clinton does not have the courage of spelling out what is primarily needed to really alter the energy and environment realities in the US, namely a substantial tax on gasoline consumption.

Housing crisis: Just like the US can sometimes use a Strategic Petroleum Reserve I would suggest the government buying a large amount of the houses currently involved with subprime loans; at a price below the current outstanding mortgage; financed by the current mortgage holder; and giving the current debtor a option to repurchase his house in a couple of years at a price that would keep the tax-payer form being harmed. That’s what I would do… but then again I am no PhD and so I could be wrong